Interesting Links: April 21, 2019

Business, News, Science, Technology, or whatever gets my attention.

Straight from my RSS feed:

Ten links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.

1. Mastodon Bones Have Been Discovered by Sewer Workers in Indiana - The bones were discovered by workers installing pipes and verified by Ron Richards, senior research curator of paleobiology for the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites. The property owners will donate them fo the Indiana State Museum, if the museum committee decides to accept them. This is the 3rd discovery of mastdon bones in Jackson County, with previous finds in 1928 and 1949. A 1998 discovery was also made in nearby Fort Wayne, IN.


2. IBM Watson Health cuts back Drug Discovery 'artificial intelligence' after lackluster sales - They're not shutting down, but they're scaling back and refocusing on the adjacent field of clinical development. This comes amid a generalized deterioration in Big Blue's health division, and technical challenges with the software.


3. Heat-Loving Microbes, Once Dormant, Thrive Over Decades-Old Fire - The coal under Centralia, PA, has burned for half a century, with underground temperatures reaching 1350 (F) and ground surface temperatures getting as high as 900 (F). It is believed likely to burn for centuries longer. This provides an opportunity for scientists to explore the idea of a microbial seed bank, the idea that dormant microbes lie in wait, ready to spring to live in the event of a suitable environmental change. Consistent with that theory, a local native turned Susqueheanna University biologist and her team found that this change in the ecosystem has activated dormant species of microbes, and the area's microbial diversity is growing. Some of the identified microbes are similar to those that live near Iceland's hot springs. I wonder why someone doesn't build a turbine on top of all this heat and start mining bitcoin. ; -)


4. STEEM World's fa(s)test camera that shoots at 10 trillion frames per second - @a-condor posts a photo, description, and embedded youtube link that demonstrates the amazingly fast camera, which is known as T-CUP. The camera was built by a team comprised of researchers with the Université du Québec, Canada and the California Institute of Technology, USA. For comparison, a typical smart phone processes 30 frames per second.


5. Video Friday: Boston Dynamics' Spot Robots Pull a Truck, and More - IEEE Spectrum's "weekly selection of awesome robot videos". Includes another take on robotic sorting of recyclables, which was also touched on here.


6. The 20 best iPhone tips and tricks to make your life easier - I am not an iPhone user, but it looks useful for those who are.


7. Malware Crypto Ransoms Rose By Almost 90% in Q1: Report - According to Coveware's quarterly report, the average ransom increased from $6,733 to $12,762 between Q4/2018 and Q1/2019. Most of the change was driven by the Ryuk strain, which predominantly attacks larger enterprise targets. The most popular cryptocurrency for payments continues to be bitcoin.


8. Has the Postmodern Revolution Come Full Circle? - Quantitative analyst and Cambridge University PhD, Colin Turfus, argues that the Enlightenment represented a triumph of values for rationality over religion and traditionalism, and that post-modernism is a rejection of that very triumph. According to Turfus, by rejecting rationality and objectivity, post-modernism implements the Orwellian standard that some viewpoints are, "more equal than others", and puts humanity right back where it was before the Enlightenment. Turfus is a co-founder of the web site, societalvalues.co.uk


9. As Governments Adopt Artificial Intelligence, There's Little Oversight and Lots of Danger - James Hendler, who has been an AI researcher for 4 decades, notes that government has a mixed record when it comes to responsible use of AI advances. Frustratingly, the problems he describes with AI lie with not trusting it enough on one end, and trusting it too much on the other. In the absence of appropriate oversight programs, he says that the best way to avoid abuses is to educate the public on appropriate ways to use AI.


10. Maya Figurine Workshop Discovered in Guatemala - Science Magazine reports that a large figurine workshop dating to between A.D. 750 and 900 has been discovered during construction on a private property in Guatamala. Archaeologist Brent Woodfill excavated the site and examined the ceramic fragments. He believes the fragments came from figurines that would have been given to allies by Maya political leaders, so such a large workshop suggests the existence of a previously unknown but prosperous Maya city in the region.

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