Category: Technology

From the Incidental Economist, this is great use of a bubble chart:

Each circle in that chart is a county in the United States, with bigger circles representing bigger counties. The fitted lines tell us that as the proportion of people receiving mammograms goes up, the rate of people being diagnosed with cancer goes up, pretty dramatically. But the rate of people dying from breast cancer in 10 years is pretty much unaffected.

The conclusion:

When analyzed at the county level, the clearest result of mammography screening is the diagnosis of additional small cancers. Furthermore, there is no concomitant decline in the detection of larger cancers, which might explain the absence of any significant difference in the overall rate of death from the disease. Together, these findings suggest widespread overdiagnosis.

As an Android guy, people always ask me when I’ll switch to an iPhone. For a long time the tiny phone size was the obvious not to switch, but now iPhones have actual good screen sizes.

So what am I waiting for?

My daughter has an iPhone 5. She’s had it for a year and change. Hardware-wise we have brought it back 4 times (bad screen, bad screen, won’t charge, won’t charge). Always under warranty so the Apple folks were basically nice, though I’m officially on a list of people who “return their defective phones too often”.

After multiple “won’t charge” issues we’ve stopped bothering when her latest refurbished piece of crap phone doesn’t charge well. Her iPhone hasn’t charged to 100% overnight in months. Brand new Apple chargers bring up the dreaded “This accessory may not be supported” message. Nice.

I’ve never had a charging issue in 5+ years with an Android phone. Nor have I ever returned one for defective hardware, much less 4x in a year.

Last night her phone charged to 100% for the first time in over 6 months. How did we do it?

She used my Samsung charger base.

With apologies for the obvious click-bait headline, an interesting blog post about what is wrong with medical research.

1) If these results had come from a drug, or some new device, it would be all over the news. The results are amazing. People would be lining up to invest. Instead—crickets. Why? There’s no money to be made from this.

…

5) This is too “simple”. It’s tightening a blood pressure cuff. That won’t interest any rich donors to fund it. It won’t interest foundations. And industry won’t fund it—there’s no money in it.

And so we will remain in this exact spot for years. There may be an incredibly simple intervention out there that could cost nothing and save lives, but we won’t implement it.

This is why Daring Fireball is an invaluable tech blog and not an Apple fanboy site.

Arguably, Google Maps is better than Apple Maps, Gmail is better than Apple Mail, Google Drive is better than iCloud, Google Docs is better than iWork, and Google Photos can “surprise and delight” better than Apple Photos. Even with the risks.

If Apple truly cares about our privacy then it should stop talking about how important it is and start building superior cloud-based services we want to use — then it can protect us.

The source article from Verge has a great headline:

First Click: Tim Cook brings a knife to a cloud fight

The second part of the three part Elon Musk series, How Tesla Will Change Your Life, came out. Required reading, but it is long.

Unlike the first part, this is a classic Wait But Why type post. A hugely deep dive into an important topic. The topic was Tesla, the table of contents is:

1. The Story of Energy
2. The Story of Cars
3. The Story of Tesla

Because that’s really the order you need to follow to understand this huge topic.

As I read it I was looking for the tl;dr; summary. There isn’t one, but here were my key quotes:

I didn’t feel strongly about this topic before I spent a lot of recent time learning about it—and now that I have, I kind of think the only way someone could feel positive about a gas car future is if they’re misinformed, personally financially interested in gas cars, hopelessly old-fashioned, drunk with politics, or kind of just being a dick

The reason Tesla is worth studying is that it’s an up-close example of how change happens—even sometimes in an industry that hasn’t moved in a century.

Just read the whole thing. And I can’t wait for part three…

Meanwhile, this is what Musk spends two days of his week on. With the rest of his time, he’s trying to make humanity a multi-planetary species—a goal that makes his Tesla mission seem like starting a grapefruit stand.

I’ve linked to waitbutwhy.com before, in particular the Fermi Paradox article. In his latest post, he describes Elon’s Musk’s assistant calling him to ask if he’d like to meet with Elon.

The post, Elon Musk, The World’s Raddest Man, appears to be the first of at least three. It’s great.

This guy has a lot on his mind across a lot of topics. In this one lunch alone, we covered electric cars, climate change, artificial intelligence, the Fermi Paradox, consciousness, reusable rockets, colonizing Mars, creating an atmosphere on Mars, voting on Mars, genetic programming, his kids, population decline, physics vs. engineering, Edison vs. Tesla, solar power, a carbon tax, the definition of a company, warping spacetime and how this isn’t actually something you can do, nanobots in your bloodstream and how this isn’t actually something you can do, Galileo, Shakespeare, the American forefathers, Henry Ford, Isaac Newton, satellites, and ice ages.

And the deep thoughts:

— He’s a pretty tall and burly dude. Doesn’t really come through on camera.

— He ordered a burger and ate it in either two or three bites over a span of about 15 seconds. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Just read it…