Month: December 2019

Data Brokers

Data brokers should be held accountable for the negative externalities they inflict on society. There will always be criminals online, and new regulations will never fully deter them. But governments can deter the complicit middlemen — the data brokers with little security and fewer scruples. While data brokers are often sued for damages if data is breached when it’s in the possession of those they sell to (e.g., Equifax in 2017 and Exactis in 2018), they are not held accountable for data breached by those they sell to, nor are their executives tried for fraud. What if instead they had to answer for the consequent fraud and abuse? What if authorities like the Federal Communications Commission had a strong mandate to punish data brokers for their role in leaks and breaches?

Solar shield

A shield to get within 10000km of the Sun

A NASA NIAC study is developing the technology to get within 0.5 solar radii of the sun. The goal is to scatter 99.9% of the solar radiation. A solar radius is 700K kilometers. They want to get to 0 to 10K kilometers away from the surface of the sun.

In 2018 the Parker Solar Probe launched, planning to approach the Sun to within 8.5 solar radii of its surface. This is 7x closer than any previous mission, allowing first-time particle, radiation, and magnetic field measurements of the Sun’s corona.

Internet GDP

Are we undermeasuring productivity gains from the internet?

the productivity slowdown implies a cumulative loss of $2.7t in GDP since the end of 2004; in other words, output would have been that much higher had the earlier rate of productivity growth been maintained. If unmeasured gains are to make up for that difference, that would have to be very large. For instance, consumer surplus would have to be 5x higher in IT-related sectors than elsewhere in the economy, which seems implausibly large.

and

the US productivity slowdown dates back to 1973, and that is perhaps the single biggest problem for trying to attribute this gap mainly to under-measured innovations in the tech sector

De-Aging

The Irishman Gets De-Aging Right—No Tracking Dots Necessary

he created a new type of camera rig that would allow Scorsese to shoot as he normally would while capturing all of the data the ILM team would need to make Frank Sheeran (De Niro), Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino), and Russell Bufalino (Pesci) whatever age they needed them to be

Symptom, Condition, Cause

The saying goes: all models are wrong, some models are useful. I don’t think existing psychiatric diagnosis is particularly accurate, but I think it’s the most useful thing we have right now. And I don’t think talking about how each condition is probably made up of many root causes is a particularly damaging objection to it. We should keep the likely heterogeneity in mind and pull it out when we need it, but we shouldn’t use that as an excuse to abandon the whole nosology.

Declarative web apps

I still have nearly all the questions I started this piece with. At the same time, by engaging with the paper and the topic I’m getting clearer in my own mind as to what my requirements for a future application composition system would be. To quote Grady Booch one more time: “the whole history of computer science is one of ever rising levels of abstraction.”

Meatless New World Mall

Standout dishes that are vegan, vegetarian, or pescatarian.

  • Dae Jang Guem: King Trumpet Mushroom skewers (vegan)
  • Sichuan Cuisine: Mapo Tofu (vegan)
  • Lanzhou Handmade Noodle: Vegetable Noodle Soup (vegetarian)
  • Laoma Malatang: Dry pot (vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian)
  • Eight Beautitudes: Japchae with Rice (vegan)
  • The Old Captain Fish Dumplings: Egg and Chive Dumplings (Vegetarian)