How Magicians Trick Your Brain: The Psychology Of Magic

We know magic tricks aren’t real, yet we continue to be fooled and impressed by them time after time. So how do magicians still manage to keep audiences on their toes? They mess with our brains of course!

Jonathan Hsu of MTheory Magic (https://www.facebook.com/mtheorymagic) stopped by to show off his skills, and teach us why we’re all so gullible.

This article originally appeared at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86kp10cboOQ.

All-bacterial battery makes a nutrient when charged, eats it to discharge

But the ultimate destination of this electron transport chain doesn’t have to be a chemical. There are a variety of bacteria that ultimately send the electrons off into the environment instead. And researchers have figured out how to turn these into a fuel cell, harvesting the electrons to do something useful. While some of these designs were closer to a battery than others, all of them consumed some sort of material in harvesting the electrons.

A team of researchers in the Netherlands figured out how to close the loop and create an actual bacterial battery. One half of the battery behaves like a bacterial fuel cell. But the second half takes the electrons and uses them to synthesize a small organic molecule that the first can eat. Its charging cycle is painfully slow and its energy density is atrocious, but the fact that it works at all seems rather noteworthy.

While bacterial fuel cells have attracted the most attention, there’s a separate area of research called microbial electrosynthesis. This is exactly what it sounds like: provide bacteria with energy in the form of electrons and get them to synthesize a useful chemical. In this case, the useful chemical was acetate, which is familiar to most of you as the key ingredient in vinegar. It’s a small organic molecule that can easily be plugged into the metabolic pathways that cells use to metabolize sugars.

In this case, the team already had access to an acetate-producing microbial electrosynthesis system, populated by a mixture of bacteria that originally came from a methane-producing biodigestor and cow manure. Separately, they had developed a microbial fuel cell that was running on acetate. These were simply placed into a single container, separated by a membrane that would allow acetate to flow through but keep the bacterial population separate.

The only thing that needed to be supplied was carbon dioxide—conveniently, that’s already part of the atmosphere. The system did, however, need a pump to ensure mixing of the materials in solution and a heater to keep it at 32 degrees Celsius.

But beyond that, the only thing the system needed over the course of two weeks was a supply of electrons during charging. The system was charged for 16 hours, after which the current was shut off; it would then produce electricity for approximately eight hours. Over 15 days of cycling, there was no detectable drop off in efficiency.

By comparing the electrons sent to the cathode with those harvested at the anode, the authors were able to calculate the efficiency of their system. By this measure, it operated at between 50- to 80-percent efficiency over the course of the 15 cycles. Due to various losses, this resulted in an overall efficiency of about one-third.

One of the intriguing things about this efficiency is that it’s not entirely accounted for by the production of acetate (which the authors also measured). Instead, the bacteria at the microbial electrosynthesis end must be producing some other product that those at the fuel cell portion can digest. In one cycle, this was clearly the chemical formate (an acid based on a single carbon atom, instead of acetate’s two). But the bacteria happily digested that, too, so it didn’t affect the overall efficiency. But that only happened during one cycle, and the authors aren’t sure what was going on the rest of the time.

The system is pretty low-efficiency compared to most batteries, and it takes 16 hours to charge. Surely it must have a redeeming property, such as great energy density, right? Well, no, it comes up short on that as well. The authors rate its capacity at about 0.1 kiloWatt-hours per meter cubed. Existing lithium-ion batteries can get above 500 watt-hours per liter. If you do the math, you’ll find that this clobbers the bacterial battery. (There are 1,000 liters per cubic meter, so the conversion’s pretty easy. Why don’t we all use the metric system again?)

The authors, like every other researcher writing about experimental battery technology, have some ideas about how to improve the energy density a bit. But they’re never going to improve it by three orders of magnitude, and you wouldn’t expect them to; ions are always going to be a more compact way of shuffling energy around than microbes. Which might lead you to the conclusion that this system is utterly useless.

But there’s one context in which it might not be. We’re already likely to be making some microbial fuel cells in order to handle our food waste, sewage, and other sources of spare organic material. At the same time, plans for renewable energy suggest we’re likely to be producing excess electricity during periods of bright sunshine or high winds. A microbial electrosynthesis system is one option for using that excess electricity to create fuel that can be used when conditions aren’t as favorable for renewable energy production, assuming we have some of the microbial fuel cells around anyway.

And, unlike options such as hydrogen or batteries, the raw materials (microbes) are cheap and can be deployed pretty much anywhere.

The chemical that powers most of our cellular processes is produced through something called the electron transport chain. As its name suggests, this system shuffles electrons through a series of chemicals that leaves them at a lower energy, all while harvesting some of the energy difference to produce ATP.

This article originally appeared at: https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/all-bacterial-battery-makes-a-nutrient-when-charged-eats-it-to-discharge/.

Software Changes Billboard and Crosses the Creepy Line.

The technology show here is cool, but is counter to every major trend in advertising. Way over the creepy line.

Never Cross the Creepy Line

People love personalisation. They hate someone watching them. Good tech draw from big data, location beacons and can creatively address users needs without being “in your face” about it.

The point where technology stops being useful and fells like it’s invading your privacy in what Robert Scoble calls the creepy line. What crosses the creepy line varies by individual, but disclousing personal identity to interrupt what they are doing it a strong example of doing it wrong.

Unfortunately, the engineer mindset that provides tools that cool thing often lead to a demo created by whipping up an example. Slapping an ad on tech is easy to conceive and the default that gets used too often. And that leads to people creating even more interruptions to breakthrough the overcrowded advertising landscape we live in.

Reminds me of early personalization efforts when I received a mail merged letter that use driver registration information to tell me they knew I owned a Ford Pinto. As if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, it felt creepy.

Interruptions are Not Helpful

Today, we can identify a person and tailor the experience to them. That very cool. I doubt the example of a young woman alone being called out by a sign to show her what she already has on her phone has to feel creepy.

Add some value to experiences or leave people alone. I’ll be following to see if someone comes up with something more interesting that blasting “buy me” messages. I think that will happen and we can stop using interuption advertising all together.

Don’t make the kind of marketing you hate.

This article originally appeared at: http://dailywarren.com/2016/07/08/creepy-line/?preview_id=431&preview_nonce=b0df1f85cc&_thumbnail_id=432&preview=true#gs.1wJgkhE.

Windows 10’s Project NEON look might throw off users again – SlashGear

Microsoft is no stranger to design changes that incite an angry mob, from the new Start menu in Windows 7 to the Ribbon UI in Office to the Metro/Modern UI in from Windows Phone to Windows 8 to present. While it won’t be introducing anything as drastic as those, the so-called Project NEON design change could still ruffle a few feathers, confuse not a small amount of people, and question Microsoft’s usability principles.

The changes shown in this leaked screenshot of a Project NEON environment are subtle and admittedly pretty, but also potentially confusing. The biggest culprit will be the changes to the window borders, or rather the lack of those borders. Perhaps opting for a more unified look, the design has seemingly removed the visually distinct window title on top of the Groove, formerly “Groove Music”, app. The app name and window buttons have, instead, been incorporated into window itself, as if part of the window’s background. Gone also, is the usual visible border around windows.

While it does look less cluttered, it could pose some usability issues, particularly in terms of resizing and moving windows. Those bars and borders have always provided some visual cues as well as a convenient target when moving windows and especially when resizing them. While the functionality will most likely still be there, users might find it harder to discover it or even determine where they should grab the window edges.

Even more subtle is the color changes on the taskbar, which has seemingly been stripped of all color even for app icons. In a visual design sense, this means a more uniform look for the whole taskbar. It could, however, make it harder for some people distinguish icons at a glance, especially without text.

The one caveat to these changes is that nothing is official nor final yet. Microsoft has not made a peep about Project NEON, so there is little chance the changes will immediately be rolled out soon. It could be a good thing that screenshots like this get leaked, which could give Microsoft some early, but unsolicited, feedback even before the flip the switch.

This article originally appeared at: https://www.slashgear.com/windows-10s-project-neon-look-might-throw-off-users-again-10474569/.

John Oliver Returns to Out-News the News—by Ignoring Trump

If it were up to John Oliver, this sentence will be the last time “Last Week Tonight” and “President Donald Trump” are mentioned in the same story. It’s not that he doesn’t want to take on the administration. Far from it. But he also knows everyone from CNN to his former coworker Stephen Colbert is already doing that on a daily basis, and covering Trump’s tweets just won’t cut it for a weekly show. Instead, he’s going to double down—not on the news, but on everything else.

In other words, Last Week Tonight can focus on things that matter. While cable news and online reporters struggle to report on Kellyanne Conway’s most recent TV appearance or fact-check the latest Sean Spicer press conference, Oliver and his team of four researchers can quietly spend months on a single 20-minute segment about something that will be incredibly important months from now. They did that nearly a year ago when they covered the phantom menace of voter fraud, and they intend to do it again.

It just won’t be about the new administration. “We’re very anxious to not make it all-Trump, all the time,” Oliver told a group of journalists in New York earlier this week when asked about the plans for Season 4, which launches Sunday. “During the week the obvious stuff has been taken away, the carcass has been picked clean. There’s a benefit to us of being pushed into covering things that no one else in their right mind [will].”

No Spin Zone

The stuff Oliver will hit may be what news outlets won’t cover, but that doesn’t mean it’s what they shouldn’t. In the weeks since Trump took office, many people have speculated that the more outlandish things Donald Trump does—going after a department store chain, say—is just hand-waving to distract reporters, while much more significant actions of the executive branch go unreported. News agencies, for their part, have tried to parry that thrust: Reuters, for example, sent a memo to staffers last week telling them to deprioritize official government access and instead focus on trustworthy alternate sources. But that doesn’t mean that administration mistruths like the so-called “Bowling Green massacre” can go unreported, either. And as a result, the news cycle becomes a vicious cycle.

As it happened, by pure chance or by the fact that we might be diametrically opposed to the president’s instincts, lots of our stories over the last three years have become very relevant.John Oliver

Even as Oliver was joking with the press on Monday, Trump was claiming that the media was consciously not writing about terrorist attacks, saying the “dishonest press doesn’t want to report it” because “they have their reasons.” (Wink.) What he was insinuating, of course, is that there is some hidden journalistic agenda based on ideological biases. While critiquing news coverage wasn’t new for Trump, his statement that journalists were ignoring important events hit hard and, as Chris Cillizza noted at The Washington Post, “for lots and lots of people listening to Trump, his suggestion that the media is complicit in a coverup of terrorist attacks will be taken as fact. They won’t seek out context or evidence that, frankly, totally undermines his contention.”

This is where Oliver’s work can matter most. Everything he says is fact-checked, but for most viewers who think of Last Week as a comedy show, he’s not seen as “the media.” (He’s also not Saturday Night Live, either.) That gives him precious maneuverability: Last Week Tonight doesn’t have to be impartial, and HBO doesn’t have advertisers, so Oliver can simply say what he wants. He might be speaking to a largely left-leaning, coastal-elite audience—though, Oliver notes, he has been approached by conservative viewers who say “I disagree with you on most things, but I like your show”—but what he’s able to illuminate for them is more valuable in the long run.

Getting the Story Right—Years Ahead of Time

This has already proven true. Even though Last Week has been on hiatus since before the election, the staff—Oliver included—hasn’t been resting. And as they began prepping Season 4, they went through the archives. What they found were traces of their reporting over the last three seasons in almost every one of Trump’s recent actions or executive orders. Torture, voter fraud, the issues inherent in trying to ban refugees to stop terrorism: All were covered by Last Week long before they were making headlines in 2017. “Over a period of five days last week we realized that each executive order related to a story that we’d done in the previous year,” Oliver says. “So, as it happened, by pure chance or by the fact that we might be diametrically opposed to the president’s instincts, lots of our stories over the last three years have become very relevant.”

And being relevant one, two, or three years from now is Oliver’s goal. He was loath to go into specifics of what this Sunday’s premiere or the rest of the season will touch on but stressed that none of them will directly address Trump. “There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit with administrations like this,” he says. “You need to reach past that.” The episodes that confront the president—like last year’s “Drumpf” episode, for example—are often the show’s most successful and most viral, but Oliver says he has “zero” concern whether something lights up the internet on Monday mornings. Instead he’d rather talk about net neutrality or the death penalty, even if “the unintended consequence of that is people actually watching the show.”

Covering Trump’s Impact—Not Trump

But just because Last Week won’t cover Trump doesn’t mean POTUS won’t influence the show. Now that he’s in office, he could easily impact an issue before Oliver and his team are even done reporting it. “Almost every one of the long-term stories [we’re working on] have an asterisk next to them that says,”Let’s see if this exists anymore,'” Oliver says.

Investigating what’s happening behind Trump’s antics, rather than the antics themselves, seems to be catching on. On Monday, a few hours after Oliver laid out his Less Trump in 2017 plan, Rachel Maddow went on the air on MSNBC and noted that she was going to start watching the White House like it was a silent movie, because “if you spend all your time trying to nail down their words—following every statement that they make as your next news story—not only do they get to lead you by the nose in terms of what you cover, but sometimes, for all the attention to what they’re saying, you miss what they’re doing.”

In the months since Oliver’s show went on hiatus, a few things have become clear: One, most people get their news from confirmation-biased, filter-bubbled social media feeds; two, the media is going to have to simultaneously run a marathon and a sprint to keep up with everything coming out of the White House; and three, no matter what they report, it will only be believed by those already inclined to believe it. As an internet-beloved show that can keep its own pace, Last Week Tonight can dodge the first and second problems. The third is trickier, but at a time when there’s equal distrust of both the free press and the administration, a fired-up Brit with a small army of fact-checkers starts to look like the best alternative. And when viewers tune in looking for a reprieve from CNN, he can give them what they want—even if they don’t yet know why they need it.

This article originally appeared at: https://www.wired.com/2017/02/john-oliver-trump-agenda/.