Aerogel is the world’s lightest solid — and also the most porous. I’ve got a story on Wired News this morning that explains all about this really cool material, how it was used in NASA/JPL’s recent Stardust mission, and how some companies are commercializing the stuff.… Read the rest
Month: February 2006 (Page 1 of 3)
If you wanted to catch a few particles of comet dust speeding through the vacuum of space at 6 kilometers per second — without damaging or destroying those particles — how would you do it?
Faced with exactly this problem, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory focused on aerogel — an extremely lightweight, porous material that is chemically identical to glass, but weighs only a little more than air.… Read the rest
Tom Lantos is my congressman, and it’s principles like this that keep me voting for him every single time he comes up for re-election: Congressman quizzes Net companies on shame | CNET News.com… Read the rest
Anyone else have problems with T-Mobile Hotspots in Starbucks bumping them off the network and reconnecting every 15-20 minutes? It’s really annoying.… Read the rest
Locke blogged my story. I blogged his blog of my story. Then he blogged my blog of his blog of my story. Now, I’m blogging his blog of my blog of his blog of my story. Ain’t trackback fun? Krugle Blog » instant replay or infinite recursion?… Read the rest
I’ve got not one, but two stories about search engines appearing today.
Here Comes a Google for Coders, on Wired News, talks about a startup search engine called Krugle, which will let programmers find source code and documentation online.… Read the rest
A new search technology from Google makes it possible for law enforcement officials to examine personal documents from your hard drive, without your knowing it, according to the digital-rights advocacy organization Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
Released last week, Google Desktop 3, the latest version of the company’s desktop search utility, adds a “Search Across Computers” feature that automatically uploads files from a user’s computer onto Google’s servers.… Read the rest
For most people, open source is a synonym for free software. But for programmers, open source is about sharing code, building on the work of others and not having to reinvent the wheel — at least, that’s the ideal. In practice, code reuse remains very low, because it’s often too hard for programmers to find relevant bits of code for their applications.… Read the rest
Elmore Leonard’s rules of writing. (Sadly not included: Don’t center your copy, since it makes it fucking hard to read.) Category | Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle (via 43 Folders)… Read the rest
Winner, best business writing, February 2006: Annalee Newitz: “investors have turned their burning, collective gaze from the wastes of Mordor to the human world of Silicon Valley again” AlterNet: Son of Dot-Com… Read the rest