I've finished with work for the year, and I strongly recommend you do the same as it will give you more time to read stuff like this 
Happy invoicing!
- Asleep at the Wheel in the Headlight Brightness Wars - ”The crusade against bright headlights has picked up speed in recent years, in large part due to a couple of Reddit nerds. Could they know what’s best for the auto industry better than the auto industry itself?” They are annoying - the headlights, that is.
- What Is Entropy? A Measure of Just How Little We Really Know. - ”Exactly 200 years ago, a French engineer introduced an idea that would quantify the universe’s inexorable slide into decay. But entropy, as it’s currently understood, is less a fact about the world than a reflection of our growing ignorance. Embracing that truth is leading to a rethink of everything from rational decision-making to the limits of machines.”
- Flesh-eating human parasite sweeping across Central America is raising concerns in US — what to know - Another good reason not to go to America: ”New World screwworm was largely eradicated from the U.S. and Central America in the 1960s and 1980s, respectively. But the potentially fatal parasite is starting to make a comeback, U.S. officials say.”
- Confronting risks of mirror life - We’ve found yet another way to destroy ourselves: ”DNA and RNA are made from ‘right-handed’ nucleotides, and proteins are made from ‘left-handed’ amino acids. Driven by curiosity and plausible applications, some researchers had begun work toward creating lifeforms composed entirely of mirror-image biological molecules. Such mirror organisms would constitute a radical departure from known life, and their creation warrants careful consideration.”
- A Genetic Time Machine Is Responsible for Chimps Evolving Like Humans - HT to DoctorStrangelove for this one: ”A new study from the University of Zurich uses markers of genetic similarity, or what they call a ‘genetic time machine,’ to analyze chimpanzee populations and tool-use culture over thousands of years. They discovered that migrating females often introduced cultural advancements into a new population.”
- NASA believes it understands why Ingenuity crashed on Mars - Air crash investigation on another planet: ”The helicopter's on-board navigation sensors were unable to discern enough features in the relatively smooth surface of Mars to determine its position, so when it touched down, it did so moving horizontally. This caused the vehicle to tumble, snapping off all four of the helicopter's blades.”
- SEPA confirms Dalgety Bay remediation work is complete - HT again to DoctorStrangelove: ”An object recovered from the beach was returned to the Rosyth dockyard laboratory for analysis and was found to contain radium-226, which is unrelated to dockyard activities. Contamination originates from the residue of radium-coated instrument panels from military aircraft incinerated and land-filled in the area at the end of World War II.” In related news: Radioactive contamination stops Highlands project
- Interstellar’s Most Enduring Quality Is Exactly What People Used to Hate About It - ”It might be hard to imagine now, but for much of 2014, many awards pundits considered Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar to be that year’s Oscar front-runner… There was just one problem: No one had seen Interstellar yet.” Film critic Bilge Ebiri looks back at Nolan’s film ten years on.
- Zen and the Art of Aibo Engineering - The story of Sony's robot dog, now twenty-five years old: ”When Sony’s robot dog, Aibo, was first launched in 1999, it was hailed as revolutionary and the first of its kind, promising to usher in a new industry of intelligent mobile machines for the home… Since Aibo’s debut, the company has sold more than 170,000 of the cute little quadrupeds—a huge number considering their price of several thousand dollars each.”
- Planet of the Apes: Face-to-Face with the Laboratory Chimps of Liberia - ”Liberia, a remote west African country, has a secret placed called Monkey Island. Too dangerous for people to set foot on, it is fiercely protected by dozens of infected chimpanzees released from a controversial US virus testing laboratory. It’s a story that seems straight out of a movie, so I decided to search for this place and see if any was real. What I eventually found was spectacular.” I have to say, the apes don’t look particularly diseased. More importantly, they seem to be thriving
Happy invoicing!
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