36350195
submission
xmas2003 writes:
The US Census Bureau reports that the U.S. Population is now more than PI times 100 Million. The monthly rate of deaths is 185,000 is offset by the gain from births of 324,000 and net immigration of 56,000. At that rate, it will be over a 1,000 years before there is another digit of precision for Pi. World population is currently 22x the US's at over 7 Billion.
31344311
submission
xmas2003 writes:
ExtremeTech has an interesting piece about
how big are porn websites.
They get some actual traffic/bandwidth data from
YouPorn.Com (only NSFW link here)
which I'm sure has plenty of
naked chicks
and
Boobies
in their 100 Terabyte archive of porn.
Every day, they handle over 100 million page views and almost a
Petabyte of data transfer — one metric says this is about
10x of Slashdot.
While Sebastian Anthony has some fun with the subject matter — "While it's difficult domain to penetrate ... hard numbers are few and far between" — he plays it straight and provides some interesting facts about some of the most trafficked parts of the internet which present some
real scalability challenges (PPT preso) using software such as Redis & Nginx.
It's certainly a complicated industry as outlined in the
Geek-Kings of Smut.
26930062
submission
xmas2003 writes:
Since /. discussed the last Lunar Eclipse until 2014 a week ago, should we have a followup post of what it looked like? Here's my pictures/time-lapse of the Eclipsed Moon setting over the Colorado Rockies — perhaps /. editors can gather the submissions for a "group" post.
23996828
submission
xmas2003 writes:
First-hand account of Reno Air Crash from (Java Designer) James Gosling ... better than most of what is being reported in mainstream media so far. Terrible tragedy and may the deceased RIP.
23987030
submission
xmas2003 writes:
As a long-time reader of News for Nerds, I fit the "profile" in a number of ways — including being myopic since childhood ... but fortunately for me, this was correctable with glasses or contacts. Around age 40, it started becoming more difficult to do close-up tasks (such as using vi to edit Perl code ;-) as Presbyopia showed up right "on time" — I'm sure many older /. readers can relate.
But at age 46, a cataract started to obscure my vision which was no longer correctable — bummer to have this happen a few decades early. After extensive research on the various options (mono focal, multi-focal, accommodating, etc.), I opted for Cataract Surgery with a Crystalens implant.
Millions of Cataract Surgeries are done annually, so I figured my (overly analytical) writeup plus visual examples might be of interest to some /. readers who may (or will) be dealing with the same issue. Plus I'm sure many have gone through this process and can chime in with their experience/recommendations.
I had the first eye done last Monday and have been updating the web page — so far, so good. The eye doctor will "poke a hole" in my second eye this Monday — wish me luck! ;-)
21654606
submission
xmas2003 writes:
A few months ago, Google announced their +1 button which was their response to the Facebook Like button,
Twitter Tweet button, Stumble Badge and other misc. social networking tools.
I have some nifty pictures of baby hummingbirds that seem popular since several hundred people look at it every day. So a little while ago, I added the Google +1 button in-line with the buttons from Facebook (2,452 likes), Stumble (35,000 views), and Twitter (147 tweets) ... and so far, the big "G's" button has been pushed ZERO times.
Are web surfers just not used to seeing the latest web button, or is this a sign that Google is a little late to the social networking craze?
11960268
submission
xmas2003 writes:
Since 2005, I've had a live webcam watching my grass grow — another is currently watching a bird nest on my front door — five babies! While I appreciate the 802.11g wireless and Pan/Tilt/Zoom (10x optical) of the 5 year old D-Link DCS-6620g, it has issues, especially image quality. I've investigated getting a new webcam, but except for high-end/security-related gear from companies such as Axis, there doesn't seem to be much improvement in the consumer space as most offerings are just cheaper and USB connected for tethered video conferencing, etc.
I have an 18 Megapixel Canon 7D DSLR that shoots gorgeous 1920x1080x30p hi-def video. While I don't expect that in a consumer webcam, their recently released T2i uses the same chip and sells for $800. And heck, point-n-shoots are a couple of hundred bucks and now many cell phones have cameras built in, so there's plenty of low power speedy CPU's in small packages these days to handle the signal processing.
So why hasn't someone taken a sensor with good image quality sensor, downsized to around 1024x768, and put it in a PTZ webcam package with 802.11n wireless for around $500?
1740109
submission
Penguin Fan writes:
For those /.'ers with idle time, check out the Growing Pengiun Webcam and "watch it grow 600% in 72 hours"
There is also time-lapse videos if you aren't able to maintain a constant vigil.
