Straw Holes

"Drinking Straws: How Many Holes?"

Drinking Bird Toy

"Why the Drinking Bird Toy Is Actually a Brilliant Piece of Thermodynamic Engineering". (Via H.R.)

Direct link to Bill Hammack video:

Stroke Therapy Progress

NYT: "New Findings Could Save Lives of More Stroke Patients".

Original article in the New England Journal of Medicine: "Thrombectomy for Stroke at 6 to 16 Hours with Selection by Perfusion Imaging".

Elon Musk Flamethrowers

"Elon Musk is now selling flamethrowers -- and he sold $2 million worth of them in 24 hours"

Fast Construction

"1,500 Chinese construction workers built this train station in just nine hours."

Self-Parking Slippers

Self-parking slippers for Japanese guesthouse.

[Off Topic] Hsieh Forbes Column: You Might Not Like The President, But That Doesn't Mean He's Crazy

[Off Topic] My latest Forbes column is out: "You Might Not Like The President, But That Doesn't Mean He's Crazy".

I discuss the latest push by some psychiatrists to declare the President unfit to hold office on mental health grounds. And the response of the White House physician who examined the President, including a cognitive evaluation.

As Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, wrote in the New England Journal Of Medicine:

Psychiatry has made too many past missteps to engage in political partisanship disguised as patriotism — witness its collusion in Nazi eugenics policies, Soviet political repression, and involuntary confinement in mental hospitals of dissidents and religious groups in the People’s Republic of China. More than any other medical specialty, psychiatry is vulnerable to being exploited for partisan political purposes and for bypassing due process for establishing guilt, fault, and fact.

Bad Sneeze

Man tries to hold in a sneeze, and instead tears his throat and requires 7 days in the hospital.

Link includes some impressive x-ray and CT images.

Foldscope

"Foldscope is a real microscope that’s made of paper"

Horsepower Vs Torque

"Horsepower Versus Torque: An Explainer". (Via H.R.)

Today Vs Pangea

"Map Showing Where Today’s Countries Would Be Located on Pangea"

From Telegraph To Internet

"In the 1960s, Telegraph Poles Were Equipped With Nuclear Bomb Alarms":

...And concerns about the robustness of military communications in a nuclear attack inspired RAND researcher Paul Baran to propose a network of distributed communication—an idea that evolved into the military’s revolutionary ARPANET and matured to become the internet.

Stone Age Facial Reconstruction

"Face of 9,000-Year-Old Teenager Reconstructed". (Via H.R.)

NYPD Rot

NYPD And "Get Out of Jail Free" Cards.

Autopilot DUI Defense

21st Century Headline: "A Tesla owner’s excuse for his DUI crash: The car was driving"

Facial Recognition In Retail

"The List of Places That Scan Your Face Is Growing".

One interesting tidbit:

[H]alf of all American adults have their photos in the FBI’s facial recognition database, which the bureau has been using since 2011 to track and identify suspects. Yet, the software had a 15 percent rate of inaccuracy—higher than Facebook’s—and incorrectly identified black people more often than white people.

Color Perception

"The Reality of Color Is Perception: An argument for a new definition of color"

Light Posting

Admin note: Posting may be lighter than usual this week due to external obligations

Small Nuclear Reactors

"Nuclear reactors the size of wastebaskets could power our Martian settlements". (Via H.R.)

AGI Timeline Prediction

"Moore's Law and AGI Timelines"

Tiny Dishwasher

"The Dishwasher Gets A Redesign For Tiny Apartments"

Amazon HQ2 Finalists

"Amazon Whittles Down List of HQ2 Contenders to 20 Finalists".

Denver is one of the finalists.

ELT MIrror

"First Mirror Segment for Extremely Large Telescope Successfully Cast". (Via H.R.)

Pentagon AI

"The Pentagon's New Artificial Intelligence Is Already Hunting Terrorists"

Underwater Volcano

"We All Nearly Missed The Largest Underwater Volcano Eruption Ever Recorded". (Via H.R.)

Learning From Hawaii

"Learning From Hawaii's False Missile Attack Fiasco"

The Bad UI Behind The Hawaii Missile Scare

"Bad design in action: The false Hawaiian ballistic missile alert"

Big Brother On Wheels

"Big Brother on wheels: Why your car company may know more about you than your spouse"

Potato Chip Flavors

"The Alchemy of Novelty Potato Chip Flavors"

Quantum Computing Update

"Yale Professors Race Google and IBM to the First Quantum Computer"

Best Of CES

Ars Technica: "The best PCs, gadgets, and wearables of CES 2018". (Via H.R.)

Kazakhstan Apostrophes

NYT: "Kazakhstan Cheers New Alphabet, Except for All Those Apostrophes"

Harry’s Razors Review

"Harry’s Razors review"

Toll-Free Numbers

"Why Do Toll-Free Numbers Start With 800?"

Pencil Factory

"Inside One of America’s Last Pencil Factories". (Via H.R.)

Remote Driving

"I Rode in a Car in Las Vegas. Its Driver Was in Silicon Valley"

Dolphin Intelligence

"Why dolphins are deep thinkers":

Kelly the dolphin has built up quite a reputation. All the dolphins at the institute are trained to hold onto any litter that falls into their pools until they see a trainer, when they can trade the litter for fish. In this way, the dolphins help to keep their pools clean.

Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on.

…Her cunning has not stopped there. One day, when a gull flew into her pool, she grabbed it, waited for the trainers and then gave it to them. It was a large bird and so the trainers gave her lots of fish. This seemed to give Kelly a new idea. The next time she was fed, instead of eating the last fish, she took it to the bottom of the pool and hid it under the rock where she had been hiding the paper. When no trainers were present, she brought the fish to the surface and used it to lure the gulls, which she would catch to get even more fish. After mastering this lucrative strategy, she taught her calf, who taught other calves, and so gull-baiting has become a hot game among the dolphins.

(Via A.B. and Marginal Revolution.)

Ikea Marketing First

"Ikea’s New Ad Is A Pregnancy Test You Pee On. Really." (Via J.A.)

Those Wacky Romans

Earliest known Roman practical joke.

Fitbit Sleep Data

"What Fitbit's 6 billion nights of sleep data reveals about us"

Emoji Origins

"How emoji are born"

New Rules For Border Inspection Of Electronic Devices

"New Rules Announced for Border Inspection of Electronic Devices":

The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol announced new restrictions on when agents can copy data from digital devices at border crossing points.

Agents now need “reasonable suspicion” in advance of searches of phones, computers, tablets, cameras or any other digital device belonging to people entering or leaving the United States. Border agents will also be restricted from accessing data stored remotely in the cloud.

The new guidance published (PDF) on Friday update existing rules introduced in 2009 regarding “advanced” searches that can be conducted at random and without warrant.

Under the new rules, border agents would still be able to conduct “basic” searches “with or without suspicion,” which entails physical examination of digital devices, such as sorting through photos and examining messages. “Advanced” searches based on “reasonable suspicion” will still be permitted and agents can still review, copy, and analyze a digital device’s contents.

The directive states travelers may be asked to provide passcodes to unlock a device. If the border agent is unable to inspect the device because it is passcode or encryption-protected, the agent may detain the device for up to five days.

Crown Casting

Side-by-side photos of The Crown's cast with their real-life counterparts. Excellent casting!

Taiko Drummers

"The arcane world of Japan's taiko drummers"

Fined For Using Waze/Google

NJ town to fine drivers $200 for using Waze/Google-guided shortcuts through residential streets.

Shortest Borders

"Gorgeous map of ten of the world's shortest borders".

Full size image here.

Ice And Snow Festival

"China's international ice and snow festival". (Via H.R.)

Biggest Prime

"This Is the Largest Known Prime Number Yet"

Moon Telescopes

"Put telescopes on the far side of the Moon"

Meltdown and Spectre Update

"Meltdown and Spectre: Here's what Intel, Apple, Microsoft, others are doing about it". (Via A.B. and H.R.)

Microchip Implants

"A practical guide to microchip implants". (Via H.R.)

Fast Shrimp

"How a shrimp closes its claws fast enough to vaporize water". (Via H.R.)

NSA Brain Drain

"NSA's top talent is leaving because of low pay, slumping morale and unpopular reorganization"

Competitive Parking

"Welcome to the National Valet Olympics"

Google And Voting

NYT: "How Do You Vote? 50 Million Google Images Give a Clue"