Stumbled_across on Patrick Stevens

Stumbled across 14th September 2013

Fri, 13 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

On the merits of silence (I wholeheartedly agree): http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/opinion/sunday/im-thinking-please-be-quiet.html
Given the previous results on humans’ sense of physical location, I’m not particularly surprised that you can make yourself identify your body as being somewhere other than where it really is: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/visualized-heartbeat-can-trigger-out-of-body-experience.html
Aaand the future arrives: http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/08/27/researcher-controls-colleagues-motions-in-1st-human-brain-to-brain-interface
Another reason why Finland is amazing: http://web.archive.org/web/20150302131427/http://neomam.com/blog/there-is-no-homework-in-finland
A thought-provoking story: WebCite version
On the “mundane magics” kind of lines: http://i.imgur.com/hINj1xf.png
Not sure what to make of this - I actually can’t remember who narrated Paddington in the audio-books of my youth: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24077834

Stumbled across 24th August 2013

Sat, 24 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The much-vaunted Hyperloop looks really cool, if it could ever be built: https://arstechnica.com/business/2013/08/hyperloop-a-theoretical-760-mph-transit-system-made-of-sun-air-and-magnets/
But it may be a bit too half-baked: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2013/08/13/loopy-ideas-are-fine-if-youre-an-entrepreneur/
I love a good visualisation: http://nickolaylamm.com/art-for-clients/what-if-you-could-see-wifi/
I laughed pretty much constantly through this piece of bureaucracy-hacking: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2013/08/the_kindly_brontosaurus_the_amazing_prehistoric_posture_that_will_get_you.html
This is a problem with the Internet of Things as well as with mind-computer interfaces: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/134682-hackers-backdoor-the-human-brain-successfully-extract-sensitive-data
Wow - it’s possible to represent words as vectors so that vector(‘Paris’) - vector(‘France’) + vector(‘Italy’) results in a vector that is very close to vector(‘Rome’): https://code.google.com/p/word2vec/
Let there be food: http://web.archive.org/web/20150219023941/http://thisiswhyyourefat.kinja.com/cadbury-creme-eggs-benedict-230182670
One of the manifold reasons why the USA’s TSA should be scrapped: https://varnull.adityamukerjee.net/2013/08/22/dont-fly-during-ramadan
An excellent witty dialogue between some experts in their respective fields: http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2013/08/21/five-math-experts-split-the-check/
How to disagree correctly: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

Stumbled across 11th August 2013

Sun, 11 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

A thousand times this (EDIT 2022: the link is dead and I have no idea what I was referring to).
A possible fix for the “economic problem of democracy”: https://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/futarchy.html
A fascinating look at privacy online, how we’re not built for privacy, and how tribal cultures attain privacy: https://aeon.co/essays/facebook-s-privacy-settings-aren-t-the-problem-ours-are/
I’m all for healthy competition and so forth, but do we really want such massive phones? https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/08/the-smallest-new-android-phone-you-can-buy-isnt-small-at-all/
This is the kind of thing that I never quite have the courage or the morals to do: http://web.archive.org/web/20130809202515/http://www.minyanville.com/business-news/editors-pick/articles/A-Russian-Bank-Is-Sued-for/8/7/2013/id/51205
This is an excellent summary for why I’m trying to find a good Gmail replacement: https://ar.al/notes/schnail-mail-free-real-mail-for-life/
A guide for dealing with introverts (not that many of my friends need it - perhaps that’s why they’re my friends): http://laughingsquid.com/how-to-live-with-introverts/
I didn’t know this was such a wide-spread problem: http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/
I agree with this article on the state of maths teaching entirely - I had some excellent teachers, but I could see from the textbooks how it was designed to be taught: http://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/mnewman/LockhartsLament.pdf
How is it that Scandinavia manages to be so nice all the time?! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23655675

Stumbled across 4th August 2013

Sun, 04 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

An ad developer has misgivings: http://seriouspony.com/blog/2013/7/24/your-app-makes-me-fat
Hint for dealing with some automated phone helplines - swear at them and they’ll put you through to a human: https://www.vice.com/en/article/z444dx/if-you-swear-at-apple-s-automated-customer-service-they-ll-put-you-through-to-a-human
The future is coming: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/162678-harvard-creates-brain-to-brain-interface-allows-humans-to-control-other-animals-with-thoughts-alone
A large collection of replacements for various PRISM-vulnerable services: https://prism-break.org/
Some people think in a really rather interesting way: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/smart_water.html
The joys of a memoryless distribution: http://io9.com/the-quantum-zeno-effect-actually-does-stop-the-world-977909459
An impressive photograph: largest photo cached
A fair chunk of the “1910’s predicted Year 2000 technologies” has been invented: http://www.sadanduseless.com/2011/03/world-in-2000/
A sweet video about Street View: http://vimeo.com/32397612
How to enable encryption in your emails using GPG: http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/06/encrypted-e-mail-how-much-annoyance-will-you-tolerate-to-keep-the-nsa-away/

Stumbled across 29th July 2013

Mon, 29 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Hehe: http://www.pixartheory.com/
Wow - light trapped for a full minute: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23925-light-completely-stopped-for-a-recordbreaking-minute.html
The importance of a consistent utility function: http://lesswrong.com/lw/my/the_allais_paradox/
Obama promised to be friendly to whistleblowers, and has quietly removed said promise: http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/07/25/obama-promises-disappear-from-web/
I wholeheartedly agree with this site: https://abandonmatlab.wordpress.com/
Good post on belief-in-belief: http://web.archive.org/web/20120629012114/http://stairs.umd.edu/236/meta-atheism.html
Huh. A strange system, the US medical system: http://stallman.org/articles/asked_to_lie.html
Very much this - about how the media has lost the plot about PRISMgate: http://m.guardiannews.com/technology/2013/jul/28/edward-snowden-death-of-internet
Aaand my faith in humanity is once again shattered: http://i.imgur.com/mdfvFA6.jpg

Stumbled across 24th July 2013

Wed, 24 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This is something I will try at some point, probably when I get back to uni: http://www.bulletproofexec.com/how-to-make-your-coffee-bulletproof-and-your-morning-too/
This was fun: http://www.sporcle.com/games/Government_Agent/true-or-false-logic-quiz
Hah - stupid copyright owners: https://torrentfreak.com/hbo-wants-google-to-censor-hbo-com-130203/
The government’s got around to allowing the testing of driverless cars: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/uk-govt-approves-autonomous-cars-on-public-roads-before-years-end/
An insightful comic about getting to sleep: https://abstrusegoose.com/523
Roll on the cheap and easy satellites: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/across-the-universe/2013/jul/17/sabre-rocket-engine-reaction-skylon
A bunch of interesting sciency things, including a new application of zapping current through the brain: https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/07/weird-science-always-runs-current-through-its-brain-before-speed-dating/
At last! http://coderinaworldofcode.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/50-shades-of-grey-made-illegal-in-uk.html
I didn’t see this at the time - consider my faith in humanity restored: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13598607
Excellent essay on why it’s hard to prohibit same-sex marriage: cached

Stumbled across 13th July 2013

Sat, 13 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This is really quite heartwarming: http://www.reddit.com/r/Random_Acts_Of_Pizza/
Interesting article on current trends in fiction: http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2013/01/david-brin-our-favorite-cliche-a-world-filled-with-idiots-orwhy-films-and-novels-routinely-depict-society-and-its-citizens-as-fools/
A ridiculous reason for a rocket to explode: https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/07/parts-installed-upside-down-caused-last-weeks-russian-rocket-to-explode/
A very information-dense way of storing data long-term: https://phys.org/news/2013-07-5d-optical-memory-glass-evidence.html (compare http://rosettaproject.org/disk/technology/ which is much less information-dense but much more easily decoded in the event of being discovered after the collapse of civilisation)
A cool thing to do with a Raspberry Pi and a microwave: http://madebynathan.com/2013/07/10/raspberry-pi-powered-microwave/
I really want one of these - I think I might order one: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cloud-guys/plug-the-brain-of-your-devices (also, the word “plug” is insanely wonderful when spoken in a French accent)
An interesting idea for making the world a better place: http://web.archive.org/web/20130713135924/http://simulacrum.cc/2013/07/10/three-trends-that-push-us-towards-an-unconditional-basic-income/
A look at how to infer causality or not, as the case may be, depending on the data: http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/if-correlation-doesnt-imply-causation-then-what-does/
I hope they get to producing this quickly: http://technabob.com/blog/2013/05/22/lumigrids-bike-leds/
Thank goodness for that - regular expressions are the most unreadable things ever: https://phys.org/news/2013-07-ordinary-language.html
Something else I would do if I had eternity to play with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voB6WiP83NU
Glass ceiling issues: http://whatwouldkingleonidasdo.tumblr.com/post/54989171152/how-i-discovered-gender-discrimination

Stumbled across 9th July 2013

Tue, 09 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Being bored over the summer holiday, I decided that I would document the cool things I ran across on the Internet. Over the last week, there have been many of these. If I see anything particularly amazing, it’ll go in one of these aggregation posts.

Neurons are surprisingly beautiful
A rather neat and very short story, Time Loop by qntm
A bit less short but just as good a short story: I don’t know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility by qntm
A rant with which students can all identify, in The Cambridge Student magazine: now lost from the Internet.
An Easter Island word “tingo” means “to borrow objects from a friend’s house one by one until there are none left”: Link to the Internet Archive
Musings on free will: Is God a Taoist?
A thing that I just have to share again: Technical hurdles have been overcome for the first human head transplant
The human brain is a really weird piece of kit: The Apologist and the Revolutionary
We have to make one of these at some point: the Creme de la Creme Egg
This is quite soothing in a weird kind of way: Things Fitting Perfectly Into Things
It is possible to be deficient in arsenic. (Link to the Soylent Discourse forum is permanently defunct.)
A really useful website for when you don’t want to have to spin up Wolfram|Alpha to work out time differences: Every Time Zone
Why never to talk to the police (seriously, never talk to the police): Don’t Talk to the Police
A fascinating book about the power of positive and negative reinforcement, and why they’re often done wrongly: Don’t Shoot the Dog
The Church of England really took its time, but at last they’ve done it: Church of England makes Chichester child abuse apology
The Hawkeye Initiative, for the liberation of women in comics: The Hawkeye Initiative