Attempting An iPhone In 1957

Building an iPhone X equivalent in 1957 would have cost $150 trillion in today's dollars. And it would have been massive:

Consider the 256 GB memory iPhone X: Implemented in vacuum tubes in 1957, the transistors in an iPhoneX alone would have:

• cost 150 trillion of today's dollars: one and a half times today's global annual product
• taken up a hundred-story square building 300 meters high, and 3 kilometers long and wide
• drawn 150 terawatts of power—30 times the world's current generating capacity

Bad Star Trek Fight Move

"How the 'Star Trek' Punch Became the Worst Fight Move on TV"

Algorithms Don't Care

"Amazon Is Suggesting 'Frequently Bought Together' Items That Can Make a Bomb".

Algorithms don't care what you'll do with your purchases.

Chocolate Bar Labels

"How to Read a Chocolate Bar Label to Buy the Best Chocolate"

Topology And The Brain

"Understanding the brain using topology: the Blue Brain project"

Ars Technica Reviews iOS 11

Ars Technica: "iOS 11, thoroughly reviewed". (Via H.R.)

Chilling FOIA Requests

ABC News: "Governments turn tables by suing public records requesters".

As one person noted, "They are going to great lengths to protect themselves and their own mismanagement. This is retaliation."

Museum Twitter War

Museum Twitter war! :-)

Robo-Reporter Update

"The Washington Post's robot reporter has published 850 articles in the past year"

Responding To Identity Theft

Patrick McKenzie: "Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You"

2017 Ig Nobels

"Research on big ears, crocodile gambling wins Ig Nobels". (Via H.R.)

Sculpture In Space

"Sculpture in space"

New Form Of Water

"Gel-like ice is the lightest form of water ever discovered"

Tolkien Reads The Hobbit

"JRR Tolkien reads from The Hobbit":

In 1952, a friend of J.R.R. Tolkien showed him a tape recorder, which the author had never seen before. Delighted, Tolkien sat for his friend and read from The Hobbit for 30 minutes “in this one incredible take”. The audio is split between these two videos (with visuals and music added later)...

Given the circumstances, the clarity of this recording is pretty remarkable. Give it a listen for at least the first two minutes…hearing Tolkien do Smeagol/Gollum’s voice is really cool.

Audio part 1

Audio part 2

AI Password Cracking

"Artificial intelligence just made guessing your password a whole lot easier"

How to Talk Minnesotan

"How to Talk Minnesotan: The Power of the Negative"

This short video, taken from a longer documentary on How to Talk Minnesotan, demonstrates how a Minnesotan speaker uses negative words (e.g. bad, not, can’t, worse) to express positive feelings. For example, a translation of the phrase “I’m so excited, I can’t believe it!!” into Minnesotan yields:

A guy could almost be happy today if he wasn’t careful.

Face ID Quick Disable

"Face ID will have a quick-disable feature and work with most sunglasses".

According to Apple senior VP of software engineering Craig Federighi, "If you grip the buttons on both sides of the phone when you hand it over, it will temporarily disable FaceID".

Communicating With Comatose Patients

"How science found a way to help coma patients communicate"

Drone Delivery Of Medical Samples

STAT news: "A drone flew dozens of blood samples 161 miles -- and kept them viable"

Johns Hopkins researchers say they’ve set a new record by flying a medical drone more than 160 miles across the Arizona desert with human blood samples safely in tow. In a new report, the pathologists say they were able to maintain the right temperature to keep the 84 samples viable for laboratory analysis once the drone arrived. The researchers ran common lab tests on those samples and comparison samples that weren’t flown by drone, and all of them showed similar results. Scientists say that adds to the evidence that in the future, medical drones could be a safe, efficient way to ferry samples between rural regions and far-off labs.

Here's a direct link to the academic article, "Drone Transport of Chemistry and Hematology Samples Over Long Distances" (American Journal of Clinical Pathology, 5 Sep 2017).

We Like Blue

"Why Blue Is the World’s Favorite Color"

Apple FaceID And The Law

"Can Cops Force You to Unlock Your Phone With Your Face?"

iPhone Privacy

"It's about to get tougher for cops, border agents to get at your iPhone's data". (Via T.V.)

Facial Recognition Update

"What machines can tell from your face".

Related: "Ever better and cheaper, face-recognition technology is spreading"

Apple AI Chip

"Everything you need to know about Apple's AI chip"

New Vonnegut

"The Atlantic has just put up a previously unpublished short story by Kurt Vonnegut, The Drone King. It’s about bees."

Sandwich Family Tree

"The Definitive Sandwich Family Tree"

Bouncing Photons

"Experiment reveals evidence for a previously unseen behaviour of light"