Link Catchup - October 2012
To understand the command line... "you must first understand UNIX" (via HN)
Plotting XKCD-style graphs - "The idea is to first apply cartoon-like styles to the graphics objects (thick lines, silly font etc), and then to apply a distortion using image processing." (via HN). Followup: Automating XKCD Diagrams (via HN), XKCD plots in D3 (via HN), Create your own XKCD-style Graphs (via HN)
Scary New Malware Uses Your Smartphone To Map Your House for Robbers - "PlaceRader hijacks your phone's camera and takes a series of secret photographs, recording the time, and the phone's orientation and location with each shot. Using that information, it can reliably build a 3D model of your home or office, and let cyber-intruders comb it for personal information" (via Bruce Schneier)
The $1 billion mission to reach the Earth's mantle - "It will be the equivalent of dangling a steel string the width of a human hair in the deep end of a swimming pool and inserting it into a thimble 1/10 mm wide on the bottom, and then drilling a few meters into the foundations" (via /.)
Stop Pagination Now - "Pagination is one of the worst design and usability sins on the Web [...] It shows constant, quiet contempt for people who should be any news site’s highest priority-folks who want to read articles all the way to the end." (via HN)
Teaching my 5 year old daughter to code... (via HN)
Human-Powered Freerunning Machine - a cross between Parkour and Rube Goldberg (via ICHC)
The $5000 Compression Challenge - Very cool "hack" of a challenge to compress arbitrary data, taking advantage of externalisable costs (via HN)
Are we the baddies? - "the official insignia of the US Navy’s Executive Office for the Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons Program."
YouTube Upgrades Its Automated Copyright Enforcement System - "Now, an eligible user can file an appeal in any situation where Content ID has flagged her video and the rightsholder has rejected her dispute. In the case of an appeal, the copyright holder must either release the claim or file a formal DMCA takedown."
The US Invaded Iraq Because It Wouldn’t Have Survived Otherwise - "Why was it rational for the US Administration to spend one trillion or so dollars on going to war with a small country on the other side of the planet, one that had nothing at all to do with the September 11 attacks? [...] Iraq had suddenly started selling its oil for Euros instead of for US Dollars."
Programmer Time Translation Table - "An experienced project manager I used to work with claimed that he took the programmers’ time estimates, multiplied by pi and converted to the next time magnitude to get the true number." (via HN)
How much do cats actually kill?
Ban under-threes from watching television - "Children’s obsession with the television, computers and screen games is causing developmental damage" (via /.)
The world’s fastest Rubik cube solver is made from Lego! - "CubeStormer II is the fastest Rubik cube solving robot in the world. It set a Guinness World Record of 5.270s for the fastest robot solving of a Rubik’s Cube in November 2011." (via HN)
A dying star weaves a spiral in the night - "R Sculptoris has both a shell and a spiral because the thermal pulse had a very sudden, sharp beginning, but continued to drive material off the star’s surface for many years after that first wave." (via /.)
The Lie Factory - How Politics Became a Business - Amazing article on modern western political campaigning, including the story of the start of the political mess around US public healthcare (and the creation of the phrase "socialized medicine") as a petty spiteful act of revenge. (via HN)
New NASA robot could help paraplegics walk - "NASA said today it has helped develop a 57-lb robotic exoskeleton that a person could wear over his or her body either to assist or inhibit movement in leg joints." (via /.)
The marshmallow test, revisited - "Right before giving the kid a marshmallow, they would have an encounter with an adult. One would be unreliable; he would promise a bunch of fun art supplies that would never appear. Another would be reliable, delivering the art supplies as promised.
That earlier encounter had a huge influence on kids’ willingness to wait for a second marshmallow." (via HN)
The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent - "Extractive states are controlled by ruling elites whose objective is to extract as much wealth as they can from the rest of society. Inclusive states give everyone access to economic opportunity; often, greater inclusiveness creates more prosperity, which creates an incentive for ever greater inclusiveness." (via HN)
Mortality and lack of health insurance - " I’ve seen more women than I can remember who waited far longer than they should have to see a doctor for their breast cancer because they couldn’t afford it. Over the years, all too often my patients have been symptomatic for quite some time, and when they finally do present their tumors are larger, more difficult to treat, and more likely to kill them."
Exoplanet found right next door in Alpha Centauri - "even though the new world would be far too hot to support liquid water, the astronomers who discovered it point out small planets tend to form in groups" (via HN)
The Escalator - How "Skeptics" View Global Warming vs Realists. (via Pharyngula)
Why Things Fail: From Tires to Helicopter Blades, Everything Breaks Eventually - "Ford isn’t trying to ensure the gas-pedal hinge will never break. The company knows it will break; its engineers are trying to understand when-and how and why-this will happen." (via HN)
L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists guilty of manslaughter - "Some scientists have warned that the case might set a damaging precedent, deterring experts from sharing their knowledge with the public for fear of being targeted in lawsuits" *boggle* (via HN, /., Bruce Schneier)
Micrographia: Or Some Phyſiological Deſcriptions Of Minute Bodies Made By Magnifying Glasses With Observations and Inquiries Thereupon By R. Hooke, Fellow of the Royal Society. - "We ſhall begin with a Phyſical point; of which kind the Point of a Needle is commonly reckon'd for one; and is indeed, for the moſt part, made ſo ſharp, that the naked eye cannot diſtinguiſh any parts of it [...] But if view'd with a very good Microſcope, we may find that the top of a Needle (though as to the ſenſe very ſharp) appears a broad, blunt, and very irregular end" Ignore the long preface, and scroll down to the diagrams. (via /.)
Marc Andreessen’s Productivity Trick to Feeling Marvelously Efficient - "What you do is this: every time you do something - anything - useful during the day, write it down in your Anti-Todo List on the card. [...] And then at the end of the day, … take a look at today’s card and its Anti-Todo list and marvel at all the things you actually got done that day." (via HN)
'Ugly girl': The negative messages we send to our daughters - "I’m fifteen and feel like girls my age are under a lot of pressure…I know I am smart, I know I am kind and funny…everybody around me keeps telling me I can be whatever I want to be. I know all this but I just don’t feel that way. [...] successful women are only considered a success if they are successful AND hot, and I worry constantly that I won't be." (via Butterflies and Wheels)
Ceefax service closes down after 38 years on BBC (via /.)
The Placebo Gene - "A study recently published in PLOS one purports to have found a gene variant that correlates strongly with a placebo response in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)."
The little ssh that (sometimes) couldn't - "This is a technical article chronicling one of the most interesting bug hunts I’ve had the pleasure of chasing down." (via HN)
Crochet Dissection WIN
SlowTech - Constant Culture of Distraction - "[Multi-tasking is] one of the only things where the more you practice it, the worse you get at it." (via HN)
RIAA Failed To Disclose Expert’s Lobbying History to “Six-Strikes” Partners - "A month before the controversial “six strikes” anti-piracy plan goes live in the U.S. [...] it turns out the RIAA failed to mention to its partners that the “impartial and independent” technology expert they retained previously lobbied for the music industry group." (via HN)
On my Quiz Show (Bible Contradictions) video: #1 - "[Believers explain] that taking the words on the page to mean what they actually say is an utterly misguided way to interpret scripture"
The Truth About Dishonesty (via Bruce Schneier)
The highlights of the highlights are probably "Human-Powered Freerunning", "Are We The Baddies?", "How Much Do Cats Actually Kill", "The Lie Factory", "The Marshmallow Test, revisited", "The Escalator/How Skeptics View Global Warming", "Crochet Dissection WIN", "Slow Tech" and "The Truth About Dishonesty"
Plotting XKCD-style graphs - "The idea is to first apply cartoon-like styles to the graphics objects (thick lines, silly font etc), and then to apply a distortion using image processing." (via HN). Followup: Automating XKCD Diagrams (via HN), XKCD plots in D3 (via HN), Create your own XKCD-style Graphs (via HN)
Scary New Malware Uses Your Smartphone To Map Your House for Robbers - "PlaceRader hijacks your phone's camera and takes a series of secret photographs, recording the time, and the phone's orientation and location with each shot. Using that information, it can reliably build a 3D model of your home or office, and let cyber-intruders comb it for personal information" (via Bruce Schneier)
The $1 billion mission to reach the Earth's mantle - "It will be the equivalent of dangling a steel string the width of a human hair in the deep end of a swimming pool and inserting it into a thimble 1/10 mm wide on the bottom, and then drilling a few meters into the foundations" (via /.)
Stop Pagination Now - "Pagination is one of the worst design and usability sins on the Web [...] It shows constant, quiet contempt for people who should be any news site’s highest priority-folks who want to read articles all the way to the end." (via HN)
Teaching my 5 year old daughter to code... (via HN)
Human-Powered Freerunning Machine - a cross between Parkour and Rube Goldberg (via ICHC)
The $5000 Compression Challenge - Very cool "hack" of a challenge to compress arbitrary data, taking advantage of externalisable costs (via HN)
Are we the baddies? - "the official insignia of the US Navy’s Executive Office for the Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons Program."
YouTube Upgrades Its Automated Copyright Enforcement System - "Now, an eligible user can file an appeal in any situation where Content ID has flagged her video and the rightsholder has rejected her dispute. In the case of an appeal, the copyright holder must either release the claim or file a formal DMCA takedown."
The US Invaded Iraq Because It Wouldn’t Have Survived Otherwise - "Why was it rational for the US Administration to spend one trillion or so dollars on going to war with a small country on the other side of the planet, one that had nothing at all to do with the September 11 attacks? [...] Iraq had suddenly started selling its oil for Euros instead of for US Dollars."
Programmer Time Translation Table - "An experienced project manager I used to work with claimed that he took the programmers’ time estimates, multiplied by pi and converted to the next time magnitude to get the true number." (via HN)
How much do cats actually kill?
Ban under-threes from watching television - "Children’s obsession with the television, computers and screen games is causing developmental damage" (via /.)
The world’s fastest Rubik cube solver is made from Lego! - "CubeStormer II is the fastest Rubik cube solving robot in the world. It set a Guinness World Record of 5.270s for the fastest robot solving of a Rubik’s Cube in November 2011." (via HN)
A dying star weaves a spiral in the night - "R Sculptoris has both a shell and a spiral because the thermal pulse had a very sudden, sharp beginning, but continued to drive material off the star’s surface for many years after that first wave." (via /.)
The Lie Factory - How Politics Became a Business - Amazing article on modern western political campaigning, including the story of the start of the political mess around US public healthcare (and the creation of the phrase "socialized medicine") as a petty spiteful act of revenge. (via HN)
New NASA robot could help paraplegics walk - "NASA said today it has helped develop a 57-lb robotic exoskeleton that a person could wear over his or her body either to assist or inhibit movement in leg joints." (via /.)
The marshmallow test, revisited - "Right before giving the kid a marshmallow, they would have an encounter with an adult. One would be unreliable; he would promise a bunch of fun art supplies that would never appear. Another would be reliable, delivering the art supplies as promised.
That earlier encounter had a huge influence on kids’ willingness to wait for a second marshmallow." (via HN)
The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent - "Extractive states are controlled by ruling elites whose objective is to extract as much wealth as they can from the rest of society. Inclusive states give everyone access to economic opportunity; often, greater inclusiveness creates more prosperity, which creates an incentive for ever greater inclusiveness." (via HN)
Mortality and lack of health insurance - " I’ve seen more women than I can remember who waited far longer than they should have to see a doctor for their breast cancer because they couldn’t afford it. Over the years, all too often my patients have been symptomatic for quite some time, and when they finally do present their tumors are larger, more difficult to treat, and more likely to kill them."
Exoplanet found right next door in Alpha Centauri - "even though the new world would be far too hot to support liquid water, the astronomers who discovered it point out small planets tend to form in groups" (via HN)
The Escalator - How "Skeptics" View Global Warming vs Realists. (via Pharyngula)
Why Things Fail: From Tires to Helicopter Blades, Everything Breaks Eventually - "Ford isn’t trying to ensure the gas-pedal hinge will never break. The company knows it will break; its engineers are trying to understand when-and how and why-this will happen." (via HN)
L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists guilty of manslaughter - "Some scientists have warned that the case might set a damaging precedent, deterring experts from sharing their knowledge with the public for fear of being targeted in lawsuits" *boggle* (via HN, /., Bruce Schneier)
Micrographia: Or Some Phyſiological Deſcriptions Of Minute Bodies Made By Magnifying Glasses With Observations and Inquiries Thereupon By R. Hooke, Fellow of the Royal Society. - "We ſhall begin with a Phyſical point; of which kind the Point of a Needle is commonly reckon'd for one; and is indeed, for the moſt part, made ſo ſharp, that the naked eye cannot diſtinguiſh any parts of it [...] But if view'd with a very good Microſcope, we may find that the top of a Needle (though as to the ſenſe very ſharp) appears a broad, blunt, and very irregular end" Ignore the long preface, and scroll down to the diagrams. (via /.)
Marc Andreessen’s Productivity Trick to Feeling Marvelously Efficient - "What you do is this: every time you do something - anything - useful during the day, write it down in your Anti-Todo List on the card. [...] And then at the end of the day, … take a look at today’s card and its Anti-Todo list and marvel at all the things you actually got done that day." (via HN)
'Ugly girl': The negative messages we send to our daughters - "I’m fifteen and feel like girls my age are under a lot of pressure…I know I am smart, I know I am kind and funny…everybody around me keeps telling me I can be whatever I want to be. I know all this but I just don’t feel that way. [...] successful women are only considered a success if they are successful AND hot, and I worry constantly that I won't be." (via Butterflies and Wheels)
Ceefax service closes down after 38 years on BBC (via /.)
The Placebo Gene - "A study recently published in PLOS one purports to have found a gene variant that correlates strongly with a placebo response in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)."
The little ssh that (sometimes) couldn't - "This is a technical article chronicling one of the most interesting bug hunts I’ve had the pleasure of chasing down." (via HN)
Crochet Dissection WIN
SlowTech - Constant Culture of Distraction - "[Multi-tasking is] one of the only things where the more you practice it, the worse you get at it." (via HN)
RIAA Failed To Disclose Expert’s Lobbying History to “Six-Strikes” Partners - "A month before the controversial “six strikes” anti-piracy plan goes live in the U.S. [...] it turns out the RIAA failed to mention to its partners that the “impartial and independent” technology expert they retained previously lobbied for the music industry group." (via HN)
On my Quiz Show (Bible Contradictions) video: #1 - "[Believers explain] that taking the words on the page to mean what they actually say is an utterly misguided way to interpret scripture"
The Truth About Dishonesty (via Bruce Schneier)
The highlights of the highlights are probably "Human-Powered Freerunning", "Are We The Baddies?", "How Much Do Cats Actually Kill", "The Lie Factory", "The Marshmallow Test, revisited", "The Escalator/How Skeptics View Global Warming", "Crochet Dissection WIN", "Slow Tech" and "The Truth About Dishonesty"