Retail stores use bluetooth beacons to track customers extensively

Retail stores use bluetooth beacons to track customers extensively

The grocery store got your location data and paid a shadowy group of marketers to use that information to target you with ads. But the location data industry has a much more precise, and intrusive, tool: Bluetooth beacons. Let’s say you visit Target; it might be collecting data from you, but it might rent its beacons out to other businesses, allowing them to monitor your location.

Source: www.nytimes.com

Principles of Chaos Engineering

Principles of Chaos Engineering

To specifically address the uncertainty of distributed systems at scale, Chaos Engineering can be thought of as the facilitation of experiments to uncover systemic weaknesses. By focusing on systemic behavior patterns during experiments, Chaos verifies that the system does work, rather than trying to validate how it works. To guarantee both authenticity of the way in which the system is exercised and relevance to the current deployed system, Chaos strongly prefers to experiment directly on production traffic.

Source: principlesofchaos.org

Show HN: Slim – Build and run tiny VMs from Dockerfiles

Show HN: Slim – Build and run tiny VMs from Dockerfiles

Provision a new instance of the given micro-vm image as a virtual machine (using virtualbox). VirtualBox will run the micro-vm instance as an attached iso loaded into a cdrom, and boot up the iso in seconds. For convenience, a ssh connection command is provided at the end of the command, allowing easy access into the machine: Example:

Unfortunately, due to the experimental nature, there are a few system dependencies you must also install:

To boot and run the image, you also need a hypervisor:

For kvm, you can install the following dependencies for ubuntu:

Source: github.com

Point it, call it, get it right (2018)

Point it, call it, get it right (2018)

New York subway train conductors have been using point and call since 1996, when a system executive noticed the practice on a trip to Japan. He acknowledges, however, that a cramped aircraft flight deck does not lend itself to the sort of expansive gestures used by Japan’s train drivers and conductors. But Forsterlee wonders if the technique could be expanded into a dialogue with passengers, in an attempt to break the trance of inattention that often surrounds cabin safety briefings.

Source: www.flightsafetyaustralia.com

Stop and Shop now has big, goofy-looking robots patrolling its aisles

Stop and Shop now has big, goofy-looking robots patrolling its aisles

But Marty’s introduction to supermarket floors has raised a number of questions about automation and surveillance for employees and customers alike—especially because the robot roll-out roughly coincided with a widespread Stop & Shop labor strike this spring to protest unfavorable changes to union contracts. Although Jennifer Brogan, Stop & Shop’s director of external communications, assured New Food Economy that the robot is not meant to replace workers, Ahold Delieze has explicitly told shareholders that the company is investing in automation and artificial intelligence to supplement or even replace human labor. Charise Thomson, a Stop & Shop customer who first encountered Marty at a store in Dorchester, Mass., said the robot appeared without any advance notification.

Source: newfoodeconomy.org

I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup (2014)

I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup (2014)

The fake forgiveness the townspeople use to forgive the people they like is really easy, so they get to boast not only of their forgiving nature, but of how much nicer they are than those mean old priests who find forgiveness difficult and want penance along with it. We have a lot of people – like the Emperor – boasting of being able to tolerate everyone from every outgroup they can imagine, loving the outgroup, writing long paeans to how great the outgroup is, staying up at night fretting that somebody else might not like the outgroup enough. In other words, outgroups may be the people who look exactly like you, and scary foreigner types can become the in-group on a moment’s notice when it seems convenient.

Source: slatestarcodex.com

Map of the World’s Nuclear Power Plants

Map of the World’s Nuclear Power Plants

It shows the location, operating status and generating capacity of all 667 reactors that have been built, or are under construction, around the world, ever since Russia’s tiny Obninsk plant became the first to supply power to the grid in 1954. These are shown, along with Switzerland and Iran, in the chart of “other countries”, below

In terms of generating capacity, the world’s top nuclear powers are the US, France, China, Russia and South Korea. If successful, the UK’s plans for a new generation of 19GW of reactors would make it once again one of the world’s leading nuclear nations.

Source: www.carbonbrief.org

My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

It satisfies the four essential freedoms guaranteed of free software:

The MIT license basically allows you to do whatever you want with the software. The collective effort of the free software community amounts to tens of millions of hours of work, which you can download at touch of a button, for free. The GPL is the legal embodiment of this Golden Rule: in exchange for benefiting from my hard work, you just have to extend me the same courtesy.

Source: drewdevault.com

The Location of ‘Salvator Mundi’

The Location of ‘Salvator Mundi’

More damning to the painting’s authenticity as an autograph Leonardo was a Guardian article on June 2 that quoted the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Carmen Bambach saying she was wrongly referenced in Christie’s catalogue as attributing the painting to the artist alone. Bambach said she had been contacted by London’s National Gallery last month to ask if it could cite her as a supporter of Salvator Mundi‘s authenticity—which, seven years after the museum’s Leonardo blockbuster, is a peculiar move at the least, considering this late stage of events. There’s a nice symmetry there with the “value” of the painting, which my sources say will remain onboard until MBS finishes transforming the ancient Saudi precinct of Al-Ula into a vast cultural hub—basically an art Disneyland—that will no doubt compete with Abu Dhabi’s Louvre and, more significantly, the Jean Nouvel-designed National Museum in Qatar, the sworn enemy of the Saudi crown prince.

Source: news.artnet.com