Life Needs “Noise” In a game world of traditional Newtonian physics calculations, time generally flows as a smooth continuum. When attempting to simulate complicated collision physics this way one often gets annoying “trapped” states where objects get trapped between or partially inside one another…

Reflecting on the ritualization of creativity, Bukowski famously scoffed that “air and light and time and space have nothing to do with.” Samuel Johnson similarly contended that “a man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.” And yet some of history’s most successful and…

Constant interruptions are the bane of life in today’s open-plan offices . And a Swedish-Swiss industrial engineering company, ABB, says it has a solution: It has given some of its employees a kind of automated “do not disturb” sign: custom-designed traffic lights for their desks. The FlowLight…

Steelcase CEO Jim Keane, right, in his prototype office pod, where he now retreats when he needs to focus. Photo: David Chandler The lofty building Jordan Hamad moved his tech-advisory firm into four years ago had the trappings of a startup idyll: open floor plan, polished concrete floors,…

I got a lot of comments about the two videos I posted last week suggesting that I have nailed the art of public speaking. I don’t know about that, I am my harshest critic. But I do believe that writing regularly makes it so much easier to speak publicly in unscripted situations. Writing forces you…

SHARE Photo: Christophe Vorlet You may already trust algorithms, or mathematical formulas that reduce the need for human judgment, more than you realize. Commercial airliners fly largely, and safely, on autopilot; Netflix Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. recommend purchases that can seem uncannily attuned…

Andreessen Horowitz’s Marc Andreessen was a guest on Masters in Business hosted by Barry Ritholtz . The content is timeless, so I transcribed the interview. That way, we can refer back to it from time to time. For more transcripts, subscribe here . Barry Ritholtz (BR): Marc Andreessen, welcome to…

Charles Lindbergh in Germany, in 1937. Philip Roth’s novel “The Plot Against America” imagines the aviator’s election to the Presidency in 1940 and the widespread persecution of Jews that follows. Credit PHOTOGRAPH BY AP Philip Roth’s novel “ The Plot Against America ” is a masterwork of…

Reuters/ Brian Snyder “I’m telling you right now, the US is going to have a crash and it will be massive,” asserted Mark Yusko at Mauldin Economics’ Strategic Investment Conference. In his keynote speech, Mark Yusko, CIO of Morgan Creek Capital Management, outlined where he sees the biggest…

Translated by Geoffrey James Book 1: The Silent Void Thus spake the Master Programmer: “When you have learned to snatch the error code from the trap frame, it will be time for you to leave.” 1.1: The Tao of Programming Something mysterious is formed, born in the silent void. Waiting alone and…

http://m.nautil.us/issue/46/balance/darwin-was-a-slacker-and-you-should-be-too

Many of us vow to get to the gym—then life intervenes. But 21% of U.S. adults do manage to get enough exercise, and these people have some common traits and habits. They are consistent but not rigid. They have open minds about what defines “exercise.” And they have different motivations than the…

Henry and Betsy Schloss run with their sons, Hank, 20 months, left, and Oliver, 3, in Washington Park near their Denver home. The couple used to compete in longer races, but after having children embraced shorter distances. Photo: Theo Stroomer for The Wall Street Journal Henry Schloss says he knew…

Tomorrow marks my one year anniversary at Influx . Making it one year at any startup is always exciting because a) you made it this far and b) the company made it this far. In addition, I’m now proud to announce that we’re growing significantly every month, churn is low and we’re expanding into a…

In a nutshell, Ethereum is a new innovation in computing built from technologies and concepts originally pioneered in Bitcoin. Bitcoin is widely understood as a system for generating a shared world ledger that securely records bitcoin balances. Ethereum uses many of the same systems (such as…

Imagine a company or service that isn't controlled by any single individual, board or other central entity. Known as a decentralized application, or 'dapp' for short, the concept has been one of the more novel ideas to emerge from the blockchain community. Armed with self-executing smart contracts ,…

Photo: Christophe Vorlet The lucky participants in one of the best retirement plans around are coming after yours with a meat cleaver. In the early stages of negotiating tax reform, Congress is already considering whether to reduce the benefits of contributing to a 401(k) and similar retirement…

https://medium.com/@scheplick/a-few-things-i-learned-from-jeff-bezos-2016-letter-to-shareholders-e24d7d7c1980

SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER Jeremy Peters of the New York Times analyzes a generational theory book titled The Fourth Turning , which has played a significant role in shaping the worldview of White House strategist Steve Bannon. In the book, amateur historians William Strauss and Neil Howe argue that…

Stephen K. Bannon tends to view politics and policy in terms of their place in the broader arc of history. Al Drago/The New York Times WASHINGTON — Stephen K. Bannon has great admiration for a provocative but disputed theory of history that argues that the United States is nearing a crisis that…

A leading weapons academic has claimed that the Khan Sheikhoun nerve agent attack in Syria was staged, raising questions about who was responsible. Theodore Postol, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), issued a series of three reports in response to the White…

While the Trump administration pursues massive cuts to HUD that threaten urban neighborhoods, especially poorer ones , there’s one form of housing assistance that the White House is much less enthusiastic about reducing : the mortgage interest tax deduction. The mortgage interest deduction costs the…

LONG VIEW | Rick Rubin in the master bedroom of his Malibu home, with natural sisal rugs, seating carved from Indonesian hardwood and Wilson Audio speakers. Photo: Martien Mulder for WSJ. Magazine A COUPLE OF YEARS back, New York–based architects Enrico Bonetti and Dominic Kozerski were touring a…

monero zcash Wednesday April 19, 2017 at 10:11 AM ← Older If you follow the world of cryptocurrencies, you probably know that Monero is a privacy-centric cryptocurrency that has surged in the market since late 2016. My coauthors and I, from Princeton and UIUC, have just released some research…

Enlarge / The Bose QuietComfort 35 headphones in question. Bose An Illinois man has accused Bose, the audio equipment manufacturer, of illegally wiretapping him via his Bose headphones. According to a proposed class-action lawsuit filed in federal court in Chicago on Tuesday, Kyle Zak bought a $350…

Support the news 100-Day Spotlight Political Upheaval, By Design 47:39 Play April 11, 2017 Share President Trump’s top advisor Steve Bannon is a big fan of the book “The Fourth Turning” and its dark message of political upheaval. We’ll check it out. White House chief strategist Steve Bannon steps…

If you want to make a progressive squirm, tell him that history is cyclical. Whether they realize it or not, progressives borrow their entire worldview from Christianity, and therefore have a fundamentally millenarian view of history. The idea of cycles makes them uncomfortable. That’s why Tom…

Life After Death When she lost her husband, Sheryl Sandberg also lost her bearings. Now she wants to help others find a way through grief By Belinda Luscombe For Dave Goldberg, May 1, 2015, was the best day with the worst ending. The Survey­Monkey CEO was celebrating the 50th birthday of one of his…

A s we took a seat in the back of the Commissary, a restaurant on the Sony Pictures Studios lot, Mike Judge pointed out a man seated two booths away. It was Tom Rothman, the chairman of Sony Pictures and former head of Fox’s film division, where he oversaw the rocky release of Judge’s 2006 film,…

The USS Carl Vinson, the guided-missile destroyer USS Wayne E Meyer and the guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Champlain participate in an exercise with Japanese destroyers in March.Photograph: US navy/EPA Japan is preparing to send several warships to join a US aircraft carrier strike group heading…

Uppsala, Sweden Ellinor Grimmark didn’t set out to wage a campaign. In 2007 the 40-year-old mother of two quit her catering job to become a midwife. She studied for years, dreaming of bringing life into the world. But Ms. Grimmark was professionally blacklisted in Sweden for her opposition to…

Tim Tebow and his Fireflies teammates. Travis Dove for The New York Times COLUMBIA, S.C. — In the autumn of 2007, Tim Tebow came to this town to deliver a crushing blow. Then the Florida Gators’ dynamic quarterback, Tebow cemented his destiny as that year’s Heisman Trophy winner by accounting for…

Julian Brigden: "This Is What The 'Armageddon Scenario' For Markets Looks Like" Apr 1, 2017 4:53 PM 15 SHARES Eric Townsend and Patrick Ceresna, the people behind the weekly Macro Voices podcast, have released an extended, hour-long interview with Julian Brigden founder of Macro Intelligence 2…

James Rickards speaks during the Bloomberg Link European Debt Crisis conference at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York, U.S., on Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011. Photographer: Jin Lee/Bloomberg Meet James Rickards, “Dr. Tail Risk.” Some people loathe Jim Rickards. Some adore him, giving him a large cult…

Neuralink is pursuing what Elon Musk calls ‘neural lace’ technology, implanting tiny brain electrodes that may one day upload and download thoughts. Photo: Patrick Fallon/Reuters Building a mass-market electric vehicle and colonizing Mars aren’t ambitious enough for Elon Musk. The billionaire…

‘I wondered what exactly the hell I’d just done’ … William Gibson. Photograph: Hubert Kang William Gibson Gibson ‘had so very little idea of how to write a novel’ when he was commissioned to come up with a manuscript Shares 7,882 7882 William Gibson Last modified on Tuesday 21 February 2017 13.20…

Laurence D. Fink, the chief of BlackRock, has become convinced that the company must bet big on the power of machines., be it Aladdin, the firm’s risk management platform; robo-advisers; big data; or even artificial intelligence. Damon Winter/The New York Times Score one for the machines. The…

Here’s a grimly edifying set-piece for twenty-first-century feminists to ponder: when my grandmother was a teenager at Greenwich Academy, a girls’ prep school in Connecticut, she and her fellow students were required to pose nude for photographs taken by the P.E. teacher. Once a year, in a mirrored…

I got to know about “J Krishnamurti” long back when my sister went to study at KFI Rajghat Besant school Banaras. But sometime back I got to know about his writing and viewpoint about life and all things Philosophy. I am still in process of becoming a regular reader. Total Freedom has been one of…

Thomas Jefferson is known for a lot of things—writing the Declaration of Independence, founding the University of Virginia, owning hundreds of slaves despite believing in the equality of men—but his place as the “Father of American Cryptography” is not one of them. As a youth in the Virginia colony,…