“I built a potato battery out of 500 pounds of potatoes. It powered a small sound system. […]
Each potato generates about 0.5 volts and 0.2 milliamperes. I connected groups of potatoes together in series to increase voltage and then connected these groups together in parallel to increase amperage. The entire 500 lb battery generated around 5 volts and 4 milliamperes.”
Author: Jani
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500 lb Potato Battery
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Software tracks mood swings of blogosphere
“[MoodViews] tracks about 10 million blogs hosted by the US service LiveJournal. […]
About 250,000 new LiveJournal posts are created every day and roughly 150,000 of these include a label for one of hundreds of different moods. Moodviews keeps track of these labels and generates a graph, revealing emotions shifts across all LiveJournal blogs over time.”
New Scientist
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Hopeisen Omenan käyttäjät käräyttivät PowerBook-varkaan
“Espoolaisen Kari Päivärinnan kannettava varastettiin autosta keskellä kirkasta päivää Oulun keskustassa kolmisen viikkoa sitten. Päivärinnan kaveri kertoi tapahtuneesta Hopeisessa Omenassa ja viikkoa myöhemmin tuntomerkkejä [vastaava] kohde löydettiin Huuto.netistä. Koneen sarjanumero paljasti[, että kyseessä oli varastettu laite], joten asiasta ilmoitettiin [poliisille]. Koska virkavalta ei reagoinut asiaan toivotulla tavalla, Homppulaiset päätivät hoitaa asian itse.”
Omenatarha via Juha
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Digital cameras individually traceable
“A new forensic technique means many digital photographs can now be traced to the individual cameras that took them. The method works by analysing imperfections in the cameras’ light sensors. […]
The technique can even trace digital images that have been compressed or cropped: “We tried all the stuff that people normally do with digital images, and found it was resistant,” [Jessica Fridrich at Binghamton University] told New Scientist.
But she admits that extensive testing will be needed to determine precisely how accurate the process is, and what the chances of an error are.”
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Fix Firefox unresponsive script warnings
“Ever since I upgraded to Firefox 1.5, I’ve been getting some unresponsive script warnings on sites that employ heavy Javascript like Gmail or Bloglines. Curious about it, I dug around and managed to find out how to fix the problem.”
The solution is tweaking the value of dom.max_script_run_time in your Firefox config; David sets it to 20 (from the default of 8).
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What's New in Thunderbird 1.5.0.2
“Thunderbird 1.5.0.2 provides stability and security enhancements that are part of our ongoing program to provide a safer email experience for our users. We recommend that all Thunderbird users upgrade to this latest version.
Here’s what’s new in Thunderbird 1.5:
- Improvements to product stability.
- Several security fixes.
The Rumbling Edge has a more detailed list of notable bug fixes.”
Mozilla via Juha
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A Tour of Microsoft's Mac Lab
“I’m going to write a little bit more about what I do to help MacBU ship great software and provide some color around what’s it’s like to work on Mac software at Microsoft. Often when we have press events or special visits from our MVPs I’ll give them a tour of the Mac Lab and explain what we do. They’ve always found it very interesting and so I thought I’d share a virtual tour of our Mac Lab.”
D. Weiss via Juha
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Torvalds creates patch for cross-platform virus
“The reason that the [Windows/Linux cross-platform virus] is not propagating itself in the latest kernel versions is due to a bug in how GCC handles specific registers in a particular system call. [Linus Torvalds] has coded a patch for the kernel to allow the virus to work on even the latest Linux kernel.”
NewsForge via Juha
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Microscott vs. Microsoft
“A computer workshop company on Sherbrooke St. in NDG is called Microscott and has a logo that uses the same font as Microsoft.”
Came by this googling for what I saw on Webpark.
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KorsoSQL
“Jostain syystä sain päähäni kirjoittaa Korsoroidun version SQL-kielestä.”