Link Dump 2015-07-15

2015-07-15

I apologize for this skipping the previous link post. My thesis document was due around then, and didn't have time to pull things together. But as a result: double the links this time!

• "Unlike a car, college requires the “buyer” to do most of the work to obtain its value." I wonder if a better analogy for college exists.

• Some details on Dean Potter and Graham Hunt's wingsuit death: Hunt crashed into the side of a cliff, cause of Potter's death remains unknown.

• Why isn't there a conservative Jon Stewart?

• It doesn't surprise me at all that burglars have their own set of skills, especially for spotting easily-carried-but-valuable items.

• A better understanding of "free speech".

• The game In Tune, as demoed at at E3, is about exploring physical consent. The two-player "game" requires people to get into various body positions (or not, if the players are uncomfortable), and optionally talk about the feelings they invoke. It's a neat idea; I've always been a fan of experiences masquerading as games. Reminds me of contact improv.

• In math, the einstein problem (note the lower case; it has nothing to do with that other Einstein) is to find a single tile that tessellates space aperiodically (a la the Penrose tiling). A non-connected solution exists, but the existence of a connected solution remains an open problem.

• This article was (in my opinion) taken out of context on Twitter, but I think it's a good argument that journals need to provide context for articles now everyone can access them online. How would layperson or journalist know whether an old article is still accurate? Should journals be responsible for warning them?

• This was written right before the failure of SpaceX's most recent launch failure, but it's a good reminder of why SpaceX is trying to land its rockets on a barge.

• Film crew needs to film a rock climbing scene, so they put up fake rock... in Squamish. facepalm I guess the V4 Easy in an Easy Chair just isn't easy enough for the actors.

• "There is magic in our program" is not a bad description of CTY... for the staff. I'm not sure the kids would use the exact same words.

• An ancient creature that scientists couldn't make up or down of, nor make head or tail of, until now.

• #TodayILearned you can buy Harrier jets. This guy owns three of them.

• Rachel Dolezal's race has caused a lot of debate. My first question: why is gender dysphoria a thing but not racial dysphoria? Philosophers chime in. Have I told you how much I like philosophers?

• Yes, everyone is average at most things, but I don't think that means we should be okay with being average. I think that means we should try to find the things at which we are exceptional.

• The mods of Reddit's /r/IAmA wrote an op-ed on the New York Times. The Times also ran a story on Ellen Pao's resignation. I'm surprised how much the whole story blew up. It's rare for something to be more mainstream than I thought it was.

• We like it when people help others... but not when the helper also benefits, even if the result is strictly better than not helping at all. I can't tell if this is because we're worried that it leads to incentives to continue the plight the helped, or if we just prefer the pure-heartedness of people helping others without reward.

• I find social issues around sexting fascinating. There's the question of whether sexting minors constitute child pornography, then there's the revenge porn thing. There's clearly something society is worried about, but nobody has yet articulated the general rule to my satisfaction. For example, for revenge porn, the standard copyright rules (ie. that the photography holds the rights) don't seem to apply. I'm curious if there are topics outside of sex where the rule also fails.

• A Lego prosthetic arm. Or rather, a prosthetic arm that is Lego compatible, so kids can build Lego contraptions powered by their mind. What a crazy world we live in.

• In general I agree that the "nothing to hide" argument is incorrect. I think the simplest counter argument is: from whom do you have nothing to hide, and are you sure other people will never get their hands on your data?

• Hello Pluto!

• One wonders if eventually everything will be in "ractives" (or full-blown AI), and books will become obsolete as a form of communication/information storage.

• The majority of visitors to national parks are white, with only 22% being minorities (from 37% of the national population). I've actually noticed a similar trend with climbing, with the majority of climbers being white or Asian.

• Design is not neutral. Key quote: "The Nikon camera feature, designed to warn you if someone blinked, that thinks Asian people have their eyes closed; the HP face-tracking webcam that can't see black people; the obsessive health-tracking app that can't be deleted off your iPhone, even if you have an eating disorder; or the fact that it seems to track everything except menstrual cycles, making female-bodied people invisible."