Woah! Is this the US trying to secretly develop a nuclear bomb!?!

One interesting thing about Carlsen is how *little* opening theory he knows compared to his rivals. He doesn't follow this approach. Instead of highly specialising in a few openings, he has very general play where he can play most openings well. Seems to be working for him!

Don't underestimate the *huge* gap Carlsen has on his rivals in the rankings: http://www.chessbase.com/post/november-2013-ratings--nakamura-in-place-four-011113 Only people like Kasparov and Fischer have managed to pull away like that in the past ...

The 4th best player on the current rankings is from the US: http://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml Behind Norway, Armenia & Russia ...

It is a valid example. Comparing the speed my TomTom sat nav says with the speedo in a number of cars, they have all overestimated how fast I was going. That's the same as Samsung has done.

I agree - it is very important. I hire a lot of developers, and I rate this very highly. Not because it is needed to do the job - in many instances it isn't. But because it is a proxy for understanding logical complexity. That's what maths is. And, ultimately, that's what a lot of programming is. If you can demonstrate understanding of abstract logical complexity, then in my mind (as a hiring manager), I will rate you more highly. That said - is it essential? No. Are there great programmers who can't do maths? Yes, absolutely. But on the balance of probability, I would rather hire someone who is.

Thanks for letting me know about Kiva. I hadn't realised this existed, but it looks like a great idea. I put $1000 into this straight after reading this post. The way I see it, with interest rates such as they are in the UK, the cost of this is very little to me.

From TFA: HECToR's memory is also impressive. It is 3,200 times larger than that of a top-of-the-range iPod 160GB

Hmm ... so a £113M computer has got 3,200 times the memory of a £230 iPod. Let's see how that stacks up:

For the iPod that's £1.44 / GB.

HECToR comes in at £220.70 / GB ...