Remembering the fallen; Identifying mobile device users through their gait;"Traffic jams"
causing deaths on Mount Everest; Why young boys get poor grades; and more...
Business, News, Science, Technology, or whatever gets my attention.
Ten links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.
Headstone of H. J. Palmer, 83rd Infantry, WWII
Bucks County, PA
Original photo taken in 2017
- 83RD INFANTRY DIVISION IN EUROPE, THE - May 27 is Memorial Day in America, a holiday when we remember America's fallen soldiers. The day always reminds me of my grandfather, because this was always a solemn day for him during my childhood. He served in the 83rd Infantry in WWII as a bazooka gunner. Half a century later, he was still having trouble with airport metal detectors and medical imaging devices because of some shrapnel that had never been removed. The video describes his unit's journeys through Europe, from the days after D-Day through the end of the war. He talked little about his experiences, but was taken POW at the Elb River. I can't be sure, but I think it was probably during the action described at about 18:35 in this video. I suppose that he may have been part of the team setting up the bridge-head.
Online identification is getting more and more intrusive - UnifyID has identified as many as 50,000 unique signatures for the way people walk or move about. When coupled with a person's speed and finger pressure on the touch screen, as well as information about where the device is used, this makes it possible to uniquely identify users of mobile devices. These biometrics can also be used to identify probable cases of fraudulent device use. h/t Daniel Lemire
Why Are So Many People Dying on Mount Everest? - Seven deaths in a week may have been caused by exhaustion from waiting in lines to get to the peak of Mount Everest. The waits at high elevations are physically taxing, and when someone needs help, the crowds slow access to medical treatment.
One of the victims succumbed to exhaustion after being stuck for 12 hours at high altitudes.h/t RealClear Science
Environmental Group Lets You Kayak European Waterways for Free in Exchange for Picking Up Trash - Denmark's environmental group, GreenKayak offers a free kayak and bucket rental in exchange for an agreement to pick up trash during the trip. In the past two years, the initiative has collected about 24,000 pounds of trash from lakes, rivers, and canals in Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, Germany, and Norway.
Why boys get poor grades - A Norwegian researcher wonders why boys in the lower grade levels score lower than girls in academic subjects despite scoring evenly on standardized testing. The theory is that teacher's unconsciously let the boys' rambunctious behavioral tendencies influence their grades in subjects where that should be irrelevant. h/t RealClear Science
Before Netscape: The forgotten Web browsers of the early 1990s
- This year marks the 30th anniversary of the "World Wide Web". The article, reprinted from 2011, looks back at some of the early browsers, including Enquire, the WorldWideWeb browser, Erwise, ViolaWWW, Midas/SAMBA, Mosaic, Lynx, and Cello. My own first browser was in about 1993, NCSA Mosaic running on SunOS 2 or 3. I even e-mailed Marc Andreeson once for help with a compiler error. Mosaic eventually evolved into Netscape.
Internal emails show Google didn't refund defrauded advertisers for years, says one of the search company's clients - According to the article, Google acknowledged in internal e-mails and a recorded phone conversations that advertisers were due credits for fraudulent clicks, but they did not issue the refunds. After a 2017 law suit by AdTrader, Google is now refunding $75 million to various advertisers.
BCH May Have Sustained $1.3 Million+ Double Spend: BitMex Research - The BitMex exchange reports 3 interrelated problem with a recent fork: (i) An attacker broadcast an invalid transaction that caused some miners to mine empty blocks; (ii) This caused a chain split, when those miners reversed to the original chain; and (iii) this interfered with a system that was intended to recover funds that were accidentally sent to an invalid segwit address. As a result of this, 25 transactions with 3,392 BCH may have been double-spent.
STEEM FOLSOM PRISON BLUES (Johnny Cash cover) - @shemzee posts a cover of Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues. (@shemzee will receive 5% of the rewards from this post)
STEEM Strange “Rogue” Planet Travels Through Space Alone - @agbona writes about the rogue planet, SIMP J01365663+0933473, which is thought to be unusual because it does not orbit a star. With 12 times the mass and 200 times the magnetic field of jupiter, it was once thought to be a brown dwarf star, but later research revealed that it doesn't quite reach the age and size requirements. Researchers suspect that the planet is unmoored from a solar system because of phenomena like galactic collisions, black holes, or the death of a companion star. (5% of the rewards from this post will go to @agbona.)
### About this series
Note: Sharing a link does not imply endorsement or agreement, and I receive no incentives for sharing from any of the content producers.
Thanks to SteemRSS from @philipkoon, @doriitamar, and @torrey.blog for the Steem RSS feeds!
In order to help make Steem the go to place for timely information on diverse topics, I invite you to discuss any of these links in the comments, and/or your own response post.
If you're not on Steem yet, you can follow this account in RSS.