On This Day in 1951

Remington Rand sells the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau. 5,200 vacuum tubes, weighed 29,000 lbs (13 metric tons), consumed 125 kW in electric. The 'Geek Squad' used shopping carts filled with vacuum tubes to keep the thing running back in the day.

Pink Martini

I had the pleasure of seeing Pink Martini last night at the Bijou Theater in Knoxville. A great show by a very talented combo.

The Thorium Dream

A Burger, and Order of Fries, and Your Credit Card Number

There are 'hactivists' out there conducting high-profile cyber-attacks on servers used by retailers and restaurant franchises. The weak link is all about weak passwords. May be a good idea to not use bank cards tied to your checking and/or savings account when paying for dinner or snacks.

The Cost of Fear: The Framing of a Fukushima Report

Here is a good analysis of the Fukushima disaster one year later by NPR science correspondent Richard Harris.

The New iPad Review

Dan Nosowitz and John Mahoney over at Popular Science provide a pretty good early review of how the new iPad stacks up. I think I'm taking the plunge in a month or two. The opinion is that if you have an iPad 2, you might want to hold on and see what Apple produces in the 2013 version.

A Talk by a Cyborg Lawyer with Proprietary Software Connected to Her Heart

Software is now controlling our medical devices, our cars, our financial institutions, our voting machines, our phones, and just about everything else imaginable. This talk is well worth the time. She makes a good case for free and open source software.