Name Your Top Sites Using Flash [Qotd]

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Some people thought I was unfair to Flash, calling it an unnecessary piece of power-sucking crap that has no real use beyond online video and advertising. So here's the question: Apart from video, what are exactly your top Flash sites?

Flash is not going to be used in Windows Phone 7, the iPod touch, the iPad, and many other mobile devices, but it is coming to Android and Pre.

Some people seem to be very upset about it because they think the lack of Flash on these devices is going to limit their enjoyment of the web. However, if you take out Flash-containered video players and advertising delivery (both dedicated promotional sites like Nike.com and banners) what are other web sites that you people can't live without? Remember that video sites like YouTube and Vimeo are already replacing Flash players with HTML5 and h.264. It's only a matter of time before the rest of the video sites—including the porn pages, which are already delivering all their content for iPhone and other personal media players—follow suit.

Are you talking about Flash-based games like FarmVille and poker, or is there something else? What non-video Flash-based site is so important that you can't live without?

Please name them in the comments, and explain why.


Apple’s Supplier Responsibility Progress Report Sidesteps All the Fire/Violence/Death Bits [Apple]

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Apple released their 2010 update on Supplier Responsibility today. And hey! According to Apple, Apple's doing a great job! But given recent events, should they really have given themselves such high marks?

There's no doubt that some of what Apple's done with their supply chain is commendable. They've made efforts to protect juvenile workers, and are actively protecting foreign contract workers from falling into forced labor. All of this should be commended.

But recent headlines have painted a different picture about conditions at Apple suppliers. A reporter was attacked last month outside a Foxconn plant for taking photographs. Workers at a Foxconn factory in Mexico burned the place down over the weekend to protest forced overtime. And just yesterday reports surfaced that a worker at a Wintek plant died of N-hexane poisoning last year. To say nothing of the Foxconn employee who committed suicide over a leaked iPhone prototype last summer.

So while I'm sure the Supplier Responsibility Progress Report is going to go over great at Apple's shareholder meeting on Thursday, and while they've definitely done admirable things to improve the conditions of their workers, I can't help but think that there's still a whole lot of progress left to make. [Apple]


FibreGlass Insulation

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can fibreglass insulation blankets be broken down and reused in other applications.

i currently have nearly 100tonnes of fibreglass blankets i am trying to find an alternative use for.

do the chemicals, binders and additives in this material restrict the possibility of breaking it down?

Back In 1967, This Was Your Average Camcorder [Retromodo]

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Actually, the Ampex VR-3000 backpack—only $42,000 for the basic recorder without accessories—with BC-300 BW Camera—just $12,685—was the only camcorder available. It changed TV forever, moving the entire broadcast television industry from film to video.

The video format—invented by Redwood City-based Ampex in 1965—was called 2-inch Quadruplex, and used four magnetic heads to record both PAL and NTSC standards using different speeds. [Wikipedia]


Small Bore Hypotube – Polished Inner Lumen

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I am looking for a hypotube (stainless steel) with an OD of 0.010" and an ID of 0.005". The challenging bit is that the hypotube needs to be about 1.5m long with a smooth or polished inner surface. Can anyone point me to a supplier with the capability to provide this type of hypotube?

Thank

Short Circuit / Coordination Study

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If I have a hvac system condenser that is 11kvA and a hvac system duct heater that is 36kW.. how would I show that as a load on ETAP? Would it be induction machine or a synchronous motor?

How would I convert those items to HP? I was told to use a formula of 1.5kVA = 1 hp from another engineer

They Like Commercial Space in New Mexico

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Governor Bill Richardson Endorses Commercial Spaceflight, Obama's New NASA Plan, CSF
 
"In a piece titled "Commercial Spaceflight: Creating 21st Century Jobs" in The Huffington Post, Governor Richardson states, "I am pleased that President Obama and NASA chief Charlie Bolden have decided to promote commercial spaceflight -- let's get to work building this growing industry! The Wright Brothers would be proud." The article can be found here."

A New Exit to Space Readies for Business, NY Times

"President Obama's call last month for fundamental changes in the mission of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration seemed to open the door, or roof, ever wider to private industry. Some people here interpreted his words to mean that your seat back and tray table should be in their full upright positions, because commercial space travel is about to blast off. And this flat, deserted, mostly rain-free stretch of New Mexico is the perfect location, says Will Whitehorn, the president of Virgin Galactic, the spaceport's anchor tenant. "It is about the closest you get on planet Earth to a Martian landscape," he says."

Old Person Hovercrafts Are the Wave of the Future [Amazing Things]

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Here's something we can all get behind: levitating chairs for the elderly that scoot around like bumper cars. There is no way this can go badly.

Created by researchers at Japan's Kobe Gakuin University, the chairs work like an air hockey table, with high-powered air jets at the bottom of the chair creating a pocket of air beneath the chair for it to float on. Of course, it only works on smooth, solid surfaces. No tatami mats! But come on, fill a room with old people on these, push one into the middle and you've got yourself a party. [Robot.M via Crave via Dvice]


Remainders – The Things We Didn’t Post: Solutions Edition [Remainders]

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In today's Remainders: solutions! Solutions for distilling water vapor into drinkable water; keeping your lunch warm with only a USB port; beaming an entire Springsteen album to your phone in under 10 seconds, and more.

Wossy
Jonathan Ross, a UK television personality, isn't the first person you'd expect to deliver the latest news on Microsoft's Project Natal, but we'll take what we can get. Apparently he's had some time to play around with the system and likes what it has to offer:

OK. Before bed. Natal on X Box impressive. Not quite there yet i think but tye have til october and if they get it right...skys the limit.

Of course we've known that the sky is the limit with Natal, but the Tweet also serves to confirm what we've heard before in terms of release date—Microsoft is shooting for a Fall launch, sometime in October or shortly thereafter. Get ready to look silly. [Engadget]

Intel Intel
In an annual filing with the SEC, Intel revealed that they, too, were the target of advanced cyber attacks early this year. The relevant section of the report read:

We regularly face attempts by others to gain unauthorized access through the Internet to our information technology systems by, for example, masquerading as authorized users or surreptitious introduction of software. These attempts, which might be the result of industrial or other espionage, or actions by hackers seeking to harm the company, its products, or end users, are sometimes successful. One recent and sophisticated incident occurred in January 2010 around the same time as the recently publicized security incident reported by Google.

A NYTimes source confirmed that they were not only at the "same time" but were in fact part of the same wave of attacks that struck Google back in January. No need to feel sheepish, Intel, plenty of companies got attacked in that last go around. [NYTimes]

No Wires Nokia
Nokia's no stranger to concepts, and the newest video from their Nokia Research Center fits the usual bill: pretty exciting and only partially explained. The Explore and Share concept shows a system in which a portable device—in this case a Nokia N900—interacts with a retail kiosk wirelessly by being placed on a small "writer." Here's where the magic happens. The kiosk registers the n900 almost instantly, and, using a "new radio technology," is able to beam an entire Bruce Springsteen album to the device in under ten seconds. That's fast! Faster than NFC and Bluetooth 3.0, as Engadget points out. Concepts have the tendency to, you know, stay conceptual, but this type of snappy, functional wireless technology is something we'd be happy to see more of in the future. And the Boss? More of him in the future, too, please. [Engadget]

Net Some Water
Dropnet, a concept designed by Imke Hoehler, is a system of large polypropylene nets that snatch droplets from water vapor clouds and distill them into potable water. They not only provide low-infrastructure areas with drinkable water but also lend the hillsides on which they're installed an exotic Avataresque vibe, so they're doubly fine by me. [DesignBoom]

Lunchtime
Apparently Thanko's last USB-powered lunchbox was enough of a hit to warrant an upgrade—two, in fact—and today they've delivered, piping hot to our desks, two new "Hot Lunch Bag" devices. You have the compact model, which is basically a rehash of the older design, but now there is also the "super slim," a more space-efficient USB-powered hot lunch solution that looks like a pencil case and slips conveniently into your laptop bag. Because if there's any word I'd use to describe keeping my lunch plugged in to my laptop, it's convenient. [CrunchGear]


Globe at Night

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Light pollution map. I snarfed it from Urban Ecoist

It’s almost time for the 5th Annual Globe at Night project.  Five years already!!  If you have not participated in this past oh, you just have to give it a go.  Super simple, you need only to follow some easy steps and you too can contribute to map light pollution.  Basically you go out and look up at the sky.  There is two week window so you have a good chance at clear skies.

I am really looking forward to this, last year I could see a difference from the year before.  The Globe at Night folks do such a great job at this too.  You can go the GAN site and get all the information you need including star charts (don’t worry it’s EASY) and they even have a Family Activity Packet.  If you are a teacher at ANY LEVEL you can make a great class project out of this and yes instructions for doing so are on the site too.

I am giving you plenty of heads up and I hope to put a banner for the side bar to remind you.  Last year there were over 15,000 observations, so let’s try and get that number up if we can.

PLEASE TRY AND PARTICIPATE IN THIS GREAT PROJECT!!!

Here’s the scoop:

The 5th Annual Globe at Night Campaign: 3-16 March 2010

What: The Globe at Night Campaign
When: 8pm to 10pm local time, March 3-16, 2010
Where: Everywhere
Who: You! (Everyone!)
How: See http://www.globeatnight.org

Why:
With half of the world’s population now living in cities, many urban dwellers have never experienced the wonderment of pristinely dark skies and maybe never will. This loss, caused by light pollution, is a concern on many fronts: safety, energy conservation, cost, health and effects on wildlife, as well as our ability to view the stars. Even though light pollution is a serious and growing global concern, it is one of the easiest environmental problems you can address on local levels.

Globe at Night is an annual 2-week campaign in March that helps to address the light pollution issue locally as well as globally. This year the campaign is March 3-16, 2010. You are invited along with everyone all over the world to record the brightness of your night sky by matching its appearance toward the constellation Orion with star maps of progressively fainter stars found at http://www.globeatnight.org/observe_magnitude.html. You then submit your measurements on-line at http://www.globeatnight.org/report.html with your date, time and location. A few weeks later, organizers release a map of light-pollution levels worldwide. Over the last four 2-week Globe at Night campaigns, volunteers from over 100 nations have contributed 35,000 measurements.

To learn the five easy steps to participate in the Globe at Night program, see the Globe at Night website at http://www.globeatnight.org. You can listen to our 10-minute audio podcast on light pollution and Globe at Night at http://365daysofastronomy.org/2010/02/03/february-3rd-the-globe-at-night-campaign-our-light-or-starlight/

For activities that have children explore what light pollution is, what its effects are on wildlife and how to prepare for participating in the Globe at Night campaign, see the new activities at http://www.darkskiesawareness.org/DarkSkiesRangers.

Monitoring our environment will allow us as citizen-scientists to identify and preserve the dark sky oases in cities and locate areas where light pollution is increasing. All it takes is a few minutes during the March 2010 campaign to measure sky brightness and contribute those observations on-line. Help us exceed the 15,000 observations contributed last year. Your measurements will make a world of difference.

Enceladus is erupting! | Bad Astronomy

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On November 21, 2009, the Cassini spacecraft sliced past Saturn’s moon Enceladus, shaving the iceball at a distance of 1600 km (1000 miles). From that distance, the view was astonishing…

cassini_enceladus_nov091

It’s been known for some time that the south pole of Enceladus is lousy with geysers, erupting water into space (though the ultimate source of the water is still a bit of a mystery). But this new pass shows 30 geysers, 20 more than were previously seen! One major geyser also appears to have waned a bit since the last pass, showing that not only is stuff going on, but things are changing, too.

cassini_enceladus_nov092

This mosaic of the surface of Enceladus overlays a high-res optical image with thermal hot-spots. You can see that the hottest parts — which are actually at -90° C (-140° F), so I guess "hot" is in the (frozen) eye of the beholder — line up along a huge fracture in the moon’s surface. The fracture is called Baghdad Sulcus and is one of the places on the moon erupting water geysers. The fracture is about 500 meters (roughly 1/4 mile) deep, and this image shows about a 40 km (25 mile) swath along it. There’s evidence of particles from the geysers re-falling here, and also house-sized icy blocks that may be rubble that has been seismically shaken and settled downslope.

There’s a lot of science in those images, and in the others returned from that close pass. But I think my favorite from these is one that may also have scientific value, but, like almost everything Cassini sends back, is perhaps more striking for its artistry.

cassini_enceladus_nov093

That’s a crescent Enceladus, replete with geysers, and its parent planet Saturn in the foreground. Wow, that’s pretty. I love how gray Enceladus looks and how much brighter Saturn is. I was thrown for a moment; Enceladus has a reflectivity of nearly 100%, meaning it reflects nearly all the light hitting it, while Saturn only reflects 30-50% of the light that hits it (depending on how you measure it). But this depends on the viewing geometry! Enceladus is thin crescent, so the light is hitting it at a very low angle. A lot of the light hitting the moon is sent straight back toward the source (the Sun), so not much of that light gets sent off in other directions. It’s not that Enceladus is intrinsically fainter than Saturn, it’s just that the light is reflected off in another direction, and not towards Cassini in this image.

As in life, sometimes what you see depends on how you look.

Cassini has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, and in all that time it has not disappointed. It continues to return a veritable bounty of information about Saturn and its fleet of moons. If you want to stay on top of Cassini news, subscribe to the email list, and follow imaging team leader Carolyn Porco on Twitter!


Gov. Bill Richardson Endorses Commercial Spaceflight, Obama’s New NASA Plan

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Hailing President Obama’s new plan for NASA, Governor Bill Richardson (D-New Mexico) published an op-ed today praising the President’s plan for “creating thousands of new high-tech jobs and helping America retain its leadership role in science and technology.”

In a piece titled “Commercial Spaceflight: Creating 21st Century Jobs” in the Huffington Post, Governor Richardson states, “I am pleased that President Obama and NASA chief Charlie Bolden have decided to promote commercial spaceflight — let’s get to work building this growing industry! The Wright Brothers would be proud.” The article can be found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gov-bill-richardson/commercial-spaceflight-cr_b_473509.html

In the op-ed, Richardson also states, “The excitement of commercial spaceflight is already inspiring kids to pursue careers in science and technology, something our nation desperately needs to remain competitive with emerging powers like China.”

“In New Mexico, our support for commercial spaceflight is already reaping benefits,” adds Richardson. “About 500 New Mexicans are now on the job, creating the first commercial spaceport in the world. Another 300 new jobs are expected this year. The spaceport is fulfilling its promise of inspiring young people to study math and science and developing our statewide economy. … The demand is there, and New Mexico will get its return on investment. Americans will get their return on investment, too.”

Image credit: State of New Mexico

New Latex & Plastic Soundproofing Could Stop Even Rumbling Bass Sound | 80beats

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InsomniaFor everyone out there who’d like to hear a little less of their amorous neighbors, not to mention their kid badly playing the violin, there may be hope: Hong Kong scientists have devised a delightfully simple material made of latex and plastic that they say could one day reduce the racket at noisy places like airports. The paper appears in Applied Physics Letters.

Zhiyu Yang and colleagues devised a system of thin tiles that, when assembled into a large sheet, could cancel out noise in a huge range, including the bass frequencies that tend to breach the walls of our apartments and houses with ease. Each panel is just three millimeters thick, and less than half an inch wide, with the weighted plastic button in the middle. When sound waves hit the panel, the membrane and weighted buttons resonate at difference frequencies. “The inner part of the membrane vibrates in opposite phase to the outer region,” says Yang. That means the sound waves cancel each other out and no sound gets through [New Scientist]. The large pieces of foam that insulate most modern houses can block out many sounds, but unfortunately, low-frequency sound waves usually will penetrate them. That’s because bass sounds in the air can be several yards in wavelength and get longer in a solid. Creating a thin soundproofing material that can block low-frequency sounds has proven extremely difficult. For instance, a thin latex membrane by itself cannot resonate at the right frequency to either absorb or reflect the bass rumble of a jet taking off [Popular Science].

But, Yang says, each thin layer can be tuned to cancel sound waves of particular frequencies by changing the weight of the button. So several layers stacked on top of one another could create a surface impervious to sounds at a wide range. And the panel’s weight is equivalent to ceramic bathroom tiles, “although it’s slightly thicker at 15 millimetres”, he adds [New Scientist].

Related Content:
80beats: This May Sound Strange: Sonic Lasers and Sonic Black Holes
80beats: How to Make a Battery Out of Office Paper & Nanotubes
Discoblog: Bomb-Proof Your House With the World’s Toughest Wallpaper
DISCOVER: Bulletproof Paper Is Stronger Than Kevlar Image: iStockphoto


Google Earth’s View of the Boneyard, Where Planes Go to Die [Aircrafts]

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The 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG), also known as the Boneyard, is a four square mile site in Arizona housing 4,000 retired aircraft—or at least one of almost every US armed forces plane since WWII.

Google Earth has recently released this gorgeous (in a maudlin sort of way), 1.5MB satellite view of the facility. You can see the entire shot over on the BBC, and if you're annoyed by their tiny frame, just right click the magnified version to "view image" to see the entire thing. You can also just check it out through Google.

For those of you thinking the Boneyard is a rotting pile of our tax dollars, well, it sort of is. But the base claims that for every $1 invested here, $11 are returned through salvaged parts (and it's easier than dropping off a rusting B52 at the local recycling facility). [BBC]


At Laptop-Spying School MacBook Use Was Mandatory, Tampering Grounds For Expulsion [Privacy]

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Details continue to trickle out about Lower Merion School District, their MacBook loan program, and the unsavory security practices they used to keep those computers safe. The latest: the school-supplied MacBooks were required for classes and students could not use their own personal machines in their place. Worse yet, it was impossible to disable the laptops' iSight cameras and attempting to circumvent the school's security software was grounds for expulsion. Yeeps.

All of this information comes courtesy of two security researchers, "Stryde" and Aaron Rhodes, who have pored over the relevant LMSD materials and even gone so far as to reverse-engineer LANRev, the snooping software Lower Merion installed on its computers.

Of course, the people behind LANRev are now trying to distance themselves from the school district as much as possible—"We discourage any customer from taking theft recovery into their own hands," their head of marketing explained—even though Mike Perbix, Lower Merion's network technician, was featured prominently in a LANRev promotional video from 2008.

Of course, not everyone's taking the matter so darn seriously. A parody t-shirt, pictured above, is now making the rounds, which you can find on Zazzle. [StrydeHax via BoingBoing]


Virtual Book Party on Thursday–Win A Free Copy of The Tangled Bank | The Loom

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This Thursday at 2 pm EST, I will be taking part in a virtual book party. The slots are filling up, but there are still some left. Register here.

What’s a virtual book party you ask? In this case, fellow Discover blogger Chris Mooney and I will each give a 15 minute talk about our new books. From the slipper-and-pajama’d comfort of your home or office (if you wear slippers and pajamas at the office), you can listen to us speak and behold our slide presentations in real time. After we’re through, there will be time for a virtual conversation between you and us.

The event (which will last about an hour) is hosted by the American Institute of Biological Sciences. They’ll be giving away copies of The Tangled Bank to two lucky audience members. Hope to some Loom readers can join us!


Grand Engineering Challenge of Our Era: A Non-Lethal Hot Dog | Discoblog

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HotdogPediatricians have declared that the trusty ol’ hot dog is in need of a makeover, setting the stage for one of the biggest engineering challenges known to man and causing some to worry, “Is it the end of the hot dog as we know it?”

The cylindrical sausage has been deemed a choking hazard by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which published an official statement on choking risks in the journal Pediatrics that included concerns about the snack clogging a child’s wind pipe. The pediatricians pointed out that 17 percent of all food-related asphyxiations among children are caused by hot dogs.

Talking about the proposal for a choke-proof hot dog, a doctor explains to USA Today:

“If you were to take the best engineers in the world and try to design the perfect plug for a child’s airway, it would be a hot dog,” says statement author Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “I’m a pediatric emergency doctor, and to try to get them out once they’re wedged in, it’s almost impossible.”

But Smith admitted that he doesn’t know how the sausage could be redesigned to be safer, adding somewhat lamely that he’s “certain that some savvy inventor will find a way.”

The doctors didn’t just suggest that the wiener needs a design re-think, they also asked that the snack come with a warning label. But the hot dog redesign debate got, uh, hotter when the president of the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council, Janet Riley, retorted that most of the sausage packages sold in stores already come with some sort of a warning label, advising parents to cut the hot dogs into small pieces before feeding them to their kids.

And then pediatrician Alan Greene, author of Feeding Baby Green, found a bigger fault with the pediatricians’ concerns over the high-fat, high-sodium, preservative-packed food item. He told USA Today: “The last thing we need is to redesign candy and junk food with cool shapes, so we can give them to kids even younger.”

So, no star-shaped mini hot dogs anytime soon? Damn.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Fast Food Joints Lie About Calories (Denny’s, We’re Looking at You)
Discoblog: Food Fraud: High Schoolers Use DNA Tests to Expose Fake Caviar
Discoblog: Fiber-Filled, Antioxidant-Packed Ice Cream—Brilliant? Sacrilegious? Nasty?
Discoblog: Heart-Stopping Cinematic Excitement: Guess How Much Fat Is in Movie Popcorn?

Image: Wikimedia