ALL CAPS

This is still one of my all-time favorite scenes from "The Simpsons".

Sex Tech

"How sex tech could threaten the world's oldest profession"

Liquor Brands

"Who Owns Your Favorite Liquor Brands?"

Snow-Melting Concrete

"Throw away the shovel: How electric concrete melts snow"

Telegrams In 2016

"I Tried to Send a Telegram in 2016"

Computer AI Go Breakthrough

"In a Huge Breakthrough, Google's AI Beats a Top Player at the Game of Go"

Hanson Book On Robots

Tyler Cowen has good things to say about The Age of Em, by Robin Hanson.

Super Bowl Cameras

Wired: "The Cameras That'll Make the Super Bowl Way More Interesting This Year". (Via H.R.)

Whale Culture

Whale dialects, whale identifiers, and whale culture. (Via Tyler Cowen.)

Israel Electric Grid Attacked

Ars Technica: "Israel's electric grid hit by 'severe' hack attack"

Air Bonsai

"These Levitating Bonsai Will Brighten Your Home With Science"

Autocomplete Dating Profile

"I used Google autocomplete to write a dating profile and it may be the best dating profile ever":

AI Hedge Fund

Wired: "The Rise of the Artificially Intelligent Hedge Fund". (Via F.G.)

RIP, Marvin Minsky

Marvin Minsky: "You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way."

RIP, Professor Minsky.

Intel Compute Stick

Review: "Intel Compute Stick (2016)"

Third Brake Light

"Thank A Psychologist For Your Third Brake Light". (Via H.R.)

Zcash Update

Wired: "Zcash, an Untraceable Bitcoin Alternative, Launches in Alpha"

Hsieh Forbes Piece: Temptation Bundling and New Year's Resolutions

My latest in Forbes: "Are You Struggling To Keep Those New Year's Resolutions?"

Space Filling Curves

"Hilbert's Curve, and the usefulness of infinite results in a finite world". (Via D.D.)

Supercomputers And Prime Numbers

"Supercomputers And Prime Numbers: Verifying That Largest Known Prime"

Biohacking Update

"Why Won't Science Let Us Have Night Vision Eyedrops?"

Floating Cube Illusion

"The Floating Cube Illusion"

How to Eat Street Food Without Getting Sick

"How to Eat Street Food Without Getting Sick". (Via Marginal Revolution.)

Cascading Magnetic Arches on the Sun

"NASA Captures Mesmerizing Video of Cascading Magnetic Arches on the Sun"

Pendulum Clock

"Building an Impossible Clock". (Via H.R.)

Top Ten Best Opening Movie Shots of All Time

"Top Ten Best Opening Movie Shots of All Time"

Secret Hitler Game

"Secret Hitler, the bluffing game for people who hate bluffing games"

False Memories

"Making a Memory of Murder: Why it's not so hard to make an innocent person confess"

Violin Imitating a Car Alarm

"Violin Imitating a Car Alarm"

Update On Property In Space

Aeon: "Space is for sale. And if we want to get serious about our interplanetary ambitions, that could be a good thing".

Includes quotes from Rand Simberg, one of my favorite space policy commentators.

Hipster Mattresses

The rise of the hipster mattress: "It was only a matter of time before the hipsters got a hold of memory foam."

Webster Vs. "U"

"The case of the missing 'u's in American English".

Casino Lingo

Secret casino insider lingo.

Playing Guitar In Space

"It's surprisingly difficult to play guitar in space":

Playing in space is particularly difficult, Hadfield said, because you have to press the guitar against you so that it doesn’t float away, while also trying to move your hand up and down the fretboard...

Hadfield also said that weightlessness interfered with the muscle memory of where his hands belonged to play a certain chord. If you want to recreate the feeling of playing guitar in space, stand on your head for a few hours and then try to play upside down. “You kind of have to learn how to be a space musician,” Hadfield said.

NASA's Vault

"Inside the vault: A rare glimpse of NASA's otherworldly treasures":

Among the samples on display is the so-called “Genesis rock,” which appears to have been coated by powdered sugar. The crew of Apollo 15 had been tasked with searching for just such an anorthosite rock, and they found it near the Apennine Mountains. Dating to 4.1 billion years old, within a few hundred million years of the Solar System’s formation, the Genesis rock helped validate the theory that the Moon formed after a Mars-sized object collided with Earth in the very early Solar System.

Real Hoverboard

"Rocket scientists have come up with a hoverboard that works".  Only $19,900!

Invisible FX

"Why 'invisible effects' are Hollywood's best kept secret". (Via H.R.)

The Evolution Of The Eye

"Inside the Eye: Nature's Most Exquisite Creation"

Key quote:

But simple eyes should not be seen as just stepping-stones along a path toward greater complexity. Those that exist today are tailored to the needs of their users. A sea star’s eyes—one on the tip of each arm—can’t see color, fine detail, or fast-moving objects; they would send an eagle crashing into a tree. Then again, a sea star isn’t trying to spot and snag a running rabbit. It merely needs to spot coral reefs—huge, immobile chunks of landscape—so it can slowly amble home. Its eyes can do that; it has no need to evolve anything better. To stick an eagle’s eye on a sea star would be an exercise in ludicrous excess.

“Eyes didn’t evolve from poor to perfect,” Nilsson says. “They evolved from performing a few simple tasks perfectly to performing many complex tasks excellently.”

Bitcoin Failure?

Mike Hearn: "The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment".

And a response: "Community Disagrees with Mike Hearn,as He Sparks Bitcoin Classic Adoption"

NASA Planetary Defense

"NASA Has Opened a Planetary Defense Office to Protect Earth from Cosmic Collisions"

Using MRI As Guitar Amp And Speakers

"Using an MRI scanner as a guitar amp and speakers". (Via Debby Witt.)

Shelf-Life of Condiment Packets

"Expiration Date of Condiment Packets"

Quick graphic summarizing the results (click on image to see full size):

Pilots Too Dependent On Automation?

"US Pilots Forget How to Fly Manually, Says Department of Transportation".

The article quotes a recent DOT report:

Advances in aircraft automation have significantly contributed to safety and changed the way airline pilots perform their duties...

While airlines have long used automation safely to improve efficiency and reduce pilot workload, several recent accidents, including the July 2013 crash of Asiana Airlines flight 214, have shown that pilots who typically fly with automation can make errors when confronted with an unexpected event or transitioning to manual flying.

As a result, reliance on automation is a growing concern among industry experts, who have also questioned whether pilots are provided enough training and experience to maintain manual flying proficiency.

I hope we have enough of these advanced autopilots on board, then!

Online Shopping Return Tech

"Inside the Hidden World That Handles Your Holiday Returns". (Via H.R.)

Swarm AI In Medicine

"Diagnostic AI: By the People, of the People, for the People".

An interesting update on the "wisdom of the crowds", applied to modern medicine. (Via D.L.)

Frozen Soap Bubbles

"Frozen soap bubbles are beautiful".

Novels Once Considered Dangerous

"Throughout the 19th century, novels were regarded with the same suspicion with which we treat, say, Eli Roth’s ‘torture-porn’ Saw movies today."

100 Drones

"Watch the Biggest Ever Drone Swarm Take to the Sky in Style". (Via H.R.)

Metallic Glue

Metallic glue.

Citizen Threat Score

Washington Post: "The new way police are surveilling you: Calculating your threat 'score'"

Living On Bitcoin

"This Man Has Been Living On Bitcoin For 3 Years"

Running With Scissors

"Do people actually hurt themselves running with scissors?"

The Triumph of Email

"The Triumph of Email: Why does one of the world’s most reviled technologies keep winning?"

Apollo Flight Control Consoles Explained

"Apollo Flight Controller 101: Every console explained". (Via H.R.)

Help Desks For Online Criminals.

Markets in everything: Help desks for online criminals.

Day Of The Week Formula

"This Math Trick Will Let You Find The Day Of The Week For Any Date"

New Sound Waves

"New class of sound wave gentle enough to use in biomedical devices". (Via H.R.)

Skepticism About Smart Guns

TechCrunch: "Why Obama's Smart Gun Push Will Misfire"

Pizza Cutting Math

"Mathematicians Have Found Crazy New Ways to Cut Pizza Into Equal Slices". (Via H.R.)

Funny Video: When You Reply To Spam

James Veitch: "This is what happens when you reply to spam email"

Who Owns Antarctica?

"Who Owns Antarctica?"  Short answer: It's complicated.

Expected Value of Powerball Ticket

"We did the math for the $450 million Powerball jackpot and concluded it's not worth buying a ticket".

The problem is the taxes, which seriously cut into the expected value.

Training A Dog To Sniff Bombs

"How Do You Train a Dog to Sniff Bombs?"

Things That Go Bump On The Flight

The science (and psychology) of air turbulence.

Plastic Welder

"I used this cool liquid plastic welding material to repair a broken butter tray door". (Via H.R.)

Headline Detection

Hah!: "A field guide to identifying what website that headline came from"

Most Popular Book At UN Library

"The UN library announced its most-checked-out book of 2015. It's kind of disturbing."

The Business of Space Funerals

"The Business of Space Funerals"

Modern Essentials

Truth: "Modern Essentials" (By James Chang.)

Lowe On 3-D Drug Printing Hype

Derek Lowe untangles some of the recent hype about 3-D drug printing. (Via H.R.)

Robots Judging Beauty

"The First International Beauty Contest Judged By Robots"

The Shipwrecked Slaves

"What happened when slaves and free men were shipwrecked together"

Best Star Wars Twitter Parody Feed

"The Force Awakens’ Best Twitter Parody Just Got Company: Very Lonely Luke"

Direct link to @VeryLonelyLuke. 

4 New Elements

"4 New Elements Are Added To The Periodic Table".

Temporary working names: ununtrium (113), ununpentium (115), ununseptium (117) and ununoctium (118), with permanent names to come later.

Musk On AI

"(All) Elon Musk Artificial Intelligence Quotes -- A Catalogue of His Statements". (Via P.O.)

5 Star Wars Movies in 4 Years

"Disney is set to release five 'Star Wars' movies in the next four years"

College Chess and Big Money

"UMBC's once-mighty chess team fails to qualify for the Final Four".

Some colleges are feeling increasing pressure to spend on scholarships and coaches to remain competitive. (Via Tyler Cowen.)

Star Trek Stamps

"Trekkies rejoice: New 'Star Trek' stamps are coming in 2016"

Cashless Sweden?

NYT: "In Sweden, a Cash-Free Future Nears"

Nanomanufacturing

"New Technique for Developing Nanodevices at One-Hundredth the Current Cost". (Via H.R.)

Star Wars 7 Plot Holes

Finally saw (and enjoyed) the movie, so now I can read: "40 Unforgivable Plot Holes in 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens'".

Note: The article is full of spoilers.