‘No, everything stays, doesn’t it? Everything.’ –Flaubert
Before you hand over your number, ask yourself: Is it worth the risk? […]
Your phone number may have now become an even stronger identifier than your full name. I recently found this out firsthand when I asked Fyde, a mobile security firm in Palo Alto, Calif., to use my digits to demonstrate the potential risks of sharing a phone number.
He quickly plugged my cellphone number into a public records directory. Soon, he had a full dossier on me — including my name and birth date, my address, the property taxes I pay and the names of members of my family.
From there, it could have easily gotten worse. Mr. Tezisci could have used that information to try to answer security questions to break into my online accounts. Or he could have targeted my family and me with sophisticated phishing attacks.
image { Bell telephone magazine, March/April 1971 }
‘The formula of our happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, a goal.’ –Nietzsche
When faced with a personal problem people typically give better advice to others than to themselves. This has been termed ‘Solomon’s Paradox’, named after the biblical King Solomon who was wise for others, but not so when it came to making decisions that would have an impact on his own standing.
Suppose that instead of imagining a problem from the perspective of another you were actually able to have a conversation with yourself about it, but from the embodied perspective of another.
A previous study showed how it is possible to enact internal dialogue in virtual reality (VR) through participants alternately occupying two different virtual bodies – one representing themselves and the other Sigmund Freud. They could maintain a self-conversation by explaining their problem to the virtual Freud and then from the embodied perspective of Freud see and hear the explanation by their virtual doppelganger, and then give some advice. Alternating between the two bodies they could maintain a self-dialogue, as if between two different people.
Here we show that the process of alternating between their own and the Freud body is important for successful psychological outcomes. An experiment was carried out with 58 people, 29 in the body swapping Self-Conversation condition and 29 in a condition where they only spoke to a Scripted Freud character. The results showed that the Self-Conversation method results in a greater perception of change and help compared to the Scripted. We compare this method with the distancing paradigm where participants imagine resolving a problem from a first or third person perspective.
We consider the method as a possible strategy for self-counselling.
synthetic polymer and silkscreen ink on canvas { Andy Warhol, Are You “Different?” (Positive), 1985 }
Just a whisk brisk sly spry spink spank sprint of a thing theresomere, saultering
An artificial intelligence system should be recognised as the inventor of two ideas in patents filed on its behalf, a team of academics says.
The AI has designed interlocking food containers that are easy for robots to grasp and a warning light that flashes in a rhythm that is hard to ignore.
Patents offices insist innovations are attributed to humans - to avoid legal complications that would arise if corporate inventorship were recognised.
The academics say this is “outdated”.
enamel on linen { Christopher Wool, Untitled, 2007 }
Every day, the same, again
Scientists are making human-monkey hybrids in China
Scientists create contact lenses that zoom when you blink twice
Facebook gets closer to letting you type with your mind
Apple has said that it will temporarily suspend its practice of using human contractors to grade snippets of Siri voice recordings for accuracy. Contractors “regularly hear confidential medical information, drug deals, and recordings of couples having sex” as part of their job.
women’s voices are becoming deeper in some countries
Employee happiness and business success are linked, study
Living Near Trees, Not Just Green Space, Improves Wellbeing
More than 1 in 4 delivery drivers are eating orders and Delivery drivers involved in Amazon theft ring
How You Move Your Phone Can Reveal Insights Into Your Personality
Computers can’t tell if you’re happy when you smile. Emotion recognition is a $20 billion industry, but a new study says the most popular method is deeply flawed.
Emotional Expressions Reconsidered: Challenges to Inferring Emotion From Human Facial Movements
Joseph D’Alesandro, 20, made nearly $2,000 a month from phone farming back in 2017. Other phone farmers said they’ve made hundreds of dollars a month from passively running apps on their phones.
How Over 25 People Got Scammed Into Working At A Nonexistent Game Company
evidence suggests it is possible for the vast majority of Americans to eat healthily and affordably
Bernie Madoff asks Trump to reduce his prison sentence
the method for taking a shit as an Apollo astronaut was horrifyingly simple
BrandoMOtv [Thanks Tim]
‘Maybe it’s notes on a cityscape to absorb the rugged, unpredictable geography of this location where the “forgotten but not gone” reside.’ –Daphne A. Brooks
“The maximum speed required to break through the earth’s gravitational pull is seven miles a second,” says David Wojnarowicz. “Since economic conditions prevent us from gaining access to rockets or spaceships, we would have to learn to run awful fast to achieve escape from where we all are heading.”
Every day, the same, again
New study uses camera footage to track the frequency of bystander intervention in heated incidents
Never Commit a Crime When Your Phone Is Connected to a Wi-Fi Network
A Few Thoughts about Deep Fakes
Sand and gravel are being extracted faster than they can be replaced. Roughly 32 billion to 50 billion tonnes are used globally each year, mainly for making concrete, glass and electronics.
History’s Greatest Horse Racing Cheat and His Incredible Painting Trick
Why everything you know about nutrition is wrong
In 2019, blockchain has been piercing the food industry at an accelerated pace. According to recent research, 20% of the top-10 global grocers will use blockchain by 2025
An 1851 manual on making ice cream [via Austerity Kitchen]
I spent a day eating food cooked by robots in America’s tech capital [more Austerity Kitchen]
More than 400,000 people have joined a Facebook event page calling for storming Area 51
Facebook’s stock went up after news of a record-breaking $5 billion FTC fine
Google takes another run at social networking with Shoelace
To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public
In a Constantly Changing San Francisco, Change is Constant — by A.I. Algorithm [Thanks Tim]
You’re up, you’ll get down. You’re never running from this town.
We analyzed over one million posts from over 4,000 individuals on several social media platforms, using computational models based on reward reinforcement learning theory. Our results consistently show that human behavior on social media qualitatively and quantitatively conforms to the principles of reward learning.
image { Dissecting Reinforcement Learning }
Plato has Socrates describe a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them, and give names to these shadows.
In mid-1947, a United States Army Air Forces balloon crashed at a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. Following wide initial interest in the crashed “flying disc”, the US military stated that it was merely a conventional weather balloon. Interest subsequently waned until the late 1970s, when ufologists began promoting a variety of increasingly elaborate conspiracy theories, claiming that one or more alien spacecraft had crash-landed and that the extraterrestrial occupants had been recovered by the military, which then engaged in a cover-up.
In the 1990s, the US military published two reports disclosing the true nature of the crashed object: a nuclear test surveillance balloon from Project Mogul.
Every day, the same, again
The Pentagon has a laser that can identify people from a distance—by their heartbeat
People keep spotting Teslas with snoozing drivers on the freeway
An interoceptive illusion of effort induced by false heart-rate feedback
Cockroaches may soon be unstoppable—thanks to fast-evolving insecticide resistance
China Snares Tourists’ Phones in Surveillance Dragnet by Adding Secret App — Border authorities routinely install the app on the phones of people entering the Xinjiang region by land from Central Asia, gathering personal data and scanning for material considered objectionable. [NY Times | Vice]
China may soon be home to half of the world’s most powerful supercomputing systems.
China’s Social Credit System Is More Kafka Than Orwell
Gutenberg Didn’t Actually Invent the Printing Press
James Joyce and the Writing of Odor
Cincinnati Built a Subway System 100 Years Ago–But Never Used It
In 1999 Sweden banned the purchase—but not the sale—of sex. The idea of criminalising prostitutes’ clients is spreading
Deepfake revenge porn distribution now a crime in Virginia
The United States Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron “Thunderbirds” will fly over Hollywood in celebration of the upcoming film Captain Marvel during the afternoon of March 4, 2019. + U.S. Air Force’s Thunderbirds stunt team flying over Hollywood Blvd [Thanks Tim]
I was shift and shuft too, with her shester Mrs Shunders
A few months ago, I started hearing about something called Superhuman. It’s an invitation-only service that costs $30 a month and promises “the fastest email experience ever made.” Marc Andreessen, the influential venture capitalist, reportedly swore by it, as did tech bigwigs like Patrick and John Collison, the founders of Stripe. The app was rumored to have a waiting list of more than 100,000 people.
“We have the who’s who of Silicon Valley at this point,” Superhuman’s founder, Rahul Vohra, told me in an interview. The waiting list is actually 180,000 people long, he said, and some people are getting desperate. He showed me a photo of a gluten-free cake sent to Superhuman’s office by a person who was hoping to score an invitation.
“We have insane levels of virality that haven’t been seen since Dropbox or Slack,” Mr. Vohra added.
Last month, Superhuman raised a $33 million investment round, led by Mr. Andreessen’s firm, Andreessen Horowitz. That valued the company at roughly $260 million — a steep valuation for an app with fewer than 15,000 customers, but one apparently justified by the company’s trajectory and its support among fans, which borders on evangelical. […]
I spent several weeks testing it out. And it turns out that the hype is mostly justified, at least if you’re the kind of person who can spend $30 a month to get your inbox in order. […]
Some of the app’s features — such as ones that let users undo sending, track when their emails are opened and automatically pull up a contact’s LinkedIn profile — are available in other third-party email plug-ins. But there are bells and whistles that I hadn’t seen before. Like “instant intro,” which moves the sender of an introductory email to bcc, saving you from having to manually re-enter that person’s address. Or the scheduling feature, which sees that you’re typing “next Tuesday” and automatically pulls up your calendar for that day.
Sleep no more
Humans need more than seven hours of sleep each night to maintain cognitive performance. After ten days of just seven hours of sleep, the brain is as dysfunctional as it would be after going without sleep for 24 hours. […]
The best ways to train your body to fall asleep quicker is to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, even if you don’t have a good night of sleep.
photo { Thomas Prior }
In this big game that we play, life, it’s not what you hope for, it’s not what you deserve, it’s what you take
A woman who was knocked unconscious by a cyclist will be awarded compensation, despite a judge finding she had stepped into the road while looking at her phone.
Robert Hazeldean, a garden designer, who was also knocked out by the collision, will pay thousands in damages and court fees to Gemma Brushett, who works for a finance firm in the City of London and runs yoga retreats. […]
Judge Shanti Mauger, at Central London county court, said: “Cyclists must be prepared at all times for people to behave in unexpected ways.”
‘Nothing brings you peace but the triumph of principles.’ –Ralph Waldo Emerson
Suppose you live in a deeply divided society: 60% of people strongly identify with Group A, and the other 40% strongly identify with Group B. While you plainly belong to Group A, you’re convinced this division is bad: It would be much better if everyone felt like they belonged to Group AB. You seek a cohesive society, where everyone feels like they’re on the same team.
What’s the best way to bring this cohesion about? Your all-too-human impulse is to loudly preach the value of cohesion. But on reflection, this is probably counter-productive. When members of Group B hear you, they’re going to take “cohesion” as a euphemism for “abandon your identity, and submit to the dominance of Group A. ”None too enticing. And when members of Group A notice Group B’s recalcitrance, they’re probably going to think, “We offer Group B the olive branch of cohesion, and they spit in our faces. Typical.” Instead of forging As and Bs into one people, preaching cohesion tears them further apart.
What’s the alternative? Simple. Instead of preaching cohesion, reach out to Group B. Unilaterally show them respect.Unilaterally show them friendliness. They’ll be distrustful at first, but cohesion can’t be built in a day.
He that is thy friend indeed
Friendships are fragile, and most aren’t built to last forever. Circumstances change, bonds diminish. That she and I made it through the better part of a decade was a feat. In 1999 and 2000, the Dutch sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his colleagues interviewed 1,007 people between the ages of 18 and 65 about the people they regularly talked to and spent time with. When they followed up seven years later with many of the participants, only about half of the friendships were still going.
The rules governing romantic love are clearer.
enamel on steel, 987 plates { Jennifer Bartlett, Rhapsody, 1975-76 (detail) }
Our shades of minglings mengle them and help help horizons
Grow Your Own Cloud is a new service that helps you store your data nature’s way — in the DNA of plants.
We are at the forefront of the development of a new type of cloud, one that is organic, rather than silicon, and which emits oxygen rather than CO2.
{ GrowYourOwn.Cloud | Continue reading | Thanks Tim}
That the mind is united to the body we have shown from the fact, that the body is the object of the mind
The mind-body problem enjoyed a major rebranding over the last two decades and is generally known now as the “hard problem” of consciousness […] Fast forward to the present era and we can ask ourselves now: Did the hippies actually solve this problem? My colleague Jonathan Schooler of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and I think they effectively did, with the radical intuition that it’s all about vibrations … man. Over the past decade, we have developed a “resonance theory of consciousness” that suggests that resonance—another word for synchronized vibrations—is at the heart of not only human consciousness but of physical reality more generally. […]
Stephen Strogatz provides various examples from physics, biology, chemistry and neuroscience to illustrate what he calls “sync” (synchrony) […] Fireflies of certain species start flashing their little fires in sync in large gatherings of fireflies, in ways that can be difficult to explain under traditional approaches. […] The moon’s rotation is exactly synced with its orbit around the Earth such that we always see the same face. […]
The panpsychist argues that consciousness (subjectivity) did not emerge; rather, it’s always associated with matter, and vice versa (they are two sides of the same coin), but mind as associated with most of the matter in our universe is generally very simple. An electron or an atom, for example, enjoy just a tiny amount of consciousness. But as matter “complexifies,” so mind complexifies, and vice versa.
{ Scientific American | Continue reading | Thanks Tim }
