When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job
For climate scientists, it can be hard to sleep at night.
Hasnain says:
"No one has experienced that hostility more vividly than Michael Mann, who was a young Ph.D. researcher when he helped come up with the historical data that came to be known as the hockey stick—the most incendiary display graph in human history, with its temperature and emissions lines going straight up at the end like the blade of a hockey stick. He was investigated, was denounced in Congress, got death threats, was accused of fraud, received white powder in the mail, and got thousands of e-mails with suggestions like, You should be "shot, quartered, and fed to the pigs along with your whole damn families." Conservative legal foundations pressured his university, a British journalist suggested the electric chair. In 2003, Senator James Inhofe's committee called him to testify, flanking him with two professional climate-change deniers, and in 2011 the committee threatened him with federal prosecution, along with sixteen other scientists."
Posted on 2015-07-10T11:24:58+0000
The Sixth Sense You Didn't Know You Had - The Crux
With the naked eye people can sense the polarization angle of light better than most other animals.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2015-07-10T09:05:53+0000
How technology could kill the art of lying
When every move you make is data-mined, evidence piles up fast.
Hasnain says:
"In Pennsylvania, police are prosecuting a woman who claimed she was sexually assaulted earlier this year after data from her Fitbit didn't match up with her story, according Lancaster Online. According to an arrest affidavit, data collected by the device showed the woman "was awake and walking around at the time she claimed she was sleeping," the outlet reported."
Posted on 2015-07-10T08:59:44+0000
Mapping the U.S. by Property Value Instead of Land Area
Troubling inequities are revealed when you look at the country by total property values.
May update - a tale of indie RPG development
May update - a tale of indie RPG development
Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum
The moderators of a popular section of a highly trafficked website explain their protest of the company’s latest personnel move.
Hasnain says:
"The community on the whole has also spoken quite loudly: Pay attention to the user base. Users are not simply a screaming mob. They are actually asking for reasonable support"
Posted on 2015-07-08T16:27:41+0000
The people who need very little sleep
Is it true that some people need only a few hours of sleep? Helen Thomson talks to a woman whose genes might hint at how we all could survive on less shuteye.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2015-07-08T11:48:04+0000
interfluidity » Why is finance so complex?
Lisa Pollack at FT Alphaville mulls a question: “Why are we so good at creating complexity in finance?” The answer she comes up with is the “Flynn Effect“, basically the idea that there is an uptrend in human intelligence. Finance, in this view, gets more complex over time because financiers get sma…
Hasnain says:
"The core purpose of status quo finance is to coax people into accepting risks that they would not, if fully informed, consent to bear."
Posted on 2015-07-08T06:23:18+0000
Code Specialists Oppose U.S. and British Government Access to Encrypted Communication
A new report says giving the governments “exceptional access” to encrypted communications would jeopardize confidential data and critical infrastructure.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2015-07-07T16:45:05+0000
Samsung releases world's first 2TB consumer SSDs
Samsung has begun shipping 2TB 850 PRO and 850 EVO SSDs, which the company claims are the first to break the "multi-terabyte" SSD barrier.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2015-07-07T11:39:30+0000