Link Dump 2015-08-15

2015-08-15

I heard that Tinder is being sued by a sex workers' group in Europe for cutting into their customer base. I don't think it's actually true, but there are reports that it's impacting the sex industry. Which parallels the impact that Uber/Lyft has on the taxi industry.
A lot of people in developing countries think Facebook is the internet, as in they'll say they use Facebook, but that they don't use the internet. It's scary to think of how they might vote on net neutrality...
This complaint about Soylent (the food substitute) annoys me. Sure, Soylent is not for everyone, but then almost nothing is. Sure, the creator of Soylent is obsessed about some strange things, but a lot of people have similar obsessions, and they're often not as productive. The author's complaints seem to boil down to "I wouldn't eat Soylent over real food," which, fine, then don't buy it. If the author has some deeper problem with Soylent, he's not naming it. And, pleasantly surprisingly, most of the comments agree with me.
I'm kind of excited that physical programming toys are becoming more popular, although I'm curious if they actually help people program later in life.
Say what you will, but Pornhub starting a subscription porn service is actually pretty clever.
I like collecting/keeping in mind patterns of thinking. A while ago the pattern of motte-and-bailey got some press. I recently came across a new one, that we should assume the competition is rational, and from that figure out what you might have missed about the problem you're both trying to solve. This doesn't seem as novel as the motte-and-bailey, but it's still clever.
In both being a doctor and being a teacher, sometimes it's better to know the person as a friend despite the standard advice about maintaining professionalism. At least, Oliver Sacks thinks so, and I agree with him.
John Deere has tried to argue that tractor owners don't have the right to modify the software on their tractors. I wonder if we can reduce this to "software is just a magnetic arrangement on a disk" and get around it that way. In fact, has this argument been tried? This is very different from copying the software, so I don't know how intellectual property arguments apply.
New flash: we should use active learning to teach science. (In case you couldn't tell, that is not new at all and I was being sarcastic.) One thing I do like about the article is that they mention "active learning done badly is worse than a good lecture." See a different blog post for my thoughts on this.
If conservatives are angry at abortion clinics because embryos are being destroyed... why aren't they angry at fertility clinics too?