Eggs! EGGS!

April 29, 2019

Hello internet friends,

back from the unannounced easter break. Did you even notice?
I thought so.

Best news ever: The age of the Influencer has peaked. It’s time for the slacker to rise again
Time to get the flannels out.

Now this is an interesting look at what is going on at YouTube: The Most Measured Person in Tech Is Running the Most Chaotic Place on the Internet
Remember the last time we learned that the golden age of YouTube is over? Now let’s read this article again and find the fun connections.

Christ almighty: Biohackers Encoded Malware in a Strand of DNA:

it’s possible to encode malicious software into physical strands of DNA, so that when a gene sequencer analyzes it the resulting data becomes a program that corrupts gene-sequencing software and takes control of the underlying computer.

The future!

Yeah, enough for now.
Toodles

Speeeeeeeeed!

April 15, 2019

Hello internet friends,

it’s a new week already, uh? Time flies when you’re having fun.
Warning: today we’re being a bit morbid with all four subjects being either extinct, past their prime, very old or about to be replaced in the near future.

Let’s start with the extinct – scientists in the Philippines have found a new species of Homo from the Late Pleistocene of the Philippines (For those of you without a subscription to nature – here’s a link to CNN.)
Pretty fascinating to think how these hunter-gatherers somehow made their way from Africa (which still seems to be the theory behind the origins of hominins) made it to those South-East Asian islands.

Oh no! The golden age of YouTube is over – or at least that’s what The Verge claims. While a lot of it might have to be taken with a grain of salt, I do notice that a lot of the people whose videos I watch on there kind of stopped lately. Oh well, as long as the hour-long videos of randos just walking around cities are still up, I know I have stuff to watch.

Ironically enough the next link is now to a Youtube video – and what a nerdy one: A 20 Year Old DOOM Record Was Finally Broken
I mean honestly… wow. That’s a lot of dedication to something that doesn’t matter at all. Not that anything does, really.

There were many articles about the 737 lately and for good reason. This one from the New York Times has been the best so far: Boeing’s 737 Max: 1960s Design, 1990s Computing Power and Paper Manuals
If you want the gist in a quick video, here’s Vox with an explainer video.

Toodles!

Least Useful Part

April 8, 2019

Hello internet friends,

let’s talk about The Matrix first. It has been twenty years since that movie appeared in cinemas and it still holds up quite well. David Sims over at The Altantic makes a case for the idea that A Movie Like The Matrix Might Never Happen Again – mostly because Hollywood is even more risk-averse these days than it was back then.

An article in The New Yorker made quite the rounds last week – apparently a bunch of paleontologists found a dig site from The Day the Dinosaurs Died thanks to that meteor.
Of couse nothing is ever as simple and great as it sounds at first. Apparently the actual scientific study does mention the day of the meteor and that they found a lot of animal fossils but not any actual dinosaurs. Turns out – it’s not so easy to know How to interpret the dinosaur study tearing the paleontology world apart.

In other news – Patagonia Is Refusing To Sell Its Iconic Power Vests To Some Financial Firms. Luckily I don’t run into people with that look a lot, but I guess they’ll have to get their puffy vests from somewhere else now.

Gizmodo asked a bunch of experts about the least useful body part and the answers are pretty amusing. It’s not a question I’ve ever asked myself, but after reading this, I might give the old pyramidalis muscle a bit of a flex.

Meanwhile BBC Future ponders Why there’s so little left of the early internet and what is being done to make sure there’s a bit more left of the internet of today. Even though it might be a stretch to say that any of this current stuff is really worth preserving.

That’s all for now – toodles!

Meh

April 1, 2019

Hello internet friends,

no shit, Sherlock: Why You Procrastinate (It Has Nothing to Do With Self-Control)
I’m pretty sure the contents of this article are only a surprise to people who don’t procrastinate. But hey, read it anyway, maybe it helps you to not have to do something else right now?

I am in the lucky position that I have a whole bunch of very good art museums nearby. (And as with most other privileges, I just squander it by not going regularly.) And so the logistics on how certain special exhibitions with art works from all over the world happen are pretty fascinating to me: How to move a masterpiece: the secret business of shipping priceless artworks

Click. Paperclip. Click Click Click, more paperclips. Remember Universal Paperclips? Well: The Unexpected Philosophical Depths of the Clicker Game Universal Paperclips is a very neat article with a lot of background information. Including the awesome fact that someone is working on a movie script based on the game.

Last but not least: The case for being grumpy at work

Toodles!