The Weekly Weird - 2017-03-31
- A law-talkin' reader reports that the important element of the you-have-to-decrypt-your-hard-drives case is the "foregone conclusion" aspect. If the authorities already know what's in the safe, that changes things substantially vs if it's just some random locked box. The nuance of how they know this (boy I hope they're not SHA-1 hashes...) is probably worthy of more investigation.
- World's tallest skyscraper? Pfft, let's just build the longest one instead. The obvious resemblance has been noted. Silly designs are one thing but hanging a skyscraper from a space elevator is so far past stupid it becomes awesome again.
- Speaking of stupid engineering efforts: let's suck the Mediterranean into the desert to spin turbines. Come for the "feasibility study proposed a series of 213 underground nuclear explosions as a cheap way to excavate the canal", stay for the complete lack of discussion of what happens to all the salt.
- I guess SpaceX launched and landed another rocket or something? Boring.
- I have a soft spot in my heart for kdb+/k/q, so this LtU post on their ?aaS is great.
- This is fine.
- Giant Comet 2016 was a bit late.
- The only thing Somalia has been in the forefront of is pithy anti-libertarian quips. It seems to have embraced this by setting its exchange rate by, um, treating physical currency like bitcoin: the value is set entirely by the physical cost of producing notes. I have no words. At least it's not as wantonly energy inefficient as Bitcoin.
- A fascinating examination of how subtle class cues affect how your resume is perceived.
- Living in a Martian igloo.
- You absolutely cannot keep a social media presence secret. Not even if you run the FBI.
- Letting two VMs covertly communicate by manipulating the host's cpu cache. Clever.