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"Serial Bus is a place for me to dump interesting links that I find."

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Archives

Funny Newspaper Correction Monday, May 28, 2012 | comments

[via Ali Go]


Sending yourself an email Thursday, May 24, 2012 | comments

If anyone knows the source of this let me know and I'll link it.
Hey, I got an email!

If I worked in a bigger office, this would be a great April Fool's Day Prank Sunday, May 20, 2012 | comments

Click for big

Run Bro | comments


Using bad yelp reviews for marketing Friday, May 18, 2012 | comments


An interesting money-making scam. Why don't you ever hear about people pulling this? Thursday, May 17, 2012 | comments

Karen and I were playing Crack the Case yesterday during a walk around the neighborhood with Violet and I had to figure out what was happening in the following case (paraphrased)


One week a guy, Mr Basil, receives a phone call. The phone call just says "bet on Lucky Stallion in the horse race" and Mr Basil watches the horse race and sure enough, that horse wins. The next week, Mr Basil receives another phone call. It says "bet on Clover Fax in the horse race" and so he does, and he wins big. The third week, Mr Basil gets a call and says "I've given you the winning horse for the last two weeks for free, but if you want this week's winning horse, you'll need to first send me $10,000"


So the question here is, how does the caller know the winning horses?

I ruled out a lot of different theories.
1) It's not a pyramid scheme
2) Mr Basil was watching the actual live races, not recordings of past races
3) The caller didn't fix the races in any way

But what helped me figure out was when I figured out that
4) The caller didn't know who was going to win the races.

Here's the solution: 
The caller had no clue who was going to win at all. He just called a bunch of random numbers. Say that there were 10 horses in each race. He calls 100 people and tells groups of 10 people each a different horse that is going to win. Whatever horses lose, he never calls those people again. Whatever 10 had a winning horse, he calls next week and tells each of them a different horse. Whatever person he happens to have told the right horse, he calls the next week and asks for $10,000. Then he takes the money, picks a random horse, and disappears.

How common is my birthday / How many people have the same birthday as me? Wednesday, May 16, 2012 | comments

Graph from Swissmiss
birthday graph chart infograph infographic

Alan Wake Ridiculous Video Game Product Placement Examples Thursday, May 10, 2012 | comments

Ok so I've been playing Alan Wake. It's this story-heavy game where you run around and creepy dudes chase you and you try to solve a mystery of sorts. So far it's no Dead Space 2, but we'll see.

I got to the point in the game below, and for a split second I noticed, hey, is that some sort of Microsoft Sync ad or something? Then we drove away and I noticed we were specifically driving a Lincoln car.

The whole course of the game there are these dark shadowy guys chasing you, and you have to sort of break them out of their darkness by blinding them with your flashlight. Your Energizer flashlight that is.  The batteries are even called lithium batteries.

I know that this looks like a bad Photoshop job, but this is what they actually look like in game.

Alan also gets phone calls on his Verizon phone.

It would seem that later I will be trying to escape some sort of institution and come across a TV screen that actually plays a Verizon commercial

Funny Penny Arcade Mother's Day Comic Monday, May 7, 2012 | comments

In reference to that "international star registry" place (which doesn't really count but, ok)

Giant sinkhole looks like it's photoshopped but isn't Sunday, May 6, 2012 | comments

From: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/06/photogalleries/100601-sinkhole-in-guatemala-2010-pictures-world/

If you have glasses/contacts, you understand this | comments

You might also need to have a basic handle on not sure if X or just Y Futurama Fry, but I think it still gets through even if you don't.

Stairs are also wheelchair ramp Wednesday, May 2, 2012 | comments

Student drops out of school, lives in the attic of an Ann Arbor church for 4 years before getting caught Tuesday, May 1, 2012 | comments

Here's an excerpt:
One of the most bizarre stories in the city's history came to a conclusion in August of 1959. Cheng Lim was a foreign exchange student from Singapore and was sponsored by the Methodist Church, to study at the University in 1952. While in Ann Arbor he attended the First Methodist Church at State and Huron.

In 1955, Lim did not apply for the fall term as he was distressed due to low grades, feeling he had failed the people that had brought him to Ann Arbor. In an attempt to fake his suicide, Lim walked down to the Huron River and threw his passport into it. Later that night he went to the First Methodist Church and climbed a ladder that led to an attic on the north side of the church. For the next four years, Lim lived in this cramped attic space. During the night he would sneak down to the kitchen for food and water.
Read the whole story here: http://aapd.aadl.org/aapd/truecrimes/5-5

Found via the comments section on an AnnArbor.com story published today about a guy whose Mom expected him to graduate Saturday, but it turns out he vanished and hadn't been a student since 2011.