I have no idea why he chose McD's in France, but I do have kids, so this is remotely understandable.

And it would be cool to have gold fall from the sky. But that doesn't make the current machines useless. Remember, we are at the very start of this revolution.

As for printing a candy bar...huh? Why do that? Traditional manufacturing still has a role, at least for the foreseeable future.

On the other hand, I was playing with a RepRap printed herringbone gear yesterday. I thought it was pretty cool. They are very difficult to manufacture with traditional machinery, but not a problem with a 3D printer.

I think that's the plan. Google Maps now has a new mode called MapsGL which uses hardware accelerated 3d. Why add 3d to the browser if you didn't plan to use it.

I just discovered the joys of podcasting their shows, which is a great way to consume non-news radio. This is terrible news.

I'll really miss Tom and Ray. I even thought they were great in their Nova special on the car of the future

There were 243 million CFL's sold in the US in 2009. And there were 34 reports of smoke, and 4 reports of fire in a US consumer product safety database from March 2011 through December of 2011 (see this article for more information). Seems like a pretty safe product to me.

In terms of your supposition that CFL's actually cost more than incandecents? Here is a study that says no, In terms of the ACEEE.org study, I can't find specifics (unless you are talking about the 2006 study, which is hopelessly out of date). But electric cars top the ACEEE.org list of cleanest cars this year.

You can keep your "spaceship" at $60,000 / kg to LTO. I'm betting on the "non-spaceship", which costs $5,400 / kg to LTO. Read wikipedia for the consequences of demanding full reusability.

Elon just answered that they were off by a few seconds because of wind. He said that if it weren't for wind, they could land Dragon in someone's backyard.

Congrats to SpaceX. Amazing accomplishment, especially for the price.

This LA Times article has more information.

Soccer causes head injuries too.

I don't get your comment. I teach math to six year olds once a week. They "get" the number line, in that they use it as a useful tool for calculation, and can understand how numbers equate to divisions on the paper. Is it innate? Probably not. Is it something that many six year olds in the US culture have? From my experience, yes.

Where the article veers into the absurd is the suggestion that we should consider "bringing the human saga" into teaching math, and that math isn't objective fact, or black and white. Math is freaking math. There is right and wrong, black and white.

Hey....this is the entertainment industry we're talking about?

Louis CK fucked with the system. He wasn't thinking of the middlemen. He stiffed the studio execs. He gave the lawyers and his agent the finger.

Will you think of the poor entertainment industry for a second? Blow and hookers are expensive. Vacation house mortgages don't just pay themselves.

This isn't totally surprising.

I was an early adopter of the Honda Civic Hybrid in July of 2002. I've had bad problems with the continuously variable transmission (which required multiple visits to the deader, but thankfully was fixed under warranty), hybrid battery problems (again thankfully replaced under warranty), and a bad ERG valve (which I had to pay for). And I felt I had to take it to the dealer for oil changes (since it uses synthetic oil). Compared to the Honda Accord I had for 10 years before this car, the Honda Civic Hybrid has had a lot of problems.

Also, there is a class action lawsuit from owners dissatisfied with their Honda Civic Hybrid's mileage that is close to settling.

And, I do plan to drive this car for at least a few more years. I do think I've saved money, as well as creating less polution. And for my next car I will be considering a hybrid, a plug-in hybrid, or an electric car.

Taking a paragraph of someone's work and rewording it may not be infringement. See the Wikipedia article on close paraphrasing for exceptions. Close paraphrasing of copyrighted text is not allowed when it is substantial, but is also allowed when there are limited ways to say the same thing.

The problem is that not all Windows 8 laptops will have this, so it will be an afterthought. When will Microsoft learn from Apple? If you build a platform that requires certain sensors, developers will use them. Otherwise...well, it will just be a gimmick.

This isn't right. The proposed algorithm is better on sparser signals, but is a regular FFT. The point is that many things we want to compress are sparse, or at least have pieces that are sparse. In JPEG, for example, images are broken into 8x8 pixel blocks and then DCT'ed (which is similar to FFT). Many of those blocks might be sparse, and benefit from this new approach, even if the most complex blocks aren't and don't benefit.