Police Encrypting Radio Communications

"Encryption efforts in Colorado challenge crime reporters, transparency". (Via Ari A.)

AIs Understanding Rats

"Scientists Use AI to Decode the Ultrasonic Language of Rodents"

Beer Therapy

"Doctors Saved Man's Life by Pumping 15 Cans of Beer Into His Body".

This is a unconventional, but legitimate way to treat methanol poisoning. (Via H.R.)

Silmarillion Primer

Jeff LaSala: The Silmarillion Primer.

Learning Robot Dog

"A robot dog has learned to run faster with machine learning"

Legendary LA Bookstore

Downtown LA's The Last Bookstore:

The massive store, covering 16,000 square feet, also boasts a coffee shop, a record store, and a used books section—but the “labyrinth” upstairs is where the magic really happens. It’s a maze of bookshelves arranged into tunnels of paperbacks, offbeat art installations made of flying books, little shops and displays of art, trinkets and antiques, and rainbow-colored rows and stacks of assorted volumes. To sweeten the deal, everything up in the labyrinth is $1 each, half of which goes to charity. Leave plenty of time to get lost here.

Embroidered Computer

"Artists Irene Posch & Ebru Kurbak have built The Embroidered Computer, a programmable 8-bit computer made using traditional embroidery techniques and materials."

Last Words

"What People Actually Say Before They Die"

Dirty Dealings In Amazon Marketplace

"Dirty Dealing In The $175 Billion Amazon Marketplace"

Some of the dirty tricks include sellers buying fake 5-star reviews for their competitors to frame them for violating Amazon terms-of-service. Or setting competitors' products on fire, then posting a fake customer review that the product exploded.

Blood Moons

"Blood moons explained: Why the moon turns red during lunar eclipses"

Password Breach

Troy Hunt: "The 773 Million Record 'Collection #1' Data Breach".

Related: If you have 1Password, here's how to "Use Watchtower to find passwords you need to change".

The Route of a Text Message

"The Route of a Text Message": How a text message is typed, stored, sent, received, and displayed.

Buffett On Bogle

I appreciated this tribute to Vanguard founder Jack Bogle, by Warren Buffett:

"If a statue is ever erected to honor the person who has done the most for American investors, the hands down choice should be Jack Bogle. For decades, Jack has urged investors to invest in ultra-low-cost index funds. In his crusade, he amassed only a tiny percentage of the wealth that has typically flowed to managers who have promised their investors large rewards while delivering them nothing – or, as in our bet, less than nothing – of added value. In his early years, Jack was frequently mocked by the investment-management industry. Today, however, he has the satisfaction of knowing that he helped millions of investors realize far better returns on their savings than they otherwise would have earned. He is a hero to them and to me."

Net Neutrality Repeal Update

"A Year Without Net Neutrality: No Big Changes (Yet)"

Bad Aphorisms

Josh Greenman: "What famous, widely accepted aphorism do you find least true or least helpful?"

Click through to see plenty of interesting responses. (Via Tyler Cowen.)

Moon Seed

"Giant leaf for mankind? China germinates first seed on moon"

Quantum Cable

"The Super-Secure Quantum Cable Hiding in the Holland Tunnel"

Brutal Typos

Fergil Mills: "Ever catch a typo so brutal it leaves you scarred, even though you fixed it?"

Some of the responses in the comments are pure comedy gold. (Via J.M.)

Chinese Anger Rooms

"All the rage -- Beijingers vent their stress in 'anger room'"

Public Domain Books

"How to Download the Books That Just Entered the Public Domain"

Privacy Update

"Feds Can't Force You To Unlock Your iPhone With Finger Or Face, Judge Rules"

Dark Markets 2.0

"Dark markets have evolved to use encrypted messengers and dead-drops"

Circle In Circle Illusion

"Watch this fantastic 'Circle in Circle' optical illusion machine in action"

First Responder Bot

"The Cheetah bot may one day save your life"

Fortune Cookie History

"The Surprising History of the Fortune Cookie"

21st Century Parenting

"Parents are using GPS ankle monitors to track their teenagers like criminals":

It can be embarrassing for a teen to wear an ankle monitor when they’re not serving a sentence or out on bail, admits [Frank Kopczynski, the owner of Tampa Bay Monitoring], adding that “you may have to wear slacks or looser jeans,” which tends to get uncomfortable on the beach. However, he said, an embarrassed child is better than someone’s daughter “running off with a guy who’s going to eventually take her to a motel and beat her ass.”

...Along with the 95-decibel siren, if a teen is out past curfew, their parents can call Tampa Bay Monitoring’s office, and Kopczynski or one of his employees will activate the ankle monitor’s speaker and tell the child it’s time to get home or the police will be called. Hearing “this god-like voice out of nowhere” is generally effective, said Kopczynski; since the system is two-way, staff can also monitor the teen covertly.

...Kopczynski, meanwhile, told Quartz he is looking toward the college market as a possible expansion opportunity for alcohol monitoring devices, which track the wearer’s blood alcohol level through their sweat.

Alternate Periodic Tables

"The periodic tables we almost had"

Translucent Waves

"Mesmerizing Translucent Waves from 19th Century Paintings"

Blocking Political Critics

"Politicians can't block their critics on social media, appeals court rules "

Ethereum Classic Theft

"Almost $500,000 in Ethereum Classic coin stolen by forking its blockchain":

Rollback attacks are often referred to as 51-percent attacks, because, in theory, they require an attacker to control a majority of the CPU power generating a blockchain. Such an arrangement violates a core requirement of any blockchain-based currency: it allows a single entity to write the contents of its universal shared transaction history.

Slime

"The science of slime."

Tesla Tribute

"The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla"

ACME Products

"Gigantic Poster Features Every Product the Fictional ACME Corporation Ever Produced".

You can buy your own copy for $49!

Indoor Beehive

"BEEcosystem is a modular honey bee hive for your home"

Laws Of The ER

Rada Jones, MD: "68 laws of the ER".

I, of course, liked:

64. Sage's First Advice: Skip the CT if the patient with abdominal pain is eating McDonald's.

Galactic Collision

"The Milky Way Could Crash Into Another Galaxy Billions of Years Earlier Than Predicted"

Sony's Mystery Lab

"Inside Sony's mysterious lab, 30 researchers pursue unique projects"

Hacked Photosynthesis

"Scientists Have 'Hacked Photosynthesis' In Search Of More Productive Crops". (Via H.R.)

More DNA Crime Fighting

"The Future of Crime-Fighting Is Family Tree Forensics"

Fire From Moonlight?

"Can you use a magnifying glass and moonlight to light a fire?"

Complaining Made Easy

"Button offers instant gratification for those plagued by airplane noise":

Barbara Deckert has a new weapon in the war against airplane noise — and she’s not afraid to use it.

Every time a plane flies over her suburban Maryland home, rattling her windows and setting her teeth on edge, she presses a small white button and feels a tiny sense of triumph. That’s because with one click, Deckert has done what could have taken her hours to do a few months ago — she has filed a noise complaint with officials at the Maryland Aviation Administration.

Thanks to the ingenuity of a software engineer from Southern California, Deckert and hundreds of others with similar beefs, and the Airnoise button, have an easy way to register their annoyance with the jets that fly over their homes.

“It’s a fabulous tool,” Deckert said. “Clicking that button is really psychologically satisfying.”

Officials at airports from Seattle to Baltimore said Airnoise has led to a dramatic spike in complaints. At Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport, officials are almost certain Airnoise is the reason complaints surged to 17,228 in August from 2,692 the previous month. In San Diego, more than 90 percent of the complaints came through third-party apps like Airnoise.

(Via Tyler Cowen.)

Happiness Tips

"Secrets of Happiness from the Oldest of the Old"

BrainNet

"Brains of 3 People Have Been Successfully Connected, Enabling Them to Share Thoughts".

More details here:

We present BrainNet which, to our knowledge, is the first multi-person non-invasive direct brain-to-brain interface for collaborative problem solving. The interface combines electroencephalography (EEG) to record brain signals and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to deliver information noninvasively to the brain.

The interface allows three human subjects to collaborate and solve a task using direct brain-to-brain communication. Two of the three subjects are "Senders" whose brain signals are decoded using real-time EEG data analysis to extract decisions about whether to rotate a block in a Tetris-like game before it is dropped to fill a line. The Senders' decisions are transmitted via the Internet to the brain of a third subject, the "Receiver," who cannot see the game screen.

The decisions are delivered to the Receiver's brain via magnetic stimulation of the occipital cortex.

The Receiver integrates the information received and makes a decision using an EEG interface about either turning the block or keeping it in the same position...

Assaults On Self-Driving Cars

NYT: "Wielding Rocks and Knives, Arizonans Attack Self-Driving Cars"

Clever AI

"This clever AI hid data from its creators to cheat at its appointed task"

2018 Science Limericks

"2018 in limericks: The highs and lows from the life sciences"

Hsieh Forbes Column: So You Got A Consumer DNA Test For Christmas -- Now What?

My latest Forbes piece: "So You Got A Consumer DNA Test For Christmas -- Now What?"

How The USPS Handles Bad Handwriting

"Have Bad Handwriting? The U.S. Postal Service Has Your Back"

15 Years Ago

Jon Erlichman:  Things that didn't exist on Christmas 15 years ago:

iPhone
Facebook
YouTube
Twitter
Instagram
iPad
Netflix streaming
Google Maps
Snapchat
Spotify
Android
Uber
Lyft
Alexa
Airbnb
App Store
Google Chrome
WhatsApp
Fitbit
Waze
Slack
Square
Dropbox
Pinterest
Venmo
Bitcoin
Hulu
Kindle

FBI Interview

"Why Doesn’t the FBI Videotape Interviews?" (Via G.F.)

GPS Wars

"The GPS Wars Are Here"

AI Threats

"The case for taking AI seriously as a threat to humanity"

Light Posting Notice

Admin note: Posting may be lighter than usual this week and next week because of the holiday season. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

New Largest Known Prime

"GIMPS Discovers Largest Known Prime Number: 2^82,589,933-1". (Via H.R.)

FedEx Christmas

"Inside FedEx’s Christmas Miracle". (Via H.R.)

A People's Guide to AI

"A People's Guide to AI". Free downloadable PDF.

Beautiful Bonsai

"Taikan Ten Exhibition 2018"

Saturn's Rings

"Saturn is losing its iconic planetary rings"

Machine Image Recognition

"How computers got shockingly good at recognizing images". (Via H.R.)

The Titanic And The Hunt For Two Nuclear Submarines

"The Story of the Titanic Keeps Getting Weirder"

Lab-Made Whiskey

"An Exclusive First Taste of Lab-Made Whiskey"

Laser-Powered Interstellar Probe

"Laser-Powered Probe Might Make It To Alpha Centauri In 100 Years"

Space Beer

"How To Make Beer With Only What You Can Grow On A Generation Ship"

Fake Faces

"These incredibly realistic fake faces show how algorithms can now mess with us"

Parrot Uses Alexa To Order Online Goods

"Parrot Uses Alexa to Order Watermelon, Lightbulbs While Owner Is Out"

536 Sucked

"Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive'"

Ant Colony Memories

"Ant Colonies Retain Memories That Outlast the Lifespans of Individuals"

Amazon Machine Learning Course

"The same machine learning courses Amazon uses internally to train their own engineers are being made available to all developers."

There are more than 30 self-service, self-paced digital courses with more than 45 hours of courses, videos, and labs for four key groups: developers, data scientists, data platform engineers, and business professionals. Each course starts with the fundamentals, and builds on those through real-world examples and labs, allowing developers to explore machine learning through some fun problems we have had to solve at Amazon. These include predicting gift wrapping eligibility, optimizing delivery routes, or predicting entertainment award nominations using data from IMDb (an Amazon subsidiary). Coursework helps consolidate best practices, and demonstrates how to get started on a range of AWS machine learning services, including Amazon SageMaker, AWS DeepLens, Amazon Rekognition, Amazon Lex, Amazon Polly, and Amazon Comprehend.

Modern Dating

"Is Swiping Right On Tinder Considered Cheating?"

Tetris Trivia

Lots of info about Tetris.

AlphaFold Update

AlphaFold @ CASP13: "What just happened?"

Deep Learning Cheat Sheets

Deep Learning cheat sheets covering the content of the CS 230 class at Stanford. Could be useful to anyone interested in Deep Learning.

Lost Heart

"Southwest flight turns around after human heart is found on plane". (Via D.M.)

Decision-Making Heuristics

"Six science-backed techniques to help you make hard decisions"

"Avengers: Endgame" Trailer

Trailer for Avengers: Endgame

CoyoteVest

"Protect your dog from predator attacks with the CoyoteVest".

It looks like something an Oakland Raiders fan would wear, but with more cheerful colors. This is apparently a real consumer product.

Border Surveillance Update

"Border Agents Fail to Delete Personal Data of Travelers After Electronic Searches, Watchdog Says"

First Word Processor

NYT Obituary: "Evelyn Berezin, 93, Dies; Built the First True Word Processor"

Geminid Meteor Shower

"2018 Geminid Meteor Shower This Week May Be the Year's Best"

More AI Medicine

"Applying Deep Learning to Metastatic Breast Cancer Detection":

 In both datasets, LYNA was able to correctly distinguish a slide with metastatic cancer from a slide without cancer 99% of the time. Further, LYNA was able to accurately pinpoint the location of both cancers and other suspicious regions within each slide, some of which were too small to be consistently detected by pathologists. As such, we reasoned that one potential benefit of LYNA could be to highlight these areas of concern for pathologists to review and determine the final diagnosis...

Encouragingly, pathologists with LYNA assistance were more accurate than either unassisted pathologists or the LYNA algorithm itself, suggesting that people and algorithms can work together effectively to perform better than either alone. 

Christmas In Space

"Christmas Dinner Rocketed To International Space Station"

Mother of All Demos

"The Mother of All Demos turns 50":

On December 9, 1968, Douglas Engelbart gave a demo of NLS, the "oN-Line System", to the Fall Joint Computer Conference of the ACM and IEEE. Later dubbed The Mother of All Demos, it demonstrated many concepts that would later become fundamental elements of personal computing, including the mouse, windows, hypertext, graphics, video conferencing, and word processing.

32-Legged Spherical Robot

"32-Legged Spherical Robot Moves Like an Amoeba". Click through to see video.

Unusual Blood Clot

"A blood clot formed in the exact shape of a man's lung passage -- then he coughed it up"

Quantum Insecurity

"Quantum computers pose a security threat that we're still totally unprepared for"

Self-Designing Machines

"Artificial Intelligence and the coming of the self-designing machine"

Apple ECG App

"ECG app and irregular heart rhythm notification available today on Apple Watch". (Via H.R.)

Cruise Vs. Motion Smoothing

"Tom Cruise is right: motion-smoothing sucks".

Cruise explains.

How People Ate In Medieval England

"How People Ate in Medieval England"

Toilet Paper Tablets

"EDC toilet paper in easy to carry tablets"

Phones And Their People

"The Ubiquity of Smartphones, as Captured by Photographers"

Food Photography Tricks

"Photography Tricks That Advertisers Use to Make Food Look Delicious".

I had heard of some of these, but others were new to me:

To make food look appetizing in advertisements, food stylists use a bunch of tricks that may not even involve edible objects. For example, syrup on pancakes is motor oil (because it doesn’t absorb), Elmer's glue is cereal milk (it prevent the cereal from sinking), shaving cream is whipped cream (doesn't melt), and dish soap helps the head on a beer appear foamier and last longer...

Control a Machine with Your Brain

"How to Control a Machine with Your Brain"

Against Book Blurbs

"We Need to Destroy the Blurbing Industrial Complex"

Good Book Design

"The Splendid Book Design of the 1946 Edition of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"

Bad Airport Wi-Fi

"Airport Wi-Fi can be a security nightmare. Here's what you can do to stop cyber criminals"

Icosahedral Earth Puzzle

"An Infinite Icosahedral Puzzle of the Earth".

From the company blog:

The Earth Puzzle is a map of the globe unlike any you’ve seen before. Start anywhere and see where your journey takes you. This puzzle is based on an icosahedral map projection and has the topology of a sphere. This means it has no edges, no North and South, and no fixed shape. Try to get the landmasses together or see how the oceans are connected. Make your own maps of the earth!

Moore's Law Lives On

"New Metal-Air Transistor Replaces Semiconductors". (Via H.R.)

If People Acted Like Dogs

"8 Hilariously Accurate Comics That Show What Would Happen If People Acted Like Dogs"

AirBnb With Alpacas

"Welsh AirBnb Flaunts Alpacas as an Added Attraction for Guests"