Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for October 14, 2019 by remlaps-lite

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· @remlaps-lite ·
$2.97
Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for October 14, 2019
<b>Blockchain governance voting with one's stake in cold storage</b>; Sensors inspired by human skin make robots safer; <b>A biologists ideas on rethinking success</b>; Paleolithic humans may have stored food 400,000 years ago; and <b>a Steem essay describes another new technique for detecting dark matter</b>

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<center><b><i>Fresh and Informative Content Daily: Welcome to my little corner of the blockchain</i></b></center>
<table>
<tr><td><h5>Straight from <A HREF=https://theoldreader.com>my RSS feed</A></h5></td><td><h5>Whatever gets my attention</h5></td></tr>
</table>

<h6>Links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines.  I filter them so you don't have to.</h6>

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<div class=pull-right><p>

![image.png](https://files.steempeak.com/file/steempeak/remlaps-lite/cC5WZDb6-image.png)
<h6> pixabay license: <a href="https://pixabay.com/photos/padlock-door-lock-key-hole-macro-172770/">source</a>.</h6>

</p></div>

<ol>
<li> <A HREF="https://blog.coinbase.com/voting-and-staking-from-the-ice-box-6db371a18a91?source=rss----c114225aeaf7---4">Voting and Staking from the Ice Box</A> - Security engineer, <A HREF="https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-everspaugh/">Adam Everspaugh</A> writes on the coinbase blog about the way that coinbase customers can participate in blockchain governance while their stake is secured in cold storage.  The technique makes use of smart contract proxies that were developed with the MakerDAO and also employs MKR ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, and it lets stakeholders use a hot key exclusively for voting.  If that key is compromised, it doesn't have permission to manipulate the underlying funds.  Meanwhile, the key that does have that permission remains cold.  Coinbase is confident of the security of the smart contract because the system has been subjected to 3rd party scrutiny.  The article makes the recommendation that protocol designers make use of multi-level keys so that users can keep the most sensitive keys in cold storage while still making use of their tokens.  This is a technique that Steem has been using since its inception.  Another recommendation is to have code audited by competent external auditors.  I'm not sure if Steem has been through that level of scrutiny or not, but if not, it might be something that the SPS could pay for.</li><br>

<li> <A HREF="https://www.tum.de/nc/en/about-tum/news/press-releases/details/35732-1/">Sensitive robots are safer</A> - Researchers, led by <A HREF="https://www.ics.ei.tum.de/en/people/cheng/">Gordon Cheng</A>, at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed a sensory system that's inspired by human skin.  It's composed of hexagonal cells that can sense pressure, proximity, acceleration, and temperature.  The cell hardware has been available for about 10 years, but robotics have been limited by computational capability.  To compute the sensory inputs that match human skin would require an entire building full of computers.  Now, the TUM researchers have switched to event-driven computation, where the cells only transmit data when something changes.  This reduces the amount of data that needs to be processed by about 90%.  In practice, this is analogous to how a person gets used to wearing an item of clothing after a period of time, and they're no longer aware of the tactile sensations from it. With the new technique, the team has succeeded in applying a skin to a human sized autonomous robot that does not depend on any external computation.  This delivers increased safety when humans and robots operate in close proximity, and it is effective enough that the robot can safely give a person a hug, which demonstrates that a similarly equipped robot could have enough bodily sensation to operate safely in a field like nursing care.  <A HREF="https://cacm.acm.org/news/240062-biologically-inspired-artificial-skin-improves-sensory-ability-of-robots/fulltext">h/t Communications of the ACM</A><br><br><b>Here is a video:<b><br>

https://youtu.be/M-Y2HW6JcGI

</li><br>

<li> <A HREF="https://www.edge.org/conversation/robert_pollack-rethinking-our-vision-of-success">Rethinking Our Vision of Success</A> - In this edge.org conversation with Columbia University biologist <A HREF="https://biology.columbia.edu/people/pollack">Robert Pollack</A>, Pollack discusses his thoughts about the future in an effort to redefine success in a way that puts it at equlibrium with the rest of the world so that "<i>we do not destroy the planet.</i>"  As a University professor, he turns to the idea of an endowment, which he points out is not taxation or redistribution, but merely an agreement to defer spending in a way that is sustainable and serves the public interest.  He also argues in favor of the species, saying that his biological knowledge of the species tells him that we are all in each other's hands, and that natural selection shows that variation is valuable, and people should value diversity.  He clarifies that he is discussing a paradox, not making a political statement, and he doesn't have a mechanism to value the future in relation to the present, but he desires a world where each of 7 billion people has access to tools and language to help each of the others.  He suggests three conceivable pathways to make this possible: (i) the world-wide web; (ii) reciprocal teaching - under tenure; and (iii) experimenting with conversations between two very different people who have common interest in their grandchildren's survival.  One of his efforts to usher in a future like this includes his operation of Columbia's <A HREF="https://rcss.scienceandsociety.columbia.edu/">Research Cluster on Science and Subjectivity</A>.  He concludes the discussion as follows: "<i>I have experienced the power of a non-biological family structure. I would like to scale that up to make the species a non-biological family. And that is a technology question that I would love to work on with others.</i>"</li><br>

<li> <A HREF="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/science/marrow-israel-cave.html">What Was Kept in This Stone Age Meat Locker? Bone Marrow</A> - Israel's Qesem Cave is being studied for its record of Paleolithic lives and diets from 200,000 to 420,000 years ago, and the research is revealing that people of the time may have saved food for a period of up to nine weeks.  It was previously believed that people at this stage of history - who shared features with Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens, but were probably neither - ate food immediately, but marks on animal bones reveal that the bones may have been saved for up to 9 weeks so that people could continue to harvest the tasty bone marrow.  According to a paper in <A HREF="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/10/eaav9822">Science Advances</A>, the researchers conducted an experiment with storing freshly killed deer leg bones, and breaking them open weekly with a quartzite or bone tool to see if the bone marrow was still fresh.  The bone marrow stayed nutritious for up to nine weeks, and the chop marks produced by the researchers resembled the marks that the scientists had found on bones in the cave.  <A HREF="https://www.archaeology.org/news/8069-191010-deer-bone-marrow">ht archaeology.org</A></li><br>

<li> STEEM <A HREF="/@kralizec/spying-on-dark-matter-with-an-axion-radio">Spying On Dark Matter With An Axion Radio</A> - According to @kralizec, a new approach is being tried in the search for dark matter.  The technique is a way to seek out <i>axion</i> particles, which are among the most promising of hypothesized dark matter particles. This article cites  Stockholm University's <A HREF="https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-lawson-9539ba166/?originalSubdomain=se">Matthew Lawson</A>, saying that when axions are inside a magnetic field they emit a magnetic field of their own, and this signal can be amplified by plasma.  Lawson suggests, therefore, that these signature fields could be detected by finding the right frequency for tuning a detector.  (A 10% beneficiary setting has been applied to this post for @kralizec.) </li><br>
</ol>


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vote details (294)
@valued-customer · (edited)
$0.08
Redefining success is a good idea, particularly for those folks that think success is having all the wealth in the world, which seems to be a lot of people.  I note that MMORPGs are an obvious proof of the simplest definition being completely contrary to enjoyment of the game.  A lot of such games exist in which there is no 'win' now.  Winning is simply the ability to keep playing in an enjoyable, diverse community.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I played a game called Diablo II.  In the game it was possible to kill other players and take their stuff, so a group called Player Killers came about that did this, and their definition of success was to kill a player and take their stuff, rather than kill Diablo and end the game.  A hacking tool called a trainer was created, and players could make themselves immortal, with so many hit points you could just stand there and let the final boss of the game beat on you for hours without dying.

I did not like the player killers, because they caused a lot of new players a lot of grief (which is what they were after).  So, using the trainer I'd make myself immortal and set up a portal (through which other players could come to your position) from Diablo's final boss battle to the surface and then ask for help dealing with some trivial problem from other players.  

Player killers would always gleefully pretend to be coming to help me with the witches on level 10, but intent on taking my newbie possessions and teabagging my corpse.  When they ported into the boss battle, they were surprised and killed Diablo - thus ending the game for them.  I laughed and laughed, griefing the griefers.

Winning is losing when you're focused on the wrong metric.  In many ways, banksters are just like player killers in Diablo II.  If they ever win the game, no one will be more disappointed than they, because once they have all the money in the world, it will become utterly worthless.
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vote details (4)
@remlaps-lite ·
lol.  That was a great way to deal with griefers.

> Winning is losing when you're focused on the wrong metric.

I didn't make the connection until I read your comment, but I guess this is relevant to Steem, too.  People make Steem worthless by defining success as grabbing as many tokens as they can as fast as they can, instead of growing the value of their stake by finding and supporting the posts that will attract eyes from elsewhere on the Internet.
👍  
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@steemstem ·
re-remlaps-lite-curating-the-internet-science-and-technology-micro-summaries-for-october-14-2019-20191017t143818066z
<div class='text-justify'> <div class='pull-left'> <center> <br /> <img width='200' src='https://res.cloudinary.com/drrz8xekm/image/upload/v1553698283/weenlqbrqvvczjy6dayw.jpg'> </center>  <br/> </div> 

This post has been voted on by the **SteemSTEM curation team** and voting trail. It is elligible for support from @curie and @minnowbooster.<br /> 

If you appreciate the work we are doing, then consider supporting our witness [@stem.witness](https://steemconnect.com/sign/account_witness_vote?approve=1&witness=stem.witness). Additional witness support to the [curie witness](https://steemconnect.com/sign/account_witness_vote?approve=1&witness=curie) would be appreciated as well.<br /> 

For additional information please join us on the [SteemSTEM discord]( https://discord.gg/BPARaqn) and to get to know the rest of the community!<br />

Thanks for having included @steemstem in the list of beneficiaries of this post. This granted you a stronger support from SteemSTEM. Note that using the <a href='https://www.steemstem.io'>steemstem.io</a> app could have yielded an even more important support.
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