the more you attempt to focus, the better you get at focusing on command, and so a real change begins taking place – you slowly become able to think differently, to hold thoughts differently and to dismiss thoughts that before led to attention difficulties or unwanted thoughts and clutter – and that’s not magical or the result of shaking hands with a deity. It’s biological. In the interview, Michael explains the benefits of the secular, scientific practice of modern mindfulness meditation
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180m Tsunami
Geologists have discovered evidence of an ancient 180m mega-tsunami.
Rickshaw Ride-Hailing
When you can’t take a bus to get where you need to go, a rickshaw is the next best option. In Lahore, rickshaws run for 200 rupees, compared to 500 rupees for taxis. “That is why rickshaws are the go-to transport for the people of Lahore and all of Pakistan, except Islamabad, where there are only taxis”. But the city of Lahore caps rickshaw registrations at 100k, and the vehicles are restricted from many residential areas. “Almost all of the drivers complained that each district should provide them their local rickshaw stands where they can park their rickshaw and wait for the rides, instead of being told to hide behind market areas or outside of residential societies”. A typical driver wastes half his day just waiting for fares to come to him. Travly cuts out the idle time, and in the future, Khan hopes to streamline the process even further with special vehicle tags that would allow rickshaws to pass through security in residential areas.
cia@aol.com
cia director uses aol for work, gets hacked. being a digital illiterate has consequences.
WikiLeaks is releasing documents from one of CIA chief John Brennan’s non-government email accounts. Brennan used the account occasionally for several intelligence related projects.
War on Mass Incarceration
An impressive group of police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors, district attorneys, and attorneys general from across the US came together to announce a joint crackdown effort on mass incarceration. You might be thinking, “Wait, but aren’t they the ones who lock people up?”
this is some seriously good news. now let’s end the war on drugs too. of course, lost cases like st. louis aren’t in the list.
Sequencing >> Genotyping
you can now get your whole genome for $745 with 10x sampling, or $1850 for 30x sampling: With >30x you’re catching almost all the variants in your genome, and so can pick up things like mutations novel to you.
Baby compliments
Helps you with harmless things to say as you’re introduced to new offspring.
(S)he looks like the Gerber baby! (S)he looks just like you! (S)he is such a happy baby. That’s a baby!
BoringSSL
We recently switched Google’s 2b line repository over to BoringSSL, our fork of OpenSSL. This means that BoringSSL is now powering Chromium (on nearly all platforms), Android M and Google’s production services. For the first time, the majority of Google’s products are sharing a single TLS stack and making changes no longer involves several days of work juggling patch files across multiple repositories. This is a big positive for Google and I’m going to document some of the changes that we’ve made in BoringSSL in this post.
Life 4.1 ga ago
life likely existed on Earth at least 4.1 ga ago — 300 ma earlier than previous research suggested. Life may have begun shortly after the planet formed 4.54 ga ago, and existed prior to the massive bombardment of the inner solar system that formed the moon’s large craters 3.9 ga ago. If all life on Earth died during this bombardment, then life must have restarted quickly
Hands-free wheelchair
Ogo is a battery powered wheelchair that has a hands-free control system. People can even mow their lawn while sitting in it. “We are currently in the preproduction set up, and are expected to be up and going soon.”
Gregor J. Rothfuss 