Take it easy on the candy bars, guys
Don’t ask why I was reading the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, but I thought this paragraph was funny. Moreover, despite our manipulations, we do not intend to advocate consuming large quantities of sugar as an ideal strategy for improving self-control. Eating several candy bars, for instance, may give one a boost of energy [...]
pressureNet now has 500 installs
Two weeks ago I posted about my friend Jacob’s project, pressureNet, which lets Xoom users pool together their barometer data. Well, Jacob informs me that they’re past 500 installs now. By the looks of their screenshots, they’ve at least got users in North America, Central America, South America, and Europe. I wonder if this is [...]
Shor’s Algorithm
RSA encryption is a very good cryptosystem. It relies on the fact that it takes computers a really long time to calculate the prime factors of large numbers. We know how to calculate the private key from the public key, but it will take until we’re long dead before we find the answer. Your secret [...]
pressureNet: a barometer network running on Android
The Motorola Xoom, the nicest Android tablet out right now, has a barometer. That’s a strange thing for a tablet to have, and you may think that it’s a waste of good metal. However, my friend Jacob Sheehy just launched an app on the Android Market called pressureNet, which hopes to collect all that barometer [...]
GPS and Relativity
The combination of these two relativitic[sic] effects means that the clocks on-board each satellite should tick faster than identical clocks on the ground by about 38 microseconds per day (45-7=38)! This sounds small, but the high-precision required of the GPS system requires nanosecond accuracy, and 38 microseconds is 38,000 nanoseconds. If these effects were not [...]