Bill Gates loses to reigning chess champion in 71 seconds

23-year-old Magnus Carlsen is the reigning World Chess Champion. At age 13, he became the second youngest chess grandmaster in history. He appeared recently on the Norwegian talk show Skavlan and defeated Bill Gates in only 71 seconds:


I'd like to think I'd hold out longer than Gates did, but I doubt it.

Introducing a Barbie Doll for homeschoolers

Imagine the hours of entertainment your little ones will get out of the new Homeschool Barbie:

As homeschooling has grown in popularity, there's a Barbie™ to meet every need. The Protestant Christian version comes with a miniature Bible (the complete King James version!) and will recite Scripture verses when her hand is pressed. Catholic Homeschool Barbie™ wears a crucifix, chapel veil, and can lead your children in praying the Rosary (in your choice of Latin or English) when her hands are placed together. Secular Homeschool Barbie™ comes complete with a grain mill and Birkenstocks™, and shares her favorite home remedies & recipes with a pat on the back. All three dolls include a variety of Math curricula with manipulatives and chalkboards with tiny real chalk!

And what would a teacher be without students? Children for Homeschool Barbie™ are available in a variety packs of seven girls & boys ranging in age from four to ten, in your choice of matching or non-matching outfits. (Cloth-diapered infants & toddlers sold separately)

Contrary to popular belief, we homeschooling families do have a sense of humor. :)

(via Facebook)

The problem with Facebook

The following video from Derek Muller offers an interesting perspective on the popular social media site:


From the video's description:

Facebook is a complex ecosystem of individuals, creators, brands and advertisers, but I don't think it serves any of these groups particularly well because its top priority is to make money. Now, I don't think making money is a bad thing, in fact I hope to make some myself. The problem is the only way Facebook has found to make money is by treating all entities on the site as advertisers and charging them to share their content.

This business plan backfires because 1) not all entities ARE advertisers and 2) it was the content from these people, specifically friends, family, and creators that made the site worth visiting in the first place. Now the incentives are misaligned:

• individuals want to see great content, but they are now seeing more paid content and organically shared content which appeals to the lowest common denominator (babies, weddings, and banal memes)
  
• creators want to reach fans but their posts are being throttled to force them to pay to be seen
  
• brands and advertisers have to pay once to advertise their page on Facebook, and then pay again to reach the people who have already liked their page. Plus Facebook is not a place where people generally go to buy things.

Facebook stands in contrast to other social media like Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram where all content is shared with all followers.

Guy videos himself dancing across China

Jake Gaba spent 100 days in China as part of a school program to study Mandarin. Rather than simply snap a few pictures and post them on Facebook, he decided on a very unique way to share his travel experience...

Fortoon Cookie (January 17, 2014)

"You smile, brings happiness to everyone you meet."

(All "Fortoon Cookie" cartoons are cross-posted at ALittleWhiteNoise.com.)

Will this burger-making machine render fast food employees obsolete?

Many parents have tried to motivate their lazy teenagers by asking, "Do you want to end up flipping burgers for a living?" Thanks to the innovative minds at Momentum Machines, that question may soon be replaced by, "Do you want to end up putting ingredients into a burger-flipping machine for a living?"

The company's mission:

Fast food doesn't have to have a negative connotation anymore. With our technology, a restaurant can offer gourmet quality burgers at fast food prices.Our alpha machine frees up all of the hamburger line cooks in a restaurant. It does everything employees can do except better:

• It slices toppings like tomatoes and pickles immediately before it places the slice onto your burger, giving you the freshest burger possible.
  
• Our next revision will offer custom meat grinds for every single customer. Want a patty with 1/3 pork and 2/3 bison ground to order? No problem.
  
• Also, our next revision will use gourmet cooking techniques never before used in a fast food restaurant, giving the patty the perfect char but keeping in all the juices.
  
• It's more consistent, more sanitary, and can produce ~360 hamburgers per hour.
  

The labor savings allow a restaurant to spend approximately twice as much on high quality ingredients and the gourmet cooking techniques make the ingredients taste that much better.

The nice thing about a machine making your food is that you don't have to worry about it remembering to wash its hands before returning to work after a bathroom break.