Calling Bullshit ~ Factcheck Covid-19 Misinfo

WIRED's Tom Simonite writes about The Professors Who Call ‘Bullshit’ on Covid-19 Misinformation...

"Jevin West told fellow University of Washington professor Carl Bergstrom that he was starting a new course on big data. The pair worked together to develop a course, Calling Bullshit, broadening the scope to offer tips on how to detect and disarm spurious appeals to data and science in anything from TED talks to medical papers. The syllabus went viral [Now] the pandemic has added Miracle-Gro to what Bergstrom and West’s course calls the “natural ecology of bullshit.” Despite the bullshit bonanza, West says he has been pleased to see medical experts fighting incorrect information on social networks and tech companies such as Facebook and Google adding banners and filters to fight or block coronavirus misinformation."

As an example...

"University of Washington professor Kate Starbird used a database of tweets about Covid-19 to create this chart showing how retweets (blue circles), quotes (orange diamonds), or retweets of quotes (green circles), boosted a tweet sharing inaccurate scientific claims about the novel coronavirus."

Shenzhen ~ The Silicon Valley of Hardware

WIRED's Future Cities series spotlights Shenzhen ~ The Silicon Valley of hardware...

Ghost Gunner ~ Tiny Anarchic Rifle Factory...

WIRED's Andy Greenberg makes an untraceable AR-15 Ghost Gun...

R.I.P. Hal Finney ~ Cryptocoder Extropian...

WIRED's Andy Greenberg writes Bitcoin’s Earliest Adopter Is Cryonically Freezing His Body to See the Future...

"Hal Finney, the renowned cryptographer, coder, and bitcoin pioneer, died Thursday morning at the age of 58 after five years battling ALS. He will be remembered for a remarkable career that included working as the number-two developer on the groundbreaking encryption software PGP in the early 1990s, creating one of the first “remailers” that presaged the anonymity software Tor, and -- more than a decade later -- becoming one of the first programmers to work on bitcoin’s open source code; in 2009, he received the very first bitcoin transaction from Satoshi Nakamoto. Now Finney has become an early adopter of a far more science fictional technology: human cryopreservation, the process of freezing human bodies so that they can be revived decades or even centuries later." [...] Fran Finney says that her husband had no illusions about the certainty of his resurrection. But until his final moments, he put his faith in the progress of technology. “He never said to me, ‘I will come back.’ But he told me, ‘I hope to be back.’"

Photographer Max Gerber captured Hal and Fran last year...

New Skull ~ 3DPrinted Replacement Braincase!

Wired's Nicholas Tufnell notes that Neurosurgeons successfully implant 3D printed skull at the UMC Utrecht hospital...

"A 22-year-old woman from the Netherlands who suffers from a chronic bone disorder -- which has increased the thickness of her skull from 1.5cm to 5cm, causing reduced eyesight and severe headaches -- has had the top section of her skull removed and replaced with a 3D printed implant. The operation, which took 23 hours, was led by Dr Bon Verweij. The patient's skull was so thick, that had the operation not been performed, serious brain damage or death may have occurred in the near future. [...] The lead surgeon had previous experience with 3D reconstructions of skulls, but such a large implant had never been accomplished before. "It is almost impossible to see that she's ever had surgery," said Dr Verweij in the university's official statement. It is hoped this technique can also be used for patients with other bone disorders or to repair severely damaged skulls after an accident or tumour.

And here's UMC Utrecht's surgery video...

Europe 24 ~ Day of Air Traffic Data Visualization!

Wired's Kyle VanHemert says Watch an Entire Day of Air Traffic in One Astonishing Visualization...

"The folks at NATS, responsible for handling much of the air traffic control in Great Britain and elsewhere, know the delicate dance better than just about anyone. To give us a sense of what keeps them busy day to day, they put together this stunning video. Running at 1,440 times regular speed, the viz is striking as pure laser light spectacle. But the closer you watch, the more fascinating details you’ll find. The clip combines UK radar data from June 21 of last year and flight plan data from the rest of the continent from July 28."

FoldScope ~ Ultra-Affordable Bio-Diagnostic Tool!

Wired's Greg Miller spots Manu Prakash's paper FoldScopes! Plus here's Manu's TED talk...

Garden Bridge ~ Proposed London Amenity...

CNN/Wired's Joseph Flaherty spots the Garden Bridge...

"If architect Thomas Heatherwick has his way, the River Thames will soon have a new plant-filled pedestrian crossing [spanning] the 1,204 foot-wide river and containing 2 million pounds of soil, giving root to 270 trees, as well as innumerable shrubs, bushes, and flowers. [...] As pedestrians proceed, stately oaks and manicured shrubs will dot the landscape. [...] Structural engineering firm Arup and landscape designer Dan Pearson helped give the concept form, while dealing with the unique technical challenges of a green bridge."

Grassroots Infra ~ Zuckerman Kick's BRCKs!

Nice WIRED UK piece by MIT Media Lab's Ethan Zuckerman noting how Africa's hackers are today's world-class tech innovators...

"On much of the African content, telecoms infrastructure is world class, whereas transport, power and other infrastructures lag far behind. For creative techies across the continent, this infrastructure disparity is an opportunity for innovation. [There's a] ...lively community of techies harnessing Kenyan telecoms to plug holes in the country's less developed infrastructure. Say you're the sort of Kenyan programmer who spends hours working on your laptop at home. Your arch-nemesis is the frequent power cuts that knock your internet router and wireless hub offline. You're the target market for the BRCK, a device being prototyped at the iHub that features a battery backup for a wireless router that talks to the GSM data network to provide net access. When the power goes off, BRCK turns on. [...] For countries such as Kenya to emerge as economic powerhouses, they need better infrastructure: roads, ports, smart grids and power plants. Infrastructure is expensive, and takes a long time to build. In the meantime, hackers are building "grassroots infrastructure", using the mobile-phone system to build solutions that are ready for market. [...] There's a vast, powerful infrastructure that can be repurposed and hacked. Some of the most creative people on the continent are solving problems by using technologies in ways their creators had never expected."

Read Ethan's whole piece and Kickstart the BRCK!

ColaLife ~ Coke Distributes AidPod Health Kits...

WIRED's Tim Maly writes about Clever Packaging: Essential Medicine Rides Coke’s Distribution Into Remote Villages...

"Simon Berry is piggybacking on Coca-Cola’s distribution system to bring life-saving medicine to the places that need it most. You can buy a Coke pretty much anywhere on Earth. Thanks to a vast network of local suppliers, Coca-Cola has almost completely solved distribution, getting its product into every nook and cranny where commerce reaches. There are places in the world where it’s easier to get a Coke than clean water. [...] ColaLife began collaborating with one of Coca-Cola’s African bottler/distributors, and the beverage giant shared advice and information about how its distribution network operates. [...] The result of their efforts so far is the AidPod, a wedge-shaped container that fits between the necks of bottles in a Coca-Cola crate. For the pilot program, they are using the AidPods to distribute an anti-diarrhea kit, called “Kit Yamoyo” (“Kit of Life”). The AidPod’s are a clever packaging solution, born of a very particular design problem. Because the vision was to physically piggyback on Coke’s distribution system, they needed to work with the crates used to move the popular soda to retailers. Initial designs experimented with pouches on the side and tubes that could be slotted in place of a bottle. Neither option would have worked, as both would have meant less space for Coke. Then, genius struck. “My wife said, ‘Why don’t we make use of the unused space?’” says Berry."

Nice!

Better Than Human ~ WIRED on Robot Ascension

WIRED's Kevin Kelly writes about robots being Better Than Human...

"...before the end of this century, 70 percent of today’s occupations will likewise be replaced by automation. Yes, dear reader, even you will have your job taken away by machines. In other words, robot replacement is just a matter of time. This upheaval is being led by a second wave of automation, one that is centered on artificial cognition, cheap sensors, machine learning, and distributed smarts. This deep automation will touch all jobs, from manual labor to knowledge work. First, machines will consolidate their gains in already-automated industries. After robots finish replacing assembly line workers, they will replace the workers in warehouses. [...] Next, the more dexterous chores of cleaning in offices and schools will be taken over by late-night robots [...] The highway legs of long-haul trucking routes will be driven by robots embedded in truck cabs. All the while, robots will continue their migration into white-collar work. [...] Any job dealing with reams of paperwork will be taken over by bots, including much of medicine. Even those areas of medicine not defined by paperwork, such as surgery, are becoming increasingly robotic. The rote tasks of any information-intensive job can be automated. It doesn’t matter if you are a doctor, lawyer, architect, reporter, or even programmer: The robot takeover will be epic."

I, for one, welcome the ascension of our overlordbots.

Bus+Train ~ JR's Dual-Mode Road+Rail Vehicle...

Alexander Lew in Wired Autopia says It’s a Bus. It’s a Train. It’s Both!

Flat Lens ~ Phased Array of Optical Antennas...

Cool work at Harvard SEAS on making a really Flat Lens...

"Our flat lens opens up a new type of technology,” says principal investigator Federico Capasso, Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering at SEAS. “We’re presenting a new way of making lenses. Instead of creating phase delays as light propagates through the thickness of the material, you can create an instantaneous phase shift right at the surface of the lens. It’s extremely exciting.” [...] The flat lens eliminates optical aberrations such as the “fish-eye” effect that results from conventional wide-angle lenses. Astigmatism and coma aberrations also do not occur with the flat lens, so the resulting image or signal is completely accurate and does not require any complex corrective techniques. The array of nanoantennas, dubbed a “metasurface,” can be tuned for specific wavelengths of light by simply changing the size, angle, and spacing of the antennas. “In the future we can potentially replace all the bulk components in the majority of optical systems with just flat surfaces,” says lead author Francesco Aieta."

(Thanks to Wired's Jakob Schiller for spotting)

Africa Tech ~ WIRED on Emerging Innovators...

Nice piece by Pete Guest in WIRED about Switching On: Africa's Vast New Tech Opportunity...

"Beyond macroeconomic factors [...] technology is driving profound changes to economies and societies across the continent. The hundreds of millions of mobile handsets and billions of airtime minutes only go some way to describe the scope of entrepreneurship that underpins Africa's technological revolution. From mobile payments to telemedicine and advertising, there is a common pulse of innovation, driven by an irrepressible combination of aspiration and necessity. This is the new Africa."

Companies and innovators mentioned include M-PESA, Verviant, PesaPal, Safaricom, Google, Wananchi, Zuku, InMobi, Encipher, mPedigree, Kalahari, Dealfish, Mocality, and more.