linkstream2 microblog

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“How: A browser extension like uBlock Origin blocks ads and the data they collect. The uBlock Origin extension also prevents malware from running in your browser and gives you an easy way to turn the ad blocking off when you want to support sites you know are secure. Combine uBlock with Privacy Badger, which blocks trackers, and ads won’t follow you around as much. To slow down stalker ads even more, disable interest-based ads from Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter. A lot of websites offer means to opt out of data collection, but you need to do so manually. Simple Opt Out has direct links to opt-out instructions for major sites like Netflix, Reddit and more. Doing this won’t eliminate the problem completely, but it will significantly cut down on the amount of data collected.

You should also install the HTTPS Everywhere extension. HTTPS Everywhere automatically directs you to the secure version of a site when the site supports that, making it difficult for an attacker — especially if you’re on public Wi-Fi at a coffee shop, airport or hotel — to digitally eavesdrop on what you’re doing.

Some people may want to use a virtual private network (VPN), but it’s not necessary for everyone. If you frequently connect to public Wi-Fi, a VPN is useful because it adds a layer of security to your browsing when HTTPS isn’t available. It can also provide some privacy from your internet service provider and help minimize tracking based on your IP address. But all your internet activity still flows through the VPN provider’s servers, so in using a VPN you’re choosing to trust that company over your ISP not to store or sell your data. Make sure you understand the pros and cons first, but if you want a VPN, Wirecutter recommends IVPN.”
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Opinion | 7 Simple Ways to Protect Your Digital Privacy
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/06/opinion/7-simple-ways-to-protect-your-digital-privacy.html

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“The savings made by hyperscale centres can be seen in their power usage efficiency (PUE), defined as the total energy needed for everything, including lights and cooling, divided by the energy used for computing (a PUE of 1.0 would be a perfect score). Conventional data centres typically have a PUE of about 2.0; for hyperscale facilities, that’s been whittled down to about 1.2. Google, for one, boasts a PUE of 1.12 on average for all its centres.

Older or less technologically adept data centres can contain a mix of equipment that is hard to optimize — and some that is even useless. In 2017, Jonathan Koomey, a California-based consultant and leading international expert on IT, surveyed with a colleague more than 16,000 servers tucked into corporate closets and basements and found that about one-quarter of them were “zombies”, sucking up power without doing any useful work — perhaps because someone simply forgot to turn them off. “These are servers sitting around doing nothing except using electricity, and that’s outrageous,” says Koomey.”
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http://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06610-y

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“Geoff Hinton, an emeritus professor at the University of Toronto and a senior researcher at Alphabet Inc.’s Google Brain, Yann LeCun, a professor at New York University and the chief AI scientist at Facebook Inc., and Yoshua Bengio, a professor at the University of Montreal as well as co-founder of AI company Element AI Inc., will share this year’s award, which is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery.

The three winners will split a $1 million prize that comes with the award, which is currently underwritten by Google. Hinton said he will donate a portion of his share to the University of Toronto’s humanities department. “They are much less well-funded and I think the humanities are very important to the future,” he said in an interview. Bengio said he may use his share to help fight climate change.” “}}

Three ‘Godfathers of Deep Learning’ Selected for Turing Award
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-27/three-godfathers-of-deep-learning-selected-for-turing-award

“If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

https://jezebel.com/on-the-origin-of-certain-quotable-african-proverbs-1766664089

http://www.informatics.jax.org/allele/MGI:5311382

b2b1035Clo = Blue meanie mutation

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Cc2d2ab2 ^ b1035Clo
Name:coiled-coil and C2 domain containing 2A; Bench to Bassinet Program (B2B/CVDC), mutation 1035 Cecilia Lo
MGI ID:MGI:5311382
Synonyms:Blue meanie
Gene:Cc2d2a Location: Chr5:43662373-43740975 bp, + strand Genetic Position: Chr5, 23.78 cM
Heterotaxy indicated by left lung isomerism with left sided IVC and TGA (observed by EFIC imaging)

…
Mutation details: This ENU-induced mutation was isolated in a screen at the University of Pittsburgh. The molecular lesion is a C to T substitution at coding nucleotide 2845 in exon 23 of the cDNA (c.2845C>T, NM_172274). This changes the arginine residue to a translation stop at position 949 of the encoded protein (p.R949*). (J:175213) Additional incidental mutations were detected in sequencing for the causative mutation, Cc2d2ab2b1035Clo, and may be present in stocks carrying this mutation.
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Reunion coverage + Useful suggestion for ORCID that can be done with a secondary email

https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/one-in-five-email-addresses-researcher-journal-articles-invalid-problem

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Mark Gerstein, the Albert Williams Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, lists over 200 members on his lab’s alumni page, about half of whom were PhD students and postdocs. Recently, he invited many of them to a lab reunion. But first, he had to find them.
“It’s a nontrivial thing keeping track of peoples’ emails,” he says. The lab maintains a database of past members, but he’s now established a LinkedIn group, which has been particularly useful, he says. Former lab members who are on the social network can associate themselves with the lab, thus providing a mechanism for staying in touch. If nothing else, Gerstein notes, he likes to be able to contact lab expats in case there’s ever a question about an old project – for instance, to clarify a protocol or locate a file.
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A third solution would be for a third-party ‘scientific directory’ service such as ORCID to add a mechanism for contacting authors, such as a button or form to send a message.
Laure Haak, Executive Director of ORCID, says, “At the current time, ORCID does not have these features on our roadmap.”
In the meantime, it is possible to make the email addresses in an ORCID profile public; go to Account Settings > Email and Notification Preferences, and change “who can see this” from “only me” to “everyone”.
Of course, even were the organization to add a messaging feature, overtaxed researchers may not read them.
“People get so much email,” Gerstein says. “I suspect people would ignore the messages.”
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“But there is another future that these statistics and our nostalgic reaction to them might produce: the research library as a Disneyland of books, with banker’s lamps and never-cracked spines providing the suggestion of, but not the true interaction with, knowledge old and new. As beautiful as those libraries appear—and I, too, find myself unconsciously responding to such surroundings, having grown up studying in them—we should beware the peril of books as glorified wallpaper. The value of books, after all, is what lies beneath their covers, as lovely as those covers may be.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/college-students-arent-checking-out-books/590305/

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You set up two pages (e.g., page.html and protectpage.html). page.html has the javascript code snippet within the tags. protectpage.html has the protected information. If someone enters the correct password — ‘letmein’ in the example — the protected page opens in a new browser window.

Of course, the password is identifiable by viewing page source. Also, a webcrawling bot will probably index or scrape protectpage.html at some point.

Anything more sophisticated is challenging.
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http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/cut10.shtml

QT:{{”
You set up two pages (e.g., page.html and protectpage.html). page.html has the javascript code snippet within the tags. protectpage.html has the protected information. If someone enters the correct password — ‘letmein’ in the example — the protected page opens in a new browser window.

Of course, the password is identifiable by viewing page source. Also, a webcrawling bot will probably index or scrape protectpage.html at some point.

Anything more sophisticated is challenging.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-whistleblower-shook-the-companyand-his-family-1479335963
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Tyler Shultz says he wanted to shield reputation of former Secretary of State George Shultz, a Theranos director and his grandfather; $400,000 in legal fees
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