It’s True — Dice Rolls Are Not Random, and Ones Come Up More Often
Sunday, March 31st, 2013
Modern dice tend to have rounded corners (as shown in the image here) and indented pips. Apparently this greatly reduces the amount of plastic required to manufacture the dice, and thus makes them less expensive. Turns out there’s a problem, though, this style breaks the randomness of the dice. They tend to come up as ones about 29% of the time (versus 16.7% if it was truly random). Think about that for a moment. The dice produce ones nearly a third of the time.
The main problem is the rounded corners. When that was fixed, the percentage of ones rolled dropped to 19%. Still too high, but much better. The indented pips were the cause of the remaining difference. When the tester used casino dice (square corners with non-indented pips), the percentage of ones rolled was “dead on” correct. And he also learned that casinos had researched this same issue and their results were similar to his.
So if you use dice for games and such, I’d suggest using a pair with square corners. And if you’re a hard-core purist, get a set of casino dice. (Unless you’re playing Axis & Allies, in which case you want a lot of ones.)
The linked article covers the history of that iconic American institution, 
Back in July, security researcher Cody Brocious 
Cigarette taxes are typically justified by earmarking them to cover the increased health care costs for smokers, but I think they’re really imposed in an effort to make the cost so high that smokers will quit. In New York City smokers pay an insanely high cigarette tax rate, $6.46 per pack, yet a recent study shows “no decline in smoking among low-income smokers, despite tax increases since 2003”.
The radio show, 
The linked article discusses whether you should type one or two spaces after a period, before starting the next sentence. The correct method is to use one space. The author covers why two spaces were once used (because of typewriters with fixed-width characters), and why this is no longer necessary for documents written on today’s computers.
Brenda Hewlett made a 114 foot hockey shot, into an opening that couldn’t have been more than an inch wider than the puck. For her efforts, she won a new Ford F-150.
From the linked article: “[Researchers] noted that social disturbance, societal collapse and population collapse often coincided with significant climate change in America, the Middle East, China, and many other countries in preindustrial times, suggesting that climate change was the ultimate cause of human crisis in many preindustrial societies.” The article goes on to link climate change with famine, war, economic chaos, and mass emigration. It then suggests that climate change, not sociopolitical factors, was the real motivating force behind these events.
In the linked article, Kim Komando gives several good reasons for not sharing your wireless internet connection with neighbors. An important one being that if the neighbor does anything illegal, the police arrest you and confiscate your computer equipment. (On the other hand, if you’re the one doing illegal stuff over the internet, I’ve actually heard people suggest that it’s a good idea to leave your wireless router unsecured—so there’s reasonable doubt concerning who performed the crime.)
October 31st, 2011 was the official day that the human population reached 7 billion. The last 2 billion of that happened in less than 25 years, and we’re on track to hit 8 billion in the next 15 years or so.