When you're done chewing stores and reads, use those mathematical modeling skills on something more interesting.
Once you have a paper model of course, you may find you need a physical scale model to validate. But how to tell if your scaling accurately represents the full-size? NASA to the rescue.
The peculiar omnipresence of ads for crappy mobile games have always baffled me. How can the ad spend be justified for obvious off-brands? Turns out, it's money laundering.
They say you don't understand something if you can't explain it at a basic level. In that case, what difficulty level is doing it at five different levels of complexity?
Go, right now, and give Metafilter some money. It's the bright, shining reminder that the web can be better than the skinner box it's shambling towards. You spend more on dumber things, I assure you.
Remember, engineering decisions have consequences. Even if you're not building bridges, take heed of the processes that did not result in a successful outcome.
This one is potentially big enough news that you've probably read it already: air and electricity goes in, gasoline comes out at $4/gallon. The full paper is ungated. There are some concerns about the research being funded by oil companies but the fact that there's an actual demo plant and not just some diagrams behind it is impressive. Stick one of these next to every solar farm in the middle of nowhere and get a global logistics and delivery system for free!
English doesn't borrow from other languages, it famously pursues other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. But what if we had stuck with Germanic a bit more thoroughly? (via)
I lost the page where I got this phrasing but the next big change might be the costs of custom manufacturing falling to meet the costs of bulk manufacturing. Like these custom ASICs for $100.
From the 'background-chyron-in-apocalyptic-movie' department:
