Generating British Placenames, Hacking Smart Fishtanks, and the Million Dollar Homepage: Lux Recommends #91

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Jul 28, 2017 · 2 min read

By Sam Arbesman, PhD

Welcome to Lux Recommends #91, the newest edition of what we at Lux are reading and thinking about (and want to receive this by email? Sign up here).

Articles

The Startling History Behind Merck’s New Cancer Blockbuster: “The often circuitous history of drug development inevitably gets polished and more linear over time; lucky breaks and even fortunate missteps get cast as more intentional than they really were.” — Adam G

Football’s Wearable Tech Revolution Has Only Just Begun: Fine-tuning athletes.— Adam G

A smart fish tank left a casino vulnerable to hackers: “The fish tank, for instance, was connected to the internet to automatically feed the fish and keep their environment comfortable — but it became a weak link in a the casino’s security.” — Alex N

Scientists Unravel the Mystery of DNA Organization: “Researchers have shown the 3D structure of human chromatin inside the nucleus of live human cells. These results revise the standard model for DNA, and suggest a new possible method for fighting diseases like cancer: controlling access to chromatin.” — Adam G

A Million Squandered: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact: “Of the 2,816 links that embedded on the page (accounting for a total of 999,400 pixels), 547 are entirely unreachable at this time.” — Sam

This 1 Startup Naming Approach Increases Your Odds of Fundraising Success, Says Study: “The researchers took a look at names that run through Microsoft Word spell check (linguistically fluent) vs. names that don’t clear MS Word, but are still easy to pronounce on first viewing (phonetically fluent)” — Alex N

This Guy ‘Cheated’ On ‘The Price Is Right’ And Made Them Change Their Whole System: “He and his wife Linda, who loves math, actually watched and studied every single episode of The Price Is Right for FOUR months before Terry went on the show.” —Adam K

How Bots Bested the $1 Billion Sneaker Resale Industry Adam G

And someone who trained an A.I. to generate British placenames: “Hambate Combe, Manory Somerstow, Buchraston-on-Ter-Sey, Brotters Common, Normannegg, Twettle Row”— Sam

Movies

The Big Sick: Amazon Studios. Silicon Valley star. True story. — Adam G

Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know: Three great episodes to get you started: The Stories Behind A Few Food Fads (TV dinner, Jello, and oat bran); Tardigrades: Nature’s Cuddly, Indestructible Microanimal; and How Foreign Accent Syndrome Works Adam G

Videos

This Is What Sound Actually Looks LikeAdam K

This is how an Amish barn is raised in 10 hours Adam K

Crowd control at a comic book convention in Japan Adam K

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