Linked List: June 26, 2014

Thursday, 26 June 2014

Nathan Taylor, Praxtime:

Recall from my previous post how we have three wildly disparate time scales in play: millions, billions and trillions. Rounding to the nearest 20, we have:

Time for intelligent life to fill a galaxy: super short 20 million years

Time for intelligent life to evolve in a galaxy: moderate 20 billion years

Time of universe to keep having stars: super long 20 trillion years

The first perspective shift is to step back in time, and realize the universe is very young. With 20 trillion years of star generation ahead, the universe has only covered 13.7 billion years or roughly .07% of its life span. Compare this to a person who expects to live 70 years, and you’d get .07% * 70 years = roughly 18 days. So in human terms the universe is a three week old baby. No wonder there’s not too much life out there yet.

I can’t get enough of this stuff. Big thoughts, in every sense of the word. (Thanks to Jesse Larson.)

Android Wear First Impressions ★

Steve Kovach, Business Insider:

I used one of the new Android Wear smartwatches, Samsung’s Gear Live, for several hours Thursday, and my wrist hasn’t stopped buzzing since I synced the device with my phone.

New email? Buzz. New text? Buzz. The thing won’t shut up. I’m one of those guys who obsessively checks his phone, but this is too much for me. Plus Android Wear ties in with Google’s digital assistant service Google Now, which attempts to help you out by notifying you about stuff it thinks you want to know about like upcoming flights or package deliveries.

So there are even more things to look at.

This isn’t the answer. Instead of solving the problem of whipping my phone out several times a day, Android Wear makes me nervous and anxious from all this hyper-connectivity. If I’m to ever go all in on a smartwatch it needs to be simpler than this.

The Fermi Paradox ★

Tim Urban, writing for Wait But Why:

SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is an organization dedicated to listening for signals from other intelligent life. If we’re right that there are 100,000 or more intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, and even a fraction of them are sending out radio waves or laser beams or other modes of attempting to contact others, shouldn’t SETI’s satellite array pick up all kinds of signals?

But it hasn’t. Not one. Ever.

Where is everybody? […]

The Great Filter theory says that at some point from pre-life to Type III intelligence, there’s a wall that all or nearly all attempts at life hit. There’s some stage in that long evolutionary process that is extremely unlikely or impossible for life to get beyond. That stage is The Great Filter.

If this theory is true, the big question is, Where in the timeline does the Great Filter occur

It turns out that when it comes to the fate of humankind, this question is very important. Depending on where The Great Filter occurs, we’re left with three possible realities: We’re rare, we’re first, or we’re fucked.

Great piece. (Via Kottke.)

Privacy as a Competitive Advantage for Apple ★

Rich Mogull, writing for Macworld:

Corporations generally limit their altruism to charity, not to core product and business decisions. Apple likely sees a competitive advantage in privacy, especially when its biggest direct competition comes from advertising giant Google and the enterprise-friendly Microsoft. Apple believes consumers not only desire privacy, but will increasingly value privacy as a factor in their buying decisions.

Plus, even CEOs and product managers get creeped out when the government reads their email.

No doubt in my mind that Mogull is exactly right. Apple cares about user privacy, and they see it as a competitive advantage. Or if you want to be cynical, they care about it because they see it as a competitive advantage. Either way, it’s good for customers.

Apple Cuts Prices on iPod Touch Line ★

The least-discussed member of the iOS device family, but Apple has sold over 100 million of them since 2007.

The Elephants in the Google I/O Room: Glass and Plus ★

Matthew Panzarino, writing for TechCrunch:

But even a stretch of presentations that had one attendee asleep in his chair apparently wasn’t enough runway to allow a mention of two troubled Google children: Glass and Plus.

Google+, the company’s attempt to unify its various products with a webbing of identity and social, was barely, barely mentioned at all during the keynote. Last year it took up a major chunk of the presentation and the year before it felt like a Google+ plus Glass keynote (complete with skydivers and biking on the roof of Moscone) with a smattering of other stuff thrown in.

This year, Glass wasn’t even mentioned, and no presenters wore it on stage. Even when the discussion turned to wearables — an ideal time to work in its face computer — Google had nothing to say.

‘When a Tie Is a Win, We All Lose’ ★

Keith Olbermann on what’s wrong with soccer and the World Cup.