Archiving my Twitter, Facebook and other social network activity
Slashdot: Autonomous Car Ethics: If a Crash Is Unavoidable, What Does It Hit?
Wired: The Robot Car of Tomorrow Might Just Be Programmed to Hit You
Thought-provoking article on pre-programming ethical choices. and oddly enough, interesting discussion on Slashdot.
Matt Smith Cast In Major Role In New Terminator Trilogy
A former Doctor is joining the cast of another time travel epic, but buried in the article is an announcement I’d missed: Emilia Clarke’s role in the Terminator remake. BOTH CERSEI AND DAENERYS are Sarah Connor. (Hey, you’ve never seen the two of them in the same place, have you?)
Time travel can really confuse things!
applinks.org [archived]
This looks like an interesting approach to solve the problem of linking to things on mobile apps. I’m going to have to read up…
The next time someone tries to scare you away from something because it has chemicals in it, remember: EVERYTHING is made up of chemicals, including you and every natural substance in existence. And just because something can be used for one purpose (ex: cleaning) doesn't make it unsuitable for others (ex: keeping your cells from dissolving).
Advice on dealing with email without letting it take over. I do some of these already: I use filters to pre-classify a lot, and I’ve pared down notifications to only the most critical. But it’s still a struggle to keep on top of it sometimes. Some of the other suggestions look like they’ll be helpful.
Does your inbox constantly beg for attention? Do you suffer from always-on inbox anxiety? Email can easily take over your life—especially if you’re running a business. If that’s happening, it’s…
Lunar #eclipse mosaic, starting around 11:00 and finishing around midnight Pacific time, just as totality set in. #moon #stargazing #notaphone
Four views of the moon over the course of tonight’s lunar eclipse, starting around 11pm and running until about midnight. I actually got some shots at the second stage without the phone line in the way, but I liked the way this looked.
Snopes: Is Volkswagen’s 300 MPG Car Banned in the U.S.?
Is the federal government preventing Volkswagen’s XL1 model car from being sold in the U.S. because the vehicle is too fuel-efficient?
“And if one buys into the conspiracy theory that the government and Big Oil are colluding to keep high-mileage vehicles off the U.S. market in order to protect profits from gasoline says, one has to wonder why those powerful and malevolent entities aren’t doing anything to stop sales of cars produced by Tesla…”
(For the record, while Tesla has faced opposition, it’s not from the oil industry over their fuel source, but from car dealerships over their sales practices.)
A nice non-technical explanation of how the Heartbleed security flaw works. XKCD: Heartbleed Explanation
Automattic Acquires Longreads, Invests in Digital Longform Publishing
Interesting counterpoint to the skimming-is-killing-our-ability-to-read-long-stuff article of a few days ago.
I walked back into my office and was surprised to see sunlight glaring off of my monitor…coming from the *northwest* — wait, what? I looked out and there's a car on top of the parking structure across the way that's at exactly the right spot to reflect the sun into my office window. At least it'll only be a few minutes.
As a Matter of Law, the Opera is Haunted
Legal analysis of The Phantom of the Opera — specifically, did the old owners of the opera house have a duty to disclose the presence of the Phantom to the new buyers?
Interesting: What if a different rift system had separated Africa and South America, leaving what is now the western Sahara attached to Brazil instead?
Katie: “Lightsaber baseball is not an inside sport.”
Android Wear Prototype: Quick Sharing to Pocket
Interesting idea: sending feedback from a smartwatch notification back into your other devices/accounts, in this case taking an alert linking to an article, and saving that article to read later on a more suitable device.
The desktop/laptop PC isn’t dying so much as the market is saturated and the upgrade cycle has slowed, while smart phones and tablets continue to demand regular replacements. Plus of course the lines are blurring.
Are PCs Dying? Of Course Not, Here’s Why
Reports of the PC’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. We’ve all heard that everyone’s just buying tablets and throwing out their keyboards and mice. But if you live in the real world, you see…
The audacious rescue plan that might have saved space shuttle Columbia
I was reading this last night. Obviously it was developed in hindsight, but it’s fascinating to see everything they would have had to do, and everything that would have had to go *exactly* right to reach Columbia before the crew succumbed to CO2 poisoning after a month in a craft that had been prepped for a mission less than half that time. Error margins are slim to nonexistent, and the time crunch would have put the rescue crew at risk as well. (via Slashdot)
As a lifelong Californian, these “my weather is better than yours” sharepics going around bug me. Not because it’s thumbing your nose, that’s just normal regional rivalry — but because we’re getting that “better weather” at the expense of the rain we normally get in winter, rain that we desperately need if we’re going to do things like grow food, fight seasonal wildfires, and, oh, I don’t know, drink. It’s like bragging about how warm you are while surrounded by fire.
The Great Lakes are freezing over to an extent not seen since 1994. Ironically, other parts of the world are dealing with record heat, and worldwide the January of the Wandering Polar Vortex is the fourth-warmest on record.
Can We Avoid a Surveillance State Dystopia?
Distributed technology vs. state abuses of such. Cameras are everywhere — including in the hands of witnesses. Photos can be manipulated — by anyone, and the masses can spot and report a fake quickly. States or corporations can amass huge amounts of data — but a single whistleblower can smuggle out evidence of it in his pocket. (via Slashdot)
A Brief Meandering About the Polar Vortex (Bad Astronomy)
The polar vortex is a normal weather feature that usually circles within the arctic area. This year it dipped southward over North America, bringing extreme cold and snow to most of the continent…while Alaska experienced much milder temperatures than normal, California continued its drought, and the southern hemisphere experienced record summer heat.
