Source: The Tree of Life Just Got a Lot Weirder – The Atlantic
Most of its branches are a mystery; we know they exist but we have never seen the organisms that perch there.
All the creatures we’re familiar with—the animals, plants, and fungi—are crowded on one thin branch. The rest are largely filled with bacteria.
Source: Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg Plan Interstellar Mission to Alpha Centauri – The Atlantic
Yuri Milner is spending $100 million on a probe that could travel to Alpha Centauri within a generation—and he’s recruited Mark Zuckerberg and Stephen Hawking to help. In an interview with The Atlantic, Milner makes his case for star travel.
This is a very big laser.
Source: Online Dating and the Death of the ‘Mixed-Attractiveness’ Couple
People tend to date people who are just as attractive as they are. And thanks to the rise of online dating, that is only becoming more true.
One week after Seattle police searched the home of two well-known privacy activists for child porn and found nothing, critics are questioning why the department failed to include a key piece of information in its application for a warrant—the fact that the activists operated a Tor node out of their apartment, in order to help internet users all over the world surf the web anonymously.
It’s like raiding the mailman’s house for delivering an illegal letter with no return address. Sure, it could have been sent by the mailman, but it could have been sent by anyone.
“When we get into things like this,” he said, “anonymizing stuff, that’s well over my head technologically, then it becomes very murky and hazy.” — Judge William Downing
Source: Compelling Science Fiction Home
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