Hacks on Widely Used Traffic Control Gear Could Cause Gridlock and Chaos →
The proprietary radio protocol communicates with no encryption, making it possible for people to monitor or tamper with the signal contents, which are used to determine whether a traffic light should stay green or turn red, display a particular message, or alert authorities to a potential emergency.
Of course it's not encrypted. Why should we protect the reliability of traffic lights?
A few years ago we did a complete analysis of our entire network. Cyber engineers found out that the system is extremely safe and extremely secure in the way it's developed.
— ICBM forces commander Major General Jack Weinstein
This is at least in part due to the fact that 8" floppy disks are involved in launching a nuclear missile.
The story behind the XP wallpaper we'll never forget (by Microsoft)
Nobody Lives Here →
The nearly 5 million U.S. blocks with zero population per the U.S. Census Bureau:
L.P.D.: Libertarian Police Department →
"Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®" I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. "Nobody move unless you want to!" They didn't.
The church's approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him to not be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours and to come to church on Sundays. What the church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.
— Dorothy Sayers via Tim Keller's "Your Work Matters"
In the End, People May Really Just Want to Date Themselves →
Opposites attract. That's how the cliché goes, and people really believe they are attracted to those different from them: 86 percent say they want a partner who "complements them" rather than one who "resembles them." There's only one problem with this idea: It's false.
Cool insight into dating and relationships from FiveThirtyEight.
Mazda Issues Recall Due to Spiders →
What Mazda is essentially saying is that it has designed a software fix because it's given up on actually keeping the spiders out and is now focusing on making sure their presence doesn't cause your car to catch on fire.
Software bugs are called that because they used to be actual bugs, but this is certainly a modern take on the issue of testing.
New "solar thermal fuel" Has Energy Density of Lead Batteries →
Rather than breaking apart the fuel molecule through combustion, solar thermal fuels release heat by rearranging bonds within a molecule, leaving all the atoms in place. As a result, they can be recycled repeatedly.
Horray for organic chemistry! I'm pretty sure azobenzene was our class's primary example of cis- and trans- isomers, and using the molecular rotation for energy storage is quite clever.