Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height

• NSA Can Access Non-Net-Connected PCs
  Using RF devices implanted in the computers.  Perhaps this is what that previous report of them intercepting shipments is all about.  Color me very favorably impressed. Color me less impressed with the human timber leading the government.  The Times says that it withheld this information at administration request when it was spilling the beans about our […]
• Goodbye to the BCS
  Grantland writers take varying looks back at the BCS: Holly Anderson: I don’t have a special set of BCS feelings I keep burnished and tucked away in a corner of the black pit where my heart should be. I watched all the BCS games, dumbly matched or not, because they were football and they were there […]

Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height

• Secret Side-Deals With Iran?
  The LA Times reports: In his interview, [Iran Chief Negotiator Abbas] Araqchi touched on the sensitive issue of how much latitude Iran will have to continue its nuclear research and development. U.S. officials said Sunday that Iran would be allowed to continue existing research and development projects and with pencil-and-paper design work, but not to […]
• Did Someone Say Inequality, Mr. President?
  Last year, before inequality became the buzzword for the proposed Democrat rebound, Joel Kotkin explained to us what a society run by the Dems’ biggest donors looks like: Rather than a beacon for upward mobility, [Silicon] Valley increasingly represents a high-tech version of a feudal society, where the vast majority of the economic gains go […]

Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height

• The Redemption of E.D. Hirsch, Jr.
  Sol Stern, at the City Journal site.  His experience with the much-lauded P.S. 87 and its progressive curriculum was, shall we say, unsatisfactory: I soon received a crash course in educational progressivism. Many of the school’s teachers were trained at such citadels of progressive education as Columbia University’s Teachers College and the Bank Street College of […]

Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height

• Nice Little Insurance Company Ya Got There
  Shame if anything happened to it. “We are considering factoring into the [qualified health plan] renewal process, as part of the determination regarding whether making a health plan available…how [insurers] ensure continuity of care during transitions,” they write. Which is kind of like the Mafia saying that it will “consider” the amount of protection money […]

Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height

• Balance of Power in the East China Sea
  Via Lawfare, a post by Oriana Skylar Mastro, on China’s ADIZ over the Senkakus: Before creating the Air Defense Identification Zone, China’s leadership would have weighed the possibility that Japan and the U.S. might defy it. China most likely expected exactly the response Washington and Tokyo are giving it. This is the problem. China has […]

Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height

• Solar Convection Cells Confirmed
  By a team using data from NASA: Besides proving theory correct, identifying giant cells on the sun might help to better predict solar events that have a direct impact on us—solar flares, coronal mass ejections, etc.—all can wreak havoc on man-made electronics. Figuring out how to predict such events and to determine their size in advance could go […]
• A New Challenge for Deer Creek
  A quadricopter drone survives a hit, and the loss of a propeller: As demonstrated in this video created by researchers at ETH Zurich, normally when a quadcopter loses one of its propellers it’s game over. The software on board that keeps the craft stable doesn’t have a clue how to compensate, and down it goes. […]

Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height

• Google’s API Victory over Oracle In Danger
  A federal appeals court looks as though it may overturn last year’s ruling allowing Google to copy the structure of Oracle’s API, while writing different underlying code to solve the problems. Circuit Judge Kathleen O’Malley said the fact that Java is freely available and widely used by programmers doesn’t mean the code can’t get copyright […]
• Exploding Exotic Cars
  With a cool, how-he-does-it video:
• Nanotechnology – Time To Productize
  That’s the claim of a new paper, which also argues that the hold-up is manufacturing processes.  Producing nanostructures is hard; you can either whittle away larger blocks of material, or build them up atom-by-atom, or molecule-by-molecule.  Productizing the technology is going to require manufacturing processes that scale.
• Federal Agency Still Uses Floppy Disks
  Yes, you read that right: Floppy disks, whose use peaked when MTV still played music videos, are no longer featured in any of today’s (or yesterday’s, or last week’s) computer hardware. But still, the Government Printing Office, which runs the Federal Register, accepts documents on CD-ROMs and floppy disks, but not flash drives, SD cards, […]
• Someone’s Been Siphoning Data Through a Huge Security Hole in the Internet
  A hole that had been explained five years ago, no less: The traffic hijack, they showed, could be done in such a way that no one would notice because the attackers could simply re-route the traffic to a router they controlled, then forward it to its intended destination once they were done with it, leaving no one […]

Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height

• Patent Trolls Under Siege
  Patent reform is getting a boost in Congress and, possibly, in the Supreme Court.  The House voted 325-91 last week for serious reform, beating back a number of Democrat amendments that would have gutted reform. Passage of the bill is a big step for patent reformers, which would have been hard to imagine even one […]
• Han Solo’s Blaster For Sale
  Via Design Taxi: Those familiar with the Star Wars franchise will remember the scene where Darth Vader uses the Force to get a hold of Han Solo’s DL-44 Blaster. Now, this iconic pistol will be up for sale on 21 December 2013 via Invaluable.com. “I know you’ve got a certificate and a great story, but I need to be […]
• Raul Candy Store
   
• Ah, Reform, Peking Style
  Not exactly encouraging: When the screening in Jiangsu ended, state media reported, local party chief Luo Zhijun exhorted the assembled officials to “correctly understand the lessons of history.” The film’s message: The Soviet Union didn’t fall apart because of the communist system itself, but because of individuals who betrayed it, especially Mikhail Gorbachev. The film […]
• Science of Snowflakes
  A profile of Kenneth Libbrecht, the man who wrote the book on snowflakes (literally, as BoingBoing points out). Over the course of his research, Libbrecht’s work has grown to encompass art and science. He’s produced both scientificpapers and hundreds of beautiful photos of natural snowflakes (which he’s published in severaldifferentbooks and had featured on U.S. postage stamps), and also devised ingenious ways […]
• Sean Trende Offers Hope for Colorado Republicans
  Even with a contentious Senate primary getting underway for the Republican nomination, some are writing off the seat and conceding it to Udall.  Sean Trende, not so much: If Republicans had a stronger field, this race would probably move up a tier. But there’s no doubt that Udall is benefiting from a field of relatively […]
• 50 Years, 50 Toys
  What people who can’t afford authentic Star Wars memorabilia have been buying for the last half-century:
• Saving = Happiness?
  Yes, you’d expect a bank to say that.  But isn’t savings actually earned success for most people?  I know it makes me feel happier.
• Climate Deniers
  That would be James Hansen, last seen “adjusting” historical climate data to show the “correct” increases.  He’s still at it, plugging away, claiming that while we’ll have to suffer through 1-degree changes, we have a moral obligation to cripple our economies to prevent 2-degree warming. The new study is a departure from the typical climate science […]
• Detroit, Illinois, Colorado
  Yes, pensions.  No, we are not Detroit or Illinois, and won’t be for some time, even if we left things as they are.  Still, our problems are far from solved, and rather than writing foolish columns about what Detroit could have learned from PERA, we’d do better to learn from Detroit and Illinois. Eileen Norcross from […]

Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height

• Libertarians For (and Against) Safety Nets
  In particular, some form of the Basic Income.  Matt Zwolinski of Bleeding Heart Libertarians makes the case for, including a couple of different forms it might take, and quotes from both Friedman and Hayek in support of the idea: Both Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek advocated for something like a Basic Income Guarantee as a proper […]
• A Detailed Explanation of the Bitcoin Protocol
  We posted a video last week about the basic principles of Bitcoin.  Here’s a detailed explanation for the layman of how Bitcoin’s cryptography works. Understanding the details of the Bitcoin protocol opens up otherwise inaccessible vistas. In particular, it’s the basis for understanding Bitcoin’s built-in scripting language, which makes it possible to use Bitcoin to […]
• FSA Commander Flees Syria
  According to the Wall Street Journal: Islamist fighters ran the top Western- backed rebel commander in Syria out of his headquarters, and he fled the country, U.S. officials said Wednesday. The Islamists also took over key warehouses holding U.S. military gear for moderate fighters in northern Syria over the weekend. The takeover and flight of […]
• The Fourth Branch
  Jonathan Turley, the liberal law professor who spoke of Obama’s being “the threat the Constitution was designed to prevent,” wrote about the rise of the bureaucratic state earlier this year: This  growth since the founding has led to increasing power and independence for agencies. The shift of authority has been staggering. The fourth branch now […]
• Access to a Waiting List
  That’s what happens when 70% of doctors don’t join your exchange: An estimated seven out of every 10 physicians in deep-blue California are rebelling against the state’s Obamacare health insurance exchange and won’t participate, the head of the state’s largest doctors’ association said. … “Enrollment doesn’t mean access, because there aren’t enough doctors to take […]
• Floating House
  Also, some instruction on camera angles and perspective.  Shot from a distance, I think it might look bleaker and less pleasant.
• Should Queens Tear Down the 1964 World’s Fair Pavilion?
  The latest Preservation Battle at Gizmodo: Last month, officials in New York determined that it would cost $53 million to fix and restorethe New York State Pavilion, the series of hulking space-age structures built in Flushing Meadows Corona Park during the 1964-65 World’s Fair. Should these deteriorating ruins be preserved? That seems like a lot of […]
• An Affordable Metal 3D Printer?
  So far, they’ve been plastic.  The results are pretty robust, but metal is a whole ‘nother ballgame: Now, scientists have built an open-source 3D metal printer that costs under $1,200, sharing their design and software with the maker community. “We have open-sourced the plans,” in the hopes of accelerating the technology by allowing others to build upon […]
• An Internet Radio From 1969
  Who knew Al Gore was so into transistors?
• Sub-Launched Drones a Reality
  The US Navy has launched a drone from a submarine platform.  No word on whether they’re naming it after the birds that Noah sent out.
• Earth’s Gravity Scarred By Earthquake
  The ESA GOCE satellite maps the earth’s local gravity, and shows that the March 2011 Japan earthquake left detectable changes in the earth’s gravity there.
• Four Social Security Reforms
  Courtesy of the e21 Project at the Manhattan Institute.  Basically they amount to making marginal systemic changes now in order to avoid crashing the system just in time for me to retire.   They’re good ideas. Much of Paul Ryan’s budget strategy centered around getting discretionary spending off the table so we could focus on […]
• Modern SF Loft
  Brick-and-Wood at its best: Two problems: first, it’s in San Francisco, which means it’s completely unaffordable unless you own Oracle;  second, as with so much modern interior design, it’s beautiful because it’s empty.  Nobody actually lives this way.
• Notes on Israeli Income Inequality
  From Tyler Cowen: The bottom decile actually has done quite well in terms of rates of change, but the 6th through 8th deciles have done especially poorly (same link).  That source serves up the intriguing hypothesis that the disappearance of middle class-earning middlemen in the Israeli economy is due to the disintermediation of the internet, […]
• Maybe They Just Don’t Like Wal Mart Because It’s a Meritocracy
  A new Wal Mart just opened in Washington, near the old downtown shopping district.  They get 38 applications for every position, and Mark Perry notes that it’s more from hope than desperation. Too bad, though, that they didn’t take Garfinckel’s old location.  Would have driven people like Jonathan Singer up the wall.
• How to Bend Markets
  Innovation, of course: The WSJ has an article today about innovation blowing up the commodity industry…. The price of nickel, a metal used to make stainless steel for everything from sauce pans to guitar strings, spiked past $50,000 a metric ton in 2007 from less than $10,000 just a few years earlier…. The innovation has sent nickel […]
• Jewish Democrat Foundation Makes It Official
  From The Jewish Week‘s Gary Rosenblatt: Several weeks ago the Nathan Cummings Foundation, a stalwart in the Jewish philanthropic community for 25 years, announced that its new strategic plan calls for focusing on two specific areas: inequality and climate change…. In the past, about 20 percent of those funds were designated to Jewish groups and […]
• First Books, Now Newspapers
  Millennials Still Want Their Newspapers.  I think the headline overstates this considerably.  Of those from 18-34, 56% are reading their local paper online or in print, and 60% of that self-selected group consider it trustworthy.  Those are ridiculously low numbers compared even to 20 years ago, never mind 40 or 60.  It’s taken a long […]
• What Industries Are Driving Denver’s Bounce Back?
  Tech, oil, and…lawyers? I don’t know if 33rd in the country is “impressive, though.”
• National Geographic Maps Meet Google
  National Geographic Google-Maps 500 of its own maps.  You can search on a location, and then zoom in and out.  The link has a couple of maps to explore, but it’s unclear how you get to the other maps they’re digitizing.  
• Harold Edgerton, Call Your Office
  From Hi Fructose: Alan Sailer, a microwave engineer and photographer, creates remarkable photographs that capture, with incredible precision, the explosion of several objects as he shoots them with a pellet rifle.
• The 3D Pen
  An Engadget review is lukewarm: Drawing on a flat surface is simple enough, however, and tracing seems a pretty good place to get started with the new tool. Lay a thin piece of paper over a well-defined image and go to town…. The trouble starts when you attempt to draw in the air. You’re essentially […]

Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height

• Could dark matter be hiding in plain sight in existing experiments?
  Particles called axions could be creating noise in superconducting devices: Axions were not originally proposed as a solution to the dark matter problem. Instead, they are a possible way to solve a pressing problem in quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of the strong force, which governs quarks and their interactions. Most interactions in physics work […]
• Obama Joins the Patriarchy
  The Obama White House continues to pay its women staffers less than its men:
• Last Friday’s Fonts
  How the 70s saw the future?  This site has Free Font Friday, usually worth taking a look at.
• How Much Is Enough?
  We are constantly being told that the US doesn’t spend enough on education.  Compared to whom, exactly?
• Obama at Saban
  Lee Smith thinks the issue is settled, that Obama has taken the military option off the table: One early clue that the administration had already discounted the military option was its opposition to imposing sanctions. The strategic purpose of sanctions was not to destroy the Iranian economy, or even just to force the regime to […]
• Israeli Startups Funding Using OurCrowd
  A different startup crowdfunding model: That’s where the hybrid model comes in, with OurCrowd, an Israeli crowdfunding platform that allows only accredited investors to invest in startups that have been curated by the OurCrowd team. This allows startups to gather lower financial commitments, but from a larger pool of investors, while still maintaining the focused […]
• The Democrats’ Civil War
  Jacob Heilbrunn in the National Interest: But the notion that discontent is a basis for governing is another matter. Just because these sentiments are passionately and genuinely held does not mean that they are practical or even beneficial economically or politically. The fact is that Third Way has performed a valuable service by calling out […]
• Vintage Skeeball Game
  I wouldn’t want one in my house, but the lines are gorgeous:
• Harry Reid’s House of Lords
  I’ve complained before about how Harry Reid’s fealty to the administration is doing lasting damage to the Senate as an independent institution.  Someone else has noticed, as well, as he’s now obstructing the NDAA: The real culprit here is Sen. Reid, who seems more intent on running interference for the administration than legislating the people’s […]
• Democrats vs. the Self-Employed
  Joel Kotkin: Why is this the case? Ironically, this may be a reaction to expansive regulatory regimes that tend to both reduce corporate employment and also encourage some individuals “to take their talents” solo into the marketplace without having to deal with, for example, labor laws and environmental regulations. … Obamacare is only one aspect […]
• 3D Imaging Reveals Details of Volcanic Flows
  Not exactly volcano-lancing, but it’s a start: To collect the data, researchers equip airplanes with hundreds of thousands of lasers that scan the terrain at a perpendicular angle to the ground. The lengths of the laser beams indicate the height of the flow, and when multiplied hundreds of thousands of times, the scans can be compiled into […]