The terror

Shit! Not again…

That was my reaction to the Belgium bombings and at that point, I realized that I have become accustomed to this. I was not surprised. I was not scared. I was angry and annoyed that this situation is still going.

What I believe to be the best game as the average Doe is to not be afraid. It’s better not to be terrified by terrorists, by definition this is their goal. Keep being nice to everyone and rock on! Oh, and keep away from subways.

If you are not an average Doe though there are plenty you can do. A step is to cooperate. It seems like terrorists don’t understand borders. But Europe’s security fails because it does.

I don’t know if this is surprising for you but among other things, ISIS is responsible for Genocide. However no one knows how to put it without recognising ISIS as a state. Also isn’t it weird that revisiting previous hits, you can spot a lot of siblings making it as terrorists partners? Why so many brothers work together in the name of terror?

Changing focus, do you know that some people say that I have OCD because I like things tidy? Frankly they don’t know what they are talking about or what obsessive-compulsive disorder is. You should know that it’s offensive to people who suffer from it so don’t do it. For those people, there is hope. Some MIT researchers study the problem and believe to have a solution. Some others found evidence that Alzheimer’s ‘lost memories’ may one day be recoverable. Needless to say that in MIT they like picking their brains.

Diving deeper into sadness, some smart people are better off with fewer friends. I call them smart bastards!

For the happier part of this, here is what engineers can learn from the design of the penis. Yes you read correctly. And you can also learn from this documentary about some teams that want to go to the moon and beyond.

Finally, registration for Google’s Code Jam is now open!

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I’m like Trump

Pi, Bieber and Nukes

I was arranging a night out yesterday with a couple of friends and in the middle of our texting I threw in a funny thing that happened. Instantly one friend mentioned/complained:

The way you hop from subject to subject drives me crazy!! 

My response was:

Some people love it and some people hate it. I am like Trump.

The difference is that I am contained in a group chat. Trump is being loved and hated by millions from the airwaves all the time. All candidates win some free time from the media but Trump knows how to earn free time better than most, by far. 

But you know, politics is a show. But people tend to forget that. Here in Greece more than anywhere. Dave Pell wrote this excellent piece about our tendency to confuse reality and politics.

Another thing of the past, is Pi day. I may not understand why we are so obsessed with Pi. This is an irrational number like many other irrational numbers. Anyhow. We can’t believe that, so we try to find as many digits of pi as possible. At one point a whole state of the United States decided that this has gone too far. That was the point when Indiana tried to change Pi to 3.2. They want to see the world burn apparently.

This is also the case with the guys who play with atomic bombs. You don’t set off nukes to do cool science? Or do you?

You may, now that you know that Justin Bieber’s Sorry is one of the 25 songs that tell us the future of music.

Finally, why stepping on a lego is so painful?

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Smartphones, singularity and some bedtime stories

We fear no robots

Attention: Follow this publication and me on Medium. It may need an account. Just do it (insert Shia LaBeouf here)!

I saw Spotlight yesterday. Great movie. It makes you wonder what good movies you have ignored because they did not happen to win an Oscar. Anyhow…

Facebook is full of life nowadays. Pictures from carnivals, selfies, parties, drunken snapchats, weddings, success stories, news stories and overall things that indicate notdeadness. The problem is we eventualy die, right? And that’s natural. What if we forgot to log out from Facebook before we did that? It’s not the first thing you think about I suppose. Whatever. Everyone does it. And there will come a day when dead people on Facebook will outnumber the living. Someone calculated that date.

While alive though we are smartphone dependant even when we are together. I am not the first guy who glues his face on the screen while in a group. I am the third and I am not Facebooking. I assert my dominance over Email like a BOSS. But if you don’t like it, what can you do about it? Here is what. It’s not good to be so religiously connected to these devices anyway.

Myself, I consider religion as already dead at that point, but Dylan Love (that’s his name), wonders if singularity strikes the complete end of it. In an era where Google’s AI beats Go Grandmasters for breakfast these are the questions to ask. If I were to challenge a robot, I would choose a game it can’t win. I would be a good sport though and tell it the big secret. Humans have counter measures if machines decide to play a game called “Kill all humans”. Super intelligent humans are coming.

To help you sleep better after that, here is the story of John Hofsess. He was the master of opperations of an assisted suicide club. If that didn’t do the trick, here is the story of an inmate who did the best he could with his time in prison.

Liked it? Every week I send an email like this. It involves:

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  • Some personal additions.
  • Many surprises!

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Oscars and refugees

America's problems:

People who tuned in expecting to see Billy Crystal sing a goofy song were in for a surprise. This year's Oscars were the most political in recent memory. Leo talked about climate change. Lady Gaga (introduced by a sitting vice president) was joined on stage by victims of sexual assault for the night's most moving performance. Sam Smith (who could have done a bit more research) used his win to voice support for gay rights. Best Director Alejandro Iñárritu ignored the play off music to call for an end to the focus on skin color. And of course, the entire event was marked by the absence of black nominees from this year's awards. While that theme might have been hit upon a few too many times, Chris Rock's opening monologue was America's best comedian at the top of his game, and at the right place at the right time. He pulled no punches in explaining why diversity in film hadn't caused protests during previous years: "We were too busy being raped and lynched to care about who won best cinematographer. When your grandmother's swinging from a tree, it's really hard to care about best documentary foreign short!" 

Europe's problems:

The refugee situation, is probably out of control and I am really frustrated with this if not angry... The last weeks in Greece, things are escalating quickly. Many places in Athens, the capital of Greece, are turning into refugee camps. In my way to work every day, I see families overflowing the buildings of the old national airport. These are huge buildings. And they are overflowing.

A small village in north Greece with a population of around 100 people called Idomene is acting as the bottleneck of this wave. Because of its proximity to the F.Y.R.O.M. border it hosts now more than 10.000 people. These people cannot flow directly into Europe due to restrictions set by the neighbour countries. Here are some photos from the field and a video.


Another thing that is not sitting well with me is that scientists found the gene responsible for grey hair. Nothing yet for the hair loss gene. 

If you read all this sadness, you are a hero and you deserve it. Deleted Scene from "Batman v Superman” Starring Jimmy Kimmel. This is gold!

Update: I read that Medium is doing some great stuff and can bring more people to this community. Generally I hear it is a good idea to go all in on Medium so I recommend it if you start writing. It would be awesome if you could follow this community on Medium and also me. I don't know what will happen in the future but it is good to make some plans.

That's my comeback!

It’s ok If you haven’t noticed, but it’s been a while. And also it’s not a Friday, so what is this guy’s email doing here, you ask.

Though I had a lot of work these days the main reason for not contacting this universe was procrastination. I’ll change this now and this email is to help me get out of the way some of the links that would otherwise make Friday’s email huge.

Exams are over! The week after that is always very liberating. Things were good. I estimate 6-7 out of 9. Not bad, right? Also I am over dealing with labs so my next visit to Patras will not be soon. Happy days.

These birds were just standing there!

A photo posted by Tasos Sangiotis (@tsangiotis) on

In not so happy days, my gear gets broken all the time… My 2 year old Nexus 5 phone has some trouble doing phone calls and requires a reboot every day around noon to continue functioning as expected. So now I am on a relative’s iPhone 5s which is just too small for the bigthumb and bad eyes me.

On the Apple side, my 4 year old Macbook Air started blinking it’s screen at boot. I can confirm that these computers don’t like to get rebooted. I formated it and now I am afraid to even put Chrome on it. I am on Safari. ON SAFARI!!! It’s not the most horrible thing ever. Oh wait, I opened a video in fullscreen. I can confirm that it is actually horrible.

I’ve already started rethinking what my setup should be for when my computer dies. I believe a 300-400 Euro Chromebook for everything and a remote Windows machine with Matlab, and Cad software is going to be gold. Know any remote desktop providers to suggest? What am I saying? In 2-4 years the only thing I’ll need would be my VR headset!

Anyhow, you like ice cream? You want some right now? Have you wondered how would life be if you could eat delicious healthy ice cream all the time? I need to try this.

On things I don’t want to try: Being a kid in Nepal. It would be very difficult to go to school. It’s not that there is no school. It’s that the road to school is a dangerous one. You have to fight nature. Fun fact, when I was in school, a yellow bus stopped at the corner of my house and I just had to listen to music, sleep and occasionally finish homework. It was tough!

Yeah, I know… It was crazy. Almost as crazy as the woman who attended her own funeral. Her husband had paid to get her killed. Or this guy who is the bad example at terrorist schools. If you thought that was crazy, check out what doctors can do to crazy! Rewiring the brain is a thing!

In other medical advancements, remote robotic surgeries go as well as expected. In the near future your surgeon will probably skype you. Whatever, who skypes anymore? I’ll wait for my surgery in snapchat please.  

Thinking about it, I thought I was good at Snapchat (find out by yourself by adding tsangiotis). Actually I thought I was the best at snapchat from the people I know. Reading this BuzzFeed article however, I realised I am just a NARP by snapchat standards.

If you are a teen that hurts a lot more but don’t worry! You are probably better than your parents and less cool by far. That’s a good thing as you are healthier, you do better choices and you are overall happier. What I am talking about? This article by Vox explains how teens and young people are becoming better persons.

You may also be more resilient. That means you are tougher and can chew whatever life throws at you. How people learn to do that? We should ask this small band of women in india who risk it all for a chance to work.

If you read this far, here is a gift. Read Frank Sinatra has a cold by Gay Talese of Esquire. It’s an awesome piece and it will make you smile and hum “New York, New York...”.

Read more »

Basic Income, Millionaires and a better world

As I said before, this time around exams have most of me. It’s tough but it's going pretty well and I am halfway there. Four more to the end!

And it’s not all that bad. The sky looks like this when you go out to eat around 5pm:


On another issue, I really don’t have the time to manage the free server I have from the ~okeanos to host the archive site for The HeadScratch. I just clicked destroy on my VM dashboard and that's it. I also don't think I need to have another url for that email or a different archive page. As simplicity is something I like and this email is destined to be personal, I am going to move all of this on my Posthaven hosted personal website. I think it is the right move and looks fine. What do you think?

Pitch to eat! That’s what startups do, you are saying. But hey, people can be startups too! That’s why Y Combinator is going to fund a study on basic income,

Many people believe, me included, that at some point in the future, as technology continues to eliminate traditional jobs and massive new wealth gets created, there would be people that will not need to work to have a great life.

What remains to be seen is if people are going to spend their money as startups do.

Mommy is home! It looks like the world is getting better as more companies treat the different people appropriately. Look what happened when Google increased paid maternity leave.

In the same spirit The Economist on us young people: “In some respects the young have never had it so good. They are richer and likely to live longer than any previous generation. On their smartphones they can find all the information in the world. If they are female or gay, in most countries they enjoy freedoms that their predecessors could barely have imagined. They are also brainier than any previous generation. Average scores on intelligence tests have been rising for decades in many countries, thanks to better nutrition and mass education." Yet they are twice as likely as their elders to be unemployed. Are the elders holding them back?

"Chandler: Well, I proposed to my shoe…" What do you know about neural networks? I was discussing about them with a couple of friends building their own and as a miracle this sprang on my twitter feed. A guy fed a recurrent neural network with the scripts for every episode of friends and it learned to generate new scenes. The results are awesome (sometimes)!

There are new Barbies in town! The almost 57 years old Barbie, finally has curves like a real woman. That was the right thing to do. Keep in mind that changes in big corporations like Mattel take time. So it will take a while before we get the invisible Barbie. I can't wait.

How Challenger blasted off. Popular Mechanics has an oral history of the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster with interviews from people on the field.

I'm really excited about this movie! It's based on a real story.

Live like Harry Potter. A group of fans in Polland live in a castle pretending they are wizards!

Darth Vader baby bodysuits recalled… For choking hazard. Ok, that was a weirdly funny force choke.

Major Tom, Dragnet and Pizza

Hi folks!

I am between exams now and everything is pretty tight. But my schedule will be kept.

Also everyone seems to disagree with me getting the thing I want. Which is this. They will need to change their mind because this is happening probably in 2016.

Ground control to Major Tom

Jon Pareles in the NYT obituary about the death of David Bowie writes: “Mr. Bowie wrote songs, above all, about being an outsider:an alien, a misfit, a sexual adventurer, a faraway astronaut.” As Dave Pell wrote in the related issue of NextDraft “Today, there are people who are famous for nothing. David Bowie was famous for everything.”

Akrasia

You know you have something to study right now. You know it and it is the single logical thing to do.

Instead you open your laptop, search Netflix or whatever for a whole season of something and begin watching.

James Clear (who has a very cool name) talks about  why is that and what to do about it?

My laptop goes in the closet when this email is sent.

Don’t want the sexy stuff

Sometimes the best way to learn about something is to ask someone who doesn’t give a flying f*ck about it — or any other kind of f*ck, for that matter.

In a world where Tinder tries any kind of algorithm to make you score there are people who don’t want to score. What’s the deal with asexuality?

JOY DOESN’T SHARE FOOD!

But if he did, he should do it the mathest way possible. Two mathematicians figured outhow to fairly slice pizza.

I still get my own pizza. What?!

Also about food. We don’t know any freakin’ thing about it (sort of). And sorry vegetarians,there’s a cauliflower shortage.

How to get caught

You are a pro doing money frauds all the time right? They never caught you. Until they did.

When this happens, what you do is becoming an expert in the technology that caught you.

The Verge has a pretty great article on a man accused of million-dollar fraud who uncovered the super secret device that caught him.

It’s fascinating!

Smartphones, the new PCs

You remember when a new iPhone came out and everyone nerded about it? Why it is better and about that new awesome feature or the bigger camera sensor?

It has been years since I got into that kind of conversation with normal people. That is also what happened with PCs some years ago.

This is the post Smartphone era.


Read more »

Computer Council, Punching Prison and Autistic soldiers

It is safe to say that you have already broken your New Year’s resolution by now. It’s ok.

Nobody cares and your expectations were probably too high. You shouldn’t have broken them though. Now feel bad. You deserve it.

Baby, the computer says it’ll be ok

Researchers at the universities of Southern California and Utah programmed a computer to analyse the speech of couples in marriage counseling. It turned out that the computer was “able to predict marital improvement or deterioration about as reliably as ratings provided by trained humans — in fact, even a little better.”

Punching prison since he was 16

“Colin threw the first punch, and didn’t let up. Mario joined in, neighbors looking on. Then Taurus waded in and landed one blow. Jacques crumpled, and never got up.” And that one punch thrown by a 16 year-old Taurus Buchanan resulted in a life-sentence. More in This Boy’s Life. Who knows? There might be support for prison reform on 2016.

Airbnb for refuges?

Of course the refugee crisis is a geopolitical and humanitarian disaster happening in slow motion. Of course! But maybe, maybe this could be an opportunity?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That was going through the heads of the two brothers that make millions off the refugee crisis in Scandinavia.

If that’s the case, they should be careful with the logo. Just saying.

Autism as an asset

It turns out that Israel has a special unit for autistic soldiers. It’s a place where their heightened perceptual skills are an asset. And they are pretty happy about it.

Am I an adult?

Ok I am above drinking and driving age (not at the same time) but am I an adult-adult or not yet. It turns out the line between childhood and adulthood is blurrier than ever.

Do you prefer cash?

Sweden, the near cash-free country. Note that here in Greece we try hard to beat them to it through a faster route.

Robot, cue the Elements!

It’s now verified. 4 new elements were added to the periodic table just before NYE. But the road is rocky for new elements down the line and here’s why.

Here are 5 robot trends to watch in 2016 by MIT Technology review. Add Facebook Messenger to the list as they now have a Chat SDK to make bots and Mark Zuckerberg is building an AI for his home. Hope he will be creative with the name.

Merry ForceIsWithYou

NASA LRO Earthrise 2015

You may have noticed (of course you did) that last week you did not receive an email.

I was very busy with my thesis, a new 3D printer at the office and Star Wars spoilers avoiding techniques. Someone posted Kylo Ren’s face on Facebook and someone studying in UK offered to spoil it. He is still in the hospital. Kidding.. Or am I?!

I always like to say I hate christmas. That’s a lie because it’s cool to hate. The truth is that I can do without the craziness on the streets and in stores but coming together with people I don’t see often and everyone being extra nice is really good!

So merry christmas!

Also you will not get an email next week. It is 1/1/2016. You will not read email and I will not be in the mood to write them.

Moving on…

Merry ForceIsWithYou

Here in Greece, we decided that we would miss the global premiere to experience a movie by Christoforos Papakaliatis. So we have the Star Wars premiere right in Christmas Eve. We are doomed… The result is I have not seen it yet.

At least one (and maybe both) of the Js in JJ Abrams now stands for Jedi as the early reviews of the new Star Wars movie are almost universally excellent.

Until you see it (unless you are lucky and you have already seen it), you can read The Force Accounted.

My christmas resolution? If it has not happened by Sunday I am going alone dressed as a Sith lord or Darth Santa (It is the best video ever).

Bye 2015, Hi 2016!

2015 was the best year in history for the average human being but there were people the internet came to hate a lot this year. What happened to them?

You Google shit, right? Here is your Year in Search for 2015. Or the year in Digg. Or what moved us in 2015.

And now that a new year is coming, here is the pessimist’ s guide to the World in 2016.

Broke on Social Media

“Many famous social media stars are too visible to have ‘real’ jobs, but too broke not to.” Get rich or die vlogging: The sad economics of internet fame.

I wanna a fucking driver’ s license!

The government in the Netherlands has clarified that “it is legal for driving instructors to offer lessons in return for sex, as long as the students are over the age of 18. However, it is illegal to offer sex in return for lessons.”

I am really bad

Couple of weeks ago I nerded on christmas tree symmetry. I nerded so bad I created a Matlab Script. I know I am the worst, please don’t hate me!

Next time I’ll try to include a guide on GCC Cross Compiling. I learned a lot last week.

If I don’t see you soon, have a nice time this holiday. I will!

Parenting, Violence and Angela

Hello there!

I spent most of my Sunday, working on that newsletter and I have some things to announce!

First of all, if you didn’t notice, the name has gone from The Email (meh) to The HeadScratch! Pretty cool, right? I think it is fitting.

Also I wrapped up the website and there is now an archive and a sign up page. You can find them on TheHeadScratch.com.

You may know that there is a bug in human nature and I am not able to make everyone do what I want just yet. I am working on it but there is not going to be a patch for it before 2016. So if you believe that someone may want to read this each week, send them to the above website.

It’s not your fault, mom

Remember when you did something bad and turned to your disapointed parents and said with righteousness “It may be your fault! You raised me that way!”?

It may not be their fault and you may be a monster. Here is why parenting may not matter.

That’s a nice conversation starter for that family dinner on Christmas eve!

Moral violence

Why violence is a thing when everyone, when asked, believes it is bad? An MIT lecturer decides to crack the patterns and reach a conclusion. And he finds out that most violence in the world is motivated by personal morality.

That means, that most people when performing acts of violence believe that it is their duty to do so. And that it is not as messed up as it sounds. Read the thing.

Also with so much violent shootings, it may be useful to know what really happens when you get shot.

Person of the year

Here in Greece, Angela Merkel is kind of a hot subject. In general people don’t like her that much.

Of course she couldn’t care less as she was chosen as the TIME Person of the Year for 2015.

Here is an excellent (but long) piece on her rise to the most powerful woman in the world by NYT.

Hot people problems

This is a piece to make you understand, what I and the rest of the elit are going through. It’s true, being handsome is a living hell.

A living hell was also the life of the Rolling Stone’s reporter who followed Cristian Leave to discover the strange life of a teen social media celebrity.

Another (uncool person) problem is that I maintained a $15 Gold Audible subscription for a couple of months. Stop arguing that I threw away my money. Maybe I understood thataudiobooks are the future of reading you clueless reader.

No you are right though. I clicked a button by mistake, subscribed and yesterday I got my refund. Thank you Amazon!

Oh Apple…

You may have noticed that Apple has been kind of a bad designer lately and people noticed and started wondering: What happened to Apple design?

Here is another article by two former Apple designers on how apple is giving design a bad name.

Don’t worry. Nothing will change. We are still going to shout SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY! on every new Apple release.

Buy me a gift

If you are struggling to find an appropriate present to give me on this holiday, your search is over! You can buy me a ride in a MiG-29 Fighter Jet.

Or contribute to my flying lessons fund. One is as good as the other.