Google and NASA and Quantum Computing

Back in May Google announced the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab. It's a joint venture between Google and NASA to make a D-Wave Systems quantum computer available to researchers and, "...study how quantum computing might advance machine learning."

They recently released a short documentary on the project. It's doesn't dive into the subject too much, but it's an otherwise interesting little film.

The Miracle of Unicode

This video is a brief, but excellent, explanation of Unicode and character encoding.

"...we have something the nearly works, and that is why [UTF-8] is the most beautiful hack that I can think of that is used around the world every second of every day."

How to Disable Website Pinning in Windows 8 Home Edition

Sometimes Microsoft adds things to the new version of Windows that are contrary to the habits users have developed. Website pinning was a new feature in Windows 7 and has been carried over to Windows 8. Luckily, Microsoft usually provides ways to get around things or disable new features.

How to Disable Aero Shake in Windows 8 Home Edition

Depending on how you work, Aero Shake is either a somewhat handy or somewhat annoying feature. It minimizes all the other open windows on the desktop when any given window is wiggled with the mouse. In How to Disable Aero Shake in Windows 8 we looked at using gpedit to disable Aero Shake in Windows 8 Pro and Enterprise. Windows 8 Home Edition, known by Microsoft as Windows 8, doesn't include gpedit, but fear not. You can still disable Aero Shake in Windows 8 with a simple registry hack.

Ktuluino - How to Build Your Own Arduino Clone

Arduino clones are ubiquitous. A quick web search or a look at any electronics hobbyist website will turn up some kind of Arduino-like microcontroller board. Studies have shown that the absolute last thing the world needs is another Arduino clone that adds nothing or very little to existing designs. One might surmise that these are the exact reasons why someone should never design another Arduino clone, yet here is Ktuluino.

How to Install the Desktop Experience on Windows Server 2012

There are two options when installing Window Server 2012: Server Core Installation and Server with a GUI. If you’re running a Server with a GUI installation, you might find a few things missing compared to the typical Windows client. Things like Media Player, desktop themes, Snipping Tool (I use this a lot), and more are not installed by default with Windows Server 2012. You’ll need to install the Desktop Experience feature to use those things.

TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard

I've been posting a few tech related documentaries lately and I don't know how I missed posting TPB AFK when it came out. TPB AFK follows the founders of The Pirate Bay while they're on trial for copyright infringement.

"Got to know each other IRL? What is that?" - District Court Judge Tomas Norström

"In Real Life." - Lawyer 

"We don't like that expression. We say AFK - Away From Keyboard. We think that the internet is for real." - Peter Sunde (co-founder of The Pirate Bay)

Truer words...


TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard on IMDB