Friday Links
And away we go.Samsung introduced a new line of SSD drives this week, and they're fast. Very fast.
The faster chips and SATA II interface gives the new SSDs sequential write speeds of 100MB/sec and sequential reads of 120MB/sec.
No pricing announced yet, and they'll be too expensive, but a 64GB SSD with these specs is very, very impressive. Read about it here.
The most interesting read of the day comes from Joe, who sent me a link to an article about profilers of serial killers. It's a gripping, excellent read, and it has a twist, or several. Read it here.
From Sirius, a link to a polished copper keyboard that is a steampunk work of art. It's completely stunning, and you can see it here. And if you're wondering just how stunning, it's being auctioned on eBay, and the bid right now is over $4,500. Yikes.
From Paul Costello (of Groovalicious Games), a link to "Free Rice," a vocabulary game with a different kind of ending--for each correct answer, 10 grains of rice are donated to the United Nations World Food Program. You can play for as long as you want (wrong answers just get you an easier word next), and don't forget to e-mail after you destroy my best streak (I tried it twice and got to 15 the second time before I missed). Play it here.
From Brian Witte, a link to a story about a working radio that was created from a single carbon nanotube. Incredible, and you can read about it here.
A second link from Sirius, this one to ten strangest science experiments of all-time. It's all very, very strange, and it's here.
Here's the hat trick for Sirius, and here's an excerpt:
"We have found evidence of a vampire folk belief throughout New England," said Nicholas Bellantoni said, Connecticut's state archaeologist. "The accounts we have documented have primarily shown up in rural areas, with hot spots in eastern Connecticut and western Rhode Island."
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, by the way, and you can read about it here.
From Edwin Garcia, a link to a program called "Visuwords," which is described as an online graphical dictionary. Here's a description from the website:
Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate.
Enter words into the search box to look them up or double-click a node to expand the tree. Click and drag the background to pan around and use the mouse wheel to zoom. Hover over nodes to see the definition and click and drag individual nodes to move them around to help clarify connections.
Very cool, and you can fiddle with it here.
Here's a link to a story titled "101 Gadgets That Changed the World," including barbed wire (#5), the compass (#19), and the match (#85). It's a fun read, and it's here.
Finally, from DQ Fitness Advisor Doug Walsh, a link to a story about a remarkable program called SnowWorld. Here's an excerpt:
Hoffman is the creator of SnowWorld, an immersive virtual reality program he has nurtured the past decade. The program sends acute-burn patients flying through glacial caverns, past cute penguins and looming snowmen, and arms them with snowballs that shatter targets into shards. Pain requires attention so SnowWorld aims to distract and redirect thought as a way to lessen the effects of the excruciating wound cleansing process.
The article also goes into detail about the program's creator, Hunter Hoffman, and you can read it all here.
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