Congressman Edward Markey of Massachusetts has asked the National Institutes of Health to study the impact of MP3 players on young people's ears. In a response sent this week, the NIH said it still needs to do more research to know for sure whether the devices increase the risk of hearing loss.

NPR : Hearing Loss Feared for Users of MP3 Players

This is a console-based Linux program, written in C language, that solves Su Doku puzzles (aka Sudoku, Number Place, etc., see figure 1) using deductive logic. It will only resort to trial-and-error and backtracking approaches upon exhausting its deductive moves.

The code was developed and tested using GCC 3.3.6 on Slackware Linux 10.2 running in an x86 environment. There should be few obstacles to porting this to other processor architectures or operating systems (although the ASCII character set is assumed.)

A Sudoku Solver in C

Today I’ve got a rundown of the methods and add-ons I use to make Gmail more powerful. By the time you’re done with this article you’ll be a bona fide Gmail power user, too.

Hack Attack: Become a Gmail master - Lifehacker

But in an era when the dominance of studio marketing had threatened to marginalize quality films, Netflix has become a key element in the democratization of the medium. "It's like MySpace without the dirty words," says ThinkFilm's theatrical chief Mark Urman. "Before they were around, my company could get great reviews for a film, but it couldn't open on 3,000 screens or be on the shelf at every Blockbuster. With Netflix, not only is our movie completely available, but the consumer gets this wonderful curatorial assistance. They're told — 'If you like that, you're really going to like this.' That builds the best kind of word of mouth, from people you trust."

Leveling the field, a rental at a time - Los Angeles Times

Though Apple only launched its 60-gigabyte Video iPod last October, the company may already be planning to phase out the mega-selling portable video player, says CNN Money. According to an industry analyst tracking Apple, the company reportedly told distributors that the 60-gig iPod is "at risk" to be discontinued as soon as the end of April, to be replaced by a new model as early as June.

The "new model" is likely the widescreen iPod that has been rumored for months now. The next-gen device will reportedly have a screen that covers the entire face of the iPod, and a "virtual click wheel" that only materializes when a user touches the screen.

Widescreen Video iPod Rumors Continue to Swirl

Hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons leads a lavish, bling-filled lifestyle -- but his most recent exploit is advising youth on how to save their money, not spend it. Commentator Jimmi Izrael says he doesn't believe Simmons intentions are entirely altruistic.

NPR : Russell Simmons Has Money on His Mind

These are the tools that have most impacted human civilization and helped move the course of history.

The 20 Most Important Tools Ever - Forbes.com

We live in a "small world," where two arbitrary people are likely connected by a short chain of intermediate friends. With scant information about a target individual, people can successively forward a message along such a chain. Experimental studies have verified this property in real social networks, and theoretical models have been advanced to explain it. However, existing theoretical models have not been shown to capture behavior in real-world social networks. Here, we introduce a richer model relating geography and social-network friendship, in which the probability of befriending a particular person is inversely proportional to the number of closer people. In a large social network, we show that one-third of the friendships are independent of geography and the remainder exhibit the proposed relationship. Further, we prove analytically that short chains can be discovered in every network exhibiting the relationship.

Geographic routing in social networks

What is essembly?

Essembly is a free, non-partisan social networking site that provides tools for politically interested individuals to connect with one another, engage in constructive discussion, and organize to take action.

essembly.com

I was assigned by the State Department to interpret for the Baghdad Conference (to establish an interim government) and later to provide language support to both Barbara Bodine and retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, the two highest officials in postwar Iraq. I didn't know how the experiment would turn out. But as I arrived in Baghdad, I really believed the United States had an efficient, well-studied plan to put Iraq together after toppling the Saddam regime.

What I witnessed in the year or so I spent helping U.S. officials on the ground in Iraq, and what I have seen more recently, has made me doubtful about our competence for nation building

How Do You Say Clueless?