5 Intriguing Things
1. The GoPro genre.
"The genre is characterized by point of view, by brevity, and by incident. The ones that go viral contain something extraordinary, be it unimaginable risk, uncharted beauty, unlikely encounter, or unexpected twist. The categories bleed. A common critique has been that the presence of the camera prods people to take greater risks as they aspire to virality—Kodak courage, which might now be more properly called GoPro guts." (newyorker.com)
2. Meet the Cubli.
"This latest version of the Cubli can jumping up, balance, and even “walk”. This new version is self contained with respect to power and uses three slightly modified bicycle brakes instead of the metal barriers used in the previous version. We are currently developing learning algorithms that allow the Cubli to automatically learn and adjust the necessary parameters if a jump fails due to the deterioration of the brakes and changes in inertia, weight, or slope of the surface." (robohub.org)
"The other building, at 25 Massachusetts Avenue in Washington DC, gets less attention. Since July, it has been home to Google’s expanding political lobbying activities: a staff of 110 now works there under Susan Molinari, a former Republican congresswoman for New York. Ten years ago – the year it went public – Google spent a mere $180,000 on lobbying; as of this August, according to the Wall Street Journal, it had spent $9.3m in 2014 alone, making it the second-biggest spender among private companies, ahead of defence contractors such as Lockheed Martin and outdone only by Dow Chemical. Facebook and Microsoft both spent significantly less." (theguardian.com)
4. Their mission: to rescue a space station.
"It’s getting dark, and Vladimir Dzhanibekov is cold. He has a flashlight, but no gloves. Gloves make it difficult to work, and he needs to work quickly. His hands are freezing, but it doesn’t matter. His crew’s water supplies are limited, and if they don’t fix the station in time to thaw out its water supply, they’ll have to abandon it and go home, but the station is too important to let that happen. Quickly, the sun sets. Working with the flashlight by himself is cumbersome, so Dzhanibekov returns to the ship that brought them to the station to warm up and wait for the station to complete its pass around the night side of the Earth." (arstechnica.com)
5. If we are living in a simulation, does that mean something for ethics?
"Very little thinking has been published about simulism’s ethical implications. Consideration is in order, and may be very practical in a few decades if we want to start simulating conscious things without worrying that we might be evil gods." (basecase.org)
Today's 1957 American English Language Tip
Oh no! I'm traveling and I forgot my dictionary. Tips will return soon.
Inertia, Weight, or Slope