Weekly Review #122 - God Blood Magic, Visa's enigmatic founder, and Palin on drugs
I camped out down near Hollister in the middle of nowhere this week and had a great time with 3 other dudes drinking Soylent and playing board games. Very Silicon Valley campstyle.
We chatted a lot of scifi, including Malazan Book of the Fallen, a crazy fantasy series that started as a Dungeons and Dragons scenario (magic is god's blood, anybody can become a god if worshipped enough) and discussed quantum computing, which is basically assured to break all known encryption currently.
Speaking of encryption, real security doesn't exist - locks only buy you enough time to respond to the intrusion. So in software there's these things called honeypots - that are servers that don't do anything except alert you if broken into. Therefore you know that you've been hacked, if one of these tells you anything. It's like a bait car for hackers!
Tech
The Trillion-Dollar Vision of Dee Hock
Dee Hock is an interesting dude. Just your ordinary banker guy in Seattle, until credits cards undermined finance in the 60s. In he stepped, and united them under certain constraints while letting them compete on others, founding Visa. Then 20 years later he decides his work is done and resigns to live in isolation in Oregon and read.
"Through the years, I have greatly feared and sought to keep at bay the four beasts that inevitably devour their keeper — Ego, Envy, Avarice, and Ambition. In 1984, I severed all connections with business for a life of isolation and anonymity, convinced I was making a great bargain by trading money for time, position for liberty, and ego for contentment — that the beasts were securely caged.”
Spotify meets YouTube, for free. Not the first of its kind, but surprisingly well done!
Lifehacks
Why making my tasks emotional increased my productivity
Sort your tasks by the emotion they'll elicit upon completion. It helped Robyn!
Female travelers club - meet women like you when you travel. CS without the creeps, exceptttttt you don't stay at their place :/. Expansion opportunity!
Totally anarchist city in Norway - interesting to see how that turns out.
Fun
This twitter bot combines Sarah Palin tweets with Erowid drug trip reports, and this one combines bitcoin pioneer quotes with Donal Trump tweets. They have a lot in common!
"It can happen. Our blockchain has tremendous potential. We have tremendous people. #MakeTheBlockchainGreatAgain"
This person took all the data from Erowid's drug usage reports and made some pretty data visualizations. Looks like it's mostly psychedelics over there.
Travel Photos Are Instantly Better With Dinosaur Toys | Bored Panda
What other objects would make good Flat Stanleys? (things you take with you when traveling)