Month: August 2015

Sky Pool

that looks like it will be fun, but i’d be surprised if it actually gets built over all the usual NIMBY nonsense.

Flimmer

The Flimmer project is aimed at “developing flying UUV techniques and technologies for long-range air delivery of UUVs and investigating configurations for mixed-mode use of bio-inspired fins in both water and air environments.”

Life Laminar Endgame

Young life is a turbulent foregame, while old life is a laminar endgame. That is, when young we are in the foregame of life, where our life paths are more turbulent, and when older we transition into the endgame of life, where our life paths are more laminar.

Complex Dark Matter

Another possibility is this 80% of the universe is also complex. Maybe there’s something interesting going on in what’s called the dark sector. We know that whatever ties us to the dark matter is pretty weak or else we would have already seen it. This observation has led to the belief that all the interactions that could be going on with dark matter are weak. But there’s another possibility: When dark matter particles see themselves, there are complex and potentially very strong interactions. There even could be dark atoms and dark photons.

Paris Syndrome sufferers

Paris Syndrome sufferers have been Japanese tourists, and the cause of their symptoms, which include “acute delusions, hallucinations, dizziness, sweating, and feelings of persecution,” is thought to be linked to extreme disappointment that Paris is not always the magical, romantic wonderland it’s so often made out to be in the movies

Chimp tools

chimpanzees have been using stone tools in the rainforests of Ivory Coast for at least 4300 years. this west African chimpanzee Stone Age is completely distinct from the human Stone Age, and may have started 1M years ago. There is a deep history of stone tool use in at least 3 primates other than humans

Gorilla speech

“She doesn’t produce a pretty, periodic sound when she performs these behaviors, like we do when we speak”. This suggests that some of the evolutionary groundwork for the human ability to speak was in place at least by the time of our last common ancestor with gorillas, estimated to be around 10M years ago.

Distributed HTTP?

There are a number of reasons why various people are interested in a distributed Web protocol.

The most practical are scaling and reliability — if you don’t have 1 server for your Web traffic, you don’t have to worry about it going down in a flash crowd or when there’s a network problem nearby.

Having multiple copies of (and paths to) content is 1 way to make it more available despite attempts to censor it.

Cutting the server out of the equation is seen as an opportunity to reset the Web’s balance of power regarding cookies and other forms of tracking; if you don’t request content from its owner, but instead get it from a third party, the owner can’t track you.

As it is, HTTP is an inherently client/server protocol, in that the authority (the part of the link just after “http://“ or “https://“) tells your browser where to go to get the content. Although HTTP (with the help of related systems like DNS) allow servers to delegate that authority to others to allow them to serve the content (which is how CDNs are made), the server and their delegates still act as a single point of control, exposure and failure.

Improving all of this sounds really interesting, both as a technical person and as a user. Why is this not just a simple matter of programming?

Talking in meetings

i’ve known many of the type.

Project Sunroof

i’m really excited about this. solar is mostly held back by inefficiencies of installation and planning, not the actual cells these days. i hope this expands worldwide as fast as possible.

Project Sunroof uses information that’s in Google Maps to figure out how much sun falls on a roof and takes into account stuff like the angle of the roof, the weather, and obstructions like trees and chimneys. Then it uses those measurements to figure out how many panels you’d probably need and how much you could save on your electric bill, including solar incentives in your area