Nowhere are the second-order consequences of cratering oil prices more varied, important, and unpredictable than in the Middle East. “ISIS is not as flush as it once was. It has cut spending on fuel and bread subsidies, while increasingly shaking down locals for cash. Fighters themselves may be feeling the squeeze, too.” The militant group’s revenue from selling oil had dropped to $300k per day, down from $2m a day in 2014. “I don’t think [the oil-revenue decline] will lead to [the Islamic State’s] collapse. … But it might accelerate their implosion”. Iran, meanwhile, has entered into negotiations with world powers over its nuclear program for a variety of reasons. But the fact that Iran is one of the world’s hardest-hit oil producers is surely one of them.
Month: March 2015
Microbial genome engineering
this looks like a very interesting talk:
Dr. Wang will discuss advances in microbial genome engineering that enable rapid reprogramming of bacteria in the gut and the skin. This enables novel probiotics to fight diseases and future augmentation of human physiological function
Buzzfeed isn’t new
- 7 types of drunkard: The Anatomy of Drunkenness (1834)
- 18 accounts of taking Laughing Gas in 1799: Researches, chemical and philosophical chiefly concerning nitrous oxide, or diphlogisticated nitrous air, and its respiration (1800)
- 162 recorded sightings of sea serpents from 1522 – 1890: The Great Sea-serpent: An historical and critical treatise (1892)
No Little Ice Age
Our results suggest that the existing consensus over a Little Ice Age in Europe is a statistical artifact, where the standard climatological practice of smoothing what turn out to be random data prior to analysis gives the spurious appearance of irregular oscillations. This is an example of the ‘Slutsky effect’ where filtering of purely random variations can produce spurious cycles
Waiting for the Subway
the difference between your boring town and nyc
Fedex war stories
You mean the time FedEx towed one of its airplanes to the other side of a hanger to keep it out of sight of a sheriff with a lock and a chain sent to lock down the airplane as collateral for unpaid fuel bills?
You mean when some angry union people showed up objecting to FedEx pilots handling packages?
You mean the time 2 barrels of liquids in the shop got confused and maybe some bad stuff got pumped by mistake into the hydraulic systems of some unknown number of airplanes?
Supply Chain Robotics
The on-going substantial improvements in the dexterity of the robots, the capabilities of the “tools” that are used to “grab” each case or item, and most importantly the great gains in the robotic control systems have solved nearly every operational problem
NTP reimplementation
Interesting account on the reimplementation of NTP (network time protocol, what is responsible for accurate time on all your devices)
2022-11-12: And now it’s time for PTP
Where NTP allows for precision within milliseconds, PTP allows for precision within nanoseconds. PTP has the potential to enable synchronization of GPUs across data centers, which could open up unprecedented scale in AI capabilities that is difficult to achieve today. This level of accuracy will help ensure synchronization of not only the computers on our networks today but also the advanced systems that will be on our networks in the future.
Artisanal Junk Food
this is perfect.
Bros swiping bros
excellent trolling
a California-based programmer has tweaked the app’s API, creating a catfish machine that fools men into thinking they’re talking to women — when in fact they’re talking with each other.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 