Links

Technology:

• Welcome to the Jungle (CPU design and Moore’s law)
• Debian bug report #217243: wget: Possibility to really reject files on recursive downloads (serious gotcha everyone needs to know about if they are trying to spider with wget a site requiring cookies/login, like, for example, a DNM forum)
• Computational Complexity of Air Travel Planning (excerpts)
• RSA Key Extraction via Low-Bandwidth Acoustic Cryptanalysis
• You advocate a ________ approach to calendar reform (I always sigh when I have to deal with any date-time programming.)
• Does Copyright Affect Creative Reuse? Evidence from the Digitization of Baseball Digest, Nagaraj 2013 (excerpts)
• Baal (Impressive. A ring of child pornographers communicating securely via PGP & alt.anonymous maildrops, rotating keys regularly, where the bust only happened because a member was busted for non-ring-related problems and the only busted members were violating the Hushmail lesson by using a third-party service.)
• How close would you have to be to a supernova to get a lethal dose of neutrino radiation?

Science/medicine/statistics:

• The Intelligent Plant: Scientists debate a new way of understanding flora (also worth reading: If a Lion Could Talk: Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of Consciousness)
• Embryo Selection for Cognitive Enhancement: Curiosity or Game-changer?, Shulman & Bostrom 2013 (excerpts)
• Were James Bond’s drinks shaken because of alcohol induced tremor?, Johnson et al 2013
• So depression is an inflammatory disease, but where does the inflammation come from?, Berk et al 2013 (excerpts)
• Change in Against Malaria Foundation recommendation status (room-for-more-funding-related)
• Replication backlash
• When Mice Mislead (Of Mice (Studies) and Men)
• The dangers of zero and one (Fun example from genetics research of how even extremely weak priors are useful)
• Do Certain Countries Produce Only Positive Results? A Systematic Review of Controlled Trials, Vickers et al 1998 (excerpts)
• China’s academic scandal: call toll-free hotlines to get your name published

Writing:

• Roomlore is the lore anent heavenly bodies such as stars, wanderers, moons, star clouds, star clusters, and starswirls, their bodily workings, and their gathering…. (written in Anglish)
• Deadline (science fiction story)
• Excerpt from The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien (Atomic theory proves that bicycles are plotting against us.)
• Lady Yodo-Dono (poem)

Politics:

• Review of The Rise of China vs. The Logic of Strategy by Edward Luttwak
• David Walsh’s wisdom beats the odds
• Snowden: Hero
• Good News You Might Have Missed in 2013 (Bill Gates reviews global health & poverty progress)

General:

• Like I Was Jesus: How to bring a nine-year-old to Christ
• We Are All MsScribe (sockpuppeting, fandom wars)
• Preference falsification
• An opportunity cost model of subjective effort and task performance, Kurzban et al 2013 (willpower; discussion)
• Making a kangling for chöd (An unexpectedly practical discussion by David Chapman of femur-flutes.)
• 100 Years Later, the Crossword Is Still the King of Puzzles

Philosophy:

• Discussions for information (These are some of the reasons I’ve soured on discussion as a way of exchanging information and evaluating new stuff.)
• Scott Aaronson interview on Philosophical Progress

Film/TV

• Aku no Hana: dropped after a few episodes, couldn’t stand the rotoscoping
• A Christmas Story/National Lampoon: Christmas Vacation: watched with family. The former was pretty good. The latter, though, had some good jokes but was generally mediocre and strained, and a product of its time.

Books

Music

Giants (recommended if you like Explosions in the Sky or El Ten Eleven; I particularly liked While the Ages Steal):

• A Near-life Experience (Demo) [post-rock]
• The Sleep of a Laboring Man (Demo)
• Berlin Rooftop (Demo)
• Under The New Sun (They, The Undeserving)
• Steps In Static Progression (They, The Undeserving)
• The Palace Stands In Its Proper Place (They, The Undeserving)
• Withered Life- Communal Rhythm (They, The Undeserving)
• While The Ages Steal (Old Stories)
• At Last, Ashore (Old Stories)
• O’ Tide (Old Stories)

Misc:

• Raiders of the Lost Ark, End Credits (John Williams) [orchestral]
• I Saw Three Ships, (King’s College Cambridge) [Christmas carol]

Touhou:

• 流体、ライフサイクル instrumental (Fluid, Life Cycle) (o ben to box; miskyworks {C82}) [instrumental]
• パンザマスト (instrumental) (o ben to box; miskyworks {C82}) [instrumental]

Vocaloid:

• echoes_teha (声になる; HKGrecords) [trance/vocal]
• vanishing_しじみ (声になる; HKGrecords) [electronic/vocal]
• 小規模な世界の私_ぴすた (声になる; HKGrecords) [Jpop]