Weekly Digest 14 - Neuralink MindPong, Muon g-2, and Foot Fetish

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Apr 11, 2021

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Neuralink is developing a fully-implanted, wireless, high-channel count brain-machine interface (BMI) with the goal of enabling people with paralysis to directly use their neural activity to operate computers and mobile devices with speed and ease. You can watch the video on how they enabled a macaque monkey, named Pager, to move a cursor on a computer screen with neural activity using a 1,024 electrode fully-implanted neural recording and data transmission device, termed the N1 Link.

Science & Tech

Jorge Cham, aka, PHD Comics, illustrates the excitement over the muon anomaly results in a set of cartoons he made for Physics.

Having a responsive, supportive partner minimizes the negative impacts of an individual’s depression or external stress on their romantic relationship, according to research by a University of Massachusetts Amherst social psychologist. The study found that being a responsive partner – one who focuses effort and energy to listen to their partner without reacting, tries to understand what’s being expressed and be supportive in a helpful way, and knows what their particular partner needs – is in general associated with better relationship quality, “which is what you would think,” Pietromonaco says.

Feasts your eyes on these amazing photographs of ants.

A review of Drink?: The New Science of Alcohol and Your Health by Professor David Nutt. Alcohol use is one of the top five causes of disease and disability in almost all countries in Europe. At least one in five cases of dementia is caused by alcohol. It is also the third leading risk factor for death and disability after smoking and obesity. The positive effect on cardiovascular health has never been definitely proven.

Some drugs classified as highly dangerous are less harmful than alcohol or tobacco. Why is alcohol legal but many other intoxicants not?

Coronavirus-related conspiracy theories (CT) have been found to be associated with fewer pandemic containment-focused behaviors. It is therefore important to evaluate associated cognitive factors. People who believe in COVID-19 conspiracy theories have the following cognitive biases: jumping-to-conclusions bias, bias against disconfirmatory evidence, and paranoid ideation, finds a new German study (n=1,684).

Business & Finance

Story of Missive, an innovative but somewhat hard-to-define email client. They reached US$1M in annual recurring revenue (ARR) last week.

Nearly 1.5m companies are incorporated in Delaware. How did this tiny state become a mecca for corporate activity? The answer is, of course, tax loopholes.

“In sharp contrast to regulators’ concerns that WSB investment advice is harming retail traders, our findings suggest that both WSB posters and users are skilled,” the study concluded.

PMC is what patent lawyers call a “non-practicing entity,” or NPE. The company has acquired over 100 patents that date back to applications from the 1980s, and it uses them to demand money from companies that do stuff—mostly internet companies.

Three factors weigh heavily in any unionization election: the outrageously vicious behavior of employers—some of it illegal, most fully legal—including harassing and intimidating workers, and telling bold lies (which, outside of countries with openly repressive governments, is unique to the United States); the strategies and tactics used in the campaign by the organizers; and the broader social-political context in which the union election is being held.

U.S. income inequality has varied inversely with union density over the past hundred years. The research finds consistent evidence that unions reduce inequality, explaining a significant share of the dramatic fall in inequality between the mid-1930s and late 1940s.

Software & AI

The Supreme Court surprised everyone with its API copyright ruling. By a 6-2 vote, the nation’s highest court held that Google’s copying of Oracle’s Java API was fair use. The ruling means Google won’t have to pay billions of dollars in damages to Oracle. It also has huge implications for the broader software industry. “It’s a minor miracle we got an opinion that reached the right result with pretty sound reasoning despite not one of the justices being able to explain how an API works,” Grimmelman said.

Git has a reputation for being confusing. Users stumble over terminology and phrasing that misguides their expectations. The author believes that Git becomes understandable if we peel back the curtain and look at how Git stores your repository data. After we investigate this model, we’ll explore how this new perspective helps us understand commands like git cherry-pick and git rebase.

Experts are raising doubts that artificial intelligence was used to create a video that police are calling a “deepfake” and is at the center of an ongoing legal battle playing out in Pennsylvania. Several experts have come forth and said that the vaping video did not appear to be artificially-generated.

The author breaks down the setup he uses to run a SaaS. From load balancing to cron job monitoring to payments and subscriptions. The business is https://panelbear.com/

Culture & Fun

“We’re receiving complaints about too much TV coverage of the death of HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh,” reads a statement on the BBC Complaints page, which invites disgruntled viewers to submit an email address to register a complaint.

A surprisingly revealing interview with a foot fetishist. e.g.What makes a foot attractive to you?

I like the painted toes. I like an arch, the more pronounced the better. I’m kinda weird with the toes, I like a rounded big toe. If it’s more square it’s okay, but the rounded is better. I definitely like the soles. But I like the arches, that gets you turned on.