Monday Links from the Bench vol. CDLXXX

[WTFH]

What to do with all that Cobalt Thorium G that's been so expensively prepared.

Ask me in 93 years, I'm sure there'll only be half of it left by then.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Looks quite nice out, but don't be fooled; that wind'll cut right through you. Better stay in by the warm glow of the World Wide Web instead.

• Nuclear goes retro — with a much greener outlook - ”Returning to designs abandoned in the 1970s, start-ups are developing a new kind of reactor that promises to be much safer and cleaner than current ones.” Nuclear power stations that don’t blow up, melt down, or make bombs sound like a good idea
  

Happy invoicing!

It'll never catch on.

What to do with all that Cobalt Thorium G that's been so expensively prepared.

[northernladuk]

Making a Turing-complete font: ”[Glyph substitution] type 5 (‘contextual substitution’) is special. It doesn’t do any replacements directly, but instead maps a sequence of glyphs to a list of other tables that should be applied at specific points in the glyph sequence… it turns out that the contextual substitution lookup type is really powerful. This is because the table that it references can be itself, which means it can be recursive.”

I don't have a ******* clue what that means so looking forward to reading that one!!!

•security envelope collection - ”These security envelopes are collected over time from correspondence, junk mail and bills.

Just when you think you're starting to grasp the full spectrum of what you can find on the internet, something else comes along to blow your mind!!

[NickFitz]

Looks quite nice out, but don't be fooled; that wind'll cut right through you. Better stay in by the warm glow of the World Wide Web instead.

• The First Dog Ascent of a 7,000-Meter Himalayan Peak - A stray dog decided, as dogs do, to follow some people it liked. They were going up a mountain: ”On November 9, 2018, a dog named Mera became the first of her kind to reach the summit of Baruntse, a 23,389-foot peak in Nepal’s Himalayas, located just south of Mount Everest… Other than a brief human-aided zip line down a short section of fixed line, Mera made the ascent completely unsupported.” Good dog
  
  
• Criminal machine learning - (Had to use a bit.ly link here as CUK changes the domain to callinbulltulip.com.) ”In November of 2016, engineering researchers Xiaolin Wu and Xi Zhang posted an article entitled ‘Automated Inference on Criminality using Face Images’… Wu and Zhang explore the use of machine learning to detect features of the human face that are associated with “criminality”—and they claim to have developed algorithms that can use a simple headshot to distinguish criminals from non-criminals with high accuracy.” But, as so often happens, it turns out their AI may have been detecting something else entirely. Hint: people who’ve just been arrested don’t often smile for their mugshot.
  
  
• Humans are wiping out chimpanzee cultures - ”When chimpanzees encounter humans, it’s usually bad news for the chimps. Logging, hunting, and epidemics have helped push chimpanzee populations to the brink across their range in West and Central Africa. Now, a new study suggests human activity may also rob chimp populations of their cultures.” Not cool, humans
  
  
• Kiliii Yuyan - Some beautiful photo galleries in this portfolio site: ”Kiliii Yuyan is a Nanai (Siberian Native) and Chinese-American photographer whose award-winning work chronicles indigenous and conservation issues.”
  
  
  
  
  
• Mars Weather - You can now get daily updates of the weather on Mars (delayed by a couple of days, but it’s a long way away): ”InSight is taking daily weather measurements (temperature, wind, pressure) on the surface of Mars at Elysium Planitia, a flat, smooth plain near Mars’ equator.”
  
  
• Nuclear goes retro — with a much greener outlook - ”Returning to designs abandoned in the 1970s, start-ups are developing a new kind of reactor that promises to be much safer and cleaner than current ones.” Nuclear power stations that don’t blow up, melt down, or make bombs sound like a good idea
  
  
• Pac-Man: The Untold Story of How We Really Played The Game - Cat DeSpira on a feature of vintage arcade cabinets: ”The impressions of human desire are often left upon objects of their devotion or on the paths leading to where a sense of peace or pleasure can be found; i.e. the worn frets on a favorite guitar; the finger-smoothed ivory keys on an old piano; the “secret path” in the forest blazed by decades of children… And, of course, the front left-hand sides of all unrestored and original Pac-Man arcade cabinets that no one –until now– has thought to explain.”
  
  
  
  
  
• Addition Font - Making a Turing-complete font: ”[Glyph substitution] type 5 (‘contextual substitution’) is special. It doesn’t do any replacements directly, but instead maps a sequence of glyphs to a list of other tables that should be applied at specific points in the glyph sequence… it turns out that the contextual substitution lookup type is really powerful. This is because the table that it references can be itself, which means it can be recursive.”
  
  
• MovieSyncs - We had Dark Side of the Moon syncing with The Wizard of Oz back in 2010 (doesn’t time fly?) but here’s a definitive collection of supposed albums-syncing-with-movies.
  
  
• security envelope collection - ”These security envelopes are collected over time from correspondence, junk mail and bills. Only one example of each envelope design is displayed in the collection. There are many very similar patterns on envelopes in the collection, but a design is only considered a duplicate if it is truly of the same manufacture and origin. Size, presence and number of windows, pattern color, adhesive type, envelope construction and manufacturer logos/codes can all serve to differentiate similar looking envelopes.” Because having the same envelope multiple times would be boring
  
  
  

Happy invoicing!