Baal (Impressive. A ring of child pornographers communicating securely via PGP & alt.anonymous maildrops, rotating keys regularly, where the bust only happened because a member was busted for non-ring-related problems and the only busted members were violating the Hushmail lesson by using a third-party service.)
Technology:
“Welcome to the Jungle” (CPU design and Moore’s law)
Debian bug report #217243: “
wget: Possibility to really reject files on recursive downloads” (serious gotcha everyone needs to know about if they are trying to spider withwgeta site requiring cookies/login, like, for example, a black-market forum)“Computational Complexity of Air Travel Planning” (excerpts)
“RSA Key Extraction via Low-Bandwidth Acoustic Cryptanalysis”
“You advocate a __ approach to calendar reform” (I always sigh when I have to deal with any date-time programming.)
“Does Copyright Affect Creative Reuse? Evidence from the Digitization of Baseball Digest”, Nagaraj 2013 (excerpts)
Baal (Impressive. A ring of child pornographers communicating securely via PGP &
alt.anonymousmaildrops, rotating keys regularly, where the bust only happened because a member was busted for non-ring-related problems and the only busted members were violating the Hushmail lesson by using a third-party service.)“How close would you have to be to a supernova to get a lethal dose of neutrino radiation?”
Science/medicine/statistics:
“The Intelligent Plant: Scientists debate a new way of understanding flora” (also worth reading: “If a Lion Could Talk: Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of Consciousness”)
“Embryo Selection for Cognitive Enhancement: Curiosity or Game-changer?”, Shulman & Bostrom 2013 (excerpts)
“Were James Bond’s drinks shaken because of alcohol induced tremor?”, Johnson et al 2013
“So depression is an inflammatory disease, but where does the inflammation come from?”, Berk et al 2013 (excerpts)
“Change in Against Malaria Foundation recommendation status (room-for-more-funding-related)”
Replication backlash
“When Mice Mislead” (“Of Mice (Studies) and Men”)
“The dangers of zero and one” (Fun example from genetics research of how even extremely weak priors are useful)
“Do Certain Countries Produce Only Positive Results? A Systematic Review of Controlled Trials”, Vickers et al 1998 (excerpts)
“China’s academic scandal: call toll-free hotlines to get your name published”
Writing:
“Roomlore is the lore anent heavenly bodies such as stars, wanderers, moons, star clouds, star clusters, and starswirls, their bodily workings, and their gathering....” (written in Anglish)
“Deadline” (science fiction story)
Excerpt from The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien (Atomic theory proves that bicycles are plotting against us.)
“Lady Yodo-Dono” (poem)
Politics:
‘Review of “The Rise of China vs. The Logic of Strategy” by Edward Luttwak’
“David Walsh’s wisdom beats the odds ”
“Snowden: Hero”
“Good News You Might Have Missed in 2013” (Bill Gates reviews global health & poverty progress)
General:
“Like I Was Jesus: How to bring a nine-year-old to Christ”
“We Are All MsScribe” (sockpuppeting, fandom wars)
Preference falsification
“An opportunity cost model of subjective effort and task performance”, Kurzban et al 2013 (willpower; discussion)
“Making a kangling for chöd” (An unexpectedly practical discussion by David Chapman of femur-flutes.)
“100 Years Later, the Crossword Is Still the King of Puzzles”
Philosophy:
“Discussions for information” (These are some of the reasons I’ve soured on discussion as a way of exchanging information and evaluating new stuff.)
“Scott Aaronson interview on Philosophical Progress”