Vi Hart and More Fun with Fibonacci, Plants, and “Spiraly Things”

Vi Hart and More Fun with Fibonacci, Plants, and “Spiraly Things”:

Here are parts two and three of Vi Hart’s brilliant and dizzying exploration of the Fibonacci number, plant growth patterns, and the mathematics behind other cool, spiraly things.

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Spirals, Fibonacci, and Being a Plant

How Allan Scherr Hacked Around the First Computer Password

How Allan Scherr Hacked Around the First Computer Password:

New submitter MikeatWired writes "If you're like most people, you're annoyed by passwords. So who's to blame? Who invented the computer password? They probably arrived at MIT in the mid-1960s, when researchers built a massive time-sharing computer called CTSS. Technology changes. But, then again, it doesn't, writes Bob McMillan. Twenty-five years after the fact, Allan Scherr, a Ph.D. researcher at MIT in the early '60s, came clean about the earliest documented case of password theft. In the spring of 1962, Scherr was looking for a way to bump up his usage time on CTSS. He had been allotted four hours per week, but it wasn't nearly enough time to run the detailed performance simulations he'd designed for the new computer system. So he simply printed out all of the passwords stored on the system. 'There was a way to request files to be printed offline by submitting a punched card,' he remembered in a pamphlet (PDF) written last year to commemorate the invention of the CTSS. 'Late one Friday night, I submitted a request to print the password files and very early Saturday morning went to the file cabinet where printouts were placed and took the listing.' To spread the guilt around, Scherr then handed the passwords over to other users. One of them — J.C.R. Licklieder — promptly started logging into the account of the computer lab's director Robert Fano, and leaving 'taunting messages' behind."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Silicon Valley Newcomers Are Still Dreaming Big

Silicon Valley Newcomers Are Still Dreaming Big: A surge in high-tech start-ups and investment money has drawn recent college graduates who, unlike their peers in other parts of the country, seem snugly protected from any hint of the recession.

The Future of War (From Jan., 1993 to the Present)

The Future of War (From Jan., 1993 to the Present):

(image is a shot of my copy of the first Wired magazine, signed by our founding team)

I just read this NYT piece on the United States’ approach to unmanned warfare: Do Drones Undermine Democracy?. From it:

There is not a single new manned combat aircraft under research and development at any major Western aerospace company, and the Air Force is training more operators of unmanned aerial systems than fighter and bomber pilots combined. In 2011, unmanned systems carried out strikes from Afghanistan to Yemen. The most notable of these continuing operations is the not-so-covert war in Pakistan, where the United States has carried out more than 300 drone strikes since 2004.

Yet this operation has never been debated in Congress; more than seven years after it began, there has not even been a single vote for or against it. This campaign is not carried out by the Air Force; it is being conducted by the C.I.A. This shift affects everything from the strategy that guides it to the individuals who oversee it (civilian political appointees) and the lawyers who advise them (civilians rather than military officers).

It also affects how we and our politicians view such operations. President Obama’s decision to send a small, brave Navy Seal team into Pakistan for 40 minutes was described by one of his advisers as “the gutsiest call of any president in recent history.” Yet few even talk about the decision to carry out more than 300 drone strikes in the very same country.

Read the whole piece. Really, read it. If any article in the past year or so does a better job of displaying how what we’ve built with technology is changing the essence of our humanity, I’d like to read it.

For me, this was a pretty powerful reminder. Why? Because we put the very same idea on display as the very first cover story of Wired, nearly 20 years ago. Written by Bruce Sterling, whose star has only become brighter in the past two decades, it predicts the future of war with an eerie accuracy. In the article, Sterling describes “modern Nintendo training for modern Nintendo war.” Sure, if he was all seeing, he might have said Xbox, but still…here are some quotes from nearly 20 years ago:

The omniscient eye of computer surveillance can now dwell on the extremes of battle like a CAT scan detailing a tumor in a human skull. This is virtual reality as a new way of knowledge: a new and terrible kind of transcendent military power.

…(Military planners) want a pool of contractors and a hefty cadre of trained civilian talent that they can draw from at need. They want professional Simulation Battle Masters. Simulation system operators. Simulation site managers. Logisticians. Software maintenance people. Digital cartographers. CAD-CAM designers. Graphic designers.

(Ed: Like my son playing Call of Duty?)

And it wouldn’t break their hearts if the American entertainment industry picked up on their interactive simulation network technology, or if some smart civilian started adapting these open-architecture, virtual-reality network protocols that the military just developed. The cable TV industry, say. Or telephone companies running Distributed Simulation on fiber-to-the-curb. Or maybe some far-sighted commercial computer-networking service. It’s what the military likes to call the “purple dragon” angle. Distributed Simulation technology doesn’t have to stop at tanks and aircraft, you see. Why not simulate something swell and nifty for civilian Joe and Jane Sixpack and the kids? Why not purple dragons?

(Ed: Skyrim, anyone?!)

…Can governments really exercise national military power – kick ass, kill people – merely by using some big amps and some color monitors and some keyboards, and a bunch of other namby-pamby sci-fi “holodeck” stuff?

The answer is yes.

…Say you are in an army attempting to resist the United States. You have big tanks around you, and ferocious artillery, and a gun in your hands. And you are on the march.

Then high-explosive metal begins to rain upon you from a clear sky. Everything around you that emits heat, everything around you with an engine in it, begins to spontaneously and violently explode. You do not see the eyes that see you. You cannot know where the explosives are coming from: sky-colored Stealths invisible to radar, offshore naval batteries miles away, whip-fast and whip-smart subsonic cruise missiles, or rapid-fire rocket batteries on low-flying attack helicopters just below your horizon. It doesn’t matter which of these weapons is destroying your army – you don’t know, and you won’t be told, either. You will just watch your army explode.

Eventually, it will dawn on you that the only reason you, yourself, are still alive, still standing there unpierced and unlacerated, is because you are being deliberately spared. That is when you will decide to surrender. And you will surrender. After you give up, you might come within actual physical sight of an American soldier.

Eventually you will be allowed to go home. To your home town. Where the ligaments of your nation’s infrastructure have been severed with terrible precision. You will have no bridges, no telephones, no power plants, no street lights, no traffic lights, no working runways, no computer networks, and no defense ministry, of course. You have aroused the wrath of the United States. You will be taking ferries in the dark for a long time.

…Now imagine two armies, two strategically assisted, cyberspace-trained, post-industrial, panoptic ninja armies, going head-to-head. What on earth would that look like? A “conventional” war, a “non-nuclear” war, but a true War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, analyzed by nanoseconds to the last square micron.

Who would survive? And what would be left of them?

Who indeed.

Google Launches Feature to Find Hotels by Travel Time, Landmarks

Google Launches Feature to Find Hotels by Travel Time, Landmarks:

Looking for a hotel near the Eiffel Tower, but not too familiar with your Parisian neighborhoods?

Google has unveiled a new feature for its “Hotel Finder” tool, allowing travelers to look for lodging near popular landmarks. The addition is perfect for those looking to narrow their hotel search by how long it takes to get to certain spots within a city. So whether you’re planning a vacation or a business trip, the feature makes it easy to find the best spot to spend the night.

Finding hotels by travel time is an extension of Google’s Hotel Finder tool, which debuted in July. Now, instead of just looking for hotels in a certain city, typing “Eiffel Tower” or “Empire State Building” will show you available hotels and prices in that area. You can also search by address.

SEE ALSO: Online Ad Spending to Surpass Print for First Time in 2012

Not into a 20-minute commute or want to walk to the landmark by foot? Select your travel-time and mode of transportation preferences, and Google’s Hotel Finder map will automatically update with suggested hotels.

Google noted in a blog post that the feature is currently “experimental” and that filtering by transit time is only available in certain cities, including New York, Niagara Falls (Canada), Las Vegas, Honolulu, Paris, London and Bangkok. These locations have “partnered with local transit agencies to integrate their data into Google Maps,” the site said.

Have you used Google’s Hotel Finder? Would you use this tool — and the new feature — to help you plan trips? Let us know in the comments.

More About: Google, travel

Professor Resigns From Stanford To Launch Online Education Project

Professor Resigns From Stanford To Launch Online Education Project:

mikejuk writes "Professor Sebastian Thrun has given up his Stanford position to start Udacity — an online educational venture. Udacity's first two free courses are Building a Search Engine and Programming a Robotic Car. In a moving speech at the Digital Life Design conference, he explained that after presenting the online AI course to thousands of students he could no longer teach at Stanford: 'Now that I saw the true power of education, there is no turning back. It's like a drug. I won't be able to teach 200 students again, in a conventional classroom setting.' Let's hope Udacity works out; Stanford is a tough act to follow."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

How to Prioritize When Everything Is Important:

How to Prioritize When Everything Is Important

You know that sinking feeling you have when there's too much on your plate? When you try to tackle your tasks by priority, but it feels like everything's important? Don't get overwhelmed—it's a problem that everyone faces at some point or another, and while it's difficult to skillfully juggle multiple priorities and competing responsibilities, it's not impossible. Here's how.

It just so happens that there's a career that focuses specifically on juggling competing tasks and priorities: These people are called project managers. And as luck would have it, I was a full time PM for many years, PMP-certified and everything. In that time, I learned a number of helpful tricks that can help you manage your workload at the office as well as your ever-growing list of to-dos at home, with your family, or with your friends. Here's how you can apply some of those techniques to your everyday life.

Photo by Josh S.

First, Answer the Question: Is Everything Really Important?

Even if everything on your plate is supposedto be equally important, you still need a way to break down which ones you spend your time on, and how you slice up your time. The first question you have to get past is whether or not everything really is of equal importance. Here are a couple of tips to help you cut through the fog and get a feel for how important your responsibilities and projects really are.

Photo by Lisa Stevens.

• Grill the boss. At work, you have a manager. At home, you're your own boss. One of the primary responsibilities of any manager is to help you understand what's important, what's not, and what you should be working on. You may have a manager at the office who does this (or needs your help doing it well), but everywhere else, you're in charge of your own work, and no one's going to tell you that backing up your data is more important right now than painting the house. It's easy to give up and think "it's all important," but at work, you can lean in and tell your boss that you really need their help. At home, sometimes you just have to pick something from your to-do list and get started to build some momentum.
• Ask around. If you're prioritizing tasks that involve other people, like your family, friends, and coworkers, talk to them. Find out from them when they need your help, how much work is backed up behind the things you're working with them on, and if they can lend a hand. If they don't need you for another week and someone else needs you tomorrow, or if they aren't as busy as you are, you know what to do.
• Work backwards. We'll get into this a little more later, but you probably have an idea of when each of your tasks are due—or at least when you'd like them done by—and how much time is required to work on each item. Start with the due dates, take into account how much effort you need to put into each one and how much input you need from others, and work backwards to find out what you should be working on right now (or what you should have already started, in some cases).
• Cover Your A**. Finally, once you've taken some time to determine what's really important and arranged them based on what you think you should tackle first, it's time to put it in writing and share it with everyone involved. Set expectations with others for when you'll get your work done for them, and set expectations with yourself for when you'll have time to work on your own projects. This is more important in a work setting, but involving others in your non-work to-dos can also keep you—and others—accountable.

Get Organized

In order for your priorities to even matter, you need to have some sort of a personal productivity system in place to which you hold yourself accountable—and in which your priorities will actually matter. If you've got a tried and true system, great. If not,check out our guide to building one that's right for you.

The goal of your system, whichever you select, is to take away the need for you to waste time deciding what to work on next, even when you have a lot on your plate. I've found that David Allen's GTD framework is one of the most effective methods for me, mostly because it focuses on what you should do now and what your next actions should be, and it emphasizes getting your to-dos out of your head and into some system that will help you work. I've mentioned before that I manage my to-dos in ReQall, but there are plenty of other options, like previously mentioned Wunderlist, or if you work on a team, Asana, a collaborative tool we adore.

Whichever tool and productivity method you choose, dump your to-dos and projects into it as quickly as possible. Make sure it's something you'll actually return to and use frequently, and something that's easy to fit into your workflow, and you'll be successful. In the end, you want something easy to refer to, easy to enter tasks into, and that gives you a great view of all of the balls you have in the air at any time.

Photo by David Chico Pham.

Behold, The Trinity: Cost, Scope, and Time

When I was a project manager, one of the first things I learned to help me judge which projects were most important or needed the most attention is the "triple constraint," or a triangle with three equilateral sides. Each side represents the cost of the project, the scope of the project, and the time required to complete the project. None of the sides can be adjusted without making changes to the other two sides. The sides you're weakest in help determine the projects that need special attention. This holds true for all things, not just projects and project managers: If someone heaps more work onto you (scope), but insists that you finish in the same amount of time (time), you'll need more resources (cost) to get the job done.

For example, if you want to paint the spare room in time for out-of-town guests to stay over, you can't change the size of the job (scope), but you can control whether you buckle down and do it yourself overnight (time), or get someone else to do it for you while you do something else (cost). Here's how you can use these three principles to organize your everyday to-dos.

Photo by Mike Truchon/Shutterstock.

• Time: Work Backwards From Your Deadlines. Time is usually the one variable most of us can't change. Deadlines are deadlines, and often we're not the ones who set them. This is where working backwards from due dates is crucial. Start a spreadsheet, and mark down when each project or task on your plate needs to be finished. Then work backwards to the present day, taking into account everything each specific to-do that needs to be done to get from here to there, and how long it takes to complete. When you're finished, you'll likely see a bunch of tasks that should have started already and others that hopefully won't start for a while if you're going to make the deadline. That list, by itself, is a good indicator of what your priorities are, what you should be working on right now, what you should work on next, and perhaps most importantly, what you should get help with—especially if they're tasks that should have started a week ago.
• Cost: Get Help from Family, Friends, and Coworkers. Cost means more than just dollars. It also means people who can help you, or services you can call to give you a hand or take the load off. Could you finish faster if someone else worked on it for you? What if a teammate could take part of the job off your hands and you could pick it up later? Perhaps there's a program or application that can automate the process for you, and it's pretty cheap. It may be worth spending money or dragging in friends to help you finish renovating the kitchen before you run out of vacation days, or calling someone to install your new washing machine so you don't have to take time off to do it.
• Scope: Don't Be Afraid to Make Compromises. If your to-dos have to be done by a certain time and you can't get help, it's time to sit down with the people waiting on you and start making some deals. Let them know what you can deliver by when, and then go on to explain what you can give them later. This is important, because it sends the message that you're not trying to avoid the work you have to do, but you're trying to give them something now that they can use while you keep working in the background to get them everything else on their wish list. The sooner you stop thinking of your to-dos in terms of all-or-nothing, the sooner you'll have the flexibility to say "I'll give you this tomorrow if you give me a week to give you the rest."

Delegate, Delegate, Delegate

It's easy for us to toil away in obscurity, quietly hating our lives and our jobs and growing more frustrated with every passing minute. All the while, there may be a friend who's willing to help if we had only asked, or a boss who would be willing to help you out if you asked the right questions or gave them the right information.

We've talked about how difficult it can be to delegate, and how to delegate effectively in the past, but however you go about it, it's important to remember that you need to be assertive, not aggressive when asking for help, and you need to make your case with all of the data you have available. By now, you should have your priorities laid out and you have a good idea what you need. Use that information to ask for help and prove you need it, and remember, don't be upset if your friends, boss, or coworkers say no.

Photo by Matthieu Plourde.

Buckle Up, It's Going to be a Bumpy Ride

Using this method to set your own priorities and keep track of your own responsibilities isn't just something you should do when you're starting to feel overwhelmed. If the walls are closing in on you, yes, it's definitely time to take a good, hard look at what's on your plate, what can come off, and what has to give, but waiting until you're already busy and stressed out will make it especially difficult to make the changes you need to get your head above water. Even so, it's essential, and once you do it you'll never look back. Hopefully, you can apply these tricks to your work, at home, and in your day-to-day life. Once you really understand what you have to work on and how long it takes, you'll be able to make smart decisions about whether you can take on that big new project at work, or help your best friend plan their bachelor party.

'via Blog this'

CITY BRIEFS: On Replicating Vancouver’s Charms In The Hearts Of Dubai And Beijing…

CITY BRIEFS: On Replicating Vancouver’s Charms In The Hearts Of Dubai And Beijing…:

by Ellen Johnston | Ten years ago, a strange vision rose up from the sands of the Arabian peninsula: a brand new neighbourhood in the heart of a city on steroids. Known as Dubai Marina, it is a place that would be strange to us because it is so familiar. The Dubai Marina is a district comprised of skinny condo towers placed on top of townhouses, all lining a seawall-style walking path and a man-made reproduction of False Creek. There, in the desert, lies a replica of Vancouver (or at least the Concord Pacific version of it).

Now, in Beijing, a different Vancouver is influencing urban development. Whereas the builders of Dubai were looking for ways to create a dense urban centre out of nothing, developers in Beijing are attempting to create an oasis of calm in their already sprawling and massive megacity…which is why they were not inspired by False Creek, but rather by the single family, well-to-do neighbourhoods of Vancouver’s Westside.

The new development, known as “Vancouver Forest”, is the brainchild of a company called EKISTICS, which has offices in both Shanghai and Vancouver. According to their website, “Vancouver Forest is a luxury residential complex comprised of approximately 800 ground oriented low density single family houses and town houses, complemented with a commercial town center which services both local residents and the general public. The architectural design of the buildings is based on Canadian traditional styles of residential architecture that embodies the “quality-of-life” values and living features found in Canada.” All of the homes are two stories in height, have small private back gardens, and are connected to a public greenway system. The neighbourhood includes a community recreation centre and commercial buildings with offices, shops, restaurants, a post office, a bank, and a daycare facility attached. For all intents and purposes, its could be Dunbar. The homes are built in a variety of styles, including Craftsmen and faux-Tudor, and they even have big front porches and big trees out front. They are exactly the types of houses that are being bought by people from China in Vancouver right now, buyers who comprised 60% of MLS home sales on the West Side last year.

It may be somewhat ironic that while Vancouver is attempting to densify, there are developers in Beijing recreating models of Vancouver’s most notoriously NIMBY-ist neighbourhoods, but it is also not hard to see why. It is for the same reasons that immigrants love Vancouver’s single family neighbourhoods to begin with. The high street model found in neighbourhoods like Dunbar and West Point Grey is one that encourages walking and community (NIMBYism notwithstanding). They offer a luxury of space and privacy that most other places in the world do not, and so are primed to be replicated the world over.

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Above all, Ellen Johnston considers herself a wanderer, whether she be tramping through the rain soaked streets of Vancouver and attempting to pry loose the layers of our urban fabric, couch-surfing across America, or getting lost in the souks of Marrakech. Since wandering is sadly not a full time gig, she also fills her days with the study of African dance and drumming, writing, piano, and running her own cookie company, Cookie Elf. She grew up in Vancouver, studied in Philadelphia and London, and hopes to see even more of this great big world in the future.

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Startup Combines CPU and DRAM

Startup Combines CPU and DRAM:

MojoKid writes "CPU design firm Venray Technology announced a new product design this week that it claims can deliver enormous performance benefits by combining CPU and DRAM on to a single piece of silicon. Venray's TOMI (Thread Optimized Multiprocessor) attempts to redefine the problem by building a very different type of microprocessor. The TOMI Borealis is built using the same transistor structures as conventional DRAM; the chip trades clock speed and performance for ultra-low low leakage. Its design is, by necessity, extremely simple. Not counting the cache, TOMI is a 22,000 transistor design. Instead of surrounding a CPU core with L2 and L3 cache, Venray inserted a CPU core directly into a DRAM design. A TOMI Borealis core connects eight TOMI cores to a 1Gbit DRAM with a total of 16 ICs per 2GB DIMM. This works out to a total of 128 processor cores per DIMM. That said, when your CPU has fewer transistors than an architecture that debuted in 1986, there is a good chance that you left a few things out--like an FPU, branch prediction, pipelining, or any form of speculative execution. Venray may have created a chip with power consumption an order of magnitude lower than anything ARM builds and more memory bandwidth than Intel's highest-end Xeons, but it's an ultra-specialized, ultra-lightweight core that trades 25 years of flexibility and performance for scads of memory bandwidth."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. unlikely to fully recover, Carney warns:

U.S. unlikely to fully recover, Carney warns

Bank of Canada governor says Canada must look to Asian trading partners if our economy is to thrive

BY ROBERT HILTZ, POSTMEDIA NEWS JANUARY 22, 2012

Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney says he still expects 'modest' growth of two per cent for the domestic economy in the coming year.

Photograph by: Chris Wattie, Reuters, Postmedia News

Canada needs to look beyond its southern neighbour for markets because the United States economy is unlikely to ever fully recover, Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney said Sunday.

In an interview with CTV's Question Period, Carney said that it is vital for Canada to look for new trading partners in the Asia-Pacific region and elsewhere to prevent the economy from being dragged down by the U.S.

"It's going to take a number of years before they get back to the U.S. that we used to know - in fact, they are not, in our opinion, ultimately going to get back to the U.S. that we used to know," he said.

Carney pointed to China as a market with great potential and as a place where Canada is under-represented, but cautioned it would take time to enhance trade between the two countries.

"It's going to take multiple visits, multiple initiatives. Not, obviously, from the public sector alone, but clearly a focus from the private sec-tor," Carney said. "That is absolutely essential for developing our future and it's a key element of our medium-term growth."

He said that the eurozone crisis, if it stays contained on that continent, won't have a catastrophic effect on the Canadian economy.

Carney said discussions are continuing about restructuring Greek debt and efforts by the European Central Bank to ensure that banks in the continent have access to capital.

"That goes a way to containing the crisis - it's not the last word but it's an important measure that's been taken. There are other contingency measures that have been taken, that are being put in place that are helpful in this situation," Carney said.

Along with citing slumping trade with the U.S. and a debt crisis in Europe, Carney repeated his warning that Canadians are carrying too much debt, and have been for some time.

"Some measures have been taken and they've been effective, they've helped reduce some of the risks around household debt," he said. "But ... household debt is at a new record high. We expect to see the debt-to-income ratio to continue to climb over the course of the next couple of years."

For every dollar they earn, Canadians now owe $1.54.

The governor also warned that housing prices in some Canadian markets may be overvalued, posing some risk to homeowners.

Despite some worries about Canada's economic prospects, Carney said the bank still expects "modest" growth of two per cent next year, spurred on by consumer spending and unexpectedly high activity in the real estate market.

"Remember the ultimate speed limit in the Canadian economy is a little over two per cent, so we're not that far off it," he said. "We still have some slack in the economy, there's still more Canadians unemployed than should be or than [we] would like."

One benefit of the crisis in Europe, Carney said, is that countries are looking to long-term Canadian government bonds and Canadian banks for stability.

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