Contriving

And to preserve the privacy of their customers, many insurance companies do not collect location data but only time-stamped driving speeds instead. The idea is that the speed and accelerations that occur when you drive give a good indication of your driving technique but without revealing your routes.

Today, Bernhard Firner and pals at Rutgers University in New Jersey say that this method may not be as privacy preserving as first thought. Indeed, these guys have created an algorithm that can predict the final location of a journey given only the starting point and the time-stamped driving speeds. “We show that with knowledge of the user’s home location, as the insurance companies have, speed data is sufficient to discover driving routes and destinations when trip data is collected over a period of weeks,” they say.

How To Track Vehicles Using Speed Data Alone | MIT Technology Review
Computer scientists have developed an algorithm that works out a vehicle’s destination using only its starting location and speed throughout its journey.

Originally posted on Google+ · January 9, 2014

Originally posted on Google+ · January 8, 2014

Today, NASA informed me of something that I just hadn’t ever thought of.

The peak of Mount Everest (pictured below) is marine limestone.  Rock made of the skeletons of sea creatures.

Photo and more information from: http://www.nasa.gov/content/the-worlds-tallest-mountain/#.UsWruhxDvwE

Originally posted on Google+ · January 2, 2014

Reshared post from Kaj Sotala

Not very impressed by their methodology, but with a novel field you have to start somewhere, and maybe this work will inspire improvements by future researchers:

"Time travel has captured the public imagination for much of the past century, but little has been done to actually search for time travelers. Here, three implementations of Internet searches for time travelers are described, all seeking a prescient mention of information not previously available. The first search covered prescient content placed on the Internet, highlighted by a comprehensive search for specific terms in tweets on Twitter. The second search examined prescient inquiries submitted to a search engine, highlighted by a comprehensive search for specific search terms submitted to a popular astronomy web site. The third search involved a request for a direct Internet communication, either by email or tweet, pre-dating to the time of the inquiry. Given practical verifiability concerns, only time travelers from the future were investigated. No time travelers were discovered. Although these negative results do not disprove time travel, given the great reach of the Internet, this search is perhaps the most comprehensive to date. "

[1312.7128] Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers
Abstract: Time travel has captured the public imagination for much of the past century, but little has been done to actually search for time travelers. Here, three implementations of Internet searches for time travelers are described, all seeking a prescient mention of information not previously …

Originally posted on Google+ · January 2, 2014

Large sections of the public agree with activists' messages, but are put off by not wanting to affiliate themselves with the kind of person they think makes an activist.

Activists have an image problem, say social psychologists

Originally posted on Google+ · January 2, 2014

Reshared post from Dustin Wyatt

But now a team of astronomers led by UChicago's Laura Kreidberg and Jacob Bean have detected clear evidence of clouds in the atmosphere of GJ 1214b from data collected with the Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble observations used 96 hours of telescope time spread over 11 months. This was the largest Hubble program ever devoted to studying a single exoplanet.

The actual paper from Nature can be found here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v505/n7481/full/nature12888.html
Of course, in the grand scientific tradition, the paper is gated and thus costs money to read.

Researchers use Hubble Telescope to reveal cloudy weather on alien world
A team of scientists led by researchers in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago report they have definitively characterized the atmosphere of a super-Earth class planet orbiting another star for the first time.

Originally posted on Google+ · January 1, 2014

Originally posted on Google+ · January 1, 2014

I hypothesize that most people hold many beliefs without having heard the strongest arguments against those beliefs put in a manner most accessible to them.  (Assume later statements that sound like assertions are in fact statements about my working hypothesis, I'm just not going to keep typing 'hypothesis')

Furthermore, this is the case for beliefs most people would consider their most important, most cherished, and most part of their identity. This includes beliefs about politics, economics, religion, family, love, and science.

The problem with this is described in my post from a couple days ago about argument (https://blog.contriving.net/2013/12/27/changing-your-mind-is-a-good-thing/).  Without being forced to make a good defense of something you believe, you likely build your belief on hidden assumptions…a house of cards that you don't recognize as such.  It might be that your assumptions are correct, or maybe not, but there are assumptions you don't recognize in your reasons for belief.

Originally posted on Google+ · December 29, 2013

I've always liked the following quote, even though I disagree with the certainty which Nietzsche (unsurprisingly) dooms the human race to a future in which humans are nothing.

I don't find it outside the realm of possibility that the human intellect will one day shape the universe to the will of its wielders.

Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history," but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist. And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened.

Nietzsche, On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense

Originally posted on Google+ · December 28, 2013

Stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite.
–Andrew S. Grove

Originally posted on Google+ · December 28, 2013