Welcome to DJ's Junk Drawer.

I will unofficially update this website on random dates within any random time interval.

Monday, November 30, 2015

Pre-mutated products: where did all those "hoverboards" come from?



Those bowtie-shaped "motorized self-balancing two-wheeled scooters" you see in the windows of strip-mall cellphone repair shops and in mall-kiosks roared out of nowhere and are now everywhere, despite being so new that we don't even know what they're called.

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Friday, November 27, 2015

Charles Stross Reveals How His Laundry Files World Is About to Change Forever



When Charles Stross isn’t writing mind-blowing space opera about the future of banking, he’s the ultra-prolific author of two long-running series. And one of those, the Laundry Files, has won praise (and a Best Novella Hugo) for its look at a spy agency that deals with other-worldly threats.

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What the 1980s would have made of the $5 Raspberry Pi



The new Raspberry Pi Zero is a $5 general purpose computer, manufactured in Wales, with more power than a 1980s personal computer.

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Sunday, November 22, 2015

Happy 30th birthday Windows! What's your earliest memory of Microsoft's revolutionary operating system?



I first started using Windows back in 1992, shortly after the release of Windows 3.1, and I’ve used every iteration since, including both the good (Windows XP, Windows 7) and the bad (Vista, Windows 8). Every time a new version was released, I upgraded pretty much immediately.

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Samsung lays out its IoT SmartThings devices in new infographic



The Internet of Things, or IoT, is the latest rage with more products coming onto the market all the time. It's also become a bit of a target for hacking, though the problem is likely a bit exaggerated.

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Thursday, November 19, 2015

Agents of SHIELD Is at the Top of its Game, and That's Amazing to Watch



One thing that keeps occurring to me while watching Agents of SHIELD lately: This show is pretty much 100 percent serialized now, with huge elements of soap opera as well as ongoing plot strands. There’s zero “monster of the week” stuff.

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Saturday, November 14, 2015

There's a Hidden Connection Between Pi and Quantum Mechanics 



Physicists have uncovered a hidden connection between a famous 350-year-old mathematical formula for pi, everyone’s favorite irrational number, and quantum mechanics. At least one mathematician has pronounced the discovery “a cunning piece of magic.”

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Thursday, November 12, 2015

Cool Visualization Lets You See Philae Bounce and Tumble as It Lands on a Comet



It was one year ago today that the Philae Lander bounced, spun, and tumbled across the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. To commemorate the historic event, the European Space Agency has released an animated video chronicling the lander’s chaotic landing.

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Councillor who voted to close all public toilets gets a ticket for public urination



In a decision that environmental activists see as a hard-won victory, President Obama today announced he is rejecting the request from a Canadian company to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

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