Internet Failure Disrupts Chess Olympiad

"Chess Olympiad: India and Russia both get gold after controversial final"

"The Online Chess Olympiad has been impacted by a global internet outage, that severely affected several countries, including India. Two of the Indian players have been affected and lost connection, when the outcome of the match was still unclear," Arkady Dvorkovich, president of the International Chess Federation, said in a statement.

He said he decided to award both teams gold medals in the "absence of a unanimous decision" from the body's appeals committee.

Timelapse Plants

"So satisfying: Plants growing timelapse compilation"

Hsieh Forbes Column: Could A ‘Morality Pill’ Help Stop The Covid-19 Pandemic?

My latest Forbes piece is now out: "Could A ‘Morality Pill’ Help Stop The Covid-19 Pandemic?"

To The Moon

"NASA has patented a new route to the moon".

More info on Patent No. 10696423.

Neuromorphic Chips

ACM: "Neuromorphic Chips Take Shape"

Airline Ban

"Coronavirus FAQ: Can An Airline Put You On A No-Fly List For Refusing To Mask Up?"

Short answer, "yes".

Martian Avalanche

"Capturing an Avalanche on Mars". (Via H.R.)

Cyberstalker Trick

"Cyberstalker Locates Victim by Enhancing Reflection in Her Eye":

Following his subsequent arrest, Sato told authorities he identified a bus stop and other scenery in the eye reflection, then used Google Maps to match it to a real-world location.

He said he was even able to estimate the floor the pop star lived on by analyzing the windows in her photos and noting the angle at which sunlight hit her eyes.

Pure Skill Minesweeper

"Pure Skill Minesweeper"

10^16 Is Not Enough

"Japan facing credit card number shortage as people stay home and shop"

Moon Lava Tubes

"Entire cities could fit inside the moon's monstrous lava tubes". (Via H.R.)

Colorful Google Maps

"Google Maps Just Got a Colorful New Update". (Via H.R.)

Crash The Universe?

"Could We Force the Universe to Crash?"

If we’re all living in a simulation, as some have suggested, it would be a good, albeit risky, way to find out for sure...

But the neatest test of the hypothesis would be to crash the system that runs our simulation. Naturally, that sounds a bit ill-advised, but if we’re all virtual entities anyway does it really matter? Presumably a quick reboot and restore might bring us back online as if nothing had happened, but possibly we’d be able to tell, or at very least have a few microseconds of triumph just before it all shuts down.

 The question is: how do you bring down a simulation of reality from inside it? The most obvious strategy would be to try to cause the equivalent of a stack overflow—asking for more space in the active memory of a program than is available—by creating an infinitely, or at least excessively, recursive process.

And the way to do that would be to build our own simulated realities, designed so that within those virtual worlds are entities creating their version of a simulated reality, which is in turn doing the same, and so on all the way down the rabbit hole. If all of this worked, the universe as we know it might crash, revealing itself as a mirage just as we winked out of existence.

I confess to being uneasy at the idea of crashing the universe. That's where I keep all my stuff!

Fired For Bad Behavior Outside Work

WSJ: "Can You Be Fired for Bad Behavior Outside Work?"

Short answer, "yes".

Malaysian Cakes

"The Mesmerizing Geometry of Malaysia's Most Complex Cakes"

Toronto Chainsaw Attacks

"Toronto residents question safety of Cherry Beach following chainsaw attack":

Two blood-covered, chainsaw-wielding men emerged from the bushes of a popular public park in Toronto on Sunday morning, where witnesses say they screamed at, followed, and even lunged toward strangers while revving their deadly tools.

It's not the kind of thing you see very often in a large Canadian city... or anywhere outside of a horror movie, for that matter...

Awesome Library Ad

This ad from the Harris County Library system is truly awesome.

This library ad is a triumph pic.twitter.com/fO80Zhzh3y

— Jen Fulwiler (@jenfulwiler) August 9, 2020

Lego Found

"Boy finds missing Lego piece in his nose after two years"

Fake Cow Eyes

"Study confirms that painting eyes on cow butts helps ward off predators". (Via H.R.)

Unsettled Science

"What To Do, Scientifically, When Everyone Is Wrong"

Fast Star

"This Star Is Moving So Fast it Visibly Warps Spacetime":

The star S62 whips around Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, at an extremely tight orbit. At its closest approach, it can travel faster than eight percent the speed of light, according to research published in The Astrophysical Journal. That's fast enough to make visible the relativistic phenomena of time dilation and length contraction, turning the star into an interesting sandbox for curious physicists.

Invisible Driver

CNN: "A woman is stunned when her new driver's license came back with a picture of an empty chair"

Photoreal Roman Emperors

"Photoreal Roman Emperor Project"

Quantum-Proof Encryption

"The quest for quantum-proof encryption just made a leap forward"

Early Early Science Fiction

"The first science fiction story":

A True Story (Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα, Verae Historiae) is a novel written in the second century AD by Lucian of Samosata, a Greek-speaking author of Assyrian descent. The novel is a satire of outlandish tales which had been reported in ancient sources, particularly those which presented fantastic or mythical events as if they were true. It is Lucian's best-known work.

It is the earliest known work of fiction to include travel to outer space, alien lifeforms, and interplanetary warfare. As such, A True Story has been described as "the first known text that could be called science fiction".

Fusion Update

"Spacecraft of the Future Could Be Powered By Lattice Confinement Fusion". (Via H.R.)

Origin of Elements

NASA: "The Origin of Elements"

Light Posting

Admin note: Posting may be light for the next few days.

Robot Acrobatics

Video: "Massive Robot Joins Swedish Acrobats on Stage"

Bird Recognition

"Scientists have created a facial recognition software for birds"

Arctic Storage

"A Staggering 21TB of Source Code Were Just Buried in The Arctic For an Unknown Future". (Via H.R.)

DNA Storage

"How Scientists Encoded 'The Wizard of Oz' Into DNA".