Look, teenage girls of America: You have got to save your sexting virginity until you meet someone really special. Not some random "male acquaintance." Because that's when the police get involved.

A sexting case in Plainfield, Illinois (a lesser-known site of the sexual revolution) has "exploded into the largest sexting case Plainfield police have ever encountered." A 16-year-old girl sent out less savory pics of herself to "a male acquaintance" (?), and being presumably a 16-year-old guy, the shots didn't stay secret for long. Apparently over half the student body has seen them, parents, police, PTA members and probably President Obama are all freaking the fuck out, and really, this could be the end of the noble American experiment. Note: The source has several hundred photo galleries linked underneath the story. Do not be fooled, none of them contain nudie pics of 16-year-old girls. [WBBM]

If you are near National Harbor in Fort Washington, Maryland, don't miss their 15,000-square-foot Gaylord National's ICE! exhibit, a winter wonderland made with two million pounds of ice. And let your pretty butt freeze, swooshing down their 20-foot slide.

Wheeeeee! Kind of underwhelming, I know, but it looks pretty. [Big Picture]

Okay, boys and girls: NORAD's got their annual Santa tracking up and running here. Keep tabs on the big guy if you're wondering when he'll be gifting your hemisphere, or if he owes you money. [NORAD Santa Tracker]

Here is a slow-mo video of a scientist making a duck have sex with corkscrew-shaped beakers. It is one of the craziest things I've ever seen. Merry Christmas!

You're going to want to check out Carl Zimmer's full article about what exactly is going on here. Essentially, evolution has caused duck penises and duck vaginas to adapt into pretty wild and complex contraptions, with the penises unfurling into clockwise corkscrew shapes while the vaginas have evolved into counter-clockwise passageways with multiple pockets. And you thought your vagina was impressive!

Seriously, go check out the article to give this video some context. If nothing else, it'll provide you with a deeply inappropriate anecdote to tell your extended family over dinner tonight. [Discover Magazine]

Sometimes, us non-Christians feel really left out at Christmas. So I'd like to personally thank Peet's (pretty much what Starbucks wishes it was) for giving everyone the gift of free coffee today, Christmas Eve. Find your nearest store here. [Peet's]

Around age 23, most men realize they'll be stuck in normal—work a normal 9 to 5, buy a normal house and lift heavy objects with normal strength. But at least we can stay warm, dammit. [HotTopic via Geekologie]

What's the best way to fix a broken-off power port on an Acer Extensa? If you said "glue the sucker back in there," you might just work in Office Depot's repair department. You're also, in that so-painfully-obvious-it-hurts-my-face way, real wrong.

When Consumerist reader Scott sent his under-warranty laptop into Office Depot for a repair, he noticed that they'd used glue to fix his power port problem. Okay, that's bad enough, since the glue melted to the power port and caused a serious burn hazard. But when Scott sent his Acer back in for round two, well:

"I detailed the issue to the Office Depot Warranty operator, and he
specifically wrote "Problem: AC port loose. glue melted from last fix.
AC adapter gets extremely hot" on the work order. I again sent the
laptop off hoping the problem would be fixed. My hopes were too high.
Turns out, glue the power port so it is usable is a masterful fix when
compared to the attached photo. As you can see... again the service
people glued the power port back into "place." Though this time it is
glued in off center, and can not be plugged in. Obviously whoever
office depot sends their laptops off to for service does not even
check to see if their "fixes" are functional. An added bonus is that
my expansion slot cover is now missing. So not only do I receive a
broken laptop, it also has a part stolen."

So, in brief: don't try to fix your laptop with glue, definitely don't try to fix it with glue twice, and definitely definitely don't trust Office Depot with your valuables. [Consumerist]

So you've got your 7,000 metric tons of puddling iron, your unruly 19th-century French construction crew, your Michelin starred chef and a Rosetta Stone French DVD. Today, finally, you have the final piece: Blueprints!

They're less precise than the perfectly-modeled CAD renderings people rely on now, but equally, they're more beautiful; and perhaps not coincidentally, so are the results. So get to it, fauxrchitectes. [Kottke]

This proposed subterranean London hotel is going to put all 200 guest rooms beneath the surface of a former golf course. Sorry, CHUDs: it's time to gentrify the soil.

The hotel, designed by ReardonSmith Architects, aims to preserve the verdant appeal of its Green Belt location while at the same time offering a full range of luxury spa, hotel, and golf accommodations. If they're able to blend it into the scenery as seamlessly as the spec art indicates, it's going to be a beautifully unobtrusive bit of five-star property. [Inhabitat via io9]

We all know the whole Snuggie thing is idiotic. But this comic really boils the idiocy down to its pure essence. Magnifique. [Chainsaw Suit via The Daily What]

My brother worships two things: God and Subwoofers.

We were raised to be quiet, well-mannered Lutherans. But for Erik, there was nothing quiet about the gospel. In church, he sang as loud as he could. He didn't care what anyone else thought – he was reaching out to the Lord and it was our problem if it made our ears ring.

One Sunday, the rumbling bass and baritone voices in the choir sang, "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," and Erik felt God's presence. That rattle and boom was God's voice literally vibrating his heart. We were still young but it decided everything: he would do the Lord's work and it would be loud.

He enrolled in seminary as soon as he could, spent some time in the Holy Land and discovered that a low-end 25 watt sub could not adequately convey the genius of either John Paul Jones bass work on Led Zeppelin IV or the sermons of that other John Paul. Both required an upgrade to a 125 watt Miller & Kreisel MK II sub.

God understood.

My brother must not have mentioned his acoustic theory of divinity when he was ordained because the Bishop assigned him to an elderly congregation in rural Washington State. The greeting committee could hear Pastor Erik coming from miles away – the sound of a booming bass floated across the raspberry fields and through the apple orchards. Things didn't quiet down after he parked his car in the church's gravel parking lot. Erik rejects silences with a roaringly good-natured laugh and a voice that would feel at home in the Super Dome. The senior citizens responded by permanently notching down their hearing aids.

Pastor Erik didn't mind - he just spoke louder and pointed out some immediate problems with the pretty, white steepled church. First, the 20 year old sound system was not up to the task of conveying God's word.

"This is the Word of God we're talking about," he said. "It needs dignity and a high power 12-inch subwoofer with a neodymium magnet and a vented enclosure."

The Church Elders blinked. Pastor Erik was not like their other ministers.

This young whippersnapper wanted to take this flock in a new direction. It didn't matter if they needed walkers, dialysis or a hip replacement to get there– they were going to hear and feel God's word.

He met any resistance with an out-pouring of Lutheran wisdom. Why spend thousands of dollars upgrading the sound system for a congregation of only 80 people? Because in 1541, Martin Luther himself said, "Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world." Pastor Erik watched his congregants closely and asked if they were willing to run the world's greatest treasure through a dusty old sound board that muddled the low range? Would Martin Luther want that?

The Elders decided to approve a budget of $9000 and Pastor Erik set to work.

His first move: bring in Jim Hall, an acoustician who has spent 42 years installing commercial audio systems in the Northwest. Hall and the Pastor huddled near the altar and laid out a battle plan. Hall wanted to deploy a four speaker TOA HX-5 variable dispersion system above the altar to ensure speech clarity. It's what he typically recommended for small churches.

"But it won't rock, will it?" the Pastor asked.

Hall was a little surprised – most churches were content with the HX-5 system. But this minister was sharp. He knew the HX-5 couldn't deliver the low end. The Pastor was asking Hall to push himself, to dig deep and that could mean only one thing: the FB-120B.

The 120B is a crunk-ready 600 watt sub guaranteed to strip the paint off the steeple of any church silly enough to order it. It's exactly what Pastor Erik was looking for.

The system took eight hours to install. They added a 16 channel Mackie 1604 VLZ3 mixing board, an EAW CAZ 1400 dual-amp for the HX-5 and an additional CAZ 800 amp interlaced with an Ashly cross-over for the sub. The final touch: two 1 inch tweeters over the choir.

"It's got to be the best system for a church its size in the Northwest ," Jim Hall says.

To test it, Pastor Erik grabbed the nearest CD he could find: a copy of Veggie Tales left behind by a pre-schooler. He pressed play and the voice of Larry the Cucumber boomed across rural Washington as if Abraham himself had just come down from the mountain to tell the world that he had a new hat and it was made of lettuce.

Pastor Erik heard the music and it was good. It didn't matter what the Cucumber was babbling about. The tune sent its shock waves through his bones and brushed across his soul like a divine wind.

Now and truly, God was in da house.

Joshua Davis is a Contributing Editor for Wired Magazine who wrote about deep sea cowboys and the world's largest diamond heist. (Both of which are being adapted for film.) He's also the lightest man to ever compete in the US Sumo Open.

I've spent a considerable amount of effort trying to convince you to get an HTPC, and nettops like the AspireRevo R3610 are a big reason why. It's affordable at $330, and it delivers a quality HD video experience.

What It Can Do

Play HD Video
Like it's predecessor, the R3610's handling of HD video is impressive for such an inexpensive machine. I watched plenty of downloaded 1080p video and playback was generally smooth. This is where the AspireRevo really shines.

Casual Gaming
This isn't a system for serious gaming, but for casual gamers that don't need the graphics cranked up to the max, the AspireRevo delivers thanks to the inclusion of NVIDIA Ion. With the settings set at a low but acceptable 1024x768 resolution, I was able to play World of Warcraft with no problems at all. Of course, the game is five years old and designed to be easy on the graphics.

Networking
The AspireRevo features 802.11b/g/Draft-N connectivity, so it does a great job of streaming media. If you need more storage than the 160GB on board, you can easily connect the Revo to a network-attached storage device if you decide to go that route.

Ports, Ports and More Ports
So yeah, six USB 2.0 ports on this thing. It also has HDMI, VGA, a media card reader, eSATA and S/PDIF. Basically, everything you need and then some.

What It Can't Do

Multitasking
The R35610 has a beefier processor this time around (Dual Core Atom 330), but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that this nettop is going to satisfy the hardcore crowd. I experienced some sluggish loading times—especially when multiple programs were running.

Play Blu-ray or DVDs
If you want to play Blu-ray movies or DVDs, it ain't gonna happen without a built-in optical drive. You will have to buy that separately.

TV Tuning
There is no TV tuner or CableCARD on board, so you will need a USB adapter for DVR functionality. Fortunately, you will probably have a free port.

What Needs Tweaking

Internet HD Playback
Until Adobe releases Flash 10.1, which includes support for NVIDIA Ion graphics acceleration, you are going to have to deal with some choppy video from sites like Hulu and YouTube. It's a massively annoying problem, but only a temporary one. I'm impatient, so I went ahead and downloaded the 10.1 beta, which seemed to remedy the situation quite well.

Web Surfing
The AspireRevo R3610 isn't the kind of computer I would rely on for power web surfing. I encountered problems with web pages sticking, choking or freezing altogether. On several occasions, the whole computer seemed to lock up. I could still control my mouse, but there was no response to clicks or commands. Sometimes this issue resolved itself, other times I did a hard reboot out of frustration.

However, things improved after I loaded Flash 10.1 and lessened the load on the GPU by disabling the Windows 7 Aero interface. Browsing seems a bit snappier and I haven't experienced the mysterious lock up issue since, but it's still not perfect. Chrome seemed to run the best when compared to IE and Firefox, but I still experience hiccups. For example, Google Wave is almost unusable on all three browsers (Yes, I actually use Google Wave).

Conclusion

If you are looking for a budget desktop computer, the AspireRevo R3610 will do the job as long as you are not pushing its limits. However, it's best to play to the strengths here and use it as an HTPC. The R3610 is small enough to tuck behind your TV, it handles HD video admirably, and the inclusion of Flash 10.1 will get the most out of NVIDIAs graphics acceleration, thereby overcoming the problems you will experience out of the box with streaming internet video.

The Windows 7 experience is decent, and you will be able to enjoy all of the benefits of Windows Media Center, but you may need to sacrifice graphics features like Aero in order to optimize performance. Still, I would say that the AspireRevo R3610 is a definite "buy" for anyone looking to get an HTPC on a budget. [Acer]

It's understandable that Apple stock is doing well—they've had a very, very good year. But after a huge rally this morning, their stock it at its highest price ever. See, yesterday, something magical happened.

A few minutes before the NYSE's 4:00 EST closing, at 8:18 PM GMT (3:18 EST), the Financial Times published a rumor: Apple will make a major product announcement on January 26th in San Francisco. That was it! But in the context of the increasingly frenzied rumors about an Apple tablet, this could only mean one thing to tech followers. And, apparently, to investors. I'll spare you the strained metaphysics of a full Santa/tablet analogy, but trust me, it's there, somewhere.

A small part (read: all) of me wants this whole thing to be a joke, and for Steve Jobs to take the stage in January to announce the long-awaited followup to the iPod Hi-Fi, and a new capacity option for the iPod Classic. There would be no bitterness. Just respect. [Reuters]

A lot of people wrote about the V-Screen 3D kit for the PSP when it was announced. Jokes may have been made! But now Ars has actually tried one, and their results are surprising: It's not perfect, but it works.

According to Ars, the V-Screen uses an old trick, popular with flight sim devotees, whereby a fresnel lens—at a size slightly larger than the device's screen—is placed a short distance away from the display. This magnifies the image a bit, and more importantly, adds a sense of depth. For 3D games where depth in important, like racing games and FPSes, the effect is apparently "more compelling than it sounds on paper," to the point that "it's going to be hard to back to playing the games on a standard screen."

There's no doubt that this is a faux-3D setup, but it's also fairly cheap—$40, to be exact, which might not buy you honest 3D, but it'll buy you the sensation. Like a Fleshlight, for your eyes! Yes. [ArsTechnica]

You waited. Then you waited some more. And now it's Christmas Eve. You should be finishing shopping right now, but you're sitting lazily at your computer. Luckily, with our last minute gift guide, such limited exertion is not a problem.

Netflix/Gamefly Subscription: Anyone who wouldn't appreciate a year's worth of unlimited game or movie rentals is not someone worth buying a gift for. And the great thing about Netflix/Gamefly is that you can't possibly buy them this subsciption from a physical store. In other words, you won't look lazy when their gift announcement arrives in eCard certificate form. Starting at about $100/year. [Netflix/Gamefly]

Nook: How can you possibly buy someone a Nook for Christmas when it's been delayed until February? Exactly! Order a Nook today and then say, "Sorry, I ordered it for you well before Christmas, but those darned manufacturing delays for this highly anticipated product seemed to have spoiled my plans." $259 [Nook]

iTunes album/movie: In case you wanted to go a bit more personal than an iTunes gift card (and you are too lazy to leave the house to buy one, even though that just means running to the drug store), gift an album straight through the iTunes Store. It's easy, just right click on the buy icon and select the gift option. All you need is an email to send a friend an album. Also, you can always print it out, too. $10ish

Magazine Subscription: Every time I receive a copy of Chicago magazine in the mail, I think about how my mother-in-law kindly gifted it to me. But you know what? She could have ordered that subscription AFTER she handed me a symbolic copy on Christmas morning. Spice things up a bit by buying a magazine that's hard to acquire. My best recommendation? Edge, the best-written, most beautifully laid out gaming magazine in the world. $76 [Edge]

Zune Pass/Last.fm: If you've never used an unlimited music service, you've missed out. It's basically radio on demand without a $1 charge every time you want to listen to a song. And while subscription fees might keep you from buying it for yourself, this is a gift, so the recipient need only enjoy. Zune Pass and Last.fm are both excellent options for unlimited tunage. Zune $15/month Last.fm $3/month Note: I'm fairly certain you can gift Zune Pass online, but didn't go through the whole process. [Zune/Last.fm]

Burned Disc of Torrentz: I wouldn't recommend this for mom or grandma, but for a friend you casually meet over the holidays, why not just burn them a copy of something valuable you...err...procured online. Your favorite music, a movie that hasn't left theaters yet, a bootleg of Windows 7 Ultimate—whatever—just make it something you know they'll like, and be sure to stick a bow on it $$=FREE

Bacon of the Month Club: 12 months. 12 different artisan bacons. Need I say more? $315 [Grateful Palate]

Don't Buy a Star: There are a countless number of stars in the Universe. And you know what? When we're traveling the cosmos, no one plotting star charts is going to acknowledge Mark Rox Bacon 2009 as the official name of some red giant on the verge of engulfing the first intelligent life we encounter. Or, even worse, the star's name will be acknowledged and your love's name will go down in infamy. Smooth move. [Star Registry]

For years, astronomers have been puzzled by the fact that our solar system is crossing a cloud of interstellar hell. One that shouldn't be there at all. Intergalactic plot to keep us isolated or cosmic event? Voyager got the answer.

Using data from Voyager, we have discovered a strong magnetic field just outside the solar system. This magnetic field holds the interstellar cloud together—"The Fluff"—and solves the long-standing puzzle of how it can exist at all.

The Fluff is much more strongly magnetized than anyone had previously suspected. This magnetic field can provide the extra pressure required to resist destruction.

The Voyagers are not actually inside the Local Fluff. But they are getting close and can sense what the cloud is like as they approach it.

At least, that's what NASA's Heliophysics Guest Investigator from George Mason University Merav Opher says in the December 24 issue of Nature. I lean to the intergalactic plot to keep our primitive world from entering the Federation of Advanced Civilizations. That, or Ming of Mongo trying to crush our puny asses.

It's ironic how the whole thing works. Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere protects us from the Sun's magnetic field and radiation. Then, the Fluff is not destroying us thanks to the Sun's magnetic field and the solar winds, which is what form the 6.2-billion-mile-wide heliosphere. So my question is: Who protects the Fluff?

I will leave you with that. Go think, my little Earthlings, go. [NASA]

JVC has updated their original wooden headphones by slashing their price as well as their size. The company claims the wood construction gives the earphones superior sound quality, in addition to superior style.

While the original cans went for nearly $800, the JVC HA-FX700 will come with a $330 price tag. Though the price is steep, you're paying for undeniably pretty earphones, purportedly high sound quality, and a lot of little parts:

The JVC HA-FX700 will be available in Japan in February and likely obtainable through your preferred Japanese electronics importer. [CrunchGear]

With 9,000 LEDs, a little superglue and some holiday magic, Siemens and artist Michael Pendry teamed up to turn a wind turbine outside Munich into "the world's biggest revolving Christmas star." It uses as much energy as a hairdryer.

The Siemens SuperStar, which will stay spinning outside Munich through January 6th, was conceived as a project to celebrate sustainable energy and green innovation.

The SuperStar's 9000 OSRAM LEDs emit the equivalent of 22,000 candles, shining in a variety of colors and an array of spectacular patterns. Long exposure photography was used to capture the SuperStar as a vibrant spinning disk as seen above, not altogether unlike the one recently created by aliens over Norway. The video below details the process of constructing the SuperStar and shows some shots of the wheel in action.

Munich's Mayor, Christian Ude, has been an enthusiastic proponent of the energy-efficient spectacle from the start and hopes his city will be the first of its size to meet all energy requirements from renewable sources. [Siemens via Inhabitat]

If Amazon is Santa, 400 folks living in RVs outside the Coffeyville, Kansas fulfillment center this winter are the elves.

A few years back Chris Dunphy and Cherie Ve Ard flipped the bird to their desk jobs, packed their belongings in a custom 17-foot solar-powered fiberglass camper, and hit the road to live "at the intersection of Epic and Awesome." A couple months ago, while staying with friends, they noticed that Amazon was luring RVers to Coffeyville, Kansas, the site of the retail giant's original and largest fulfillment center.

"We were located in San Diego at the time," explained Cherie. "We're part of a community of younger full-time RVers on Nurvers.com, a group of non-retired-age folks who are living the mobile lifestyle and kind of going outside the norms of 'Wait for retirement to travel.'" They noticed other RVers were flocking to Kansas to work for Amazon. The pay wasn't great—just above $10-an-hour, typically—but Chris and Cherie were planning on being in St. Louis for the holidays. Why not kill a month in Kansas working for Amazon?

Fast forward a couple of weeks, and the self-styled "technomads" were putting down stakes at a state park about 20 miles from the four enormous but dull warehouses that comprise the Coffeyville hub.

Their first day inside, Chris was awed. "Walking inside reminded me of the scene from Indiana Jones when they abandon the Ark in that giant warehouse. It's three stories high. It feels like an industrial library. Shelves going up and up and up." Hundreds of employees scurried, some "orange-badges" or "green-badges" hired by two temporary employment services mixed with the sought-after blue-badges of full-time Amazon employees, guided to their next destination by computers that flashed lights when bins were full or guided workers through the maze with handheld computers. "Pickers are basically playing a human Pac-Man game. They've got a computer scanner that they carry around that tells them where to go. They find their little shelf. One slot might be a book. The next shelf over might be a toaster. Or an iPod. The next slot after that might be a pair of jeans."

Fiberglass City

Amazon didn't always lure in "workcampers" from the RV community.

"From what the agency people had told us, Amazon had a bad experience busing in people from Tulsa," says Chris. "There was a lot of theft and a lot of people who weren't really serious about the job."

Workers from Tulsa were adding a 4-hour round-trip commute to an already grueling 10-to-12 hour shift, Cherie is quick to add. "They'd get there exhausted."

Enter the workcampers, people making a go at living in their RVs full time—many of whom might be otherwise overqualified. "I think Amazon was skeptical at first," says Cherie. "But after the first trial year they were very, very impressed. Workcampers came in enthusiastic about working, since most are professionals. We've owned businesses or been managers." White collar workers, trying their hand at the gypsy life. Even better, the workcampers were able to stay locally.

Not all of the camps provided for the workcampers were exactly inviting.

Chris and Cherie pulled into the one just before Thanksgiving, but could tell it wouldn't make for a pleasant stay. "The closest one was a city park called Walter Johnson. RVs were very close together. Half the campsites had full hookups, which meant they had water, electricity, and sewer dump on-site. Half the sites just had electricity and water and they had what they call a 'Honey Wagon' that comes around and pumps your sewage out a few times a week." Some RVers had been in Coffeyville since August.

Worse, it was cramped and muddy. "Coffeyville also had a flood three years ago, so it was very, very wet and muddy because the area had been washed out, then rained on recently." They eventually moved on to a state park, which was lovely, but also four times farther away. They rarely had time to enjoy the scenery.

"We were on the night shift," says Chris, "Our day would start when we would wake up at three in the afternoon. Work started at five."

"Every shift starts with what they call a 'Stand Up.' You gather in one area with your usual department—ours was called 'Sortable Singles,' which sounds like it should be the name of a dating site—and they'd count off how many people they needed in each department. Run through a few announcements. Give you a few safety tips. And then they lead you through five minutes of group stretches."

Cherie was mainly a packer, putting items in the box and scanning them. Chris, on the other hand, was a "water spider." He explains, "A water spider is responsible for keeping all the packers supplied, so ideally they'd never need to stand up and leave their station to get any other supplies like all the different sizes of boxes, plus making sure their tape machines and paper-spitter machines are operating."

"I never quite exactly figured out why they call it a water spider. My guess is back in the history of assembly line jobs, the water spider would be the person who would bring people on the line water to drink. Nobody seemed to know!"

The Mocha Factory

Work was monotonous and—for a couple who had been living a relative life of leisure—full of endless hours of standing on one's feet.

"24-Hour Fitness, Amazon-style," laughs Chris. Cherie liked to think of it as having "a personal trainer for 60 hours a week."

Inside the warehouses, machines and man alike were controlled by Amazon's computerized assembly line.

In one part of the factory, Chris watched two giant elliptical carousels, each one the size of a football field, carry wooden trays around at 15mph. "All the items are coming in the totes on one side of this giant machine. There are people who take each individual item, scan them and put them on the trays as they go by. The trays get to a chute where their order is being assembled, tilt, and the product flies down into that space. When all the items for a particular order are assembled in one place an orange light comes on and somebody comes by." Above, another carousel brought an endless procession of empty boxes to be filled with the orders.

It wasn't exactly what Cherie had envisioned. "When we told people were going to do this, someone said 'Whenever I click the order button on Amazon, I always imagine a chorus of happy, singing Oompa-Loompas riding around on Segways and shipping my stuff.' Well...no. It's not exactly like that."

"The computer has to prioritize how it's going to send out all the pickers in this giant facility. So someone could order a book and a sweater and an iPod, and those could be in completely different corners of the whole facility. But somehow they all arrive within about 30 minutes of each other." It's efficiency even Willy Wonka could love.

Chris and Cherie wouldn't work another season at Coffeyville, but not because they were miserable. "Everybody treated each other really nicely!" says Chris. It's just that the two are "experience junkies, craving the new," even if working for Amazon certainly gave them a fresh perspective on American culture.

"You'd have a tote come down the line, and you'd have adult toys right next to kid toys in the same bin," laughs Cherie. "The Obama Chia Pet was an oddity. And the Bill Clinton corkscrew. And I did have a tote one afternoon that was full of mooning gnomes."

Chris geeked on it pretty hard. (Before he became an migrant worker, Chris was a founding editor for boot magazine—later known as Maximum PC. He also worked for Palm.) "Just getting to experience that type of work, to literally see consumer culture flow beneath your fingertips, was absolutely fascinating. You feel the pulse of the market."

Besides their paychecks, all they're left with are memories—cameras weren't allowed inside.

"One of the rules at Amazon is that you're not allowed to bring anything into the facility that they sell." Chris went through a bit of withdrawal. "One of the hardest things about the job was going without my iPhone for a month. It was a great way to break the addiction of wanting to Twitter about things. You'd be like, 'Oh my God, I just saw this Bill Clinton corkscrew and you won't believe where the corkscrew comes out.' But oh crap, I can't tweet."

An optical sensor checks this mini hourglass eventually triggering the rotating mechanism to flip the thing 180 degrees. It also can send the optical sensor's values to a PC by USB, providing random numbers. I just think it looks cool.

There are some good non-deterministic random sources disclosed on the Internet. They make use of radioactive decay, radios tuned to secret frequencies where there is no broadcast, dice rolling down a chute, and even lava lamps.

The USB Hourglass compares well with these sources in terms of bit-rate, cost, safety, reliability, and simplicity.

[USB Hourglass via boingboing]