Enhanced photoreceptors

Injectable NanoParticles Let Mice See Near Infrared

these nanoparticles not only provide the potential for close integration within the human body to extend the visual spectrum, but also open new opportunities to explore a wide variety of animal vision-related behaviors. Furthermore, they exhibit considerable potential with respect to the development of bio-integrated nanodevices in civilian encryption, security, military operations, and human-machine interfaces, which require NIR light image detection that goes beyond the normal functions of mammals, including human beings. Moreover, in addition to visual ability enhancement, this nanodevice can serve as an integrated and light-controlled system in medicine, which could be useful in the repair of visual function as well as in drug delivery for ocular diseases.

Claymation Education

Human beings are strange. The unimaginative jackass Logan Paul has 18m YouTube subscribers, while the fascinating and talented Maxwell Helmberger has 105 subscribers. In my opinion, Paul should have 105 subscribers and Helmberger should have 18m. Helmberger’s claymation video about how the pincushion millipede (smaller than a grain of rice!) defends itself against ants trying it eat it has 94 views. Please watch and share with your friends. I want to encourage him to do more.

Hifi image synthesis

Ian Goodfellow’s tweets showing x years of progress on GAN image generation really bring home how fast things are improving. For example, here’s 4.5 years worth of progress on face generation:

And here we have just 2 years of progress on class-conditional image generation:


I was drawn to this paper to try and find out what’s behind the stunning rate of progress.

KC Gourmet Empanadas

Now a chef has decided to open up a small restaurant in the far reaches of Alphabet City, a surprising place outside of the Brooklyn parts that normally cater to Panamanians. Possibly to compensate for this, they do offer standard NY deli favorites like egg sandwiches for breakfast. Beyond this, the tiny place has a very large menu, proving it is not the size of the kitchen but how you use it.

It is unclear whether the operation is a family affair, but it certainly has the feel of one. The chef and proprietor of the place has what could be her granddaughters run the register and interact with customers, sending orders and instruction back to her in Spanish. She has a presence back there that makes you feel like the food will be good before it comes out.

Big Alice Barrel Room

The new outpost is significantly larger than their original taproom in Long Island City, offering lots of seating to enjoy more than 12 draft beers with a wide variety of Big Alice’s brews, plus cider for the non-beer drinkers. The space will also give Big Alice an opportunity to expand their barrel aging program without taking up the precious space they have in their current Queens location.

Status as a Service

The gradient of your network’s social capital ROI can often govern your market share among different demographics. Young girls flocked to Musical.ly in its early days because they were uniquely good at the lip synch dance routine videos that were its bread and butter. In this age of never ending notifications, heavy social media users are hyper aware of differing status ROI among the apps they use.

On the dumb things people do to maintain “status”

Where to Eat in Flushing

The Chinatown you now see is buttressed by Korean and Indian communities, and now constitutes one of the city’s most active commercial centers, linked to the rest of the city by the Long Island Railroad and the 7 subway line. The streets are bustling with shoppers seeking out dumpling shops, bakeries, sprawling fish and vegetable stands, beauty shops, apothecaries, and restaurants. And walking down Main Street from the terminus of the 7 train is as close to being in Beijing or Taipei as one is likely to get in New York City.

  • Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot
  • DaXi
  • Szechwan Absolute
  • Asian Jewels
  • Miss Li Henan Cuisine

Data Is Not the New Oil

data isn’t the new oil, in almost any metaphorical sense, and it’s supremely unhelpful to perpetuate the analogy. Oil is literally a liquid, fungible, and transportable commodity. The global market is designed to take a barrel of oil from the Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia and, as frictionlessly as possible, turn it into a heated apartment in Boston or a moving commuter bus in New York. With data, by contrast, the abstract bits are functionally static. The distinction between the service that provides user value and the previously cited bounty hunters who buy trafficked location data becomes clear when considering the 2 biggest triumphs of privacy legislation: the European Union’s GDPR and California’s Consumer Privacy Act. Both require data handlers to gain user consent and place various administrative hurdles around the third-party use of data. A well-known app, publisher, or online store like Facebook, The New York Times, or Amazon can easily collect consent. Who doesn’t just click Accept on all the popups to get to the story or product you want? But what if some random company like LocationSmart (implicated in the bounty hunter data leak) needs to find you and collect consent? Best of luck with that.

NY Budget Dir on Amazon

Make no mistake, at the end of the day we lost $27 billion, 25K-40K jobs and a blow to our reputation of being ‘open for business.’ The union that opposed the project gained nothing and cost other union members 11K good, high-paying jobs. The local politicians that catered to the hyper-political opposition hurt their own government colleagues and the economic interest of every constituent in their district. The true local residents who actually supported the project and its benefits for their community are badly hurt. Nothing was gained and much was lost. This should never happen again.