New Toyota Corolla Ad Features Ninja Kittens

I’m not exactly sure what Toyota had in mind by featuring ninja kittens in a Corolla ad, but one thing is for sure; it grabbed my attention. Maybe the the company is looking to pimp up the image people have of their medium-sized sedan. After all, in my mind, the Corolla has always been a rather unremarkable vehicle, even though it’s one of the most dependable ones out there.

[Via Neatorama]

Will Geeks Be the Next Poker Stars?

by Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

So 22-year-old Peter Eastgate has become the youngest World Series of Poker champion ever. It was also the longest final table in the history of the series, 274 hands in 15 hours and 28 minutes. Though a $9.1 million payday isn’t bad for 15 hours of work.

Like most younger poker players coming onto the scene these days, he got his start online; he decided to make money playing Internet poker rather than going to college. A gutsy choice… or maybe he just knew how good he was. Still, the Internet has become a popular training round ever since the Cinderella story of Chris Moneymaker, who turned a $39 online satellite into a $2.5 million World Series win… his first live and in person tournament ever.

So what I’m wondering is–with these younger, Internet-poker-playing competitors swooping in and stealing the pot from the seasoned pros–does the training of online poker actually give you an advantage? I imagine that to some degree it’s an issue of scale; you can play a heck of a lot more hands from your computer than you can if you have to wait until you can get to Atlantic City on the weekends.

But here’s the geeky rub: if you learn to play online, where there are no tells or body language, do you learn to play the numbers better? Do you get a better feel for the uncluttered probabilities? And if so, could this actually make you a better player? Could geeks take over this sport? How much of poker can you learn, and how much is instinct?

I will add one caveat, though: the difference between playing Internet poker for real money, and playing for “play” money or in a computer game. Computers don’t play like real people, and people playing for peanuts don’t play like real people, either. Though that can be a great way to learn the game, if you sit down at a table with players who have something to lose, you’ll notice the difference very quickly.

Image Source: flickr



What if Google Were Built by Librarians?

Google’s PageRank algotrithm certainly has its detractors, among them people who feel that using links as ‘votes’ for a site’s importance isn’t the smartest way to get the best content. Unsurprisingly, librarians fit within this group, and they set out to determine what Google would look like if the weight of search results were powered by the expertise and credibility judgements of actual people. Namely, themselves.

The “Reference Extract” is currently being developed by the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) along with the information schools of Syracuse University and the University of Washington. OCLC is an international cooperative that pools resources among over 69,000 libraries in 112 countries and territories.

The Reference Extract won’t be a simple online directory; instead, it will focus on answering questions. Users will enter a search term and get results weighted toward sites most often referred to by librarians at institutions like the Library of Congress. The idea is that you’re getting the “natural” intelligence of librarians to help you find a credible source of information.

Wired Campus says it’s a case of librarians trying to ‘out-Google Google’, but Google hardly needs to be concerned about the competition. Reference Extract has a $100,000 grant to get started – up against a $150-billion company – and they’re not trying to do quite the same thing.

But, Reference Extract sounds like it may very well provide a useful service. After all, the internet is huge and full of inaccurate information. The Dewey Decimal system may be a dinosaur, but librarians still have a place in the world of research.

66% of used hard drives still hold sensitive data

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Security researchers have found in tests that if you buy a second-hand hard drive on eBay, you will probably end up getting a lot more than just the hard drive.

In their tests, the researchers found that 66% of the second hand hard drives still contained sensitive data which had not been deleted properly.  The previous owners of the computers had just deleted the files with the standard Windows delete function, which of course is easily reversible given the right software.   This then opens the door to identity theft and a whole host of other scenarios, especially if the documents relate to things such as corporate secrets or sexual preferences… you get the idea.

All people need to do is install a secure deletion program such as Eraser or Ultrashredder.   Then they won’t have to worry about this!

Can you recommend a secure deletion program that you like and use?