Welcome to the sixth issue of Tech Tuesdays!
Here’s what I found interesting this week:
Nonprofits and NGOs around the world were stunned last November when the Internet Society (ISOC) announced that it had agreed to sell the Public Interest Registry—the organization that manages the .ORG top-level domain (TLD)—to private equity firm Ethos Capital. EFF and other leaders in the NGO community sprung to action, writing a letter to ISOC urging it to stop the sale. What follows was possibly the most dramatic show of solidarity from the nonprofit sector of all time. And we won.
Dasung just released a 25 inch eInk monitor
Video: https://m.weibo.cn/detail/4586036510859416
Picture: https://wx1.sinaimg.cn/large/005wwlbWly1gm07tdt77cj30m814sn88.jpg
Hotwire is an alternative approach to building modern web applications without using much JavaScript by sending HTML instead of JSON over the wire.
This is a list of things you’re allowed to do that you thought you couldn’t, or didn’t even know you could.
Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?
What the Hole Is Going On? The very real, totally bizarre bucatini shortage of 2020.
What If You Could Do It All Over?
As Sartre says, we are who we are. But isn’t the negative space in a portrait part of that portrait?
Talking out loud to yourself is a technology for thinking
Technological developments that make speaking seemingly redundant are also an obstacle to embracing our full cognitive potential.
Windows 0day privilege escalation still not fixed
low integrity process can send LPC messages to splwow64.exe (Medium integrity) and gain a write-what-where primitive in splwow64’s memory space. The attacker controls the destination, the contents that are copied, and the number of bytes copied through a memcpy call.
2-Acre Vertical Farm Run by AI and Robots Out-Produces 720-Acre Flat Farm
Plenty is an ag-tech startup in San Francisco, co-founded by Nate Storey, that is reinventing farms and farming. Storey, who is also the company’s chief science officer, says the future of farms is vertical and indoors because that way, the food can grow anywhere in the world, year-round; and the future of farms employ robots and AI to continually improve the quality of growth for fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Plenty does all these things and uses 95% less water and 99% less land because of it.
Average Rent in San Francisco Has Dropped $1k This Year
While $3,100 a month in rent certainly isn’t “cheap,” it’s now $1,000 a month or 24 percent cheaper than in January of this year and nearly 31 percent below a 2015-era peak of closer to $4,500 a month.
SEC charges Ripple and two executives
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced today that it has filed an action against Ripple Labs Inc. and two of its executives, who are also significant security holders, alleging that they raised over $1.3 billion through an unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering.
Anti-diarrhea drug drives cancer cells to cell death
In cell culture, loperamide, a drug commonly used against diarrhea, proves effective against glioblastoma cells.
Google told its scientists to ‘strike a positive tone’ in AI research
Alphabet Inc’s Google this year moved to tighten control over its scientists’ papers by launching a “sensitive topics” review, and in at least three cases requested authors refrain from casting its technology in a negative light, according to internal communications and interviews with researchers involved in the work.
Robinhood was indeed too good to be true
Most Robinhood investors probably suspected that there was a catch. There's no such thing as a free lunch, as the saying goes. But it’s difficult to resist the temptation of receiving something for nothing, plus investors greatly prefer paying indirect fees, through opaque arrangements, to paying explicit costs. So, they went along for the ride.
Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high
Japan on Friday confirmed its first cases of a mutated form of COVID-19 in five people who entered the nation from the U.K., health minister Norihisa Tamura said.
By contrast, almost all adults chose to save 1 human over even 100 dogs. The view that humans are morally more important than animals appears later and may be socially acquired.
The survey of more than 21,000 adults from 27 countries finds that 72% would prefer their life to change significantly rather than go back to how it was before the COVID-19 crisis started. Further, 86% would prefer to see the world change significantly – and become more sustainable and equitable – rather than revert to the status quo ante.
Ketamine may ease depression by restoring the brain’s sensitivity to prediction error
In other words, the drug may help to alleviate depression by making it easier for patients to update their model of reality.
Psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy produces large, rapid, and sustained antidepressant effects
Combining the psychedelic drug psilocybin with supportive psychotherapy results in substantial rapid and enduring antidepressant effects among patients with major depressive disorder, according to a new randomized clinical trial. The findings have been published in JAMA Psychiatry.
Masks Not Enough to Stop COVID-19’s Spread Without Social Distancing
Every material tested dramatically reduced the number of droplets that were spread. But at distances of less than 6 feet, enough droplets to potentially cause illness still made it through several of the materials.
Today, over 63 countries have at least one such program. So-called conditional cash transfers (CCT) improve people's lives over the long term.
An experiment involving the illusion of owning an opposite-sex body led people to embrace a more equal identification with both genders.
Korean artificial sun sets the new world record of 20-sec-long operation at 100 million degrees
The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR), a superconducting fusion device also known as the Korean artificial sun, set the new world record as it succeeded in maintaining the high temperature plasma for 20 seconds with an ion temperature over 100 million degrees (Celsius).
GoDaddy Employees Were Told They Were Getting a Holiday Bonus. It Was Actually a Phishing Test
In usual GoDaddy fashion, the level of cruelty is actually stunning.
Thanks for reading!
If you got any comments or just want to brainstorm, email me at jacob@unhype.com.