Welcome to this week's recommended links! Here you'll find lights that are too smart, a liquid metal robot, the voice of a legend, the optogram of murderers and the professions of psychopaths, among many other gems. Don't miss them!
A Massachusetts institute has had smart lights on for a year and a half because they can't turn them off
"It was designed as an energy-saving system, but it is costing thousands of dollars a month in electricity bills. The public regional institute Minnechaug in Massachusetts has had smart lights on 24 hours a day for a year and a half, because they have broken down and... they cannot be turned off. Behind it is a bizarre story that is hard to understand. Doesn't the institute have a main switch to turn off all the lights, or can't they do it from the electric company? Well, simply... no."
A liquid metal robot that can slip through bars like in 'Terminator 2'
"In the movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the first Terminator (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) defends Sarah and John Connor from a new generation of liquidator from the future, the T-1000. The first thing that catches your attention about this robot is that it is so ductile that it deforms after receiving a blow or bullet and immediately recomposes. Now, Chinese and American researchers have created something like a T-1000, in reduced version. Their creation, made of metal that melts almost at room temperature, can pass from solid to liquid state at the will of its creators."
Crypto miners paint GPU memory to make them look new
"If a couple of months ago we saw how they even washed them with water to leave them as new, now the roguery has gone up a level. It has been in Brazil, where it was discovered that cryptocurrency miners are using more creative solutions to 'restore' the hardware that no longer serves them. The reason for this is the resale of hardware, with the 'restoration' of VRAM memory chips being the most common. Remember that in Ethereum mining, the component that suffered the most of a GPU was precisely the memory."
The tech magnate who spends $2 million a year to have the physique of an 18-year-old
"Software magnate Bryan Johnson wants to regain his youth and spends two million dollars a year for it. The 45-year-old American businessman says he has the heart of a 37-year-old, the skin of a 28-year-old, and the physical condition of an 18-year-old. He has had 30 doctors working behind him for some time to control his routine. His goal is for his main organs, such as the brain, liver, kidneys, teeth, skin, hair, penis, and rectum, to function as they did in his adolescence."
How humanity will evolve if we stop wars and invest in science
"Let me pause and summarize: if humanity were as peaceful as Lennon imagined, then it could have sent a probe to every star in the Milky Way in a few decades. Realizing this opportunity and reading the daily news about the war in Ukraine makes one wonder if we are a truly intelligent species. But let's continue with our thought experiment and hope it can inspire policymakers to shape a more inspiring future for humanity."
The professions that psychopaths prefer most and least
"The definition of a psychopath has varied over the years and is still under investigation. However, there are several behaviors and characteristics that are common among psychopathic people. They tend to have marked antisocial behavior, reduced fear, reduced empathy, lack of guilt, egocentrism, manipulation, irresponsibility, impulsivity, and antisocial behaviors. (Skeem et al, 2011). This set of characteristics makes us wonder which professions psychopaths generally choose."
Ymac Sumac, the voice of the legend
"Yma Súmac's success was forged in the 1950s, in the United States and Europe, amid Hollywood glamour and the fascination caused by her singular voice. She was capable of reaching such wide vocal ranges —from four to five octaves— that beyond academic purism, they dazzled thousands of people who ran to buy her records in Los Angeles, New York, or London, also marveling at the legend that had been woven around her. It was said that she was the last descendant of the Incas, that her singing competed with that of birds, and that her vocal timbre was so extraordinary that it only appeared every thousand years."
How a philosopher carved Epicurus's teachings in the 2nd century and created the largest inscription of antiquity
"The inscription turned out to be the work of an Epicurean philosopher named Diogenes of Oenoanda. It turns out that this Diogenes, of whom practically nothing is known except what the inscription itself reveals, must have been rich enough to acquire a large plot of land in his city. On that land, he had a plaza adorned with statues built and, in it, a stoa (a long, porticoed building with columns) 80 meters long, on which he carved a summary of Epicurus's philosophy."
When comics were the secret weapon of the United States
"They called it the Writers' War Board and it brought together a large number of cartoonists, screenwriters, and publishers secretly funded by the Office of War Information. At first glance, it worked as an association of artists committed to the cause, but their comics followed a state-approved roadmap to shape popular perceptions, and it was done very specifically, with guidelines on how the enemy should be portrayed. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, for example, some covers showed the Japanese as monstrous creatures that deserved to be exterminated."
The Kip brothers or the optogram of murderers
"Optography is the process of seeing or recovering an optogram, the image on the retina of the eye. The belief that the eye records the last image seen before death was widespread in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was a frequent device in the plots of fiction of the time, to the point that the police photographed, as in Jules Verne's story, the eyes of victims to solve murders. The concept has been, as we shall see, repeatedly discredited as a forensic method."
Why the FIFA saga sells like hotcakes if every year it offers the same game
"Although the saga has had some installments that have represented a significant leap compared to what has been seen in the past, the truth is that the vast majority of games are indistinguishable at a glance, especially in the last 15 years. Even FIFA fans would have a hard time trying to explain what distinguished FIFA 20 from FIFA 21, for example. The logical thing would be to think that releasing an almost identical game every year would erode sales figures due to the lack of new features, but nothing could be further from the truth."
Beyond 'The Last Of Us', 25 great zombie series and movies on platforms
"It adapts the famous video game of the same name in which Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey must face the zombie apocalypse stemming from the expansion of a lethal fungus. Taking advantage of this predictable television milestone, we selected 25 series and movies about the undead that exude terror, apocalypse, irony, criticism, fun, and (many) bites. There are 25, but there could be 50, because the list is as infinite as the fascination that the supernatural undead, or failing that, the infected by viruses, fungi, or other dangerous microorganisms, causes us."
VIDEOS: Artificial gecko skin, a camera under the pier, naked mole-rat colony, the ice disc, the master of the Slinky, Graham's number, cyberpunk Japan, mysterious and intricate 17th-century anatomical mannequins, how silk is obtained and thread is made from silkworm farming, vitamin C under the microscope, an astronaut stuck in zero gravity, fat kitten symphony, a machine that washes hair, Internet in 1993, a reverse waterfall captured by drone, slime attack, squid camouflage, about the use of depleted uranium..., and the sci-fi short The Kid.
GALLERIES: The history of photography in photos, pen drawings, old photos from the perfect angle, Popular magazine covers from the '20s, worlds inside nutshells, the terrifying strange art of AI Capitan, cholitas on skateboards, Wonders of Street View, sweets and makeup, the foxes of Ross Harried, map battle, the game Chrono Photo, the Vertedero Animado and the Tiradero Visual de la Semana to close.
https://old.neoteo.com/ketchup-como-pasta-termica-y-otros-experimentos-que-tan-dificil-es-refrigerar-un-gpu/Thanks for reading! See you next time!
