Fun Friday Links: Facebook Clears 1 Billion, Quartz Stores Data Forever, and Hexaflexagons

The Things That Connect Us

Soooo, in case you didn’t know, Facebook cleared a billion users and released its first commercial. Of the user count, founder Mark Zuckerberg said the following in a recent interview:

“It feels like an honor. We get the honor of building things that a billion people use. I mean, there’s no core need. It isn’t a core human need to use Facebook. It’s a core human need to stay connected with the people you care about. The need to open up and connect is such a deep part of what makes us human. Being in a position where we are the company—or one of the companies—that can play a role in delivering that service is just this … it’s an honor.”

The commercial below speaks to that level of connection by comparing Facebook to other things that connect us: bridges, doorbells, chairs, airplanes:

Interestingly, as Mashable’s Lance Ulanoff pointed out in his critique, the ad “does not show a single computer. In fact, the only visible technologies in the whole spot are a flat screen display over a lecture hall, the basketball court scoreboard and a 1950’s-era telephone. No smartphones, no tablets, no computers, no HDTVs, nothing.”

Store Data FOREVER!

Earlier this month Hitachi announced, in collaboration with the Faculty of Engineering, Kyoto University, the ability to record and reproduce digital data using quartz glass.

Reads the article: “Quartz glass has excellent heat resistance and water resistance and is extremely tough. From the fact that even when heated for two hours at 1000 degrees, quartz glass that records the data did not deteriorate the digital patterns of data.

The new technology uses a laser to mottle a piece of quartz glass with dots to store binary codes. The stored data then can be read by using an optical microscope. In comparison, physical hard drive can lasts up to 10 years and tape storage can last for 10 to 30 years.”

A New Dinosaur

While I don’t think this quite make up for demoting the Triceratops — or Pluto, for that matter — it’s still pretty neat:

“In a report published Wednesday in the online journal ZooKeys, Paul C. Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago and a dinosaur specialist, described the strange anatomy of the newfound member of the heterodontosaur family and gave the new species the name Pegomastax africanus, or ‘thick jaw from Africa.’”

Hexaflexagons

I’m not a math person (can’t even remember how to do long division) so this video on hexaflexagons *extra* blows my mind.