How a Boat-Plane Hybrid Shattered the Sound Barrier of Sailing →
When Paul Larsen decided to sail faster than physics would allow, he had only one choice: reinvent the boat.
Much like wings on hydrofoils the America's Cup teams "sail", this isn't really a "boat". Regardless, Larsen's SailRocket destroyed the world record with a 65.37-knot run.
Dear Spotify,
It's a decent recommendation, but only because I have owned the album since the 90s, not because Sanctus Real sounds anything like DC Talk or because it's a new release...
If you're charging 10 percent more or 20 percent more than what it costs to deliver the service, that's an acceptable profit margin. Charging 400 percent more than what it costs has no rational basis in it at all.
— Gerard Anderson, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Hospital Finance and Management
It's perfectly rational if you can get away with it because you're a hospital...
What does that sound like? Lebanon. But it's Lebanon on steroids. The Syria I have just drawn for you — I call it the Sinkhole.
— What Should Obama Do About Syria?
A nuanced look at the Syrian civil war, the parties involved, and why all the decisions about U.S. involvement are bad ones.
Apple the Black Swan →
Great piece on Wall Street's belief of Apple as a black swan.
Spying on the Seven Seas →
More from the annals of "Scary Security Stuff Found by the Internet":
On the Internet you can find websites that provide vessel tracking data based either on asking people to volunteer the information from their AIS receivers or deploying some themselves. However, we observed AIS receivers that are blatantly open on the Internet, many belonging to private organizations and institutions.
Considering that a lot of military, law enforcement, cargo, and passenger ships broadcast their positions, we feel that this is a security risk.
People doing stupid things on the open Internet could be a security risk? You don't say.
Technologists used to work on big problems. Not First World problems, but whole world problems -- sending humans to the moon, ending poverty, ending disease. They didn't do it because it was gonna get them a big badass IPO, or get them on the front page of VentureBeat, or get them fawned over at SxSW. Forgive me, but those are stupid reasons to do anything. They did it because technology is about improving the human condition.
Someone tried to blow up some of my friends today →
Praying for all those who were affected in Boston.
Web Privacy, and How Consumers Let Down Their Guard →
Intriguing experiments by Alessandro Acquisti, a behavioral economist, suggest that people often reveal more than they mean to online.
A researcher at Carnegie Mellon, Mr. Acquisiti teaches courses on the economics and psychology of privacy under a program called privacy engineering.