Sapere Aude
Month: April 2019
The agency wanted to crack the iPhone of Syed Farook, a suspect in the 2015 San Bernardino shooting. The Apple CEO took a stand.
as with all things apple, this is mostly bs. what’s not mentioned: icloud backups aren’t encrypted, so this is all pr theatrics.
Helvetica Now is a new chapter in the story of perhaps the best-known typeface of all time. Available in 3 optical sizes-Micro, Text, and Display-every character in Helvetica Now has been redrawn and refit; with a variety of useful alternates added. It has everything we love about Helvetica and everything we need for typography today. This is not a revival. This is not a restoration. This is the typeface Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann would have designed back in 1957 if they had known about offset printing, small screens, browsers, digital design tools and UI designers.
Another aspect of social evolution of viruses that Sanjuán is investigating is why multiple viral particles sometimes gather and infect a cell together. The trade-off is that, if the viral particles assemble, there are fewer units to infect different cells. So “in principle, this is costly because it limits diffusion capability”. But his team found that the aggregated viruses grow faster and produce more progeny. This result was dependent on cell type: In tumor cells that have no innate immunity, being aggregated was costly. But in normal cells, which do mount an innate immune response, being aggregated was beneficial for the viruses because it allows the viruses to overwhelm the innate immune response
An unforgettable iPhone data recovery
In 2017, Jessa Jones, a smartphone logic board repair expert, received a particularly difficult case. Earlier that year, a brutal hate crime (NY Times) had ended the life of Srinivas Kuchibhotla. Hoping to recover as many memories as she could, his widow, Sunayana Dumala, contacted Jones’s business to determine if the data from Kuchibhotla’s ruined phone could be recovered. Jones documented the painstaking repair (YouTube; video includes close-ups of dried blood), ultimately restoring the phone and recovering all his data for Dumala.
Should We Search for Messages from Extraterrestrial Intelligences in Terrestrial Genomes? Compared to other methods of interstellar messaging, DNA-encoded messages could have the advantages of being auto- amplifying and blanketing across space and time (i.e., everywhere and persistent)
Measuring 3K m2, the new market is 3x the size as the old one, with space for 2 full service restaurants, 39 market vendors, a state-of-the-art demonstration kitchen, mezzanine level public seating, event office spaces and a sub-cellar vendor storage space. Inside the market, shoppers will find 14 new vendors and 25 vendors from the original market. Returning vendors like Saxelby Cheesemongers and Essex Farms will be joined by newcomers such as Samesa, a contemporary Middle Eastern takeaway counter; Riverdel, a vegan specialty shop that crafts their very own in-house cheeses, and Chinatown Ice Cream Factory; a family run business from Chinatown now operated by the second generation. For some new vendors coming into the market, it will be their first brick and mortar location. The unique mix of vendors will offer affordable daily provisions, prepared and specialty foods. The new space allows existing vendors to expand their current offerings with more room to stock a diverse array of goods and install food preparation equipment provided by the NYCEDC.
the notion of a “crime scene” has thus been digitally expanded, taking on a kind of data shadow, as someone simply driving down a street or sitting in a park one day with their phone out is now within the official dataprint of an investigation
‘Beyond the Aquila Rift’ kind of blew me away. That’s probably my favorite thing I’ve seen—feature or short film, period—in a while. Alastair Reynolds was the MVP of this whole thing, because ‘Zima Blue’ was great too, in a totally different way. Just really cerebral, with interesting plot twists.”
For trips of 100 kilometers, a fully loaded VTOL carrying 1 pilot and 3 passengers had lower greenhouse gas emissions than ground-based cars with an average vehicle occupancy of 1.54. Emissions tied to the VTOL were 52% lower than gasoline vehicles and 6% lower than battery-electric vehicles.
For the first time in human history, astronomers have combined the power of telescopes from across our planet to create an image that shows the event horizon of a black hole.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 