Matt has republished some of our best iDrone posts:
Writing an accumulator generating function in Ruby (Mark Wilbur)
Thoughts on the Subset Sum Problem (Matt Ball)
On Google’s Evilness (John Pasden)
The Perfect Programming Language (Matt Ball)
We had some serious geekery going there while it lasted.

Wayne sprung this question on me yesterday. I swear he should have been a CS major.

The Hundred Hatted Prisoners
There are a hundred prisoners in a dungeon, sentenced to be executed the next morning. Fortunately for them, the king of the land is eccentric and offers them a chance to survive. He tells [...]

The votes from Friday’s Simple Probability Puzzle are in. Here was the question:
Imagine there’s a completely random event with two outcomes, say flipping a coin. Each flip has an equal probability of landing heads or tails. Now imagine that we’re interested in seeing how long it takes to get a certain sequence of outcomes.
Pattern [...]

Ever wonder why so many expert witnesses lead juries astray due to mathematical errors? Or why so many gamblers and investors are so bad at assessing relatively simple probability questions? First imagine that you consider yourself an expert (at something other than math), and then you encounter a question like this…
Imagine there’s a [...]

I’ve been interested in the Vancouver-based startup D-Wave for over a year now. They make quantum computers. And, unlike any other company in the world, they’ve actually made working ones. This week they’re demoing a pattern recognition test that’s very difficult for traditional computers– scanning pictures and quickly identifying which ones are [...]

Last week, I saw Stephen Petranek give an interesting talk in the Technology, Entertainment, Design conferences. It was from a presentation he gave in 2002, titled 10 ways the world could end. He takes a rational, scientific look at ten of the most underestimated threats humanity faces and proposes solutions for each.

One thing [...]

I wasn’t kidding when I said I liked the new dictionary at labs.chinesepod.com. After getting used to using it all the time via the search bookmark I made last week, I started wondering why I still had the MDBG searchbar up on my page.
After I quick consultation with David (CPod’s CTO), I had [...]

I’ve long been a fan of David Lancashire’s Chinese-English dictionary and anotation engine Adsotrans. I’ll admit I’ve had my share of frustrations with its previously poor support of traditional characters, but I’ve always loved the engine.
Since he David joined Chinese Pod, his various technical marvels have been springing up here and here throughout [...]

I’ve recently discovered that all the comments I’ve made on Reddit.com for over a month have been invisible to the rest of the world. I had no idea, though, because reddit makes it look like they’re visible by displaying them to me while I’m logged in.

If you click through to Zooomr, I’ve set up [...]

I recently stumbled accross a site called Fuzzwich, that automates cheesy video design. Here’s the result of my first effort: