I finished the book Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery by Scott Kelly. I liked the book a lot. The most interesting part for me was that he was up in space for a whole year while his twin brother stayed on earth. A lot of research was done and will be done because of that. It was also interesting that both twins developed prostate cancer. I also liked how the Russian space agency does things differently than NASA. Reading this book has made me more interested in space. I will have to read up on more topics, also next time I am in Washington DC, I have to go back to the National Air and Space Museum.
What you see here is the price of bitcoin, it crossed the 10,000 mark on November 28th 2017. Insane..
On January 1st 2017, bitcoin was 963, it's up over 1000% year to date
Bitcoin hit the 11K mark this week, almost at 12K today
What will happen first, will bitcoin hit 20,000 or will it go down to below 5,000?
Charts here: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#charts
Who buys bitcoins at 10K anyway? Maybe if you live in Zimbabwe or Venezuela where inflation is 50% or higher it makes sense, otherwise it's way to volatile IMHOWatched Meth Storm on HBO. This documentary looks at meth addiction in rural America from the perspective of dealers, users and law enforcement. I guess there is no way for me to understand how people act and live like this so I won't judge. It is however sad, very sad what these people go through and put other people through.
This Week I Learned
TarantellaSaw this on the Anthony Bourdain's Southern Italy episode which was shot in Puglia. It looks like
the tarantella is a solo dance performed supposedly to cure through perspiration the delirium and contortions attributed to the bite of a spider at harvest (summer) time
More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantella
Humans Are the Sex Organs of machines
Interesting quote from Marshall McLuhan, I heard this while listening to the Joe Rogan experience podcast with guest Brian Redban. This quote is from 1964, Marshall McLuhan was way ahead
Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian professor, philosopher, and public intellectual. His work is one of the cornerstones of the study of media theory, as well as having practical applications in the advertising and television industries. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge; he began his teaching career as a Professor of English at several universities in the U.S. and Canada before moving to the University of Toronto, where he remained for the rest of his life.
McLuhan is known for coining the expression "the medium is the message" and the term global village, and for predicting the World Wide Web almost 30 years before it was invented
More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan
How Lumière created the movie camera
Heard this on the Missed in history podcast. Lumière was struggling to create a movie camera, when he looked at a sawing machine, he noticed he could do something similar with his movie camera. Once he perforated the film and added clips to the camera it worked. The Lumière brothers were not interested in selling their cameras but more interested in showing films. Also interesting that the earliest movies included a lot of spanking and animal cruelty.
Thermometer scale
Heard this one in the How it began: A history of the modern world podcast
Anders Celsius (1701–1744) proposed a scale with zero at the boiling point and 100 degrees at the freezing point of water though the scale which now bears his name has them the other way around
Wow how interesting would it be to convert Celcius to Fahrenheit and vice versa if the original scale was still in use
This Week I tweeted
Stanford University 2017-18: CS007: Personal Finance For Engineers“Personal Finance for Engineers“. The course is offered through the Computer Science department (CS 007), but is open to undergraduate & graduate students of any major.
Shell and carmakers aim to go the distance with highway charging
Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) has partnered with top carmakers to deploy ultra-fast chargers on Europe’s highways, stealing a march on rivals in the race to remove one of the biggest obstacles facing the electric car sector.
Looks like Shell is already starting to diversify away from oil.
The electricity used to mine bitcoin this year is bigger than the annual usage of 159 countries
The amount of energy used by computers "mining" bitcoin so far this year is greater than the annual usage of almost 160 countries, according to new research.
Research by energy tariff comparison service PowerCompare.co.uk shows that the amount of energy expended mining bitcoin globally has already exceeded the amount used on average by Ireland and most African nations.
PowerCompare.co.uk used stats from Bitcoin and cryptocurrency data provider Digiconomist, which estimates that 29.05 TWh of electricity was used to mine bitcoin, compared to an estimated 25 TWh of electricity per year used by Ireland.
I guess it is good they use mostly ASIC miners these days instead of graphic cards... You could also in the future use miners as a heat system and generate money while also heating your house :-)
Coinbase Ordered to Turn Over Identities of 14,355 Crypto Traders to the IRS
On Tuesday, a California federal court ordered the popular cryptocurrency exchange and wallet service Coinbase to turn over records on thousands of customers to the Internal Revenue Service.
The requested records include the name, birthdate, address, and account activity for any user who bought, sold, sent, or received more than $20,000 worth of Bitcoin in their accounts between 2013 and 2015.
Not so anonymous is it?
More than 480 web firms record 'every keystroke'
Hundreds of web firms are tracking every single keystroke made by visitors, a study from Princeton University has suggested.
The technique - known as session replay - is used by companies to gain an understanding of how customers use websites.
More than 480 websites used the technique, according to the study.
Experts questioned the legality of using such software without user consent
That's not cool
Flat Earthers to Elon Musk: Mars is round, silly
Coinbase Ordered to Turn Over Identities of 14,355 Crypto Traders to the IRS
On Tuesday, a California federal court ordered the popular cryptocurrency exchange and wallet service Coinbase to turn over records on thousands of customers to the Internal Revenue Service.
The requested records include the name, birthdate, address, and account activity for any user who bought, sold, sent, or received more than $20,000 worth of Bitcoin in their accounts between 2013 and 2015.
Not so anonymous is it?
More than 480 web firms record 'every keystroke'
Hundreds of web firms are tracking every single keystroke made by visitors, a study from Princeton University has suggested.
The technique - known as session replay - is used by companies to gain an understanding of how customers use websites.
More than 480 websites used the technique, according to the study.
Experts questioned the legality of using such software without user consent
That's not cool
Flat Earthers to Elon Musk: Mars is round, silly
Haha this is awesome.. they are either the biggest trolls or the dumbest people.Hi Elon, thanks for the question. Unlike the Earth, Mars has been observed to be round.— Flat Earth Society (@FlatEarthOrg) November 28, 2017
We hope you have a fantastic day!
Some cool stuff you might enjoy
Django 2.0 releasedDjango 2.0 has been released, support for Python 3, Python 2 is not supported. Easier routing, window expression in the over clause just like in SQL Server, and much more, check it out here: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.0/releases/2.0/
World Cup 2018 draw
On December 1st the draw for the World Cup 2018 happened. Below are the 8 groups, I will give you also my predictions of who will advance from each group
Since Russia is playing at home, they will have an advantage over the other teams. This group is also the easiest group that could have been picked for Russia.. it is almost if someone paid FIFA off ;-) Russia and Uruguay to advance
The Iberian derby, Ronaldo vs Ramos, this will be interesting. Portugal and Spain to advance
France to advance, the 2nd place is difficult to predict perhaps Denmark?
Iceland and Croatia meet again, Iceland won the last game, but this is when Croatia had the tv repair man as a couch, it seemed they got their crap together. Don't know much about Nigeria, could be the dark horse in this group. Argentina and Croatia to advance.
Brazil and who else to advance. Serbia will have a tough game against Switzerland since the Swiss team has a bunch of Albanians/Kosovars in their team. But then again Serbia since it is playing on their Russian orthodox brothers turf, it could be said they are playing home. SO the 2nd place will got to Serbia probably
Die deutsche Fußballnationalmannschaft (die Mannshaft) to advance in first place, 2nd place is a toss up between Mexico and Sweden, 51% for Mexico
The south Netherlands (aka Belgium) to advance with the English team
Colombia to advance with Japan is my guess here. But then again Lewandowski could score a good number of goals and have Poland advance
Some pics I took
Took this while walking to work... I like how the light hits the fog and dust particles
Broadway near Fulton Street looks spooky with all the steam blowing all over the place
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