- .@davidhfe Totally glad Wikipedia is back. Its absence on matters like electromagnetic weaponry was palpable. in reply to davidhfe ->
- You know you needed this: List of electromagnetic projectile devices in fiction – http://t.co/RPPfsjT2 ->
- Year ago, but … the mystery of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom/Schmitz – http://t.co/DPkuKmC6 ->
- Whoa, in retaliation for Megaupload bust, anonymous has offed RIAA, DOJ, Copyright Office, MPAA, Universal Music, etc. http://t.co/u4meJ26Q ->
- Congrats @crashplan. Best in class: Meet Code 42, Accel’s first Big Data Fund investment — http://t.co/f8weeZZ4 ->
- Sigh RT @BloombergNews: Microsoft 2Q EPS 78c, est. 76c; 2Q rev. $20.89b, est. $20.92b. Shares up 2.9% $MSFT ->
Latest Stories
Twitter Digest: 2012-01-19
By · January 20, 2012 · ·
On Work
By · January 18, 2012 · ·
“Do your work for six years; but in the seventh, go into solitude or among strangers, so that the memory of your friends does not hinder you from being what you have become.”
- Leo Szilard
Twitter Digest: 2012-01-17
By · January 18, 2012 · ·
- GRL: A recent and abrupt decline in the East African long rains http://t.co/B6wbooiw ->
- PNAS: Global risk of big earthquakes has not recently increased http://t.co/ff1JcRwb ->
- Cheap Trick, Surrender. Live at Budokan. And you lovely people thought I didn't care about you. http://t.co/NA08N0aE ->
- Benford's Law, and worldwide illicit financial flows http://t.co/g6ppa5a5 ->
- Turntable For Video ‘Chill’ Turns Into Pinterest For Video, Sees 10 Sign Ups A Minute http://t.co/ZUiEzl3E ->
Benford’s Law, and Worldwide Illicit Financial Flows
By · January 18, 2012 · ·
Intriguing new paper:
The leading digit distribution of the worldwide illicit financial flows
Benford’s law states that in many data sets the overall distribution of the significant digits tends to be logarithmic so that the occurrence of numbers beginning with smaller first significant digits is more often than those with larger ones. We investigate here recent data on illicit financial flows from developing countries and reveal that the data does submit to Benford’s law. Further, the general improvement in the statistical accuracy which we observed supports the applicability of the normalization process used to limit the inclusion of the countries in the database for which the illicit financial flows are not substantial.
via [1201.3432] The leading digit distribution of the worldwide illicit financial flows.
Samsung and the Holy RIM
By · January 17, 2012 · ·
Samsung: We are not buying RIM! Will you please listen? We are not buying RIM, do you understand? Honestly!
RIM bull: Only someone buying RIM denies their buying.
Samsung: What? Well, what sort of chance does that give me? All right! I am buying RIM!
RIM bull: They are ! They are buying RIM !
Twitter Digest: 2012-01-16
By · January 17, 2012 · ·
- QotD: "If I had this [voice-controlled TV], I'd read a lot more books". http://t.co/j2WsxkHz /via @emilychangtv ->
- Oye. RT @Esquiremag: So this happened on Jeopardy just now: http://t.co/vrXosIOi ->
- .@boblesko No, it's for a presentation I'm working on. Don't ask. in reply to boblesko ->
- Reading that Klingons supplanted Romulans as foes in original Star Trek because of less expensive make-up requirements. Whoa. ->
Normalization of Deviance and Cruise Ships
By · January 16, 2012 · ·
Good reading from New Scientist on Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster.
Why was this massive ship so close to shallow rock outcrops?
Mark Staunton-Lambert, technical director of the London-based Royal Institution of Naval Architects, says this is the main question investigators will want answering. GPS and sonar instruments should have warned of the danger, he says.
Why might the Costa Concordias depth-sounding sonar have been ignored?
Like aviation, seafaring is in the midst of major computerisation, with bridges in modern ships like Costa Concordia becoming “glass cockpits”. The transnational maritime trade union Nautilus International says that the technology at the heart of this – the Electronic Charts Display and Information System ECDIS, which marries GPS and seabed sonar data in one screen – can be a problem. First, it says that the data on seabed obstacles can be out of date; second, the system generates too many alarms that can lead mariners to ignore them. “The ECDIS screens are only as good as the data that goes into them,” says Nautilus spokesman Andrew Limington. “And there are major problems with their user interfaces and ergonomics.”
via How stable are cruise ships like the Costa Concordia? – tech – 16 January 2012 – New Scientist.
Twitter Digest: 2012-01-14
By · January 15, 2012 · ·
- Where do I sign up for Googflix, as per @rupertmurdoch here http://t.co/hncTB1gJ ? Wait, he made that up. Darn. ->
- RT @timbray: This CNN image feels iconic: http://t.co/BMooXsX1 ->
- Super graph. RT @asymco: A brief history of personal computing platforms. http://t.co/K9J5kg1I ->
- At a birthday party of biking six year old girls. Surprised Russ Meyer never filmed this rather than Faster Pussycat. ->
Paper: Stochastic modeling of a serial killer
By · January 13, 2012 · ·
Unsettling new paper:
Stochastic modeling of a serial killer
We analyze the time pattern of the activity of a serial killer, who during twelve years had murdered 53 people. The plot of the cumulative number of murders as a function of time is of “Devils staircase” type. The distribution of the intervals between murders step length follows a power law with the exponent of 1.4. We propose a model according to which the serial killer commits murders when neuronal excitation in his brain exceeds certain threshold. We model this neural activity as a branching process, which in turn is approximated by a random walk. As the distribution of the random walk return times is a power law with the exponent 1.5, the distribution of the inter-murder intervals is thus explained. We confirm analytical results by numerical simulation.