MarkWhittington writes “Bill Nye, once known as ‘The Science Guy’ for his 1990s PBS educational television show, has cut a YouTube video in his current capacity of CEO of the Planetary Society urging people to write to President Obama to restore cuts to planetary science. The budget cuts were enacted by the president last February, causing consternation in the scientific community. Nye writes, ‘If that proposal continues the steep decline in funding to NASA’s planetary program it will gravely endanger the unique capabilities and outstanding people that have delivered U.S. leadership in space. We will lose a capability that took decades to develop and may never be replaced.’”
Google has launched a pop-up dialogue box on YouTube that urges you to use your real name when trying to make a comment. From the article: “When you try to comment on a YouTube video, a box will pop up that displays your username as it’s currently seen, along with a side-by-side comparison to what it will look like if you let YouTube pull your name from Google+. You can choose ‘I don’t want to use my real name,’ but that will lead to another dialogue box that basically guilts you into agreeing. If you still insist on remaining anonymous, you have to tell Google why: ‘My channel is for a show or character’ or ‘My channel name is well-known for other reasons’ are two options. ‘I want to remain anonymous, is–unsurprisingly–not one.”
An anonymous reader writes “Google Earth has featured (some) textured 3D buildings and 3D terrain since 2006. New image-based modeling algorithms that process 45-degree Aerial Images automatically, however, will allow Google Earth to display entire 3D cities with fully texture-mapped, accurately modeled 3 dimensional buildings, roads, trees and landscaping/terrain. This YouTube video released by Google shows how effective the technique is at capturing urban areas in 3D. The resulting 3D cities look almost like a high-altitude view of a fully modeled 3D city in games like Grand Theft Auto.”
PerlJedi writes “A few months ago, a Tweet from Randal Schwartz pointed me to a YouTube video about ‘Triangle Parties‘ made by Vi Hart. My nerdiness and my love of math made it my new favorite thing on YouTube. Now, with Pi Day coming up later this week, I thought it would be an appropriate time to point people to another of her YouTube videos: Pi is Wrong. The website she mentions at the end, Tauday, has a full explanation of the benefits of using Tau rather than Pi. Quoting: ‘The Tau Manifesto is dedicated to one of the most important numbers in mathematics, perhaps the most important: the circle constant relating the circumference of a circle to its linear dimension. For millennia, the circle has been considered the most perfect of shapes, and the circle constant captures the geometry of the circle in a single number. Of course, the traditional choice for the circle constant is pi — but, as mathematician Bob Palais notes in his delightful article “Pi Is Wrong!“, pi is wrong. It’s time to set things right.’”
The Obama administration plans to renew its#40dollars campaign today, complete with a White House event this morning involving some of the people who posted Twitter messages about what $40 meant to them.
Launched in December, the White House used Twitter to let ordinary people sound off about the value of $40, which is the amount that would have been cut from the average American’s weekly paycheck under a Republican tax proposal. The campaign was an instant success, as it transcended partisan lines and put complex tax policy into simple language.
Obama announced the renewed #40dollars campaign in a 40-second YouTube video that will be released later today. In it, he asks supporters to use the #40dollars hash tag or make comments on the White House Website.
“Your voices changed the debate and reminded Washington what was at stake. Well, once again I need you,” Obama said in the video. “We all need you to speak out. Because if Congress fails to act soon, then taxes on the middle class will go up.”
MojoKid writes “Renowned overclocker ‘Hicookie‘ achieved a new high clock speed on the Intel Core i7 3930K processor by cranking the chip past 5.6GHz using a Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 motherboard, the first mobo in the world to achieve a mulitplier of 57x. There was a bit of a scandal with Gigabyte recently when a YouTube video showed one of its X79 boards going up in smoke. Gigabyte released a BIOS update for several of its X79 boards to prevent such incidents from happening, and there were outcries that the new F7 BIOS would … [reduce] overclocking performance; Hicookie’s achievement should erase those concerns.”
theodp writes “Federal prosecutors will not charge a Texas judge seen lashing his teenage daughter with a belt on a YouTube video taken seven years ago and posted online last week, closing the door on the possibility of criminal charges in the case. The viral video, uploaded by now 23-year-old Hillary Adams, shows her father, Aransas County Court-at-Law Judge William Adams, whipping her with a belt for downloading music when she was 16 (full video, requires login). ‘F*****g computers,’ the judge tells his now ex-wife on the video. ‘I told you I didn’t want one in the god damn house. See all the problems they cause?’ Judge Adams issued a statement asserting that his daughter released the tape to retaliate against him for withdrawing his financial support.”
Trevelyan writes “In his Blackhat talk on the past and future of SSL (YouTube video) Moxie Marlinspike explains the problems of SSL today, and the history of how it came to be so. He then goes on to not only propose a solution, but he’s implemented it as well: Convergence. It will let you turn off all those untrustable CAs in you browser and still safely use HTTPS. It even works with self-signed certificates. You still need to trust someone, but not forever like CAs. The system has ‘Notaries,’ which you can ask anonymously for their view on a certificate’s authenticity. You can pool Notaries for a consensus, and add/remove them at any time.”
