These are my links for August 19th from 16:41 to 19:47:

• The Secret Tunnels Under UT –
• H2Orange – Clean. Crisp. Pure Texas. Purified Texas Water. –
• Texas Water in UT Tower-Shaped Bottle to Raise Millions for Academic Scholarships –
• Bit Twiddling Hacks –
• five-essential-phone-screen-questions – from steve yegge

• BBC NEWS | Technology | Nasa investigates virtual space » The US space agency is exploring the possibility of developing a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game.
• Library of Congress Taps Web 2.0 for User Photo Expertise » As part of an effort to expand access to its photograph collections and tap the collective knowledge of user-generated content, the Library of Congress Wednesday launched a pilot project with photo-sharing site Flickr to publish some 3,000 photos. – New Y
• The Algorithm: Idiom of Modern Science »
• GeForce 9600GT Benchmarked Out in the Wild » NVIDIA’s upcoming 9600GT graphics card lives up to the company’s performance claims
• Discount Electronics »
• LITTER KWITTER » The Original Cat Toilet Training System.
• CIA: Hackers Shook Up Power Grids (Updated) | Danger Room from Wired.com » Hackers have tried to extort money from overseas utility companies. At least in one case, the Washington Post reports, the online attackers messed with an electrical grid, disrupting ing power in several cities.
• America’s Army game player saves real life » with no previous medical training, except from the game
• Rendering Games with Raytracing Will Revolutionize Graphics »
• RoboPult » Robot catapult hurls flaming fireballs
• Super Nightvision Headset Hack! » turn an old VHS camcorder into a nightvision scope.
• ‘Darkest ever’ material created » The material was created from carbon nanotubes – sheets of carbon just one atom thick rolled up into cylinders. Researchers say it is the closest thing yet to the ideal black material, which absorbs light perfectly at all angles and over all wavelengths.
• Contact lenses with circuits, lights a possible platform for superhuman vision » Engineers at the University of Washington have for the first time used manufacturing techniques at microscopic scales to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights.
• Chris Oliver’s Weblog : Weblog »
• JavaFX »
• In-Desk Dock for iPod » Belkin
• In-Desk USB Hub » Belkin
• Aggression: As Good as Food or Sex? »
• Create Quick Linker Widget » Amazon

Reducing the game of checkers into a group of algorithms of movement, computer scientist Jonathan Schaeffer has developed a program called Chinook that he has proven that at the least will draw. Apparently checkers played in a perfect game will always end in a draw.

Forget hoity-toity chess programs, Chinook has long ago ditched any human competition. The work since then was only to find an unbeatable game, and a proof to the algorithm that is the game of checkers. On the Chinook website is a link to the proof for verification. (I started to, but then I realized how much non-fun I had in my discrete math and program verification course, and decided to put it off until never.)

You can also play against the program, in a more dumbed-down version that is difficult, but that won’t always win.

More on this story at Scientific American