Steve Says

Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for March 11, 2020

A robot inspired by baby deer that can teach itself to walk; Brave Browser partners with TAP Network to connect BAT tokens directly to retailers; A fireside chat including the controversial and eccentric Craig Wright and economist George Gilder; Master's thesis finds that rocks from Earth and Moon are less similar than previously believed; and a Steem essay discussing the theoretical possibility of "bubbles of nothing" that could destroy the universe

Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for March 10, 2020

Automatic pricing algorithms could reduce competition and raise consumer prices; Robot swarm achieves goals without central orchestration; Lettuce grows on the International Space Station (ISS); Google releases open source TensorFlow Quantum to streamline quantum machine learning; and a @steemhunt post that draws attention to a children's exotrainer for repairing muscular atrophy

Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for March 9, 2020

Study finds that low-carb diets may prevent and reverse age-related cognitive decline; IEEE Spectrum's weekly selection of awesome robot videos from March 6.; a Steem essay describing the current state of knowledge on the novel coronavirus (COVID-19); A podcast argues that bitcoin mining might be returning to the US, and that it might represent a new business model for power plants; and a TED talk describing research into how specific neural pathways in the brain impact behavior

Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for March 7, 2020

Harvard Working Paper suggests that occupational licensing reduces competition and fails to improve consumer satisfaction; More on the health-care robot that automates needle insertion for blood draws and fluid delivery; Glassware in Japan dates to Persian dynasty between years 226 and 551; Study in Finland finds that pet dogs are surprisingly anxious and stressed; and a Steem photo-essay with original nature-photography from Bangladesh

Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for March 6, 2020

A TED talk by a security researcher gives a rundown on "stalkerware"; A Youtube video addresses Peto's Paradox - the surprising observation that larger animals are less likely to get cancer; Microsoft announces a free tier of its Cosmos DB NoSQL database; Twitter is testing fleets, transient tweets that expire after 24 hours; Brave Browser announces a state of the art privacy enhancement; and a Steem essay discusses the nature, causes, and treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder

Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for March 5, 2020

Partnership between Boston Dynamics and Otto Motors makes warehouse automation safer; A paper claiming a link between the Sun and global warming was retracted. The authors dispute the action.; Computers suggest that between 1700 and 1910, Beethoven was the most influential piano composer and Rachmaninoff was the most innovative; A new AI chip makes image recognition much faster; and a Steem author reviews the Brave Browser

Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for March 4, 2020

Honeywell claims quantum breakthrough that's twice as powerful as IBM and Google offerings; A satirical browser extension responds to the coronavirus by adding medical masks to images that contain faces; British historians find a secret door in Parliament's House of Commons; Twitter gives blue check mark to fake politician invented by high school student; and a Steem essay discusses incision and drainage as a treatment for subcutaneous abscess

Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for March 3, 2020

Dogs' noses can sense the ambient warmth of their prey from a meter and a half away; "Fake news" didn't have much impact on the 2016 election; An attempt at estimating numbers of unreported cases of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19); Xerox offers $24 per share to buy HP. HP says no thank you.; and a Steem "citizen science" photo-essay with bird photography and siting counts

Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for March 2, 2020

American consumers get gun-shy after data breaches; The Brave browser adds feature to do Wayback Machine look-ups for missing web pages; Ex-Googler, Eric Schmidt, argues for massive investment in emerging technologies and intellectual capital; Another safety and feasibility trial finds that CRISPR gene editing is safe for cancer therapies; and a Steem post with photos of the ATLAS comet (Comet C/2019 Y4)

Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for March 1, 2020

IEEE Spectrum's weekly selection of awesome robot videos; A report on browser privacy finds that Brave leads the pack, Microsoft Edge and Yandex trail; Theorists still don't totally understand how planes fly; A new study sees brain waves as a form of "what if" testing; and a Steem essay with embedded video describing a first-hand observation of baboons in the wild

Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for February 29, 2020

Artificial intelligence predicts heart attacks, strokes, and even deaths better than doctors with traditional techniques; Unisys CEO predicts a year of transition, and also a possible return of acquisition activities; Freeman Dyson was almost certainly my favorite science & technology writer. He died on Friday (Feb 28); Texas wind-power is driving a Bitcoin mining expansion in the state; and a Steem essay describing new research into leptoquarks at the Large Hadron Collider

Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for February 28, 2020

Smithsonian Institute puts 2.8 images into the public domain; Coinbase Child pays for parent (CPFP) technique supports zero-fee BTC transactions in its custody product; The US Department of Defense has adopted principles for ethical adoption of artificial intelligence; A summary of a recent Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) conference on ethical artificial intelligence; and a Steem post that describes a biodegradable coffee cup that can be used to plant trees

Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for February 27, 2020

Harvard researchers find that free open source software (FOSS) comes with a cost; Small levels of daily alcohol consumption may increase longevity, but binge drinking may reduce it; A recently declassified report reveals that the NSA phone meta-data monitoring program is expensive and unproductive; An argument that researchers need to study deceptive practices that emerge naturally in artificial intelligence (AI) systems; and a Steem essay describing a recent search for dark matter in the Earth's core.

Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for February 26, 2020

Researchers suggest that Moore's Law has ended and suggest a path forward; Vote-buying goes mainstream on the EOS blockchain; Tim Draper eschews stocks in favor of Bitcoin and predicts BTC $250,000 by 2022; The first known animal that doesn't breathe has been discovered; and a Steem essay talks about the use of robotics in the oil industry

Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for February 25, 2020

Better information doesn't always lead to better decisions; A new robot passed its first trial at taking blood samples from human patients; Archaeologists discovered a sophisticated Soviet Spy radio when digging for a Roman villa; University of North Carolina survey finds surprisingly broad support for free speech, but also disparities between political conservatives and liberals; and a Steem essay reporting on the Sunday Night Soft Fork

Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for February 24, 2020

Global greening confirms and mitigates climate change; Artificial intelligence discovers powerful antibiotic that even kills drug-resistant bacteria; An AI system rewrites text in a way that confuses other AI systems; A TEDed video on the nature and meaning of Viking runes; and a Steem essay announcing a new community for coronavirus discussions

Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for February 23, 2020

IEEE Spectrum's weekly selection of awesome robot videos; Bruce Schneier joins the effort to bring the Solid data-ownership protocol to the main-stream; Snap chat set to offer in-app mental health tools; A Youtube video about the possibility that photosynthesis uses a quantum-mechanical search technique; and a Steem essay on the topic of myotoxins or mold toxins

Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for February 22, 2020

Garry Kasparov looks at the growth of artificial intelligence after his 1997 chess loss to IBM's Deep Blue; A TED talk argues that people should own their digital data; Sweden is testing a government-backed digital currency, the e-korona; Solving the so-called Molyneux's Problem, bumblebees can transfer recognition of a shape from touch to sight; and a Steem essay discusses alkanes, petroleum octane, engine knocking and pollution

First trial successful for high-precision robot-assisted surgery; A kit has been released for an open source rotary cell phone; Sia launches Skynet, a blockchain based peer to peer web hosting service; A PBS Space Time video discussing the relationship between quantum mechanics and consciousness; and a Steem essay discusses the use of virtual reality in medicine.

Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for February 20, 2020

A paper that claimed link between heart-attacks and vaping has been retracted; IOTA found the bug that led to their recent hack, and patched the wallet, but their network remains offline; Tech Mahindra and the Indian state of Telengana have launched blockchain accelerator with plains for creating the blockchain capital of the world, centered in Hyderabad; An argument for a grand program to put the US back ahead of China in STEM capabilities; and a Steem essay discussing research that found a link between seismic activity and movement of the Earth's poles