Category Archives: Technology and Society
The Modern World
Yes. “The modern world is astonishing. But it has a price: sometimes the expectation of no communication is better than an expectation of communication that goes unfufilled.”
[Update a few minutes later]
This seems related: Wifi is about to get faster.
Too bad it’s not about to get more reliable. I still have to reboot the router every time I want to watch Netflix.
Hipster Web Fonts
A righteous rant. As Glenn notes, a lot of web designers are young, with good eyesight, and monitors the size of a drive-in theater screen.
But now I’m thinking I should go look at my own style sheet.
Cosmos
Chad Orzell has some problems with the reboot. So do I and while it’s not his main concern, he puts his finger on it:
The bit where he called out young-Earth creationism for the impoverished scale of its vision was cute, too, though I’m not sure it was all that necessary or useful (in that the people who believe that won’t be watching, and wouldn’t be convinced), but then the show has clearly established a pattern of throwing red meat to the anti-religious from time to time.
Yes, if by “from time to time” he means every episode so far. I’m not traditionally religious, but I find it gratuitous and off putting. The writers and Tyson seem to get some sort of righteous satisfaction from putting a rhetorical thumb in the eyes of believers. It does not advance science, or their own secular religious cause.
Crowdfunding Is Not A Scam
It’s market research. She makes a good point, that it’s a quick, inexpensive way to identify products with no market, relative to actually putting them in the market. On the other hand, sometimes products that don’t do well in the market as their primary function find some other killer app that no one anticipated. If it dies in crowdfunding, no one would get the chance to discover that sort of thing.
Asimov’s Laws Of Robotics
Why they can’t protect us.
Unfortunately.
Government Ranges
We can’t rely on them for commercial spaceflight. It’s truly appalling that we’re going to have a multi-week delay at the Cape because the infrastructure lacks robustness. Unfortunately, the incentive structure for government expenditures allows this to happen.
Oculus Rift
Is the device sexist?
Ariane 6
The Germans want ESA to rethink it.
SpaceX is being very disruptive.
Doctor, Can I Go To Space?
A story on the legal issues associated with personal suborbital spaceflight.