LOOPY - feedback loop simulator
This is pretty neat, draw feedback loops and simulate them.
Escape Pod 589 - Seb Dreams of Reincarnation
I liked this one, return/reintegration/addiction with an uplifting twist and yet no cheesy easy answer.
Lost knowledge: ropes and knots
"Few realize the importance that knots and cords have played in human history. It is remarkable that they are not even mentioned in otherwise great books on the history of technology."
Sam Harris and Gavin de Becker: Living With Violence
Sam Harris speaks with Gavin de Becker about the primacy of human intuition in the prediction and prevention of violence.
- Teach your child to go to a woman if she is lost
- "Don't talk to strangers" is terrible advice - if you're in trouble you'll need a stranger to help. Learn to talk to strangers.
- Do the opposite of what [an attacker] says : "Don't move"? Run. "Be quiet"? Yell. "Don't tell"? Tell.
- Never let yourself be taken to a secondary crime scene.
- Unsolicited promises are a big warning sign.
Makefile to pre-process downloaded podcasts
I recently updated my podcast pre-processing script to Python 3.6 & the multiprocessing.Pool module and then a few days later realized the whole thing would be much better as a simple Makefile
The goal is to:
- reduce filesize of podcasts (192kbit/s is overkill for spoken word!)
- normalize the volume and convert to mono (easier to listen to when riding/running and it's windy)
- speed up playback (people talk too slow!)
- strip tags (so my dinky mp3 player doesn't put the podcasts into different "folders")
Source:
Prerequisites:
This American Life #622 - Who You Gonna Call?
Bob Fass Wait a minute, wait a minute. Before you say goodbye, give us like -- it takes about 20 minutes to trace a call, and you haven't been on the phone with us for three minutes yet.
Suicidal Caller You telling me the truth?
Bob Fass I'm telling you the truth. It takes about 20 minutes to trace a call. I know, because we tried to --
Suicidal Caller Why does it take so long?
Bob Fass Because the telephone company is more messed up than your life is, and they're not about to commit suicide.
The Biggest Rocket ever Designed? - The Sea Dragon
This big dumb rocket has a lot going for it. The ocean launch is particularly neat.
Roderick on the Line 253
"time geography" == life logging
Getting new posts from friends on Facebook with Selenium
I made a little script that uses Selenium to create a single page containing all the new posts from my Facebook friends.
This lets me see everything that is posted without having to seek it out and wade through the ads and other things Facebook is trying to recommend to me.
The output is currently very rough, but it'll do for now - in particular, it just screenshots the post, rather than trying to extract the content and re-render it.
Hand powered drilling tools and machines
Boring is quite interesting - how hole-making tools have evolved.
Selenium Python Bindings 2 documentation
See also https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/
Henry Rollins on Defining Success
"... Henry Rollins [on] not labelling what you do, why he’s not interested in advice, the need to make things constantly, and why he’s never had a creative block." And 4 minute naps.
Techdirt: Re-Decentralizing The Web
A tour of some projects to restore the decentralization of the web with Jamie King (from the Steal This Show podcast.)
Getting Started with Headless Chrome
Browser automation got a lot easier with chrome --headless.
The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
Including this interesting self-referential one - the Kolakoski sequence.
The 10 Commandments of Startup Success with Reid Hoffman
Tim Ferris with excerpts from Reid Hoffman's Masters Of Scale podcast, including some interesting bits with Mark Zuckerberg and Brian Chesky (Airbnb).
Civilizations at the End of Time: Iron Stars
Some really "long now" thinking. I love the possible answer to the Fermi Paradox too - that the ETs are hoarding mass & energy to do their computing when the universe cools down and it's more efficient to run their data centers.
Richard Feynman on The True Meaning of Physics
An Omni magazine interview with Richard Feynman.
Escape Pod 581: That Game We Played During the War
An interesting Hugo-nominated short story - war and chess where one side is telepathic...
Nakagin Capsule Tower
"the utopian structure was a fascinating yet wholly anachronistic remnant of a past future". Unbelievably this wasn't a filming location for The Fifth Elelement.
Steven Pinker - The Decline of Violence
A Long Now talk based on Steven Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature and the counter-intuitive fact that we're living in the least violent period of history.
Lawrence Lessig : How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It
Lawrence Lessig with an excellent Long Now talk on money in politics.
Cory Doctorow - The Coming Century of War Against Your Computer
Cory Doctorow giving a Long Now talk on trusting our computers to do what we want.
AI Progress Measurement
An EFF project to show how AI is progressing in various problem domains.
Bruce Sterling: The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole
Bruce Sterling poetically throwing some cold water on the singularity at the Long Now. "the singularity is a place where matters that would be of great importance and interest to futurists become impossible to write about" "the idea that technology is being built too fast for straight people to comprehend ...kind of lacks a business model"