Category: Link post

1. Ben Thompson on Facebook/Google regulation. Ben Thompson argues in an excellent 3000 word piece the current EU approaches to Facebook/Google regulation are backfiring, and transparency is a better solution. I don’t think this will get many pageviews, but at a theory and explanation level it’s outstanding. Old style consumer companies with physical goods tended to… Continue reading Saturday Links 22-Sep-2018: Ben Thompson on internet regulation, Apple reviews, micromobility, Kipchoge’s ridiculously fast marathon

1. Kessler syndrome and space junk. Nature news has an article on the accumulation of space junk (dead satellites, rocket shards, etc) in low Earth orbit. The chart below is a nice visual. Of the 20,000 tracked objects, half come from two events: 1) Chinese government blew up a satellite in a missile test in… Continue reading Saturday links 8-Sep-2018: Kessler space junk, unsupervised play is good, white flight Asian edition

1. Twilight of the Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza era. Cavalli-Sforza died on August 31. He helped create many of the modern techniques of population genetics, and his life’s work was an attempt to fit all of humanity into a single family tree. If you’re interested in an overview of his career, see this excellent post by… Continue reading Sunday links 3-Sep-2018: the Cavalli-Sforza era, text editing methods, some excellent charts

Below is my weekly summary of things I’ve enjoyed reading, with commentary. 1. Facebook and Nutella. The New York Times story Facebook Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany was by far the most posted link in my twitter feed this week. Most quoted sentence: “Wherever per-person Facebook use rose to one standard deviation above the national… Continue reading Sunday Links 26-Aug-2018: Facebook and Nutella, Neanderthal Denisovan mix, infinite book scroll, Angry Angry Hippo

Here’s my weekly list of links and commentary. 1. Peter Turchin’s model says US violence will peak in 2020. This Nature News article from 2012 summarizes Turchin’s work: To Peter Turchin, who studies population dynamics at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, the appearance of three peaks of political instability at roughly 50-year intervals is not a… Continue reading Saturday Links 18-Aug-2018: Turchin’s model for social crisis, feudal California taxes, PGS for disease, Elephant genes

Here’s what I found interesting this week. Plus commentary. 1. Amazon Alexa only rarely used for shopping. The Amazon Alexa voice interface device is primarily used to “answer simple questions about the weather, set timers and play music and radio stations.”  Via Charles Arthur on twitter, of the 1 million who’ve tried shopping with Alexa,… Continue reading Sunday Links 12-Aug-2018: most don’t shop with Alexa, Loss Aversion, workplace wellness RCT, Arambourgiania, Colima volcano

Here’s 5 links, with commentary, on what I enjoyed reading this week. 1. The shifting language of racism. If you spend time on twitter (guilty), it was impossible to miss the kerfuffle around the New York Times hiring Sarah Jeong to its editorial board. People looked into her twitter history, and dug up tweets like:… Continue reading Sunday Links 5-Aug-2018: Shifting language of racism, two kinds of YIMBY, Island Dwafism, Wildfires and Houses

Here’s comments on what I most enjoyed reading this week. And yes, a lot of this post is on educational attainment genomics paper number three (nickname EA3). Point #1 below. But plenty of other good stuff too! 1. Genomic prediction of educational attainment. New paper analyzes DNA of 1.1M people of European descent to find… Continue reading Sunday Links 29-Jul-2018: Genetics of education, Big tech economics, MOOC middlemen get the $, Underground water on Mars

1. Voice Computing. Benedict Evans has long been skeptical of voice as a computing interface. I’ve generally been bullish. In the end I think everyone agrees voice would be great, but it’s unclear on when it will become good enough to be truly useful. It’s a matter of timing, always the hardest thing to know… Continue reading Sunday Links 22-Jul-2018: Voice computing, Netflix, Quantum gravity, blueberry Earth

1. Genomic Prediction of Social Mobility. New paper using 20k individuals predicts SES mobility with genomic scoring. In English this means that by looking at your genes, you can predict, at least to some extent, who is going to rise and fall in socioeconomic status. The study included predictions of siblings (since children have different mixes… Continue reading Saturday Links 14-Jul-2018: Genomic Prediction of Social Mobility, Alzheimer Virus, Mind as prediction, Sonos teardown