Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for July 30, 2019
Libra accused of copying from MIT paper; NASA seeks to begin manufacturing in space; Deciding whether to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN); Market researchers can learn from baseball; The possibility of time travel
Straight from my RSS feed:
Links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.
- MIT Fellow and NYU Math Professor Says Libra Copied Off Co-Authored Paper - MIT fellow Andrew Lipton says that the "structure" of Libra is nearly identical to a paper that he wrote last year, with Sandy Pentland and Thomas Hardjono. Their paper envisioned a basket of commodities, instead of fiat currencies and government securities, but according to the article, the concepts are otherwise similar. The article also raises concerns because the increase in the supply of available currency may lead to inflatoin.
- NASA seeks to break the “tyranny of launch” with in-space manufacturing - NASA has funded a contract for two 10-meter solar panels to be built in space. The idea is that manufacturing in space would make it possible to build larger payloads. The manufacturing spacecraft is set for launch in 2022.
- Should You Use a VPN for Internet Privacy? That Depends, Experts Say - A VPN is an encrypted connection to a remote device on the Internet, so that your web activity appears to originate in a remote location. Advice for web users who are considering VPNs to protect their privacy includes staying away from free VPNs, and understanding the VPN provider's server locations, data logging policies, and history of compliance with law enforcement. The web site, That One Privacy Site helps people to evaluate VPNs and choose the one that suits their needs.
- What Market Research Can Learn from Baseball - As they say, "You get what you measure." Market researchers are fundamentally seeking to understand, "What do my consumers think?", but the data can only provide a partial answer. According to this article, a crucial difference between baseball and market research is that baseball statistics don't create a feedback loop with the players. On the other hand, market researchers frequently create the trends that they seek to measure. The article argues that market researchers could improve their product by finding questions that passively measure things about the consumers without influencing their behavior.
- STEEM Will Time Travel Ever Be Invented? - In this post, @sauravrungta discusses the possibility of time travel. The post says that Einstein proved that time travel to the future is theoretically possible by traveling very close to the speed of lite, but many people think that the possibility of paradoxes means that time travel to the past is impossible. However, some theoretical possibilities that may enable it include wormholes and higher dimensions. (A beneficiary setting has been assigned to @sauravrungta for 5% of this post's rewards.)
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I was curious about Libra when I heard about it...but that was until I read about it. Libra, to me, is almost literally everything I don't want out of the blockchain/cryptocurrency revolution. And Facebook being the irresponsible and far over-reaching company they are, I'll likely take no part in it.
Now, we need some legitimate blockchain-based social networking projects to get people away from that corporate monstrosity.
I don't particularly like the KYC aspect, but that's becoming unavoidable. It's just the nature of regulators, I guess. I was also disappointed that it is planned to launch as a permissioned block chain. But if they eventually switch to permissionless - as documented, I'll give it a second look.
It's also quite a coincidence that their logo is fairly similar to a sideways copy of the Steem logo.
Good sharing.