In this palindrome edition of the recommended weekly links: a plane powered by coal, how to kill Sarah Connor, did IBM's 2013 predictions come true? and a monkey beat some professionals in the stock market over 10 years. More? There's a lot more! But don't make me write it all; come in, rummage through the links and take whatever you like best. It's all free and there's no admission fee.
The photocopier that changed the world: this was the Xerox 914: "The Xerox 914 was the first photocopier in history, a machine that kick-started the information age. It was created in the late 1950s and was a real revolution for the office, making it possible for the first time to make almost perfect copies of documents in just a few seconds. It wasn't a small machine, nor was it cheap. In fact, its creator struggled quite a bit to start marketing it. But once it hit the market, no one could stop it." It's a shame they later ripped us all off.
The first traffic accident in history and the first deaths caused by cars: "In 1869 Mary Ward fell from the vehicle her cousins had built and that was moving by steam. It was a primary predecessor of the car and they were still testing it. Ward, then 42, fell from the car on a curve, landing underneath it, which ran over her, breaking her neck and killing her instantly. This Irish woman, who was also a naturalist, astronomer and art lover, was also a writer and was the first person to die in a motor vehicle accident. There is some parallel with what happened with autonomous cars these days; a woman was also the first to be run over a century and a half ago, although in Ward's case it was not a typical hit-and-run, but rather she fell from the car and then was run over." And in recent days, the first death by an autonomous vehicle happened. We made history!
The German plane powered by coal: "At the end of 1944, months before the end of the war, Germany was short of fuel. Aeronautical engineer Alexander Martin Lippisch, who had worked on flying wing and delta wing aircraft designs, designed the Lippisch P.13a (not to be confused with the Lippisch P.13, unrelated despite the name). Its peculiarity was that it was proposed to use coal as fuel. This delta-wing interceptor powered by a ramjet initially had a wire basket behind the nose air intake, slightly protruding into the airflow and ignited with a gas burner."
The first portable brain scanner: "Up to now, the possibility of doing a brain scan to analyze a person's activity was limited by one factor: during magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging, the patient must be absolutely still to avoid distorting the results. This limitation prevented diagnostic and research tests in groups such as children, people with autism, or those with mobility problems, like patients with Parkinson's."
How to kill Sarah Connor, what the first 'robotic homicide' can teach Skynet (and all of us): "Programming that justice is quite difficult. As robots come out of science fiction books and Central European mythologies, killer robots have become a (very serious) topic of debate. In recent years we haven't tired of talking about it. How do we program an autonomous car so that, in the event of an accident, it decides who should live or not? Is it safe to design military devices directed (at least partially) by artificial intelligences? Is it just my impression, or is that robot vacuum cleaner looking at me as if to say 'one of these days I'll start a revolution and this will look like Matrix'?"
Plans to bring samples from Mars: "What is the priority of the scientific community when we talk about Mars? Nothing less than bringing back a piece of its surface to be analyzed on Earth. The reason is that, no matter how sophisticated the instruments you can take to the red planet, there will always be all kinds of limitations. On Earth, samples can be analyzed with extremely complex instruments in dozens of laboratories around the world, and we can even use techniques that haven't been invented yet."
IBM predictions - Did IBM's 2013 predictions come true?: "One of the most interesting presentations IBM makes is its predictions package called 'Five in Five'. IBM usually participates in each of those developments (either directly or indirectly), and is supposed to have sufficiently advanced information to make accurate predictions. In 2013 it consulted its crystal ball, and today we ask ourselves: How well did it do?" Not too well, but they bet we'll forget. At NeoTeo we DO NOT FORGET.
How a monkey beat some professionals in the stock market over 10 years?: "Ten years ago, the Russian magazine Fináns began an experiment in which a monkey randomly selected a portfolio of Russian stocks, and the top managers of the time were asked to do the same. A decade later, the professionals have added up how much each competitor earned. During this time, the monkey's portfolio grew by more than 750%. According to specialists, the animal would have earned 1 million rubles in dividends (about $17,500) and the net worth of its portfolio would have increased from 1 million rubles (about $17,500) to 7.5 million rubles ($130,000)."
10 GameBoy games you may not remember: "If you're a millennial born in the 80s (or even a bit later) and you're passionate about video games, you probably experienced the fever and popularization of 8-bit consoles, where one of the most popular was the GameBoy, due to its nature as a handheld console, belonging to the third generation of consoles. Other consoles like the NES (Nintendo) or Master System (Sega) also belonged to this generation, however, the GameBoy was the most popular due to many factors: its portable nature, the long battery life (its rival, the Sega Game Gear lasted much less), the wide catalog of games, etc."
The three most realistic psychopaths in cinema, according to psychiatrists: "It's often said that reality surpasses fiction. In some cases it's true, but not always. Sometimes cinema takes too many artistic liberties, to the point of sowing in the collective imagination representations that have little to do with reality, as in the case of psychopaths. In fact, when we think of psychopaths, the first images that come to mind are probably Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, Alex McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, or Norman Bates in Psycho. However, those maniacal laughs that make our hair stand on end and those Machiavellian looks aren't very real."
No matter what you say, you also deceive yourself: "If you think you don't deceive yourself, you're lying twice over: for the original falsehoods and for the audacity to believe there are no tricks in your mind. There are degrees. There are more stubborn deceptions (or applied to a more visible and refutable part of the personality) and more dispersed and intimate ones. Some are more skilled, some more clumsy. But you deceive yourself, and you also deceive your loved ones. Don't feel guilty: they do it too. Whether that deceit has harmful consequences for others is another story."
The oldest phrase in humanity includes 'fire', 'worms' and your mother: "If we get on our time machine and go back 15,000 years, there's a phrase we could say in more than 700 modern languages that maybe the hunter-gatherers of Asia we meet might understand. And that phrase is: 'Who? Listen! I give fire to that man who barks. You flow and pull the black worm from the bark with your hand to give it to your old mother. And don't spit in the ashes!'"
VIDEOS: Puppy throwing a tantrum, Netflix in 1995, laser engraving on a pistol, the stuff of nightmares, a dinosaur on fire, playing three flutes at once, beautiful sculptures, spring in China, the new Pokemon Go consists of searching for people who still play Pokemon Go, disco endings from 1979, amazing olive harvesting machines, unexpected CGI in movies, and dogs playing the piano.
GALLERY: The 87-year-old grandmother who makes art in Paint, people selling mirrors, macabre costumes, amazing tattoos, Sony World Photography Awards 2018, drunk people in 1915, the best UFO Flying Saucers covers, Tibetan sand art, the most adorable and colorful café in Tokyo, mechanics posing like Renaissance paintings, miniature things, Japanese video game ads from the 80s, Russian beauties of the 20th century, animations of ancient monuments, fungus art, and Visual Dump of the Week in its 20th edition.
This week on NeoTeo: The best of NeoTeo? Of course! Here goes: WiFi gun that seems like science fiction, the floppy disk calculator, ray tracing demo with $60,000 in GPUs, the Atacama alien was actually a..., IBM's computer smaller than a grain of salt, you shouldn't force close apps, emulation of LCD games, and Pac-Man in augmented reality.
That's it, all done. If you got this far, it's because you have wayyyyy too much free time and you should find more constructive hobbies. But thanks anyway. See you next weekend!
