Category: Wandering.Shop

Ok, I know “self-driving data centers” are talking about automatically spinning up/down resources and doing …

Ok, I know “self-driving data centers” are talking about automatically spinning up/down resources and doing its own maintenance…

But I can’t help imagine an autonomous van packed with servers and Wi-Fi, driving itself around town like an automatic ice cream truck

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Interesting: Machine learning was used to determine who Shakespeare collaborated with on Henry VIII – …

Interesting: Machine learning was used to determine who Shakespeare collaborated with on Henry VIII – and which scenes were written by which playwright.

Analysis supports John Fletcher, long suspected to have contributed to the play, over other authors who have also been suggested.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/11/22/131857/machine-learning-has-revealed-exactly-how-much-of-a-shakespeare-play-was-written-by-someone/

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Here’s an interesting idea: using sand or gravel and mountains for long-term energy storage. When …

Here’s an interesting idea: using sand or gravel and mountains for long-term energy storage. When there’s a surplus of solar/wind/whatever-generated electricity, use the extra to lift buckets of sand up a mountain and drop them in a storage basin (similar to pumping water uphill to fill the area behind a hydroelectric dam), and when the grid is low on power, open a chute and let the sand turn a turbine.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/environment/mix-mountains-and-gravity-for-longterm-energy-storage

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I always find it interesting when a language reveals or clarifies connections between two others….

I always find it interesting when a language reveals or clarifies connections between two others.

Like, it’s not obvious at first glance that cheese and queso are related, but if you also know Käse, they’re clearly all the same word.

Similarly, I could never see the connection between John & Ivan, until I realized that if you write Juan in all-caps ancient Roman chiseled stone style, it comes out as IVAN. (I know that’s not how it happened, but it makes the connection clearer.)

#linguistics

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Catching up on Flash / epinephrine

Watched the episode where Rosso becomes Bloodwork. His moment of transformation: He realizes that the blood supply he’s using lacks epinephrine, so he needs to get it from scared people, which means he has to kill them, and he’s willing to do that to stay alive.

COME ON.

He’s a doctor. He can buy epinephrine by the gallon if he wants, cheaply. (Most of the cost of epinephrine auto-injectors is the device. And greed.)

Story done.

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My suspension of disbelief works a lot better with wild and crazy tech/magic/”science” like dark matter, super-speed, multiverse teleportation and so on than with something that they try to make “realistic” but completely miss.

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Here’s a weird one: “Ship’s captains and outside monitoring firms have reported waves of GPS …

Here’s a weird one:

“Ship’s captains and outside monitoring firms have reported waves of GPS jamming around Shanghai’s ports, on a scale and of a severity never seen before”

“The most likely culprit in the mystery is sand smugglers, who are part of a global network of sand-thieves who have literally cratered whole cities and islands in their drive to obtain sand for concrete. “

Sand thieves believed to be behind epidemic of Chinese GPS jamming

#weird #gps #sand

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Me 10 minutes ago: I have an umbrella! I can totally handle walking to lunch …

Me 10 minutes ago: I have an umbrella! I can totally handle walking to lunch in the rain!

I hadn’t considered the utter shortfall of drainage along this street. I narrowly missed getting completely drenched with muddy gutter water by a full sized truck at this spot.

#rain

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