Maggie's Farm

Scientists recreated classic origin-of-life experiment and made a new discovery

This finding supports the authors' original hypothesis. Corrosion on the surface of the glass (due to the hot and caustic water circulating through it) plays a key role, since this releases silicon-dioxide molecules into the solution. This in turn acts as a catalyst to speed up the chemical reactions between the nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen atoms that ultimately create organic molecules.

No, this finding supports my hypothesis that the glass was dirty. You know, with organic molecules. Scientists haven't been very scientific for a long time now.

Why do dogs tilt their heads? New study offers clues

A quick internet search turned up plenty of speculative results positing that dogs tilt their heads to hear better, to listen for specific words or tones, or to see past their snouts. Sommese found one poster hypothesizing that shelter dogs do it more often because they know on some level that humans find it irresistible.

Well, pit bulls tilt their heads to make them more irresistible to humans, and to make it easier to get the toddler's head in their mouths. Duh.

Remote-first work is taking over the rich world

One possibility is that they can more easily focus on tasks than in an office, where the temptation to gossip with a co-worker looms large. Commuting, moreover, is tiring. Another factor relates to technology. Remote workers, by necessity, rely more on tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. This may allow bosses to co-ordinate teams more effectively, if the alternative in the office was word-of-mouth instructions that could easily be forgotten or misinterpreted.

So, "That meeting should have been an email" was right on the money, and at least fifteen years ago at that.

HTTP 419 Never Gonna Give You Up

I get tired of error reporting services, like Rollbar, blowing up when a bot scans my websites for URLs like the infamous /wp-admin.php so why not rickroll them? It won’t do much except make website owners feel better, but I’d say that’s worth it.

A website error message that Rickrolls the bot. Like most coder things, it's almost clever, but not quite. It's also childish, kinda pointless, and the name of the object of the exercise (Rick Astley) is spelled wrong.

Troll A – The Tallest Structure Ever Moved by Mankind

Located about 80 km off the west coast of Norway is Troll A, a colossal natural gas platform and the tallest structure ever moved by mankind. It’s construction is regarded as one of the largest and most complex engineering projects in history.

"It is construction"? Man, noone can spell anymore. They're's mispellings everywere.

Practical Time Machines

Your computer can travel to the future even more easily than a DeLorean. The UI isn’t quite as cool, but it doesn’t require plutonium. Simply open your system control panel, turn off the “Set time automatically” option, and click the button to adjust the system date/time to your target.

Isn't that supposed to be spelled "Time Masheen"? Oh well. It's an interesting idea about checking software reliability. Of course a much more useful tool is to set your computer's clock backwards in time. You can use timestamped software trials forever that way. You didn't hear that from me.

Neuroscientist argues the left side of our brains have taken over our minds

"The left hemisphere's goal is to enable us to manipulate things, whereas the goal of the right hemisphere is to relate to things and understand them as a whole. Two ways of thinking that are both needed, but are fundamentally at the same time incompatible."

Nope. I've seen Twitter. The spleen has taken over our minds.

‘Astounding’ Roman statues unearthed at Norman church ruins on route of HS2

More than 1,000 archaeologists have worked at more than 60 sites along the HS2 route between London and the West Midlands over the past three years. At Saint James’s Garden near Euston station in central London, more than 50,000 skeletons were exhumed from a burial ground. In Birmingham, more than 6,500 skeletons were uncovered from an 18th-century cemetery.

A new railway built on bulldozed graveyards. I think I've seen that movie.

Elon Musk wants to start a university in Texas that will have epic merch

Tesla & SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has just posted on Twitter that he wants to start a new University in Texas. He wants to name it “Texas Institute of Technology & Science (TITS)”.

I've seen college bookstores. There aren't any books in there, so worrying about the college themed merchandise before founding the college isn't that dumb. Infantile, but not dumb, which is what Musk should have on his business card.

Feds cuff Russian said to be developer of 'Trickbot' ransomware

Indictment reveals org behind banking trojan even had nifty jobs titles like 'Malware Manager'

I still prefer "infantile but not dumb."

For the Price of a Tesla Model S, You Can Buy a Flying Car That Doesn’t Require a License

For that price, you will get a half assembled kit, which includes an aluminum space frame, motor controllers, propellers and motors, as well as an assembly guide. Weighing only 40 kilograms (88 pounds) when empty, Jetson One is categorized as an ultralight aircraft in the U.S., which doesn’t require a pilot license to fly.

John Denver acutely unavailable for comment.

Facebook’s lost generation

At the same time, a rising crop of younger social networks has continued growing in popularity with young people — a phenomenon Facebook has closely tracked with its own research. In an internal presentation earlier this year, employees estimated that teens spend 2–3x more time on TikTok than on Instagram and that Snapchat is the preferred method of communicating with best friends for young people.

Zoomers ain't Boomers. Sorry to break it to dullard Millennials who think Zoomers are going to help them smother Boomers with a pillow, but Zoomers don't like Millennials much, either.

Have a great Friday, everyone!