Archive for June, 2013

Big Apple, Bigger Google – MoneyBeat – WSJ

Thursday, June 27th, 2013

GOOG > APPL by enterprise value (if you subtract cash in bank)
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/06/25/big-apple-bigger-google/?mod=trending_now_3

My Kids Are Obsessed With Technology, and It’s All My Fault – NYTimes.com

Wednesday, June 26th, 2013

Worries about tech obsessed kids b/c work quality proportional to filtering distractions http://bit.ly/11Z7z7I via @Prof_Thea @nytimes
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/my-kids-are-obsessed-with-technology-and-its-all-my-fault.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all QT:
“Midway through my 20s I underwent a reformation. I began reading, then writing, literary fiction. It quickly became apparent that the quality of my work rose in direct proportion to my ability filter out distractions. I’ve spent the past two decades struggling to resist the endless pixelated enticements intended to capture and monetize every spare second of human attention.”
Companion to piece in Atlantic Monthly

The Thermodynamic Sinks of this World » American Scientist

Wednesday, June 26th, 2013

Thermodynamic sinks: oxides, alkaline cation + molecular anion, fluorides, dissolved salts
https://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/the-thermodynamic-sinks-of-this-world #chemistry
by Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffmann

QT:”
Let’s use some simple chemistry to get a feeling for the thermodynamic sinks of this world. …. Here is the first principle of stability, one we have already seen in the reaction forming water: Form oxides. ….The prescription is obvious: Form oxides, form solid state, ionic compounds. The elements don’t stand a chance, except for the early noble gases …. one finds that all carbonates are very stable, as are most salts containing nitrate (NO3-), sulfate (SO42-), phosphate (PO43-) and silicate ions…..
There is a pattern emerging in the nature of the more stable compounds: It’s not simply ionic bonding (Na+Cl-, Li+H-), but ionic bonding between an alkali or alkaline earth cation and a molecular anion (CO32-, SiO44-). Of course, within each molecular ion there lurks ionicity… Ions within ions!
But there are compounds more stable than oxides, and these are fluorides—for example, CaF2, fluorite, or Na3AlF3, cryolite. In these even more ionicity is provided than in oxides. ….
Also, in the temperature range where water is a liquid, a good number of salts, hardly all, dissolve in water with a negative Gibbs energy of solution….
So my tentative answer to the question posed at the beginning is not romantic. The final product (at P = 1 atmosphere and 298 kelvin) will be a messy soup of cations of the less electronegative elements (including the transition metals) with molecular anions, in water. “

How Cryptography Will Guarantee Genomic Privacy | MIT Technology Review

Tuesday, June 25th, 2013

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/425748/how-cryptography-will-guarantee-genomic-privacy/

Big Data’s Parallel Universe Brings Fears, and a Thrill – NYTimes.com

Tuesday, June 25th, 2013

Hari Seldon & psychohistory
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/05/science/big-datas-parallel-universe-brings-fears-and-a-thrill.html?smid=go-share

The Scientific 7-Minute Workout – NYTimes.com

Tuesday, June 25th, 2013

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the-scientific-7-minute-workout MT @herstoryhere The Scientific 7-Minute Workout http://bit.ly/11XePRj But how long to warmup and cooldown? #exercise

Best Urban Explorers and Place Hacking Stories – GQ March 2013

Tuesday, June 25th, 2013

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201303/urban-explorers-gq-march-2013?printable=true&mobify=0
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201303/urban-explorers-gq-march-2013?mobify=0

US diplomats spied on UN leadership | World news | The Guardian

Monday, June 24th, 2013

wikileaks :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cables-spying-un

(
The US government has other efforts to related to collecting DNA including http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/hundred.pdf
or
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/lab/codis
.)

The Obama Campaign’s Digital Masterminds Cash In – NYTimes.com

Monday, June 24th, 2013

QT:”
But there was the potentially politically explosive matter of privacy. Unlike Facebook, where users were at least giving the campaign explicit permission to collect personal data even if they had not read the fine print, television watchers were making no such agreement. To address this, the campaign and Rentrak hired a third party to “anonymize” the data so that they would only know that the information was coming from a set-top box of somebody on the persuadable list; identifying information would be stripped away.

What if they didn’t hire a 3rd party ? Is this something the government can do ?

Determine who the swing voters are & what they’re watching, so you can target pol ads. Impressive mining but a little scary from privacy perspective

Find swing voters & what they watch to target pol ads. Impressive #mining but a little #privacy scary
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campaigns-digital-masterminds-cash-in.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campaigns-digital-masterminds-cash-in.html

N.S.A. Leak Puts Focus on System Administrators – NYTimes.com

Monday, June 24th, 2013

Can IT staff be trusted ? MT @nytimes: N.S.A. Leak Puts Focus on System Administrators

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/technology/nsa-leak-puts-focus-on-system-administrators.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0&pagewanted=all