firehose

tastefullyoffensive:

"The hardest part of being in a biracial relationship is taking a picture together." [whatthecaptcha]

twisted-oak:

The Big Bang Theory with the laugh track removed is just 4 people being mean to an autistic man

Amazon just wrapped up a successful holiday shopping season. It sold 36.8 million items on Cyber Monday alone, or 426 items per second.

The company also revealed the most popular holiday purchases in a range of categories. Some of the items are kind of surprising…

The most popular grocery item was…

A Miracle-Gro AeroGarden kit, which is a dirt-free herb and plant-growing aparatus that allows its owners to raise their own herbs in the confines of their kitchen. The Miracle-Grow beat out the well-known K-Cup Keurig coffee-makers, which topped Amazon’s list last year. This is what it looks like:

The most popular jewelry item was…

A pair of “Sterling Silver Amethyst Flowers Earrings,” which beat out the “Sterling Silver ‘I Love You To The Moon and Back’ Two Piece Pendant Necklace.” What’s surprising isn’t that the most popular jewelry item is purple. These earings just seem a bit elaborate to have garnered such wide appeal.

The most popular kitchen item was…

A Tovolo Ice Mold, which makes spherical ice cubes. The ice mold is a neat but strange choice given that the ice cubes it makes are large, and don’t fit into many standard cup sizes. It beat out a far more traditional non-stick baking mat set and Cuisinart griddle. Everyone fashions himself a mixologist these days: Amazon says it sold enough Tovolo Sphere Ice Molds to fill Mad Men‘s Don Draper’s whiskey glasses for 251 years.

The most popular home good was…

An art set. The Darice 80 piece deluxe art set, which comes with everything from color pencils to watercolor cakes and crayons, sold better than any vacuum cleaner, ornament, or decoration. It even outsold Swarovski’s perpetually popular crystal star ornament.

The most popular health and personal care item was…

The Fitbit Flex Wireless Activity + Sleep Wristband, a sleep, exercise, and health tracker that straps onto one’s wrist. Amazon sold more Fitbit wristbands this holiday season than it did Philips electronic toothbrushes and Braun electric shavers. The popularity of the little gadget is a pretty clear nod to the growth of the internet of things and growing comfort with mini, wearable computers, as well as the skyrocketing trend in health obsessiveness.

The two gay players were accepted as "unbelievable teammates" in the locker room, according to a report.

While the 1993 Houston Oilers are remembered for their dysfunction -- an up-and-down season, coordinators punching each other on the sidelines, the benching of a Hall of Fame quarterback -- a recent report by the Houston Chronicle's Brian T. Smith suggests they were also progressive. According to former players, two members of the roster were gay, information that was widely known and accepted by teammates.

The two players, who have not been named, were considered valuable contributors to the team, Pro Bowl linebacker Lamar Lathon said.

Listen, those guys that we're talking about were unbelievable teammates. And if you wanted to go to war with someone, you would get those guys first. Because I have never seen tougher guys than those guys. And everybody in the locker room, the consensus knew or had an idea that things were not exactly right. But guess what? When they strapped the pads on and got on the field, man, we were going to war with these guys because they were unbelievable.

While the two were not technically open, their sexual orientation was well known around the locker room, agreed two-time Pro Bowler Chris Dishman.

"Everybody knew certain guys (were gay). Everybody speculated and people used to see these two guys come in by themselves. They’d leave at lunchtime and then come back," Dishman said.

The team, which entered the season as Super Bowl favorites, started 1-4 then rattled off 11-consecutive wins only to lose in the Divisional round of the playoffs. Their tumultuous and often bizarre season is chronicled in a recent NFL Network documentary.

In April, 12-year NBA veteran Jason Collins became the first openly gay active athlete in the four major U.S. professional sports. Collins, who has played with six NBA teams, has been lauded as a pioneer for the LGBT community. A free agent at the time of his announcement, he has not played for a team since coming out.

Robbie Rogers of Major League Soccer became the first openly gay player to actually participate in a U.S. professional sports league when he entered a game as a substitute for the Los Angeles Galaxy in May. Rogers made his sexual orientation public the same day he retired from the league in February, but returned to the MLS as a member of the Galaxy three months later.

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theodp writes "In 1919, Nora Bayes sang, "How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree?" In 2013, discussing User Culture Versus Programmer Culture, CS Prof Philip Guo poses a similar question: 'How ya gonna get 'em down on UNIX after they've seen Spotify?' Convincing students from user culture to toss aside decades of advances in graphical user interfaces for a UNIX command line is a tough sell, Guo notes, and one that's made even more difficult when the instructors feel the advantages are self-evident. 'Just waving their arms and shouting "because, because UNIX!!!" isn't going to cut it,' he advises. Guo's tips for success? 'You need to gently introduce students to why these tools will eventually make them more productive in the long run,' Guo suggests, 'even though there is a steep learning curve at the outset. Start slow, be supportive along the way, and don't disparage the GUI-based tools that they are accustomed to using, no matter how limited you think those tools are. Bridge the two cultures.'" Required reading.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you go to Google and search for "rap genius," rapgenius.com will not be found on the first page. Instead you will find links to their Twitter account, Facebook page, Wikipedia profile and stories like this about them being penalized by Google. But you won’t find rapgenius.com on the first page.

submitted by Seansterd
[link] [19 comments]

All in, 2013 was an embarrassment for the entire tech industry and the engine that powers it—Silicon Valley. Innovation was replaced by financial engineering, mergers and acquisitions, and evasion of regulations. Not a single breakthrough product was unveiled—and for reasons outlined below, Google Glass doesn’t count. If it’s in the nature of progress to move in leaps, there are necessarily lulls in between. Here are all the reasons 2013 was a great big dud for technology as a whole.

Mobile phones stagnated

2013 was the year smartphones became commodities, just like the PCs they supplanted. Even at the high end, Apple and Samsung’s newest flagship phones weren’t big leaps ahead from previous versions. The most that Apple could think to do with the new, faster processor in the iPhone 5S was animate 3D effects that make some users feel ill and a fingerprint sensor that solved a problem that wasn’t exactly pressing. Apple’s new iOS7 mobile operating system, which felt “more like a Microsoft release,” crippled many older iPhones and led to complaints of planned obsolescence.

Samsung’s update to history’s best-selling Android phone, the Galaxy S series, delivered on the technical specifications but continued the line’s “unpleasant, cheap design.” Packed with new features like touch-free gesture control, the phone also has an “easy mode” in recognition that many will want to switch them off, and suffers from an interface that stutters at odd moments despite its powerful electronics. Meanwhile, Google’s mysterious superphone turned out to be the Moto X, which is a nice Android phone but hardly revolutionary.

The one good thing about all this commodification is that smartphones are cheaper than ever—in 2014 they’ll cost as little as $20 in China—just like high-end televisions. Prices for good tablets have similarly collapsed.

Wearables were a letdown

The tone-deaf design of Google’s Glass headset—which to anyone but its user is a head-mounted video camera without the tiny light that all other video cameras have to tell you you’re being filmed—made the device such anathema that one pundit wondered whether he should be ashamed to wear it in public. Sergey Brin’s personal campaign to make wearing Glass look normal couldn’t hide the fact that Glass is a technology in search of an application—unless that application is invasions of privacy.

Smart watches were easily the biggest letdown of the year. Despite the fact that nearly every big electronics manufacturer is working on one, the battery and display constraints have stumped designers. Again and again, reviewers have declared existing models unfit for widespread adoption, with both Sony and Samsung unveiling devices that failed to make a compelling case for themselves.

Former giants continued their inglorious decline

Microsoft lost nearly a billion dollars on the Surface RT tablet, which was to be the device that pole-vaulted the company over Apple’s iPad and the dying PC industry. Insiders revealed Microsoft’s ruinous internal culture, fostered under a leader who probably never should have been CEO, leading those same insiders to conclude that the only solution is a breakup of the company.

The outlook wasn’t much better for Intel, not because the company hasn’t continued to innovate, but because people don’t need as many of its microprocessors, and the ones they do need are less profitable than ever.

BlackBerry, which investors once thought might be broken into smaller businesses with some latent value, proved to be a near-total loss. And while Hewlett-Packard has put the disastrous acquisitions and rapid-fire leadership changes of recent years behind it, the best that can be said so far is that it’s gracefully managing its own decline.

M&A replaced innovation

Microsoft bought Nokia‘s devices business, which would have been an astonishing turn of events a few years ago, but now felt like a lurch into an unsure future in which Microsoft remains an also-ran in mobile devices. Most big news about Apple was about the company’s tax-avoidance techniques and general failure to deliver any new products of note. (It still isn’t making phablets, though they’ve been hugely successful for other manufacturers.)

Google killed its much-vaunted 20% time—the policy of allowing engineers to spend a portion of their working time on their own projects—while insisting it hadn’t, leading to a furious (and public) debate among its employees about whether or not the company is still friendly to bottom-up innovation.

The arrogance of technology’s ruling class increased

Even as one entrepreneur declared that Silicon Valley should be a separate US state, economists made the case that much of what the internet has accomplished in the past 20 years is the impoverishment of the majority of Americans. While there isn’t much manufacturing left in rich countries to automate, it appears that robot baristas could threaten jobs in the service sector as well. Some in Silicon Valley even made explicit their goal of eliminating workers and their labor protections. And Uber’s CEO alienated customers by insisting that exorbitant “surge pricing” was nothing more than a way to ensure supply at busy times.

Meanwhile, American tech firms flocked to Ireland in order to avoid regulation, while companies like Uber and AirBnB made it apparent that their business model is dependent on avoiding regulations in the states.

Social media became profitable, if not compelling

We became more tired of social media than ever. Twitter filled up with machines. Facebook’s response—to mess with the algorithm that determines what’s in your feed, called Edgerank—made the site less appealing to many.

Facebook did crack the code on how to increase its revenue and boost its share price back to the levels of its 2012 IPO. Unfortunately, those methods included obnoxious video ads. Twitter’s IPO, meanwhile, suggested that the company will have to follow in Facebook’s wake—more, and more intrusive, advertising—in order to justify its share price.

Media ravenous for stories bought into techno-hype

The value of bitcoin increased at least 10-fold in 2013, thanks to heavy investment—by the media, which helped talk it up. Managing “big data” became the growth plan of companies like IBM, despite the fact that most companies aren’t handling data that’s anywhere close to “big.”

Amazon scored a huge PR coup when its “surprise” announcement of a new drone program gave the company a boost in visibility worth millions, just ahead of the biggest online shopping day of the year. Amazon competitor FedEx and just about everyone else who knows something about drones maligned the plans as a publicity stunt.

The NSA spying scandal put a chill on the biggest technological shifts of coming years

As more and more revelations emerged from the documents Edward Snowden lifted from the US National Security Agency, observers seemed numbed by the sheer scope and audacity of the agency’s domestic and foreign internet surveillance. The fallout for the tech industry has just begun: US companies must now prove, especially to foreign customers, that the move to cloud-based services, which necessitates sending all their data through the very same communication nodes to which the NSA has access, won’t put all of their secrets in the hands of US spymasters by default.

The effects are already being felt. Cisco blamed a poor quarter on deals in Russia and Brazil soured by fears about the NSA. Cisco also warned that this will affect many other US firms, and that it threatens the future of the internet of things—fitting, since the implications of a world in which every gadget is a potential mole sure are scary.

And as is the case every year, tech pundits made countless dubious calls for which they will never be held to account.

Read This Next: Google sincerely thinks that Google+ is the future of Google

It’s common currency in internet punditry circles that Google won the battle to dominate search while Facebook won the battle for social, and that Google+ is just a failed competitor to Facebook. But Google hasn’t given up.

It has been clear for a while now that, to make up for the fact that not very many people actively use Google+ as a social network, Google is turning it into a platform on which the rest of Google’s web services are evolving—something that has the effect of making people use Google+ by default. Results from Google+ already clutter search results. YouTube’s commenting system has been replaced by Google+. Chat and Talk, once stand-alone services, were combined into Hangouts and incorporated into Google+.

In a revealing interview with the Indian business newspaper Mint, Steve Grove, a Google+ exec who inks deals with content providers and influential figures, makes it clear that this is just the beginning. Grove tells Mint that “the reason for that is that Google+ is kind of like the next version of Google.”

Why? According to Grove:

There’s a lot of great value here, because Search also shows results from Google+ and this is going to bring more people into Google+; people are going to see that there’s a lot of value in logging into our services, before doing a search.

We’ve written before about how Facebook’s strategy for getting users in emerging markets is to convince people new to the internet that Facebook basically is the internet. Google’s strategy looks a bit like the obverse of this: convince people already on the internet that the internet runs on Google+.

But when you look at it longer-term, Google’s strategy is actually very similar to Facebook’s. New internet users, such as the hundreds of millions expected to come online in India in the coming years, will find that being on Google’s social network is increasingly a prerequisite for using Google’s other services. Roping those new users into Google+ from the get-go is the company’s best chance for coming from behind and defeating Facebook’s dominance in social media. And that clearly seems to be Google’s goal, given how much effort it’s pouring into the network. “We focused a lot on Google+ here [in India], and it’s already very active, and people are getting on board on their own,” Grove said.

This is an updated version of an article first published on Sept. 26, 2013.

The US Postal Service (USPS) has made it official: Anybody who wants to turn a quick profit at its expense will have an opportunity to do so come January.

As of January 26 next year, it will hike the price of a first-class stamp from $0.46 to $0.49. Stamp prices are normally increased by about 1 or 2 cents a year to match inflation. This 3-cent increase, approved on Dec. 24 by the US Postal Regulatory Commission, is large enough that it creates an opportunity for arbitrage in so-called “forever” stamps, which hold their value regardless of changes in postage price. (The Postal Regulatory Commission stressed that the increase would be temporary, to be phased out in less than two years, when the Postal Service has made up the $2.8 billion it lost during the recession.)

Before forever stamps were introduced in 2007, all stamps in the US were denominated. In other words, the price paid was printed on the stamp. If the stamp was old, and the denomination was less than the current cost of postage, then a letter-mailer would have to supplement it with smaller stamps to make up the difference. A forever stamp can be used, well, forever.

So what’s stopping stamp peddlers from buying up forever stamps at $0.46 before the price hike on Jan. 26, 2014, and selling them afterwards at a profit for less than $0.49?

We hashed out a hypothetical plan to see whether forever-stamp arbitrage is worth it.

Timing

First of all, timing is key. It’s best to buy the stamps right before the price increase, and flip them shortly afterwards. The  longer you hang onto the stamps, the less you make in real terms, because of inflation:

Planning

Our plan is to buy 10 million stamps at $0.46 each and sell them at $0.48. The margins, of course, are small. If we buy 10 million stamps, spending $4.6 million, we’ll earn $200,000—a 4.3% profit.

The good news is that you can buy up to 1 million stamps in a single order from the USPS, and pay a mere $1.75 in shipping (shipping is their business, after all).

Raising capital

But $4.6 million (or $4,600,001.75 with shipping) is a lot of money, especially for folks like us (an economist and a journalist) who’ve never raised money before and don’t have many assets. Ideally we’d borrow it all at once, but given our limited financial means, securing a $4.6 million loan would be tough, at least at an interest rate that would still leave room for us to make money.

We’d get better terms on the loan if we had some collateral. But all we can offer is the stamps we plan to buy. So the trick is to get our seed funding by selling equity (we’d like to start with $250,000) and then securing loans for the rest using the stamps as collateral. It may seem a little far-fetched, but it’s not all that different from the kind of leveraged trading that goes on in the financial world.

In the past, our journey would probably end here. There’s no way we could convince our friends and family or millionaires to invest a total of $100,000 in this hare-brained scheme. But thanks to the recent US JOBS Act, we don’t need them. We can crowd-fund all of our equity from the general public on sites such as Crowdfunder. This would be our offer: We’ll split the profits 50/50, with half going to our shareholders and the other half to us.

Once we’ve raised the $250,000, we can order some stamps: 5,434 rolls of 100 stamps for $249,964, plus 8 strips of 10 stamps for $36.80.

Including the $1.75 in shipping, that’s $250,002.55.

Those stamps won’t be enough collateral for a $4.6 million loan, so we’d need to take out a smaller loan and use that money to buy more stamps. Then we use those stamps to take out yet another loan and buy even more stamps. We estimate that we’ll need to take out 18 loans to get our hands on 10 million stamps.

That’s a total of 19 separate stamp orders, which will cost $33.25 in shipping. We can front that money ourselves. So, what about interest? Even though our loan is collateralized, it’s a risky proposition, so we expect to have to pay a fairly high interest rate—8% on an annual basis.

Selling stamps

Getting the stamps is one thing; selling them is another. There’s no way we could convince a buyer to purchase our stamps before the price increase actually happens in January. Who would agree to buy more expensive stamps in the future when they could buy cheaper ones now? So, we’ll have to cut all of our deals after we’ve already put ourselves on the hook for $4.6 million. This is our biggest source of risk.

Ten million is a lot of stamps for us to move. It wouldn’t make sense for us to sell them directly to people, because people don’t typically keep a lot of stamps around. We could try to find an organization or company that does a lot of mass mailing, but such an organization would probably either print its own stamps or, if it’s a non-profit, buy them at a special discount rate from the USPS.

What we really need is a distributor—someone who can sell all of the stamps to convenience stores and drug stores, which usually sell stamps for $0.60 each or more. There is a company called C Store Distributors Directory that maintains a database of almost 1,000 convenience store distributors: names, email addresses, phone numbers. It sells copies of the database for $399.  Our first step would be to buy one and get on the phone. The 3-cent spread gives us some room to negotiate. We can offer a cheaper price, say $0.475 a stamp, if they are willing to buy in bulk.

There’s always a chance distributors will be wary about working with a couple of unfamiliar people selling discount stamps. But there’s another avenue we could try: A company called Check Stand Program works with distributors across the country and helps anybody with a new product get that product into stores. If you pay it $3,500 and make 100 promotional displays, it will send its sales reps out to those stores to push whatever it is you’re trying to sell. The stamps we own would be out of our hands, but Check Stand increases the size our sales force to include people who actually have relationships with stores.

We might want to take both approaches. To avoid refinancing our loans and paying more interest, we would need to offload all the stamps in a month.

Raking in the cash… maybe

So, if we’re able to pull this off, how much will we make?

Assuming we sell all 10 million stamps for the bulk discount price of $0.475 each, our profit will be $150,000. Subtract out the $399 for the distributor database. Let’s also assume we spent the $3,500 for Check Stand Program plus, say, $300 to make the 100 displays for advertising in stores. That gives us $145,801.

If we do manage to shift the stamps in a month, the interest on our debt will be $29,000. That brings our profits to $116,801. Then we’ll return the equity to our shareholders, along with 50% of the profits.

That leaves us with the other 50%: $58,400.50. If you look at that as a profit on the $4.6 million initial outlay, it’s not very much: less than 1.3%. But remember, all that outlay was leveraged. So if you look at it as a return on our investment—$33.25 for shipping—it’s 175,541%.

So the ultimate forever-stamp arbitrage may indeed be worth it.

Daily Mail

GOP surges ahead of Democrats in 2014 generic ballot CBS News Democrats woke up Thursday to some gloomy post-Christmas news: they have fallen behind Republicans in the battle to win House and Senate seats in the 2014 election. A new CNN/ORC International poll released Thursday shows Republicans holding a ... US polls finds 73pc unhappy with CongressThe Australian Poll: This Is The Worst Congress EverTIME Obama Is Now Holding Back Democratic Congressional CandidatesSan Francisco Chronicle Politico -Tucson News Now all 194 news articles »

Taco Cowboy writes "Perhaps it's not much, but China has released a panoramic view of the moonscape where their lander has landed. They 'stitched' up some 60 photos taken by 3 cameras on the Chang'e 3 lander, taken from 3 different angles — Vertical, 15 degrees up, and 15 degrees down. From the picture, there is a significant sized crater is seen, several meters wide, off to the left of Yutu, the (jade rabbit) moon rover, and located only about 10 meters away from the Chang'e-3 lander."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

extremely rough proof-of-concept sketch from Hayao Miyazaki’s unreleased “GG Allin and the Valley of Scum”

“Never be bored again!”

Brooklyn-based Dark Igloo and M ss ng P eces production company have created “Bored Game,” a magical parody commercial for a fake mashup board game from the 80s. They combined together old school board games, superhero and villain action figures, and classic video game accesories to bring their amazing board game to life. It, of course, comes complete with a quirky game wizard.

We made this thing purely for the fun of it. A silly idea filled with amazing opportunities to study 90′s commercials, design a wizard, work with talented friends and pour dry ice into a miniature dungeon. Most of the games were recovered from Mark’s attic back home in Goshen, Indiana. The rest was sourced from some deep ebaying, and shout out to Jay at GameStation.net for the custom, delicious dice. Apart from our usual prop-obssessing, Bored Game allowed us really dive into character design in a new way. We had the best time designing Bordak the Game Wizard™ with with AB FX Studio and his clothes with Mary Jane Lane.

video and images via Dark Igloo

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Ninjas is an upcoming indoor throwing star range and will be the first of its kind in Kentucky. Deadly ninja initiates everywhere will be able to take lessons at the new facility, throw at one of their many lanes, buy over 500 different types of shurikens, and enjoy a beverage at their sake bar. The indoor throwing star range is scheduled to open in spring 2014.

video and images via Ninjas

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

As Super Smash Bros. reveals go, Princess Zelda is a bit like getting socks for Christmas: predictable. And in our case, pink - auntie's very fond of pastel colors. Not that we can't rock pink socks, because we can so rock pink socks. Offering more ...

And here it comes: with 100-130 km/h winds following along behind. It’s going to be an interesting night…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNIfbdi41ho&feature=youtu.be

Original Source

http://imgur.com/a/uiwcv

Original Source

The Orlando Magic have until Jan. 7 to get rid of Hedo Turkoglu and avoid paying his full 2013-14 salary.

The Orlando Magic will have Hedo Turkoglu out of limbo by Jan. 7. That's the date the team must trade or waive the veteran forward by to avoid paying his full $12 million salary for the 2013-14 season, according to Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel.

Only half, or $6 million, of Turkoglu's salary is guaranteed, but the team has decided to ride part of the season out with the forward on its roster, allowing for his expiring contract to be used in any potential trade.

The 34-year-old hasn't played in a game this season, and it appeared from this offseason onward that he wasn't in the Magic's plans.

Turkoglu missed a 20-game chunk of last season after being suspended for testing positive for steroids. This year, the team has opted to give its young players in Maurice Harkless and Tobias Harris playing time at Turkoglu's small forward spot. Orlando has even played shooting guard Arron Afflalo at the 3 to open up more time for point guard Jameer Nelson and rookie combo guard Victor Oladipo.

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Massive flooding across areas of the UK has struck a productivity blow to indie developer Hello Games. Yesterday, via Twitter, the house that birthed Joe Danger announced its Guildford office had been swallowed by rushing water. "A river broke its ...

KOMO News

McDonald's closes employee website amid criticism San Angelo Standard Times FILE - In this Friday, Oct. 4, 2013, file photo, a McDonald's restaurant sign is seen at a McDonald's restaurant in Chicago. McDonald's Corp. has shut down a website, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2013, intended to provide employees with work and life guidance after it ... McDonald's Shuts Down Website That Told Workers To Avoid Fast FoodOPB News all 368 news articles »

It's been said that a good way to keep children from developing nut allergies is for moms to avoid peanuts, tree nuts, and related products during pregnancy. Turns out that's nonsense. A long-running health investigation involving over 8,000 kids now suggests you can scarf as many nuts while you're pregnant as you damn well please.

Read more...

Not all white dudes with black hair and superpowers are the same, guys. GEEZ. On the bright side, at least there's another superhero who won't be getting their own movie before Wonder Woman premieres in live-action on the big screen.

[With special thanks to the Up-Goer Five Text Editor, which was inspired by this xkcd]

I study computers that would work in a different way than any computer that we have today.  These computers would be very small, and they would use facts about the world that are not well known to us from day to day life.  No one has built one of these computers yet—at least, we don’t think they have!—but we can still reason about what they could do for us if we did build them.

How would these new computers work? Well, when you go small enough, you find that, in order to figure out what the chance is that something will happen, you need to both add and take away a whole lot of numbers—one number for each possible way that the thing could happen, in fact. What’s interesting is, this means that the different ways a thing could happen can “kill each other out,” so that the thing never happens at all! I know it sounds weird, but the world of very small things has been known to work that way for almost a hundred years.

So, with the new kind of computer, the idea is to make the different ways each wrong answer could be reached kill each other out (with some of them “pointing” in one direction, some “pointing” in another direction), while the different ways that the right answer could be reached all point in more or less the same direction. If you can get that to happen, then when you finally look at the computer, you’ll find that there’s a very good chance that you’ll see the right answer. And if you don’t see the right answer, then you can just run the computer again until you do.

For some problems—like breaking a big number into its smallest parts (say, 43259 = 181 × 239)—we’ve learned that the new computers would be much, much faster than we think any of today’s computers could ever be. For other problems, however, the new computers don’t look like they’d be faster at all. So a big part of my work is trying to figure out for which problems the new computers would be faster, and for which problems they wouldn’t be.

You might wonder, why is it so hard to build these new computers? Why don’t we have them already? This part is a little hard to explain using the words I’m allowed, but let me try. It turns out that the new computers would very easily break. In fact, if the bits in such a computer were to “get out” in any way—that is, to work themselves into the air in the surrounding room, or whatever—then you could quickly lose everything about the new computer that makes it faster than today’s computers. For this reason, if you’re building the new kind of computer, you have to keep it very, very carefully away from anything that could cause it to lose its state—but then at the same time, you do have to touch the computer, to make it do the steps that will eventually give you the right answer. And no one knows how to do all of this yet. So far, people have only been able to use the new computers for very small checks, like breaking 15 into 3 × 5. But people are working very hard today on figuring out how to do bigger things with the new kind of computer.

In fact, building the new kind of computer is so hard, that some people even believe it won’t be possible! But my answer to them is simple. If it’s not possible, then that’s even more interesting to me than if it is possible! And either way, the only way I know to find out the truth is to try it and see what happens.

Sometimes, people pretend that they already built one of these computers even though they didn’t. Or they say things about what the computers could do that aren’t true. I have to admit that, even though I don’t really enjoy it, I do spend a lot of my time these days writing about why those people are wrong.

Oh, one other thing. Not long from now, it might be possible to build computers that don’t do everything that the new computers could eventually do, but that at least do some of it. Like, maybe we could use nothing but light and mirrors to answer questions that, while not important in and of themselves, are still hard to answer using today’s computers. That would at least show that we can do something that’s hard for today’s computers, and it could be a step along the way to the new computers. Anyway, that’s what a lot of my own work has been about for the past four years or so.

Besides the new kind of computers, I’m also interested in understanding what today’s computers can and can’t do. The biggest open problem about today’s computers could be put this way: if a computer can check an answer to a problem in a short time, then can a computer also find an answer in a short time? Almost all of us think that the answer is no, but no one knows how to show it. Six years ago, another guy and I figured out one of the reasons why this question is so hard to answer: that is, why the ideas that we already know don’t work.

Anyway, I have to go to dinner now. I hope you enjoyed this little piece about the kind of stuff that I work on.