Extenuating Circumstances

This is an auto-posted collection of public links I’ve either posted to, or favourites from Twitter, my Instapaper bookmarks and my public links posted to Pinboard.in for September 11th from 00:04 to 23:30:

• Simulated annealing – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – Simulated annealing (SA) is a generic probabilistic metaheuristic for the global optimization problem of locating a good approximation to the global optimum of…
• My Favorite Versions of iTunes. – Version 1.1 Classic version of iTunes. It improved visual effects and it bundled with Mac OSX v10.0. The bundling was what made this version a standout. Don’t…
• Immigration income threshold creates thousands of ‘Skype kids’, says report – At least 15,000 British children are growing up as “Skype kids” because an immigration income threshold does not allow both of their parents to live together in…
• 9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes – Tucked in a piney notch in the gentle folds of the Adirondacks’ southern skirts—just up from a derelict Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern rail spur—is a 22-year-old…
• Comments – Most of you know me as Timothy Yu, a mild-mannered Chinese American poet from Madison, Wisconsin. However, for several years I have been leading a poetic double…
• Sherman Alexie Speaks Out on The Best American Poetry 2015 – Like most every poet, I have viewed the publication of each year's Best American Poetry with happiness (I love that poem ), jealousy ( That poet has been chosen…
• Meet the white guy submitting poetry as “Yi-Fen Chou” – The poetry of "Yi-Fen Chou," aka Michael Derrick Hudson, is featured in 'The Best American Poetry 2015.' Readers of the newly published edition of The Best…
• Potential applicant for the Amina Arraf Fellowship in the Arts – One of the poets appearing in the anthology Best American Poetry 2015 is Yi-Fen Chou. In the anthology, the poet's bio states baldly that he has found greater…
• They Pretend To Be Us While Pretending We Don’t Exist – To be Other in America is to be coveted and hated at the same time. It’s never been enough to know that I feel it, but I know I am often asked to prove it…
• Building a Better Battery for Vehicles and the Grid – Argonne scientists Ira Bloom (front) and Javier Bareño prepare a sample of battery materials for Raman spectroscopy, which is used to gather information…
• Chariot Wins First Round Of San Francisco’s Private Transit Battle – San Francisco has become a hotbed for private bus startups, with several smart-phone-oriented services sprouting up in America’s tech capital, including Night…
• 0x10c – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – 0x10c (stylized as 0x10c) is a sandbox science fiction video game previously under development by Mojang AB. It was announced on April 3, 2012, by Markus…
• RTX2010 – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – The RTX2010 manufactured by Intersil is a radiation hardened stack machine microprocessor which has been used in numerous spacecraft. It is a two-stack machine,…
• Pretty Soon Your Computer Will Know If You’re Happy, Sad, or Mad – Strides in cloud computing, image recognition, and artificial intelligence are helping startups like Affectiva make software that is “emotionally intelligent.”…
• Science Knowledge Quiz – Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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• David Cameron promises fresh shakeup of public services – David Cameron will herald new moves to open up public services to private providers when he hails the role of “insurgent companies” and speaks of the benefit of…
• David Cameron promises fresh shakeup of public services | Politics | The Guardian – David Cameron promises fresh shakeup of public services (incl GDS and bluelight ICT)

This is an auto-posted collection of public links I’ve either posted to, or favourites from Twitter, my Instapaper bookmarks and my public links posted to Pinboard.in for September 10th from 14:27 to 14:46:

• Is This a Sandwich? – I met Mike 15 years ago, when he moved to Portland after getting kicked out of the army due to his relentless pushing at the logic of all rules (something the…
• Human hybrids: a closer look at the theory and evidence – There was considerable fallout, both positive and negative, from our first story covering the radical pig-chimp hybrid theory put forth by Dr. Eugene McCarthy,…
• A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans? – Comparison of human and chimp chromosomes. Credit: science.kqed.org/quest/2008/05/12/chromosome-fusion-chance-or-design/ (Phys.org) —These days, getting a…
• We’ve found a most remarkable creature – This Face Changes the Human Story. But How? This is the story of one of the greatest fossil discoveries of the past half century, and of what it might mean for…
• 6 Tiny Cavers, 15 Odd Skeletons, and 1 Amazing New Species of Ancient Human – Science The Inside Story Behind A Spectacular New Hominin Find John Hawks Lee Berger put his ad up on Facebook on October 7th, 2013. He needed diggers for an…

This is an auto-posted collection of public links I’ve either posted to, or favourites from Twitter, my Instapaper bookmarks and my public links posted to Pinboard.in for September 10th from 11:27 to 11:46:

• Usability of EHRs remains a priority for ONC – Health IT Buzz – The New Year is a time of reflection and anticipation. We reflect on what went well in the past (and perhaps what didn’t go so well); we anticipate future…
• Survey: How to Get Older Patients to Schedule Preventive Services – Preventive health is a big component of the shift in U.S. health care from quantity-based medicine to quality outcomes. Preventive services can help doctors…
• The 10 Best Designs in Medical Software – Adoption of electronic health record (EHR) software among US physicians is projected to exceed 80 percent by the end of 2013. As EHR usage grows, so does the…
• User Experience in Electronic Health Records (EHR) | HIT UX | HIMSS – With the wide-scale usage of eletronic health records accross the inpatient and ambulatory settings, the focus is now on the optimization of those technologies.…
• VistA and Epic: A tale of two systems – Two Platforms, Two Approaches Over the last few weeks, access to VA healthcare for veterans has been all over the news. At the same time, the DoD is moving to…
• Saying Epic is a ‘closed’ health records system is an oversimplification – As health care reform has focused on the digitization of health information, one Wisconsin company, Epic Systems, has quietly, and reluctantly, moved into the…
• 25 million lines of Fortran – One of my colleagues is ex Bloomberg . He tells me there's only one thing I need to know about them: "25 million lines of Fortran !" Apparently they have 1500…

This is an auto-posted collection of public links I’ve either posted to, or favourites from Twitter, my Instapaper bookmarks and my public links posted to Pinboard.in for September 9th from 15:02 to 23:35:

• Does Your Language Shape How You Think? – Important point here (several paragraphs in): Whorf, we now know, made many mistakes. The most serious one was to assume that our mother tongue constrains our…
• East is East. – it is a cold winter afternoon, and the meat queue stretches all the way around the block. People are shivering and fidgeting– they’ve been waiting for hours…
• Deepdreaming without the Slugdogs – In our deepnightmares, we’ve seen monstrous slugdogs, shoggoths of endless eyes, creatures beyond all reckoning. Wherever we look, a dog’s face stares back at…
• It’s time for the Permanent Web – Early this year, the Internet Archive put out a call for a distributed web . We heard them loud and clear. Today I'm making an announcement that begins our…
• Reviewing jail on Yelp – An emerging genre:
  “When I would shower, I would take my clothes and wash them, people thought it was funny, but it was really a way for me not to get my own…
• Tone-deaf iPad Pro demo photo-edits a smile onto a woman, gets applause | The Verge – Look, I don't run a billion-dollar company. I don't even run a company. But I have this crazy idea for Apple and Adobe and any other company. If you're going to give a presentation that will be seen…

This is an auto-posted collection of public links I’ve either posted to, or favourites from Twitter, my Instapaper bookmarks and my public links posted to Pinboard.in for September 9th from 00:30 to 14:54:

• NASA Graphics Standard Manual | NASA –
• Jørn Knutsen on Twitter: “Didn’t @genmon and @schulze make those magnetic connectors for Olinda?” – Good memory! Sprung contacts for the hardware API. Search for "copper" in the Olinda PDF
• Untitled (http://berglondon.com/proj/olinda/Olinda_pamphlet_for_screen.pdf) – Good memory! Sprung contacts for the hardware API. Search for "copper" in the Olinda PDF
• Procurement Officers – Enterprise Resource Planning | Oracle –
• Comparison between ConvNet filters and visual cortex? –

This is an auto-posted collection of public links I’ve either posted to, or favourites from Twitter, my Instapaper bookmarks and my public links posted to Pinboard.in for September 8th from 15:15 to 16:17:

• On Digital Healthcare — outro: Outro – As promised, we’re returning to a question we asked in the beginning of this post: Do these advances in digital health actually improve clinical outcomes? In a…
• Alan Moore Endorses ‘Different Types Of Storytelling’ Over ‘Enhancement’ In Electricomics – Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movie, TV News – logowide copy The Electricomics app , heralded here at Bleeding Cool through a series of interviews last autumn into winter, launched with its four original…
• Be Still My Heart! Performance Metrics for Communication Efforts | Engaging Local Government Leaders – By Kim Newcomer – Bio , LinkedIn , and Twitter Spoiler alert: when you’re done reading this you will be no closer to establishing the ideal performance metrics…
• About Rock Health | Rock Health – Rock Health exists to fund and support entrepreneurs working at the intersection of healthcare and technology. Put simply, our mandate is impact. We want to…
• Bits or pieces?: The continued search for Spime Script – Back in 2006, I gave a talk on the likely development of a future language – Spime Script – that would encode both digital and physical structure . This would…
• Broader Perspective –

This is an auto-posted collection of public links I’ve either posted to, or favourites from Twitter, my Instapaper bookmarks and my public links posted to Pinboard.in for September 8th from 13:58 to 14:38:

• Carr-isms –
• Ryan on Twitter: “Everlane “name your own job” https://t.co/xpvEGWhY9r h/t to @MusaTariq http://t.co/vIKdirNk8A” – Everlane "name your own job" h/t to @MusaTariq
• Everlane – Name Your Job – Everlane "name your own job" h/t to @MusaTariq
• Max Chafkin on Twitter: “so in february @fastcompany asked me to figure out what @travisk of @uber is really like. this is what i found: http://t.co/bQco67Z3Mb” – Not 100%, but it reads closer to what I’ve seen @uber in the last 6 months than any press I’ve read since I joined.
• Home – Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services –

This is an auto-posted collection of public links I’ve either posted to, or favourites from Twitter, my Instapaper bookmarks and my public links posted to Pinboard.in for September 6th from 18:12 to 10:02:

• R.W. Johnson: Ransomware – I had just finished writing an article for the LRB and was attaching it to an email when suddenly all the files saved as icons on my screen vanished. I thought…
• TSA Master Keys – Schneier on Security – Someone recently noticed a Washington Post story on the TSA that originally contained a detailed photograph of all the TSA master keys. It’s now blurred out of…
• live-from-the-roasterie-steve-jobs-2010-apple-and-the-tv-markethttpwwwrajamreportcompost128273560320a.html – Must-Read: The standard story of Christensenian disruption is that there is a niche large enough to allow for economies of scale and for learning by doing but…
• Magnetic Input for Mobile VR | Boris Smus – It's easy to do, just follow these steps: Cut two holes in a box Put your phone in that box Look inside the box And that's the way you do it . Your smartphone…
• Oh You Masters of War: The Red: First Light by Linda Nagata – There are many possible reasons why I’ll choose certain books for review. Most often it’s simply because they look promising. Occasionally it’s because I’m a…
• Reverse-Engineering iOS Apps: Hacking on Lyft, with Conrad Kramer – If you’ve ever needed to know how another piece of code works, or have been at the mercy of someone else’s bugs, you can always look at the source code… unless…
• Postscript: Oliver Sacks – Four weeks before Oliver Sacks died, I received a letter from him. In our all too brief correspondence, he never e-mailed. He wrote beautiful, longhand letters…
• Your Midwife Really, Really Shouldn’t Be a Dolphin – 1“Do I drop mucus and nastiness in YOUR house? DO I!!!????”AnonymousCivilPersonView discussion »
  “Do I drop mucus and nastiness in YOUR house? DO…
• Dolphin-Assisted Childbirth Is a Bad Idea – Dolphins are beautiful, highly intelligent and magical creatures. They can follow a cuttlefish recipe, recognize themselves in mirrors and create nicknames for…
• PC Comedy and Paul Revere – [Advisory: This post contains extensive details about a sexual assault case and an animal cruelty incident that will be hard for some readers to take.]
  This is…
• How Schools Are Handling An ‘Overparenting’ Crisis – Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success
  by Julie Lythcott-Haims
  Paperback, 368 pages | purchase
  More on this book:
  How the Best…
• Pumping the Primes | bit-player – On your desktop is a black box. Actually it’s an orange box, because black boxes are usually painted “a highly visible vermilion colour known as international…
• America’s national vacation problem – BBC News – As Americans enjoy an extra day away from the office over the long Labor Day weekend, many will reflect on the end of a summer when, once again, they took far…
• Uber 2.0: Human Self-Driving Cars – Stratechery by Ben Thompson – There was one line that jumped out of the San Francisco Chronicle’s coverage of the decision of U.S. District Judge Edwin Chen to grant class-action status to…
• Russell Davies: Dash it all – I mentioned this on a panel at a conference yesterday and was told it was vapourware. Doesn’t look that vapoury to me.
  The scenario that always pops into my…
• The varying wavelengths of colors – Rain-Bros by Daniel Savage is a fun visualization of the different wavelengths of light in the visible spectrum, from the loping walk of red to blue's energetic bounce.
• When Discrimination Is Baked Into Algorithms – Rafael Marchante / Reuters A recent ProPublica analysis of The Princeton Review’s prices for online SAT tutoring shows that customers in areas with a high…

This is an auto-posted collection of public links I’ve either posted to, or favourites from Twitter, my Instapaper bookmarks and my public links posted to Pinboard.in for September 4th from 20:50 to 13:03:

• Until Done – Sam from Until Dawn is a horror game about a bunch of dead-eyed teenagers in their mid-20s, none of whom have full control of their necks. The game is set in a…
• Bits or pieces?: Somethings are different, some remain the same. – Back in 2011, I published a population study of companies showing that a next generation of company seemed to be emerging with a different phenotype. Details of…
• Thomas Fuchs on Twitter: “No one stopped at this point and said, “Gee, maybe we should just use real fucking buttons.” http://t.co/gNcRDwhtTq” – No one stopped at this point and said, "Gee, maybe we should just use real fucking buttons."
• OpenTech – I think that the Notcon session was my recap of the original life hacks talk , rather than the inspiration for it. Oddly enough I was vaguely prodding around…
• It can’t happen here – How over a million American families live on $2 per day , by Dylan Matthews, VOX Kathryn Edin 's ( previously ) and H. Luke Shaefer 's new book, $2 A Day , is…
• Soon you’ll be able to be a Goonie in an interactive theater experience – When I first watched The Goonies as a kid, it depicted everything I wanted my life to be. Growing up in a big city left little opportunity to mob around on…
• Poison-Injecting Robot Submarine Assassinates Sea Stars to Save Coral Reefs – You might think that the biggest threat to the world’s coral reefs is humanity. And you’d be right, of course: climate change, pollution, overfishing, and scuba…

This is an auto-posted collection of public links I’ve either posted to, or favourites from Twitter, my Instapaper bookmarks and my public links posted to Pinboard.in for September 4th from 13:44 to 15:25:

• Normal: A Novel, Warren Ellis – Amazon.com – Where is Normal Head in Oregon and can I go visit it please
• My Nephew Has Some Questions – The New Yorker – ME: I need you to buckle up back there, buddy.
  MY NEPHEW: Why?
  ME: I just do.
  MY NEPHEW: Why?
  ME: Because I want you to be safe.
  MY NEPHEW: Why?
  ME: Because I…
• How to Build a Better Invisibility Cloak – Drones Industry September 1, 2015 Robert Beckhusen 3 Cloaking devices — or “metamaterials” that scatter light — have been in university labs for years. But…
• A New Angle On This Shadowy Stealth F/A-18 Hornet Concept Is Intriguing – One of our readers, Gareth Webber, pointed out a strange looking aircraft stored at AMARG, the Pentagon’s aircraft boneyard in Tucson, AZ. I immediately…
• Secret New UAS Shows Stealth, Efficiency Advances – A large, classified unmanned aircraft developed by Northrop Grumman is now flying—and it demonstrates a major advance in combining stealth and aerodynamic…
• Why Is The ‘Retired’ F-117 Nighthawk Still Flying? – Why is the F-117 Nighthawk, America's first true "stealth" aircraft, still prowling the skies years after its retirement in 2008? Since the F-117 officially…
• Why Is AREA 51 Building A Mysterious New Hangar And What Will It Hide? – In the latest satellite imagery released to the public, dated June 30th (partial) and June 2nd (full) , Area 51 continues to undergo changes, and one of them…
• Lockheed Moves Foward With Big Blended Wing Hybrid Transport Jet Design – 2 3 4 5 … 7 Lockheed has had a busy month attempting to stake its claim to America’ staple military aerospace capabilities, unveiling their U-2 replacement…
• F-22 Raptors Descend On Europe In Historic Deployment – 2 Just days after Air Force Secretary Deborah James hinted at a looming inaugural F-22 deployment to Europe , four F-22A Raptors of the 95th Fighter Squadron…
• This Is The Insane Video China Just Put Out Showing It Attacking The U.S. – A small group of Chinese Navy ships showed up near Alaska earlier this week during President Obama’s visit to the northern state, mostly as a “we’re here”…
• How to use a PS4 controller on Mac – Now just might be the best time ever to be a Mac gamer, as a ton of big titles for PC and console are also available for Apple computers via the Mac App Store,…