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Just found this: comparison of the Pentagon vs the Boeing factory:
https://mapfight.appspot.com/b...

Note it is using area, not volume.

Okay, let's do some Fermi math.

Watt hours to mAh is (Wh)*1000/(V) =(mAh): https://milliamps-watts.appspo...

The US generally uses 120 volts for power so that would be 45.6 trillion mAh.

I have on the desk in front of me a phone with a battery that holds about 3000 mAh and when stood on end takes up a surface area of about 618 mm^2.

45.6 trillion mAh / 3000 mAh/phone = 15.2 billion phones * 618 mm^2 = 9.4 trillion mm^2. .....

I believe all that math works out?

Not quite: your phone battery has 3.7 - 4.2 V, not 120V or 1000V. To boost your voltage to 120V you will need either
- to stack (in series) 35 - 40 of them, or
- boost the voltage by a circuit but then you get proportionally lower current, further reduced by the circuit efficiency (good one about 90%)

So according to your calculation you need to multiply your number of batteries by a safe factor of about 50.

Okay, let's do some Fermi math.

The US uses about 4 trillion kWh/year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

But given a sufficient number of solar panels we only need to store enough for about 12 hours. 4 trillion / (365 * 2) = about 5.5 billion kWh, or 5.5 trillion Wh.

Watt hours to mAh is (Wh)*1000/(V) =(mAh): https://milliamps-watts.appspo...

The US generally uses 120 volts for power so that would be 45.6 trillion mAh.

I have on the desk in front of me a phone with a battery that holds about 3000 mAh and when stood on end takes up a surface area of about 618 mm^2.

45.6 trillion mAh / 3000 mAh/phone = 15.2 billion phones * 618 mm^2 = 9.4 trillion mm^2.

There are 1,000,000 mm^2 / m^2 so that would be 9.4 million m^2, and there are about 2.59 million meters per square mile, so 9.4 million / 2.59 million = 3.6 square miles.

So in order to get in down to one square mile you'd need a stack of phones four deep. This phone happens to be 129 mm high, so a stack of 4 would be 516 mm, or about 1 foot, 8 inches.

On the one hand you'd also need a lot of infrastucture to support those batteries which would also take up some area. However i'm also pretty sure that connecting over 15 billion phones in series would be far from the most efficient way to get the required battery storage.

I believe all that math works out?

If you are truly starting at the beginning and need to understand basic concepts like conditionals, loops, variables, etc I recommend Blockly.

By the time you can solve level 10 of this tutorial you'll have a fair grasp of some fundamentals.

The best part is it automatically converts to JavaScript and Python, two good languages to move on to after you've master the basics.

If you have modern browsers at both sides of the connection (supporting webrtc: http://caniuse.com/#feat=rtcpe...), there are many online sites that require no account setup or anything else, and where a connection can be done by clicking a link. No plugins required.

It needs a separate channel e.g. chat to set it up (where you can send your communication partner the link, or ask them to talk via the webrtc), but it works.

https://talky.io/
https://appear.in/
https://meet.jit.si/
https://apprtc.appspot.com/

Japan is smaller than California. http://mapfight.appspot.com/jp... It would be a good deal more than a little bit of up front investment. A better choice might be to power them with natural gas or even hydrogen. It is not like you would have to worry about tank size.

Here you go:

https://frames-per-second.apps...

That is a simple JS app that lets you compare frame rates controlling all aspects (I love how it lets you even configure motion blur settings). For me the best comparison (on my 60fps monitor) is 60fps vs 30 fps both without any motion blur, the quality difference is so blatant that I can't imagine like people still defend frame rates lower than 60fps.

Yeah I really wish RED would add a complete set of framerate demos for:

* 24 Hz
* 30 Hz
* 60 Hz
* 120 Hz
* 144 Hz

The nice thing about using about 120 Hz and 144 Hz refresh is that it is an exact multiple of 24 Hz (5x and 6x, respectively).

I might have to get a HERO4 or some other cheap 240 fps camera and record this demo 120 vs 60 vs 30 fps, but then again we already have 60 Hz vs 120 Hz comparisons.

Just download the latest stable/nightly build of Chromium from https://download-chromium.appspot.com/. Or build it yourself using the instructions at https://www.chromium.org/getting-involved/download-chromium

Depends on your monitor, of course, but a whole (recent) generation of "LCD gaming screens" only showed 6 bits of color depth:

http://compreviews.about.com/o...

Also, even when you show people the bottom 2 bits, they usually don't perceive them:

http://rahuldotgarg.appspot.co...

Wait, so you're saying that Google-- which has been developing an open source browser for 10 years, pushing web app support into Android, and been heavily promoting Polymer, even a new proposal for a better JavaScript (also open)... they're afraid of standards-based web apps?!!

And Apple is afraid of proprietary, closed-source software, I presume?

I'm surprised that Passfault was not mentioned in the paper TFA references, since it specifically checks for dictionary attacks in multiple languages, and for substitutions, reversals, keyboard shifts, and other transforms that an advanced cracking program might check. It's open source, too. Yet no one else even mentioned it in this discussion, when Slashdot is how I know about it in the first place.

https://blockly-games.appspot.... - i've been programming for about 15 years and this seems like a perfectly nice introduction for kids

According to sources like this, about 85% of Sweden's population is in urban areas. When you only have 15% of the population that's really spread out, of course it's easy to just spend the extra money to wire all of them up.

You mean unlike the USA, which have to deal with the punishing 17% non-urban population which makes it impossible to roll out a decent infrastructure? Different for different states, of course, but less densely populated states also have a smaller population which you need to cover.
 

The population of Sweden is so small, you really can't extrapolate out from it very much to US sized problems either. You could barely fill the NY metro area here with everyone in Sweden.

I would argue the exact opposite. You can perfectly well extrapolate from Sweden, and use that extrapolation as an inspiration of where the USA can get with decent policies.
 

And our sparse states make Northern Sweden look like a huge party. Nationwide US policy has to consider what's feasible in states like Montana and Wyoming, at 2.7 and 2.3 people per sq km. And then there's Alaska at 0.5...a single state that is also 4X as big as Sweden, too.

So what kills decent broadband in the USA is rural Alaska, which has less than 0.24% of the US population? There are two ways you handle this problem. First of all, you begin by building out good infrastructure to the 50/90/95/99% which is cheapest to deploy. Secondly, you let those living in areas where building infrastructure is cheap sponsor the buildout in more expensive (typically rural) areas. As the value of networks grow with the number of people connected this is, within reasonable levels, profitable for everybody.

When it comes to the population density, you should note that Sweden has a considerably lower population density than most of the American states, yet much better telecommunication infrastructure. Northern Sweden has a population density of about 4 people per square km, yet good access to telecommunication services.

According to sources like this, about 85% of Sweden's population is in urban areas. When you only have 15% of the population that's really spread out, of course it's easy to just spend the extra money to wire all of them up. The population of Sweden is so small, you really can't extrapolate out from it very much to US sized problems either. You could barely fill the NY metro area here with everyone in Sweden.

And our sparse states make Northern Sweden look like a huge party. Nationwide US policy has to consider what's feasible in states like Montana and Wyoming, at 2.7 and 2.3 people per sq km. And then there's Alaska at 0.5...a single state that is also 4X as big as Sweden, too.

This project seems to have similar ambitions to the Justify project. Justify's creator has a good overview of Justify and has published some thoughts about why softwear like this is important.

JPEG2000 in Javascript

WebP in Javascript

Another WebP in Javascript

JPEG2000 in Javascript

WebP in Javascript

Another WebP in Javascript

The internet is just a tool. Books can be evil or stupid too.

PS: https://blockly-games.appspot....

+1

Right, because in 2014 there's NOTHING useful on the internet.

We will continue to have a book-only education FOREVER and we will ALWAYS teach our kids how to write by hand before typing. Because the paradigm never changes.

Believe it or not I have shown them wikipedia, at least the version in my own language, because they are inquisitive. Yes, I could read it to them, I could study it in advance and present the information to them and so on. But to be honest I actually believe the paradigm has shifted and they will live in a different world as my parents did and they will need access to newer tools earlier.

The internet is just a tool. Books can be evil or stupid too.

PS: https://blockly-games.appspot....

Google has never provided binaries on their Chromium site and that has always seemed like a very deliberate choice to deter would be users.

To run Chromium (on Windows) you must to dig through third party sites which may or may not have the latest version of Chromium available and may or may not bundle adware garbage installers.

Here you go...
https://download-chromium.apps...

This is the raw build of Chromium for Windows x86, right off the trunk. It may be tremendously buggy.
created by François Beaufort - now maintained by the Chromium team

My son, age 11, loves computers so I've wanted to teach him programming for awhile. He loves playing Disney Infinity 2.0 and there is a surprising amount of "coding-light" options in there. (If you step on this switch then this action happens.) He's also gotten to love Blockly which is based on Scratch. He's also joined his school's Lego Robotics club so he's learning some programming there while using Lego Mindstorms.

For UK and European readers, "the size of Delaware" is just a tad more than a fourth of "the size of Wales".

Close. According to MapFight, it's at 31%.

Google Reader was merely the most popular 'client' app - its disappearance wouldn't spell the doom of feeds (RSS/atom/whatever), and here's why: practically all the major publishing apps have RSS functionality built-in.
Do you use Wordpress? You probably have an RSS feed whether you're aware of it or not.
Using phpBB? You probably have an RSS feed.
Started a subreddit? It comes with a bunch of feeds.

Now try to get an RSS feed for, say, https://twitter.com/slashdot .
Or how about an RSS feed for https://www.facebook.com/slash... ?

facebook still offers an RSS for timelines, but you'll have to get it first as it's keyed.
twitter doesn't offer an RSS at all, you'll just have to use the APIs (and you'll need to authenticate even if you only want public read access, so you'll have to register, too). And don't think about trying to offer an API-to-RSS bridge, Twitter doesn't take kindly to such awesomeness; http://tweet-2-rss.appspot.com...

These 'social media' platforms of course want you to stay inside their boundaries. If you want to know what @Whoever is up to, you'll just have to view twitter or, better yet, 'Follow' that user and make sure you've got yourself logged in on as many devices as possible preferably with the official twitter apps.

So what happens when a company no longer regularly posts their news or blog posts via their regular content delivery, and instead takes to twitter / facebook? The feed dies out. Sure, it's still there, and maybe once in a blue moon some new content does pop up on there.. but for that same content and everything else you'd be interested in, you'll just have to check them out on facebook and/or twitter.

It's only when companies start realizing this shift - and, again, they might not even be fully aware that they're offering a feed in the first place - that they might try shutting it down for fear of not reaching the right viewership (in the way they want, including the possibility of deleting a post that they later regret).

At least feeds will remain as the premiere way to deliver podcasts (hacked on as they are) ... until some sort of social podcasting platform emerges as the de facto standard and requires you to use their website/proprietary apps.

The statistics do not support your observation. Of the major powerhouse python projects, over 80% have python 3x support. Here is a site that tracks the top 200 python packages.

Just serve WebP to anything except IE and you're fine. There also appears to be something interesting at http://webpjs.appspot.com/ .

In a way, yes. Browser were already using something called a the 'shadow DOM', they are starting to make it available to web developers:
http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/working-with-shadow-dom

So finally HTML5 is getting reusable components and templates, instead of more Javascript, finally some more declerative support:
http://html5-demos.appspot.com/static/webcomponents/index.html#1

The certificates may be worthless. I don't know, I never tried to use them. But the skills they teach (Python programming, using AppEngine, etc.) are valuable. At least, in my corner of the real world they proved themselves so (this application uses AppEngine in Python).

After much searching, I found a good replacement for the basic rss part: http://rssdashboard.appspot.com/.

They won't even get that. Teachers who participate (it is optional, so no one is being forced to teach something with a week or less to prepare) can win prizes, and students who attend a follow-up course can win stuff for themselves. Sounds like bribery to me.

Besides, I don't think it is important that things are incomplete, since the week designated is December 9-15. Plenty of time, and I don't think this qualifies as rushed.

And, they probably won't do much in the way of actual code. "Designed as a game that teaches basic coding principles, it will feature guest lectures by technologists including Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and artwork from popular games"

There is a blurb at the CS education week site http://csedweek.org/ "No math needed. No computers either."

"Weâ(TM)ll host a variety of hour-long tutorials
on the http://csedweek.orgwebsite/ for
students to doâ"some developed by
Code.org, others developed by partner
organizations. Many of the tutorials will be
compatible with tablets and smartphones,
and there will be some âoeunpluggedâ lessons
that require no computer at all. "

So you would have to at least preview each one to see which tutorial to show for that hour. Lots more time involved.

One actual demo, "Blockly", is putting code blocks together like legos, and it isn't completely terrible.

link

Bookend with some talking heads, and you got an hour without talking or touching code.

You should ask Google for a refund of the purchase price.

Good plan!

1 - 10 licenses: $399.00/ea

Google Earth Pro licensing costs

If you want to find good targets for your spare time, here you can find abandonware that is still used by people:

http://python3wos.appspot.com/

just pick any project that is marked with red color!

I spent 5 minutes wading through news articles to finally find the free to access simulator: http://cnotmz.appspot.com/

One interesting cross-domain tagging system, which I use extensively, is Fluidinfo. It allows users to attach tags, which can have typed values, to arbitrary objects identified by any unicode string (or by a UUID). There's a query language that lets you find things based on your own tags and, subject to permissions, other people's tags. It was discussed previously on /., but now has more interesting public data in it, such as most of the books from the British Library's catalogue, e.g. Animal Farm and that old /. favourite Pride & Prejudice.

Another recent development that could be significant for tagging is the announcement by Apple that OS X Mavericks will have more extensive support for tags on files both in the OS and in iCloud. Since tags look like being the only way Apple will offer to organize files in iCloud, it is possible these will catch on in a big way, and this could lead to a broader interest in tagging as a general alternative/addition to hierarchical organization.

One interesting cross-domain tagging system, which I use extensively, is Fluidinfo. It allows users to attach tags, which can have typed values, to arbitrary objects identified by any unicode string (or by a UUID). There's a query language that lets you find things based on your own tags and, subject to permissions, other people's tags. It was discussed previously on /., but now has more interesting public data in it, such as most of the books from the British Library's catalogue, e.g. Animal Farm and that old /. favourite Pride & Prejudice.

Another recent development that could be significant for tagging is the announcement by Apple that OS X Mavericks will have more extensive support for tags on files both in the OS and in iCloud. Since tags look like being the only way Apple will offer to organize files in iCloud, it is possible these will catch on in a big way, and this could lead to a broader interest in tagging as a general alternative/addition to hierarchical organization.

http://go-read.appspot.com/ --- SER

Bookmark this link or this link to find the current day of September 1993.

Blockly is something like scratch, it also has the turtle, and is web based. https://code.google.com/p/blockly/ It is localized in Dutch here http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/de.html Blockly is more an editor, but there are demos like the turtle one that create a pretty complete application! I used blockly for my app (here http://epleweb.appspot.com/ ) that serves as live coding / debugging platform for learners, not so young like your daughter :) All the best!

Blockly is something like scratch, it also has the turtle, and is web based. https://code.google.com/p/blockly/ It is localized in Dutch here http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/de.html Blockly is more an editor, but there are demos like the turtle one that create a pretty complete application! I used blockly for my app (here http://epleweb.appspot.com/ ) that serves as live coding / debugging platform for learners, not so young like your daughter :) All the best!

The Maze App based on the Blockly language has been translated into danish. See http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/maze/da.html

Not Dutch but available in German, English and Vietnamese!
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/de.html

Here is the main page
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/index.html

It uses Blockly, a visual programming editor...
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/index.html

Its browser based and I think with your help initially, she can play around by herself eventually... :)

Here are some examples of what can be done:
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/contest/index.html

If she likes drawing..you can use that as a relation to see if she likes this as well....
Here is one that someone did that creates a random pattern everytime....
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/en.html#zdpxaa

Not Dutch but available in German, English and Vietnamese!
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/de.html

Here is the main page
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/index.html

It uses Blockly, a visual programming editor...
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/index.html

Its browser based and I think with your help initially, she can play around by herself eventually... :)

Here are some examples of what can be done:
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/contest/index.html

If she likes drawing..you can use that as a relation to see if she likes this as well....
Here is one that someone did that creates a random pattern everytime....
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/en.html#zdpxaa

Not Dutch but available in German, English and Vietnamese!
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/de.html

Here is the main page
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/index.html

It uses Blockly, a visual programming editor...
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/index.html

Its browser based and I think with your help initially, she can play around by herself eventually... :)

Here are some examples of what can be done:
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/contest/index.html

If she likes drawing..you can use that as a relation to see if she likes this as well....
Here is one that someone did that creates a random pattern everytime....
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/en.html#zdpxaa

Not Dutch but available in German, English and Vietnamese!
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/de.html

Here is the main page
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/index.html

It uses Blockly, a visual programming editor...
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/index.html

Its browser based and I think with your help initially, she can play around by herself eventually... :)

Here are some examples of what can be done:
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/contest/index.html

If she likes drawing..you can use that as a relation to see if she likes this as well....
Here is one that someone did that creates a random pattern everytime....
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/en.html#zdpxaa

Not Dutch but available in German, English and Vietnamese!
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/de.html

Here is the main page
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/index.html

It uses Blockly, a visual programming editor...
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/index.html

Its browser based and I think with your help initially, she can play around by herself eventually... :)

Here are some examples of what can be done:
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/contest/index.html

If she likes drawing..you can use that as a relation to see if she likes this as well....
Here is one that someone did that creates a random pattern everytime....
http://blockly-demo.appspot.com/static/apps/turtle/en.html#zdpxaa

> Also 16 FPS is enough for a human being to consider what happens on the screen smooth

1. Citation
2. Do you understand the frame rate of movies??
3. Maybe you are blind but I just gave my co-worker this test:

http://frames-per-second.appspot.com/

On a double blind test he was able to easily tell the difference between 30 Hz and 60 Hz 100% of the time.

> movies are below 40 FPS. 40 FPS is more than enough when it's really 40 ...

Moves are 24 Hz and panning looks like garbage.

118 out of 200 most downloaded third party packages in PyPI has Python 3 support. Ref. http://python3wos.appspot.com/

Even better comparison tool imho:

http://frames-per-second.appspot.com/

Can change move speed, fps, motion blur effect, and number of moving spheres (with different settings) live.

cipher text body:

"HVPKD FNFJU YIDDC RQXSR DJHFP GOVFN MIAPX PABUZ WYYNP CMPNW HJRZH NLXKG NENKK ONOIB AKEEQ UAGTA RBQRH DJOFM TPZEH LKXGH RGGHT JRZCQ FNKTQ KLDTS GQIRU"

Key ID reference, and offset into key material:
"AOAKN 27 1525/6

Gonna be real hard to crack this without knowing what the key material was, or what typical material might have been. Could have been a popular book, or even a poem... (ala poem code) though the ACA stats don't point to a pure poem code.

Some odd bits:

The time codes:
"lib 1625" (liberation? of the pigeons)
Time of Origination: "1522"
This makes sense as time stamps for the process of the time from the command to write/encipher the message, until the time the birds were given their payloads and released.

However the "27 1525/6" trailing the message body does not make sense as a time stamp.

The pigeon serial numbers:
NURP 40TW 194
NURP 37DK 76

Indicate one pigeon was commissioned in 1940, and the other in 1937. The ex-pidgeon was 40TW 194...
Depending on how well the RAF took care of their birds, this message could have been coded anytime between 1940 and then end of the war.
Wild pigeons live 3 - 5 years, but domesticated ones can live typically 10 - 15 years without difficulty. I'm gonna guess mortality rate was fairly high. so bird 37DK 76 places a stiffer upper limit on the date... but it still might have been near D-Day.

from: http://bionsgadgets.appspot.com/gadget_forms/refscore.html

Number of standard deviations from averages for each cipher type:

RunningKey 4
Periodic gromark 5
Progkey beaufort 5
Progressivekey 5
Randomtext 5
[...]

The raw histograms doesn't point to a OTP... it looks all wrong for a 125 char message. it should be much flatter. And there would be no need for the "AOAKN" header and footer. Also OTP is really not very good idea for a forward SOE unit... too easy to lose, or be caught with.

Another odd bit about this whole story. Historians who have commented on this story elsewhere seem to think it was extremely rare for birds to carry enciphered payloads. The vast majority during WW2 carried plaintext. I am assuming that this was due to protocol rather than some notion that birds were considered a secure transport.

The Blockly Maze Demo is fun, and simple, but it won't occupy the kids for all that long.

(Somebody already posted about Scratch, which seems to have a similar programming interface but is more mature.)