$45 Mini PC

Want a low cost mini pc for running monitoring and different scripts?  Check out SolidRun's  2"x2"x2" CuBox, a mini-pc that runs Android or Linux.  The more advanced units even include wifi.  (I have not played with this yet though..)

What good can come from hoarding?

Photographer Jim Golden has some very amazing photos of "collections of stuff".  Wired has a good piece on him, and some great examples of his work, and how he does it.

"Hot or Not" app used to design better cites?

Wired has an interesting piece on a simple app called Place Pulse made by MIT's Media Lab, which uses Google Street View  to show random locations in specific cities, and then asks users to judge which random image is nicer.

What's so wrong with secure Email?

Secure email is a ridiculously simple concept, but unfortunately with very few simple to use applications available to the public.  MailPile is a startup who is attempting to come up with a good working solution.  They also have gotten quite a bit of public backing (they raised $135k with a goal of $100k). Unfortunately, as Slashdot points out (and ArsTechnica), PayPal seems to have unfairly frozen their account to apparently prevent them from making easy to encrypt emails.  

Law + Luddite = ?

Vanity Fair have a very good article by Michael Lewis, about Sergey Aleynikov who is an ex-Goldman Sachs developer who got busted by the FBI for "stealing source code" from his ex employer.  Its an interesting read, about the lack of understanding of technology by law enforcement, the public, and big business.

Big trouble with little bugs

CDC published its first of a kind assessment of the threat we face from antibiotic resistant bugs.  Wired has a nice summary of the results, but it looks dire, suggesting that we will be soon in a "post-antibiotic era".

WiFi Pineapple

Slashdot points out the Pineapple, a wifi hacking device for $80.  A must have gift for the holidays!

Car Pool?

Planet Money shows in graphs how for the last 70 years, the US has been relying more and more on private vehicles to get people to work and less ans less on alternative modes of transportation.

Marine Dead Zones

Earth Observatory has an interesting graphic listing all the dead zones in the sea, and the size of them.

candlestick

Slashdot points out Alex Wellerstein's interactive map which shows the explosive force of different nukes or with different yields and the fall out area from them, and does this over any spot on google maps.  (never realized how big some of those bombs got.)