The Spectacular Thefts of Apollo Robbins →
Robbins, who is thirty-eight and lives in Las Vegas, is a peculiar variety-arts hybrid, known in the trade as a theatrical pickpocket. Among his peers, he is widely considered the best in the world at what he does, which is taking things from people's jackets, pants, purses, wrists, fingers, and necks, then returning them in amusing and mind-boggling ways. Robbins works smoothly and invisibly, with a diffident charm that belies his talent for larceny. One senses that he would prosper on the other side of the law. "You have to ask yourself one question," he often says as he holds up a wallet or a watch that he has just swiped. "Am I being paid enough to give it back?"
A fascinating look at the intersection of magic, psychology, neuroscience, and larceny.
For stricter gun control to be instituted in the US would require a mass movement. First, a clear majority of Americans would have to be persuaded, and then they would have to apply sufficient pressure that either Republicans shift their position or Democrats retake Congress and develop the fortitude to pass laws.
— Ben Adler, Sandy Hook's dead deserve a change in US gun law. But don't hold your breath
Boeing's Dreamliner Batteries "Inherently Unsafe" →
The batteries at the heart of the problem, manufactured by the Japanese firm GS Yuasa Corporation, are essentially giant versions of the lithium-ion batteries used in cell phones and laptops. Like those batteries, the Dreamliner's use a lithium-cobalt oxide cathode, which is "an inherently unsafe cathode," said Mark Allen, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. And in the larger form used by Boeing, they pose an even larger risk. When overcharged or damaged, they can become essentially a firebomb inside the airplane—one that burns without air and can't be put out by usual aircraft fire suppression systems.
I really never expected anyone to say that the problems in the electrical systems of the 787 might be due to the chemistry of batteries, but you'd think someone would have at least looked at the Wikipedia page:
Batteries produced with LiCoO2 cathodes, while providing good capacity, are more reactive and have poorer thermal stability than batteries produced with other cathode chemistries. This makes LiCoO2 batteries more susceptible to thermal runaway in cases of abuse such as high temperature operation or overcharging. At elevated temperatures, LiCoO2 decomposition generates oxygen, which then reacts exothermically with the organic materials in the cell. This may pose a safety concern due to the exceptional speed and magnitude of the highly-exothermic reaction, which can induce thermal runaway in adjacent cells or ignite nearby combustable materials.
Fascinating.
Orlando Is the Cat's Whiskers of Stock Picking →
A cat beat professionals in the stock market. Surprise. Dallas used to have a steer that could do that...
America's Real Criminal Element: Lead →
Take this with a grain of salt, but apparently the rise and fall of lead concentrations have been correlated with violent crime statistics by studies on the city, regional, state, national, and international levels. There's some interesting theories presented here, but the data provided is a little weak.
Amazon, Apple, and the Beauty of Low Margins →
A lot of folks, especially Apple supporters, like to characterize Amazon as irrational, even crazy, for its willingness to live with low margins. It must be frustrating to compete with a company like that. But to call their strategy irrational or to believe they want to be a non-profit is a dangerous misreading of what they're all about.
More on the benefits of low-margin businesses like Amazon and a few of their advantages against high-margin businesses like Apple.
Silicon Valley's Problem →
What if these two groups—the tech industry and the denizens of the Net—put its economic, political and media clout behind fixing our broken system so it works for everyone? What if, instead of imploring people to vote on Facebook's privacy policies, we were pushing Florida lawmakers into fixing the state's broken voting system? What if prison reform advocates could speak as loudly as the anti-SOPA activists? Why can't we, the tech community, figure out how to harness our talent and influence to fundamentally change the way our democracy works—not just for us, when it suits our interests, but for everyone?
Really, Amazon?
Raging Bulls: How Wall Street Got Addicted to Light-Speed Trading →
Latency is rapidly approaching the physical limits of the universe set by quantum mechanics and relativity. But perhaps not even Einstein fully appreciated the degree to which electromagnetic waves bend in the presence of money. Kevin McPartland of the Tabb Group, which compiles information on the financial industry, projected that companies would spend $2.2 billion in 2010 on trading infrastructure—the high-speed servers that process trades and the fiber-optic cables that link them in a globe-spanning network—all just to cut a few hundredths of a second off the time it takes to receive data or send an order.
Wired dives into high-frequency trading.
Wall Street has essentially granted Bezos the right to operate an extremely forward-looking charitable venture on the theory that at some future point it will acquire monopoly pricing power and start screwing us all.
— Matthew Yglesias, Slate