🔖 Stamp for music playlist portability

Bookmarked Stamp | FREE YOUR MUSIC (Stamp)
Stamp moves tracks and playlists across various services - Apple Music, Spotify, Google Music and others!
How awesome this portends to be! I’ve been wanting this type of functionality for a long time. I’m curious how long it stays up?

Too many music services don’t make it easy to transport your playlists as it’s one of the methods they use to lock you into their service (and their recurring subscription fees). It looks like it supports .csv formats, but it would be nice if there were a better standardized data format to let users own all of their own data. How great would it be if I could maintain my own playlist on my own website and then authorize services to access it to play what I wanted? Then I could have one central repository and take it to any subscription service out there.

It looks like it supports Spotify, Apple Music, Google Music, Pandora (Pro only?), Amazon Music, Groove, YouTube, rdio, Deezer, and Tidal.

Stamp | Free Your Music

🎧 This Week in Google: #411 Dinah Won’t You Blow | TWiT.TV

Listened to This Week in Google: #411 Dinah Won't You Blow from TWIT.tv
EU fines Google €2.42 billion, Canada demands global de-listing. Google News' redesign causes Jeff concern. YouTube Party. Amazon Show unboxing. Facebook hits 2 billion users. Petya ransomware may be retaliation for Russian cyberwarfare on Ukraine. Jeff's report from Vidcon.

https://youtu.be/bRI078mWrxg

🎧 This Week in Google: #410 Addicted to Convenience | TWIT.TV

Listened to This Week in Google: #410 Addicted to Convenience from TWIT.tv
Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods and how it could change grocery stores. The transition from an economy of goods to one of experiences. Uber and Lyft get their way in Texas after refusing to comply with an ordinance requiring fingerprint background checks for drivers. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick resigns and whether or not the corporate culture of Uber was necessary for its success. Stacey's Thing: Radical Technologies - The Design of Every Day Life by Adam Greenfield Mike's Number: 18, the number of Girl Scout badges introduced for cybersecurity education Leo's Tool: Search for "Spinner" on Google

I enjoyed the discussion of the purchase of Whole Foods by Amazon. I had described a big chunk of the value there as Amazon buying up a lot of the only warehouse space available in housing zoned areas while they described it as solving the last mile problem in local delivery. This is essentially the same thing, though they didn’t mention Amazon’s experiments with delivery via drones which could easily become a reality with not only warehouse space, but landing pads and bases in every big neighborhood with a Whole Foods located within them.

It was cool to hear the news about Girl Scouts adding lots of cybersecurity badges to their list.

🎧 This Week in Google: #409 Practical Telepathy | TWIT.TV

Listened to This Week in Google: #409 Practical Telepathy from TWIT.TV
Leo, Jeff, and Stacey are all off this week, so Jason Howell, Ron Richards, and Kevin Marks are in charge. The Essential phone will be a Sprint exclusive, but that doesn't mean you can't buy one and use it with whatever service you want. Google's successor to the Pixel XL may be getting even bigger, and might get made by LG this time around. The current Pixel XL will self-destruct on October of 2018. Google's cute little self-driving cars are self-driving off into the sunset. Google Drive wants to back up your whole computer. Softbank is buying Boston Dynamics. Google's Project Sunroof lets you know which neighbors have solar power. Facebook expands safety check in a possibly stressful way. Kevin's Pick: IndieWeb and IndieWeb Summit Ron's Pick: Astro Jason's Pick: pix2pix fotogenerator

The conversation about how Facebook is doing their safety check is intriguing. How should they be doing it better to inform people who might be concerned, but without creating undue stress to others who generally aren’t involved or nearby? This is particularly interesting to me as I’m often near to frequent forest fires in Los Angeles, not to mention the future potential of major earthquake events.

Checkin Sahara Restaurant

Checked into Sahara Restaurant
Birthday celebration

The kitchen opens up into the dining room at Sahara. The decor isn't much to look at but the food is fantastic.
The kitchen opens up into the dining room at Sahara. The decor isn’t much to look at but the food is fantastic.
The menu at Sahara
The menu at Sahara
The menu at Sahara
The menu at Sahara
The first course...
The first course…
With this church across the street, one expects some great Middle Eastern food.
With this church across the street, one expects some great Middle Eastern food.
I don’t often weigh myself, but a few people in the past week have said I look like I’ve lost weight. Since I recently unpacked the scale, I thought I’d change out the batteries and see what I’m up to. I was shocked to discover that I’m down to 169.3 pounds! I think this may be the first time in over 20 years that I’m sub-170. For most of the past year I think I’d been hovering around 185 with a high somewhere around 192.

I’m hoping that the changes I’ve made recently in the move will continue on. Perhaps I can get down to the 155-160ish that I ought to be for my height?

🔖 Upcoming Special Issue “Information Theory in Neuroscience” | Entropy (MDPI)

Bookmarked Special Issue "Information Theory in Neuroscience" (Entropy | MDPI)
As the ultimate information processing device, the brain naturally lends itself to be studied with information theory. Application of information theory to neuroscience has spurred the development of principled theories of brain function, has led to advances in the study of consciousness, and to the development of analytical techniques to crack the neural code, that is to unveil the language used by neurons to encode and process information. In particular, advances in experimental techniques enabling precise recording and manipulation of neural activity on a large scale now enable for the first time the precise formulation and the quantitative test of hypotheses about how the brain encodes and transmits across areas the information used for specific functions. This Special Issue emphasizes contributions on novel approaches in neuroscience using information theory, and on the development of new information theoretic results inspired by problems in neuroscience. Research work at the interface of neuroscience, Information Theory and other disciplines is also welcome. A special issue of Entropy (ISSN 1099-4300). This special issue belongs to the section "Information Theory". Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 December 2017