Around the world, a handful of visionaries are plotting an alternative online future. Is it really possible to remake the internet in a way that’s egalitarian, decentralised and free of snooping?
Links
👓 ‘Fits neatly inside a lizard’s cloaca’: Scientists are leaving Amazon reviews, and it’s amazing | Washington Post
There are worse things you can put through a tea strainer than ants.
Scientist reviews on Amazon are just spectacular! I think there are a few things I could add to the pile…
I love the Post’s disclaimer about Bezos’ ownership of the Post:
Disclaimer: The Washington Post is owned by Jeffrey P. Bezos, who also runs Amazon, though we really don’t think we’re doing the site any favors with this article.
Also noted: They’ve quietly hidden the key word “poop” into the meta data for the article!
🔖 Decoding Anagrammed Texts Written in an Unknown Language and Script
Algorithmic decipherment is a prime example of a truly unsupervised problem. The first step in the decipherment process is the identification of the encrypted language. We propose three methods for determining the source language of a document enciphered with a monoalphabetic substitution cipher. The best method achieves 97% accuracy on 380 languages. We then present an approach to decoding anagrammed substitution ciphers, in which the letters within words have been arbitrarily transposed. It obtains the average decryption word accuracy of 93% on a set of 50 ciphertexts in 5 languages. Finally, we report the results on the Voynich manuscript, an unsolved fifteenth century cipher, which suggest Hebrew as the language of the document.
Aside: It’s been ages since I’ve seen someone with Refbacks listed on their site!
50 percent long soak 1 Jonathan Bethony, who runs Seylou Bakery in Washington DC, mills his own wheat and uses 100% of the grain. Talking to him for Eat This Podcast I learned about the difference in bran between softer European wheats and harder North American wheats. My wholemeal, from softer whe...
Want to watch: Claude Shannon Project (Documentary)
Directed by Mark Levinson. With Judith Ivey, Michael Rose, Kaliswa Brewster, Geoff Schuppert. A film about Claude Shannon, the "Father of Information Theory"
I know this shot over a year ago now. I’m wondering what’s happened to their post production schedule? Distribution issues perhaps?
👓 Sexual harassment allegations roil Princeton University | WHYY
Another high-profile instance of sexual harassment has rocked a major institution — this time Princeton University in New Jersey. And students say administrators didn’t act transparently or strongly enough when disciplining the alleged perpetrator, a decorated professor.
Once you start reaching Sergio Verdu’s age, and particularly with his achievements, your value to the University becomes more geared toward service. How much service can a professor do with an albatross like this hanging around their neck?
It would be nice if Universities were required to register offenders like this so that applicants to programs would be aware of them prior to applying–a sort of Megan’s Law for the professoriate. Naturally they don’t do this because it goes against their interests, but by the same token this is how a lot of issues run out of control within their sports programs as well. If someone did create such a website, I imagine the chilling effects on colleges and universities would be such that they might change their tunes about how these cases are handled. Immediately recent cases like Michigan State’s athletics problem, USC’s Medical School Dean issues, Christian Ott at Caltech come to mind, but I’m sure there must be hundreds if not thousands of others.
Maybe we need a mashup site that’s a cross between RateMyProfessors.com and California’s Megan’s Law site, but which specifically targeted Universities?
Fortunately even given Sergio’s accomplishments and profile, it will probably take forever for web searches for his name to not surface the story within the top couple of links, but this is sad consolation, particularly in a field like Information Theory which is heavily underrepresented already.
👓 Read Professor Verdu’s emails to student where he invites her over to watch explicit film before sexually harassing her | The Tab
‘P.S. Please call me Sergio ☺️’
I was just wondering why Sergio Verdu was so quiet on Twitter. Then I wondered why his Twitter account had disappeared.
Now I know the sad and painfully disappointing answer.
👓 Chiefs Of Three Russian Intelligence Agencies Travel To Washington | Radio Free Europe
WASHINGTON -- The directors of Russia's three main intelligence and espionage agencies all traveled to the U.S. capital in recent days, in what observers said was a highly unusual occurrence coming at a time of heightened U.S.-Russian tensions. Russia's ambassador to the United States had earlier confirmed that Sergei Naryshkin, the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), was in Washington in recent days to meet with U.S. officials about terrorism and other matters.
Unmentioned in this article: there’s a pending election in Russia which is creating optics for voters there as well.
👓 AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s claims in his State of Union address | AP News
WASHINGTON (AP) — The AP is fact-checking remarks from President Donald Trump's State of the Union speech. Here's a look at some of the claims we've examined (quotations from the speech as delivered or as released by the White House before delivery): WAGE GAINS TRUMP: "After years and years of wage stagnation, we are finally seeing rising wages." THE FACTS: Actually, they are not rising any faster than they have before. Average hourly pay rose 2.5 percent in 2017, slightly slower than the 2.9 percent increase recorded in 2016.
👓 Analysis | Polls show ‘no one’ cares about the Russia investigation, White House press secretary said. That’s not true. | Washington Post
Eugene Scott (Washington Post)White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said President Trump will not address the ongoing investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia because no Americans care about the issue.
👓 Richard Branson Says You’ll Be More Successful if You Develop This Daily Habit | Inc.com
Richard Branson says that success is in the details. Here's why he leaves his computer behind and takes handwritten notes on everything.
Hello irresistible linkbait… You bet. I read this.
👓 TinyLetter will fold into MailChimp in the future — but it’s not going to happen in 2018 | Business Insider
MailChimp bought TinyLetter in 2011 for its simplicity — the same elements which built its cult following among indie writers.
👓 Marijuana goes mainstream by Jeremy Cherfas
Jeremy Cherfas (jeremycherfas.net)Legalized marijuana is going the way of all agricultural commodities in the United States, and that shouldn't be a surprise. A really interesting analysis by 538 reveals that the price of pot has dropped for grower and dope fiend alike, and with big money at stake -- $6.7 billion this past year and $20 billion the dream for 2021 -- big money is very interested.
Jeremy has some great insight in looking at marijuana as a simple staple crop. It would be interesting to view this as a simple agriculture problem and compare the economics of it for the first several years to other crops like soybean and sorghum. I’m relatively sure of where things will end up, I’m just curious how they differ until things reach scale. This is a particularly interesting economics problem because it provides an experiment that isn’t an easy one to recreate at these scales for how often does a mass consumable crop get discovered?
👓 Import your Lanyrd events | Notist
We really loved Lanyrd as a site for logging the events and conferences we were attending and speaking it. Worried that it might go away, we’ve fast-tracked a tool to help you grab your data.