Ulysse Sabbagh

After alcohol-induced blackout, this MIT researcher created glowing ice cubes to track his drinking

After alcohol-induced blackout, this MIT researcher created glowing ice cubes to track his drinking

thenextweb.com/shareable…

Some people complain about their headache, others innovate:

After an alcohol induced blackout, I made self-aware glowing ice-cubes that beat to the ambient music. The electronics inside the ice-cubes know how fast and how much you are drinking. The cubes change color from green to orange to finally red as you keep drinking beyond the safety limit. If things get out of control, the cubes send a text to your close friend using your smartphone.

Follow the link for the video. 

The Science of productivity:

Shockingly, when we look at some of the most elite musicians in the world, we find that they aren’t necessarily practicing more but, instead, more deliberately. This is because they spend more time focused on the hardest task and focus their energy in packets — instead of diluting their energy over the entire day, they have periods of intense work, followed by breaks. Not relying on willpower, they rely on habit and discipline scheduling. Studies have found that the most elite violinists in the world generally follow a 90-minute work regime, with a 15- to 20-minute break afterwards.

Cops, emergency room doctors, and insurance actuarists all know it. They realize how many crazy impossible things happen all the time. A burglar gets stuck in a chimney, a truck driver in a head on collision is thrown out the front window and lands on his feet, walks away; a wild antelope knocks a man off his bike; a candle at a wedding sets the bride’s hair on fire; someone fishing off a backyard dock catches a huge man-size shark. In former times these unlikely events would be private, known only as rumors, stories a friend of a friend told, easily doubted and not really believed.

But today they are on YouTube, and they fill our vision. You can see them yourself. Each of these weird freakish events just mentioned can be found on YouTube, seen by millions.

The Improbable is the New Normal by Kevin Kelly, founder of The Whole Earth Catalog, writes an excellent article about the unexpected nature of our time (spent browsing the Internet). 

Cops, emergency room doctors, and insurance actuarists all know it. They realize how many crazy impossible things happen all the time. A burglar gets stuck in a chimney, a truck driver in a head on collision is thrown out the front window and lands on his feet, walks away; a wild antelope knocks a man off his bike; a candle at a wedding sets the bride’s hair on fire; someone fishing off a backyard dock catches a huge man-size shark. In former times these unlikely events would be private, known only as rumors, stories a friend of a friend told, easily doubted and not really believed.

But today they are on YouTube, and they fill our vision. You can see them yourself. Each of these weird freakish events just mentioned can be found on YouTube, seen by millions.

Lazy Philosophy is a blog which attempts to make philosophy entertaining as well as intellectually satisfying. Until now it has worked very well and I read it every single day. Today, the writer makes a worthwhile detour and talks about String Theory. 

String Theory supposedly tell us that the most basic particles of the universe aren’t quarks but tiny strings of vibrating energy. Check out the video, it’s worth your precious time. 

lazyphilosophy:

Here at Lazy Philosophy we do enjoy the occasional philosophical epiphany that a great text can produce. But scientific vulgarization also has a great ability to blow philosophical minds by taking them into the secrets of our Universe.

Don’t be put off by the childish form of the video, because that bearded guy will blow your mind for certain by taking you into the microscopic world.   

However, if you want the full experience, watch Brian Green’s Elegant Universe  documentary about the evolution of our understanding of the Universe from Einstein to String theory. You will come out a changed human being. http://youtu.be/UV_X2B5OK1I 

Here’s a taster from the first part; and it only gets better.

A study led by Dr Galla from The University of Manchester and Professor Doyne Farmer from Oxford University is trying to find an answer to why you never seem to win at skill-based, complex games such as poker and chess.

In simple games with a small number of moves, such as Noughts and Crosses the optimal strategy is easy to guess, and the game quickly becomes uninteresting.

However, when games became more complex and when there are a lot of moves, such as in chess, the board game Go or complex card games, the academics argue that players’ actions become less rational and that it is hard to find optimal strategies.

This research could also have implications for the financial markets. Many economists base financial predictions of the stock market on equilibrium theory – assuming that traders are infinitely intelligent and rational.

But agents aren’t so rational, as we all know, and Economics, as a science, aims to best approximate the agents behaviour.

So there is little chance we can actually predict market patterns or anticipate general reaction.

Much of traditional game theory, the basis for strategic decision-making, is based on the equilibrium point – players or workers having a deep and perfect knowledge of what they are doing and of what their opponents are doing.

“With trading on the stock market, for example, you can have thousands of different stock to choose from, and people do not always behave rationally in these situations or they do not have sufficient information to act rationally. This can have a profound effect on how the markets react.”

“It could be that we need to drop these conventional game theories and instead use new approaches to predict how people might behave.”

A study led by Dr Galla from The University of Manchester and Professor Doyne Farmer from Oxford University is trying to find an answer to why you never seem to win at skill-based, complex games such as poker and chess.

In simple games with a small number of moves, such as Noughts and Crosses the optimal strategy is easy to guess, and the game quickly becomes uninteresting.

However, when games became more complex and when there are a lot of moves, such as in chess, the board game Go or complex card games, the academics argue that players’ actions become less rational and that it is hard to find optimal strategies.

This research could also have implications for the financial markets. Many economists base financial predictions of the stock market on equilibrium theory – assuming that traders are infinitely intelligent and rational.

But agents aren’t so rational, as we all know, and Economics, as a science, aims to best approximate the agents behaviour.

So there is little chance we can actually predict market patterns or anticipate general reaction.

Much of traditional game theory, the basis for strategic decision-making, is based on the equilibrium point – players or workers having a deep and perfect knowledge of what they are doing and of what their opponents are doing.

“With trading on the stock market, for example, you can have thousands of different stock to choose from, and people do not always behave rationally in these situations or they do not have sufficient information to act rationally. This can have a profound effect on how the markets react.”

“It could be that we need to drop these conventional game theories and instead use new approaches to predict how people might behave.”

explore-blog:

The best countries to be born in are small, peaceful, homogenous, liberal democracies.

Study evaluates the best and worst countries to be born in, based on 11 indicators.

How average Americans versus Hillary Clinton spend their time. No wonder why she’s quite tired since she spends more time in an airplane than the time average Americans read, eat and drink or do the chores. 

Led Zeppelin vs The Beatles - Whole Lotta Helter Skelter, a mashup by Soundhog.

Led Zeppelin vs The Beatles - Whole Lotta Helter Skelter, a mashup by Soundhog.

The Retina MacBook Pro is still very much a luxury item, but we’ve had a Retina iPad for almost a year and the iPhone 4 for two and half years. High definition displays in widespread usage are five times older than Gangam Style.

And yet, the internet is still having a hard time adopting. Startups slave for months meticulously designing their new marketing site and are completely oblivious that, to people on a Retina display, it looks like a jumbled pixelated mess.

You Suck at Retina nails it, albeit this is a big, fat, greasy first-world problem. 

The Retina MacBook Pro is still very much a luxury item, but we’ve had a Retina iPad for almost a year and the iPhone 4 for two and half years. High definition displays in widespread usage are five times older than Gangam Style.

And yet, the internet is still having a hard time adopting. Startups slave for months meticulously designing their new marketing site and are completely oblivious that, to people on a Retina display, it looks like a jumbled pixelated mess.

Gamers hired by father to ‘kill’ son in online games

Gamers hired by father to ‘kill’ son in online games

www.bbc.co.uk/news/tech…

Some headlines are worth all the world’s gold.