Category: Personal
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"I Forgot My PIN": An Epic Tale of Losing $30,000 in Bitcoin
In January 2016, I spent $3,000 to buy 7.4 bitcoins. At the time, it seemed an entirely worthwhile thing to do. I had recently started working as a research director at the Institute for the Future’s Blockchain Futures Lab, and I wanted firsthand experience with bitcoin, a cryptocurrency that uses a blockchain to record transactions …
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The First Time I Met Americans
HANOI, Vietnam — I first visited the United States in the summer of 1998, when I was invited to attend a literary conference in Montana with four other Vietnamese writers. We flew from Hanoi to Taiwan to Los Angeles. As we crossed the Pacific Ocean, passing through many time zones, I buried myself in … -
The Web began dying in 2014, here's how
Before the year 2014, there were many people using Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Today, there are still many people using services from those three tech giants (respectively, GOOG, FB, AMZN). Not much has changed, and quite literally the user interface and features on those sites has remained mostly untouched. However, the underlying dynamics of power …
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Welcome To Nauru, The Most Corrupt Country You've Never Heard Of
Nestled in a cluster of islands in the central Pacific Ocean is Nauru, a small country with a totally insane story.
In 1980, the island nation was considered the wealthiest nation on the planet; in 2017, BusinessTech listed it as one of the five poorest countries in the world.
This is a story of a country that journeyed … -
An Extremely Close Reading of Pop Song Duets
MOST SONGS give you only one perspective: She will always love you. Billie Jean was not his lover. You can check out of “Hotel California” but you can never leave.
But popular music history is studded with the occasional duet that serves more of a purpose than simply an excuse for the … -
Introduction (to SMAC)
Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri[1] (which we fondly refer to here as SMAC, both as an acronym and in reference to its potent addictive properties) opens in an odd way for a science fiction game. Most such games open with spaceships, star travel, or some futuristic technology. They seek to hook the imagination. But our game begins much more …
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Starring to feel like #Christmas! It's that time of the year when I finally run out of goose fat from LAST Christmas.
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Carry Fire
"My dad'd love this!" Dan thinks as he listens to Robert Plant's new album, in the first case of him momentarily-forgetting-his-dad's-death in almost a year. It's a pretty good album, regardless.
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Found GLTHEB08 Mutiny on the Bounty
This checkin to GLTHEB08 Mutiny on the Bounty reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Found easily this morning while on the way to a museums conference at the Imperial War Museum (because no trip to London is complete without a geocache being found!). Wasn't exactly where the hint seems to …
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Speaking of volunteers, #MuseTech17: how do you manage yours? Wearing my @3RingsCIC hat: www.threerings.org.uk is seeing increased adoption.
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#MuseTech17 @cawston I wonder how the psychological diff. between transparent and opaque donation boxes is affected by "opaque" contactless?
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#MuseTech17 @cawston has done interesting experiments in feedback/"rewards" for contactless donors, e.g. "thanks" videos.
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#MuseTech17 Thought: does adding a "narrative-building" preposition to digital exhibit labels count as clickbait?
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#MuseTech17 Kevin Bacon and his team have learned the same lessons as the @bodleianlibs did about kiosks, in the same order... #dejavu
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Are speakers planning to put #MuseTech17 slides online? It'd save effort by the people who seem to be photographing every... single... slide