Chad's News

Twitter is a popular micro-blogging site, where you can post short messages (tweets) about yourself. But users are starting to see a new type of directed, unsolicited advertising based on their posts. For example, say that you tweet about having an ear infection. This is monitored by someone, and you receive a message from a medical company suggesting that you try their product to help with the infection. It’s an advertisers paradise, because the messages are directed to those most likely to be interested in the product.

Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/…
(via Kim Komando)

Here are 11 predictions in Back to the Future II that came true. Pretty good for a sequel!

Link: http://www.11points.com/…
(via mental_floss)

The Amazon Kindle is an e-book reader that’s becoming quite popular. But be warned: the Kindle becomes an expensive paperweight should Amazon decide to cancel your account.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

One of the banks in my area is offering a free iPod Shuffle to people opening new accounts. Here’s the story of a guy who chose his bank based on a free gift, and he more than paid for it. All I can say is TANSTAAFL (with thanks to Robert Heinlein).

Link: http://www.getrichslowly.org/…
(via mental_floss)

This Flash animation of the Easter Bunny doing a rap routine is hilarious. Thanks to June for this topic.

Link: http://www.dougpatton.com/…

This article is one of the more readable explanations that I’ve seen of how universes are created. It’s short and concise, yet manages to cover topics from quantum multiverses to what may exist outside of our universe.

Link: http://www.time.com/…
(via digg)

The linked article describes how paper is recycled. The system breaks down the wood fibers slightly, and they can’t be reused after about 6-8 times through the process. Also, there are nasty chemicals involved.

Link: http://www.mentalfloss.com/…

Boy this takes me back. The title for the linked article is a bit inaccurate, since some of the products did actually die. And for several of them, only the naming rights have survived.

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/…
(via digg)

From the article:

With King shot just the day before in Memphis, Elliott encouraged her third-graders to discuss how something so horrible could happen.

“I finally said, ‘Do you kids have any idea how it feels to be something other than white in this country?’”

The children shook their heads and said they wanted to learn, so Elliott set the rules. Blue-eyed children must use a cup to drink from the fountain. Blue-eyed children must leave late to lunch and to recess. Blue-eyed children were not to speak to brown-eyed children. Blue-eyed children were troublemakers and slow learners.

Within 15 minutes, Elliott says, she observed her brown-eyed students morph into youthful supremacists and blue-eyed children become uncertain and intimidated.

Brown-eyed children “became domineering and arrogant and judgmental and cool,” she says. “And smart! Smart! All of a sudden, disabled readers were reading. I thought, ‘This is not possible, this is my imagination.’ And I watched bright, blue-eyed kids become stupid and frightened and frustrated and angry and resentful and distrustful. It was absolutely the strangest thing I’d ever experienced.”

Link: http://www.latimes.com/…
(via Neatorama)

You’re a hacker who wants to break into a large web forum, steal their user data, and destroy their database. The site is using the latest software patches and has a large array of security features to prevent unauthorized intrusion. What do you do? Simple, hack into their off-site backup, which is not nearly as secure but still contains their database login credentials.

Link: http://ask.slashdot.org/…

Here’s the situation: “DNA traces of an unknown eastern-European woman had been found at almost 17 crime scenes, including two murders … but also car jackings, unprofessional break-ins and on a bullet fired in a marital dispute. The crimes [were] spread around a large area including south-west Germany, France and Switzerland.” Law-enforcement officials set up a massive task force to track down this super-criminal, and they believe they’ve found the culprit—a woman at the factory that makes cotton swabs for DNA tests. The swabs used at the crime scenes were contaminated with her DNA. Oops.

Link #1: http://mwinkelmann.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Link #2: http://en.wikipedia.org/…

Link #3: http://www.reuters.com/…

If you can get Internet Explorer 8 to work correctly, it has some nice search abilities.

Link: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/…
(via Lifehacker)