Geekosystem Newsletter - MIT Unveils Free Online Class, is This the Future of Higher Education?

	MIT Unveils Free Online Class, is This the Future of Higher Education? Renowned as a premiere institute of higher learning for the sundry sciences, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced a new program that will bring a free version of one of its classes online. The program is called MITx, and the first of its fully automated courses kicks off this fall with 6.002x Circuits and Electronics. In addition to no costs, there are no prerequisites, anyone anywhere can sign up, and will receive a certificate upon completion. Seems like everyone is giving away university courses these days, huh? Read More »
	The Entirety of the Universe and the Astounding Diversity Which is Creation, to Scale You know when the modern patron saint of astronomical sciences Neil deGrasse Tyson says something is a must-see that it's a big deal, and it's hard to get much bigger than a scale model of the entire universe. Well, not everything in the entire universe, but a series of new and familiar touchstones that really put the scale of everything into context. And I do mean everything: The flash presentation created by Cary Huang starts with strings (no, these kind) and ends with "the observable universe." Getting from beginning to end does take a bit of time, but it's well worth the trip. After all, space is big. Really big.  Read More »
	Pinterest Has Porn Clones. Unrelated, 97% of Pinterest's Facebook Fans are Women If you haven't been following the world of social networks, the new obsession in Internet town, Pinterest, is garnering a lot of attention as of late, mainly for two reasons: Growing so quickly, and being largely inhabited by females. Aside from bothering female redditors, a part of Pinterest's pet name being thrown around the Internet, "reddit for women," seems like it could actually be extremely accurate. According to AppData, over 97% of Pinterest's Facebook fans are women. Unrelated (probably?) to that statistic, Pinterest already has a couple porn clones. Read More »
	Check Out This Fractal Art Made by Blasting Plastic With a Particle Accelerator There are plenty of ways to create art. You can draw, you can paint, you can write, or you can rent time at a particle accelerator and fire supercharged electrons into acrylic slabs and then hit the slabs with a hammer so the electrons scald fractal patterns into the slab as they escape. I lean towards writing, but man, that particle accelerator thing sounds cool too. That particular medium is Todd Johnson's chosen specialty and he calls the results by the awesome name of Shockfossils. Read More »
	Avengers Assemble(d) Out of LEGO Bricks in New Sets This weekend, Marvel unveiled the minifigs and a few sets from the upcoming The Avengers LEGO sets. Though no doubt a relationship built on a literal interpretation of "Avengers, assemble," the sets have some pretty bold designs and interesting unique pieces. My only real complaint is that some of the sets look a little over-simplified (unlike the leaked LOTR sets, which look crazy complex) and Iron Man looks like a bobblehead. The enormous Hulk, and an eyebrow-cocking Black Widow might make up for it, though. See the sets, after the break. Read More »
	Twitter Broke News of Whitney Houston's Death 27 to 42 Minutes Before Major News Outlets Iconic singer Whitney Houston was found dead, reportedly in a bathtub, at age 48 over the weekend. The sad news was confirmed by the Associated Press on Twitter with a tweet sent at 4:57 pm that said Houston's publicist confirmed the death. Interestingly, the news was found in a tweet sent 27 minutes earlier from an account that, at the time, only had 14 followers. At the that time, the tweet was only retweeted once, compared to the Associated Press' tweet, which was retweeted over 10,000 times. However, news then came to light that yet another small Twitter account reported the news first, 15 minutes before the first small account. Read More »
	SNL Lambastes the Baffling World of Cellular Phone Advertisements [Video] The venerable comedy show Saturday Night Live turned its satiric eye to the confusing, brand name and acronym laden world of cellular phone advertising with their satire of Verizon LTE ads last night. In it, a hapless customer endures a barrage of meaningless comparisons, buzzwords, and bewildering stats before reaching a rather inevitable conclusion. Oh, and even if you think you know what all those words meant, it's far more confusing than you might think. Read More »
	Geekolinks: 2/12 This is what 15 tons of meth, worth $4 billion, looks like (BuzzFeed) SETI should get the funding to probe Kepler planets (New Scientist) Is OAuth a ticking timebomb? (Wired) Building a 1:1 scale model of WoW in Minecraft (Boing Boing) What does The Avengers board game tell us about the movie? (io9) Southwest Airlines iPhone app is a "hacker's dream" (/.) RIP Whitney Houston (Styleite) (title pic via Reddit) Read More »
	Thousands Turn Out Across Europe to Protest ACTA, Four Countries Back Off Signing Treaty Yesterday, thousands turned out across over 200 European cities to protests the Anti-Counterfeiting Trademark Agreement or ACTA. Like SOPA and PIPA in the U.S., ACTA (among other things) aims to create tougher penalties and grant broad new powers to law enforcement to stop the transmission of copyrighted works over the Internet. With the European Parliament poised to vote on ACTA in June, it's yet unknown what effect these protests will have. Read More »
	Do You Dare Attempt to Eat Jabba the Birthday Cake? Artist and expert baker Kate Hopkins has taken the appetite-suppressing grotesquery of Jabba the Hutt and (for better or worse) combined that with a delicious cake. The result is this stunning confection, fit for a Hutt, presumably to celebrate a birthday. Stunning in every respect, my personal favorite aspect of the cake is the surprised, incredulous look on Jabba's face. Henry, you are one lucky man. Read More »

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