Hsieh Forbes Column On Vaping And Unintended Consequences

My latest Forbes column is now out: "Don't Make The Vaping 'Crisis' Worse With Hasty New Regulations".

Life After Snowden

Matthew Green: "Looking back at the Snowden revelations"

Power-Dense Motors

"This Inside-Out Motor for EVs Is Power Dense and (Finally) Practical". (Via H.R.)

NULL License Plate

"How a 'NULL' License Plate Landed One Hacker in Ticket Hell"

No Apocalypse

"Humanity will outlive climate change and nuclear war, no matter how bad it gets"

Mystery LA Singer

"Mystery Woman Sings Opera In Los Angeles Metro -- And Goes Viral".

Tweet via LAPD:

4 million people call LA home. 4 million stories. 4 million voices...sometimes you just have to stop and listen to one, to hear something beautiful. pic.twitter.com/VzlmA0c6jX

— LAPD HQ (@LAPDHQ) September 27, 2019

Ig Nobel 2019

Winners of the 2019 Ig Nobel Prizes!

Black Hole Up Close

"NASA Visualization Shows a Black Hole's Warped World"

Irrational Approximations

"New Proof Solves 80-Year-Old Irrational Number Problem"

Lost Masterpiece Found

"Lost Renaissance Masterpiece Worth $6 Million Found Hanging Above Woman's Hotplate"

Apple Watch 5 Review

Ars Technica reviews (and likes) the new Apple Watch Series 5. (Via H.R.)

Inconsistent Facebook Standards

"Facebook confirms its 'standards' don't apply to politicians"

In particular, "Politicians are officially exempt from both hate speech rules and fact checking."

Boiling The Perfect Egg

"How to Boil the Perfect Egg"

Apple Watch Success

"Spokane man credits Apple Watch with saving dad's life after bike crash". (Via H.R.)

Apple Privacy Vs. Facebook And Google

"Apple iOS 13: Is Facebook And Google's Worst Nightmare Coming True?"

SMOD Update

"A 'Sneaky' Asteroid Narrowly Missed Earth This Summer. Internal Emails Show How NASA Scientists Totally Missed It."

Ars Technica Reviews iOS 13

"iOS 13: The Ars Technica review". (Via H.R.)

Jon Gruber On iPhone 11 And Apple Watch 5

Daring Fireball: "iPhones 11 and Apple Watch Series 5 Q&A"

Yo Yo Skills

"How to Become Freakishly Good at the Yo-Yo"

Vanguard Robo-Advisor

"Vanguard to launch robo-advisory platform that removes all human advisers"

Robotic Farming

"This Startup Is Building Giant Robots to Grow Our Food". (Via H.R.)

AI Hide-And-Seek

"AI Agents Startle Researchers With Unexpected Hide-and-Seek Strategies"

Propmasters Speak

"The Hardest Props I Ever Made"

Making Pencils

"How Pencils Are Made"

RPS Revisited

"Who Invented Rock, Paper, Scissors and What's the Best Way to Win Consistently?" (Via H.R.)

Boston Stereotypes

Video: "Where Boston Stereotypes Come From"

"The Rock" Movies

"The Three Types Of Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson Movies"

Powerful Kirigami

"Mathematical framework turns any sheet of material into any shape using kirigami cuts"

Many Uses Of Dental Floss

"It Slices, It Dices, It Binds And It Stops Bugs: Dental Floss Is Your Secret Multitool"

Tunnel Of Samos

"How did the ancient Greeks dig a 4000-foot tunnel from both ends and meet exactly in the middle in the 6th century BCE, 200 years before Euclid?"

High Cats

"Photographer Takes Photos Of Cats High On Catnip, And The Results Are Brilliant"

Moving Corpses

"Human Corpses Keep Moving for Over a Year After Death, Scientist Says"

Philosophy Of Computer Science

William Rapaport: "Philosophy of Computer Science"

Blackest Black

"World's darkest material is 'blackest black' ever created". (Via H.R.)

Escape Rooms

The popularity of escape rooms..

I've done a few with friends, and had lots of fun!

Fraud With Fake Audio

"Fraudsters deepfake CEO's voice to trick manager into transferring $243,000"

Self-Healing Robots

"Soft Self-Healing Materials for Robots That Cannot Be Destroyed"

As the article notes, "It'll take more than having its fingers chopped off to stop this robot hand". I see no possible way anything could go wrong with this.

Real-Life Moon Base?

"The Silicon Valley Heavyweights Who Want to Settle the Moon"

Fake Keyboard For Cats

Brilliant idea: "This heated fake keyboard was designed to fool your cat".

More info: Patent 10398125, issued September 3, 2019.

IKEA Hide And Seek

"Police called to Scottish IKEA after thousands sign up for hide and seek"

Instant Boston Accent

Video: "Actor Learns a Boston Accent in 6 Hours"

Exoplanet With Water

"Water found for first time on potentially habitable planet".

The big question is whether the planet will be inhabited with intelligent aliens who happen to look a lot like the actor population of greater LA area with bad makeup.

Science Of Cardiac Arrest

"The heart-stopping reality of cardiac arrest"

Burger Rankings

Clever way to display hamburger rankings along 8 different axes.

Special Baseball Mud

"Mud Maker: The Man Behind MLB's Essential Secret Sauce"

D&D Pickup Lines

"50 Dungeons & Dragons Pickup Lines"

Direct link to video:

Dinosaur Treasure Trove

"There's probably enough dinosaur material here to keep a thousand palaeontologists happy for a thousand years"

No Wind Was Good That Day

"Falklands War: The Time British and Argentine Aircraft Carriers Nearly Fought to the Death"

Genes For Left-Handedness?

"Scientists have identified the genes linked to left-handedness"

Vinyl >> CD Sales

"Vinyl Is Poised to Outsell CDs For the First Time Since 1986"

Very Very Cold

"Racing toward Absolute Zero"

New Yorkers Losing Airpods

"New Yorkers Losing So Many AirPods in Subway Tracks That MTA is Considering a PSA to Warn Commuters"

New Perspective On Gymnastics

"Mesmerizing video of a gymnast's high bar routine where he remains stationary while the apparatus moves around him". (Via Kottke.)

Self-Citing Scientists

"Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database"

Self-Sculpting Robot

"Robot Made of Clay Can Sculpt Its Own Body"

Magnetic Mouse

"This New Logitech Mouse Has a Magnetic Wheel That Feels Like Magic". (Via H.R.)

Breakfasts Around The World

"Around the World in 380 Breakfasts"

Censor-Proof Messaging

"Hong Kong Protestors Using Mesh Messaging App China Can't Block: Usage Up 3685%". (Via H.R.)

More Noises From Our Machines

"Why Washing Machines Are Learning to Play the Harp"

Welding Ceramics

"Ceramics enter a new era with laser-welded joints". (Via H.R.)

Side Stitches

"When you get a stitch in your side, what's really going on?"

Short answer: We don't really know, although there are a few plausible theories. And at least there's a fancy medical term, "exercise-related transient abdominal pain", or ETAP.

Amazon Claims

"The Amazon Is Not Earth's Lungs: Humans could burn every living thing on the planet and still not dent its oxygen supply"

Nanotubule Chip

"MIT Engineers Build 15,000-Transistor Carbon Nanotube RISC-V Chip"

Engineers from the MIT and Analog Devices have created the most complex chip design yet that uses transistors made of carbon nanotubes instead of silicon. The chip was manufactured using new technologies proven to work in a commercial chip-manufacturing facility.

The researchers seem to have chosen the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) for the design of the chip, presumably due to the open source nature that didn’t require hassling with licensing restrictions and costs. The RISC-V processor handles 32-bit instructions and does 16-bit memory addressing. The chip is not meant to be used in mainstream devices quite yet, but it’s a strong proof of concept that can already run “hello world”-type applications.