Featured Links - March 18, 2024

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Light on the bay

• US Citizens Are Strikingly Bad At Sorting Facts From Opinions. "There’s a huge amount of research on misinformation. But what we found is that, even before we get to the stage of labeling something misinformation, people often have trouble discerning the difference between statements of fact and opinion." This is worrisome, though I am not at all surprised. 
• Kate Middleton’s Story Is About So Much More Than Kate Middleton (gift link). "But the frenzy around Catherine, Princess of Wales, raises important questions that go well beyond the usual concerns of royal watchers. Those questions stem from the extreme deference with which Catherine has previously been treated, in Britain at least, compared with the thrashing bestowed on her sister-in-law, Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex." The Royal Family and the British Press do not come off well. 
• AI is growing in the food-service industry — and nothing will stop it. "These technologies are spreading fast, despite breaches of privacy and the biases baked into software."
  
• Covid, 4 years on. "As we recently hit—March 11, 2020—the 4-year anniversary of when WHO finally declared Covid a global pandemic, and today, March 13th, when the US declared it a national emergency, we’re still learning every day about SARS-CoV-2’s impact, its evolution, protection from vaccination, and more. Here’s a quick summary of what I think is worth reviewing."
• America's Cheyenne Mountain Complex Can Withstand A 30-Megaton Nuclear Bomb. "693,000 tons of granite were blasted out of the mountain to make the bunker at the height of the Cold War." I've been in the NORAD SAGE base in North Bay, a similar facility, now decommissioned. 
• Climate Change Is Bad for Your Health, Wherever You Are. "Rising temperatures are a threat regardless of where you live on the planet—they’re just dangerous in different ways."
• Why Does This One Couch From West Elm Suck So Much? "Comparing notes with other unsatisfied owners of the Peggy sofa." Modern furniture isn't what it used to be. 
• Las Vegas Sphere has 4,000TB SSD storage delivering 400GB/s throughput — World's only 16K display requires some exquisite technology to keep it going. "