Interesting Links: June 1, 2019

Stephen Wolfram on computation and language; Visualization of 50+ years of oil production, by country; What it takes to launch a telescope; BitPay interviews Naomi Brockwell; and more...

Business, News, Science, Technology, or whatever gets my attention.

Straight from my RSS feed:

Ten links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.

1. Mining the Computational Universe - In edge.org's "Possible Minds series", Stephen Wolfram discusses some of his thoughts and experience at the intersection of language and computation. The link contains a video and a transcript of the talk.


2. What it takes to launch a telescope - This TED talk by Erika Hamden discusses her work creating the Faint Intergalactic Redshifted Emission Balloon (FIREBALL [PDF]) telescope. In pursuit of her goal to be able to see and measure every atom in the universe, the device is intended to take astronomical observations while hanging in a balloon at the edge of the atmosphere, at 130,000 feet in altitude. In addition to discussing the technology, she also highlights the importance of facing challenges and persevering through failure. After facing down obstacles with weather and equipment problems, FIREBALL's next launch attempt is scheduled for 2020.


3. Bar chart race of Global Oil Production by Country tbpd -
   Video:

   h/t Mark Perrry
   
   

4. STEEM The Evolution of the Blockchain Space - This post contains a youtube link with a BitPay interview of Naomi Brockwell (@skycorridors) at Consensus 2019. She discusses her history in blockchain and media, pointing out that the industry is in constant flux, so it's important to keep your "ear to the ground", and describes her work attending a variety of conferences and producing online content that is meant to educate people, as well as the Hard Fork Series, which is a TV science fiction thriller. Surprise fact for Steem's #classical-music community, she originally moved to the US as an opera singer. (5% of the rewards from this post will go to @skycorridors)


5. Whales: gigantism and cancer suppression evolved concurrently - Researchers from the University of Arizona published in Molecular Biology and Evolution that the gentic changes that produce exceptionally large size for whales also protect them from cancer. Peto's Paradox has been known for years, which is the observation that although whales have many more cells than humans, and they live longer lives, they do not have higher cancer rates, which is the opposite of what arithmetic would suggest. The current research supports earlier findings that exceptionally large species of animals have duplicate copies of many genes that are critical to cell function, and this seems to protect them from cancer. This observation is also true in elephants. h/t RealClear Science


6. ‘Socially responsible’ investors may have unwittingly backed police-state surveillance in China - Hangzhou Hikvision is accused of providing cameras that are used in surveillance of the Uighur Muslim minority in China, the US congress has banned use of the company's products in the government, and the company is also rumored to be a potential target of a Trump blacklist. However, the company's shares are still held by a number of so-called Enivronmental, Social, Governance (ESG) money managers.


7. Lenovo channels the spirit of IBM: Lays off 500 staff, savages Data Centre Group - The company acknowledges that it is cutting 500 jobs, worldwide, with 200 coming from the data center group. Anonymous posts on an online discussion board suggest that more cuts may be looming and that planning for these cuts began in 2018, when the company's financials were weaker than they are now.


8. Is There a Distinctive West Coast Style of Management? - In this article, James Heskett, Professor, Emiritus at Harvard argues that starting with Jim Collins & Jerry Porras in 1994, Stanford University's business publications have been highly influential in defining modern business strategy, and their graduates have clustered on the west coast. He also offers a number of anecdotes to suggest that this is creating a unique business culture on the west coast of the United States, with a focus on the "post-managerial society" where decision-making and creativity are decentralized, and empowered by ubiquitous tools, learning, and participation.


9. Sprint’s 5G network is here, and it’s completely different from what Verizon and AT&T are doing - Sprint launched its 5G network in Dallas, Houston, and Kansas City on Thursday. Unlike Verizon and AT&T, whose 5G products focus on millimeter wave technology, Sprint's "split mode" combines 5G NR and 4G LTE for 5G coverage that is more consistently reliable. Sprint claims that their 5G implementation will overlay their entire network, and that it will be 5X faster than its 4G network, with speeds from 100 Mbps to 600 Mbps, compare to 30 Mbps for 4G customers. The initial roll-out includes 8 cities with 11.5 million people.


10. STEEM Notes on "Winning" by Jack Welch - @jeffreymartin wrote 42 words or phrases from the book, Winning by Jack Welch, and then used that list to identify areas of opportunities in his own life. The article caught my attention, because I worked for GE's Aerospace business in the 1980s, when Welch was the CEO. Many of the words in @jeffreymartin's list ring true to me, but the corporate-level thing that I remember most from that time is Welch's (rumored) insistence on exiting from all lines of businesses that weren't ranked #1 or #2 in their sector.



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### About this series

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