Sapere Aude
Month: August 2014
This is amazing. So so awkward for the AGs from Indiana & Wisconsin. Posner is one of the most influential judges in the US. I always enjoy a good smackdown of dumb people. Especially dumb people in positions of power.
While lawyers for Wisconsin and Indiana attempted to defend their state’s marriage bans, Posner issued a series of withering bench slaps that unmasked anti-gay arguments as the silly nonsense that they are.
Demodex mites are a group of hair follicle and sebaceous gland-dwelling species. The species of these mites found on humans are arguably the animals with which we have the most intimate interactions. 100% of people over 18 years of age appear to host at least 1 Demodex species, suggesting that Demodex mites may be universal associates of adult humans.
this is very true, and i wonder if there is a longer term equilibrium. it has become nearly impossible to plan an event where you have expenditures without asking for money down from people, or you’ll end up holding the bag.
the experiment probes the limits of the universe’s ability to store information. If there is a set number of bits that tell you where something is, it eventually becomes impossible to find more specific information about the location—even in principle
the article didn’t mention the Bekenstein bound which i thought this was about.
i like most of these.
Rule #1: Small Changes can have a Big Impact to Key Metrics
Rule #2: Changes Rarely have a Big Positive Impact to Key Metrics
Rule #3: Your Mileage WILL Vary
Rule #4: Speed Matters a LOT
Rule #5: Reducing Abandonment is Hard, Shifting Clicks is Easy
Rule #6: Avoid Complex Designs: Iterate
Rule #7: Have Enough Users
When IKEA started to look at creating more than product images in 3D a few years ago, they already had a set look and feel for IKEA pictures. They wanted to keep the sense of reality and the feel of a “lived in” environment when moving over to digital workflow. They didn’t want their customers to see or even more importantly feel any difference. “We understand how important the knowledge of home furnishing is. How homes look, how homes feel, and so on. The experienced photographers at IKEA have been working with the interior designers on re-creating this feel for 15-20 years, some of them. We needed to translate that knowledge over to the 3D artists who were tech-savvy but in some cases coming directly from school. We needed them to understand the kind of feel we wanted the images to convey. It was very hard at the beginning.”
how the ikea catalog became mostly rendered, rather than photographed.
given enough DNA manipulation, you can get yeast to do nearly anything. rob carlson has pointed out the connection from homebrewing to diy biotech for years.
anyone with access to the yeast strain and basic skills in fermentation would be able to grow morphine-producing yeast using a home-brew kit. Because yeast is easy to conceal, grow and transport, criminal syndicates and law-enforcement agencies would have difficulty controlling the distribution of an opiate-producing yeast strain
the craft medicine marketing exists already
Pfizer Releases Vintage Cask-Aged Robitussin. The new up-market blend has a sophisticated flavor profile of cherry, codeine, pseudoephedrine, and hints of citrus.
I hope Microsoft doesn’t get cold feet, and indeed moves to monthly updates. Obsolete OS versions are holding things back across the industry, and the evergreen strategy has been extremely successful for browsers.
Microsoft will make monthly updates a mandatory part of participation in the upcoming Threshold technical preview. It’s expected to show users some of what’s new in the desktop experience and be limited to running on Intel-based PCs/devices.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 