Originally posted by alreadypacked
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Monday Links from the Bank Holiday Deckchair vol. CCCXXXV
It may not be raining, but that's no reason to go out and do something nice with your family for the Bank Holiday when you could stay in and read this lot instead:
- The Mastermind - Seven-part series on Paul Le Roux, a programmer who became a murderous international drug kingpin, dealing in everything from prescription drugs to meth from North Korea, before being arrested and turned by the DEA. ”Le Roux was once known online for helping build one of the world’s most significant pieces of encryption software, and then, in the mid-2000s, he poured his technical talents into an Internet pharmacy business, selling prescription drugs to Americans. That operation, according to the Department of Justice, earned hundreds of millions of dollars. Le Roux then directed his money into a broad portfolio of criminal concerns around the world: cocaine dealing, arms dealing, gold and timber smuggling, money laundering, and selling technology to pariah states. In the course of business, he’d arranged the murder of at least half a dozen people that I could name.”
- Two-hundred-terabyte maths proof is largest ever - "Three computer scientists have announced the largest-ever mathematics proof: a file that comes in at a whopping 200 terabytes, roughly equivalent to all the digitized text held by the US Library of Congress.” If you start downloading it now, it should give you something to play with over Christmas
- What technology are we addicted to this time? - "When a new thing comes along people say it’ll never catch on. When it catches on they say it’s a fad. When the fad gains enough traction, they say it’s an addiction." Louis Onslow brings together contemporary reports of moral panics over just about everything, from novel-reading being compared to alcoholism, to the plague of nomophobia: fear of your phone’s battery going flat
- I created Godwin's Law in 1990, but it wasn't a prediction - it was a warning - Mike Godwin himself on the real purpose of his “little social experiment”: ”Based on my own early experience of online arguments, I had come up with this mock ‘law,’ which was meant to have the sound and seeming inevitability of a law of physics or mathematics: ‘As an online discussion continues, the probability of a comparison to Hitler or to Nazis approaches 1’… I knew as a writer that if I could say something memorable about internet culture it was entirely possible for the memorable thing to take on a life of its own, propagated by the internet itself.” :nazi:
- 170,000 years before Stonehenge, Neanderthals built their own incredible structure - And what’s more, they did it in the dark: ”Hundreds of centuries ago, someone trudged into that foreboding darkness. Methodically, they broke apart hundreds of stalagmites and arranged the pieces in cryptic piles on the cave floor: two stone rings, one vast and one small, and several piles containing charred rock.”
- Project 360: Mount Everest - ”Interactive climbs are now possible for the first time in the history of alpinism. Experience the most famous routes of the world in a 360° view.” A team of Sherpas have ascended Everest wearing 360° panoramic camera rigs, creating this remarkable tour for you to take without the inconvenience of frostbite and oxygen starvation. (There are also a number of other famous mountain climbs on the site.)
- C&EN profiles the U.S. Fish & Wildlife forensics lab, the nation’s CSI: Wildlife team - A look at the work of the US government agency that investigates crimes against wildlife: ”Since it was established in 1988, the lab and its experts in chemistry, genetics, pathology, and other specialties have helped wildlife investigators by analyzing crime scene evidence. If their analysis links the victim, crime scene, and suspect, law enforcers use it to build a case that can stand up in court.”
- Is Donald Trump’s Hair a $60,000 Weave? A Gawker Investigation - "Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has generated an unceasing torrent of press attention that some estimate to be worth roughly $2 billion. Yet the central mystery at the very core of his persona—his inscrutable hairdo—has somehow, impossibly, remained unsolved. Until, perhaps, now." Could the truth about Trump’s hair finally have been uncovered?
- Why this man decided to become a goat - Thomas Thwaites goes to Switzerland to find out what it’s like to be a goat: ”Originally, he sought a grant allowing him to become an elephant and cross the Alps… A visit with a shaman, who called his plan ‘idiotic,’ helped him realize that in spiritual terms, he was closer to a goat.”
- Prostitute Portraits From The Dark Side Of 1900's New Orleans - NSFW, if you work in 1912.
Happy invoicing!
- The Mastermind - Seven-part series on Paul Le Roux, a programmer who became a murderous international drug kingpin, dealing in everything from prescription drugs to meth from North Korea, before being arrested and turned by the DEA. ”Le Roux was once known online for helping build one of the world’s most significant pieces of encryption software, and then, in the mid-2000s, he poured his technical talents into an Internet pharmacy business, selling prescription drugs to Americans. That operation, according to the Department of Justice, earned hundreds of millions of dollars. Le Roux then directed his money into a broad portfolio of criminal concerns around the world: cocaine dealing, arms dealing, gold and timber smuggling, money laundering, and selling technology to pariah states. In the course of business, he’d arranged the murder of at least half a dozen people that I could name.”
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