The Impossible Diamond Robbery
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
Here’s the lowdown on how thieves stole tens of millions of dollars worth of diamonds from the Antwerp Diamond Center. Such a theft was considered impossible because of the extensive security measures in place. Almost all of the robbers were later caught, but they would have gotten away with it except for one weak link in the group. (Note to self: when performing a $100 million diamond heist, don’t rely on others to destroy the evidence.) What I found most interesting, however, is the claim that the theft was just a cover for insurance fraud.
Link: http://www.wired.com/…
(via Neatorama)
According to the interface specifications, all of my hard drives should be running at about 160MB/s. After using the HD_Speed utility, however, I found that actual, sustained transmission times are a fraction of the theoretical maximum. While this wasn’t a huge revelation, I was surprised to find a drive running at one-third the speed of the others.
Here’s a trillion dollars put into perspective. And keep in mind these are $100 bills they’re using.
The linked article has some interesting facts about Dr. Seuss. For instance, he’s credited as the first person to use the word “nerd” in an English-language publication.
When Google released 
From the article: “Printing the [New York Times] costs twice as much as sending every subscriber a free Kindle.” This sounds great, but I’ve heard there are problems with the pricing of books—specifically that the Kindle version sometimes costs more than the paperback version. Does anyone have any experience with a Kindle? If so, let us know in the comments.
The linked article details the story of Phillipe Petit’s 1974 high-wire walk between the World Trade Center towers in New York. It took quite a bit of planning and deception. Among other things, he smuggled a 450-pound steel cable to the top of one tower. To string the wire, they used a bow and arrow with fishing line attached, then sent across progressively larger ropes. One witness said Petit was jumping up and down—that his feet were actually leaving the wire. That’s pretty impressive considering a fall would have been fatal.
Here’s an interesting theory that goes against modern conventional wisdom. Boys are naturally inclined towards a certain amount of aggressive behavior, and violent video games are good outlets for it. Moreover this natural aggression is normal and healthy, and if suppressed, can hinder a boy’s development.
This was discussed on a local radio station. As part of the annexation of Texas into the United States, Texas was allowed the option of dividing itself into smaller states at an unspecified future date. As the linked article notes, however, any state can split up, provided it follows proper procedures.
Here at the Chad’s News network command center, we’re always exploiting new technology in our never-ending quest to serve up interesting content. So we now have a version of the site formatted for mobile devices. Mobile users are automatically detected and redirected to the 