We’ve had some really good press the past week, the first I’d like to share with you comes from Aimee Groth writing for Quartz: The makers of WordPress.com learned years ago that the ultimate office perk is not having an office. The funny thing is I’m writing this from the once-a-year Automattic Grand Meetup, which is in Utah this year, there are over 250 of my colleagues here and it’s great fun meeting and hanging out with everybody.
“We were going to wait until he learned to talk to question him,” Secret Service Agent Edwin Donovan said in a statement, “but in lieu of that he got a timeout and was sent on [his] way with [his] parents.”
Pretty funny article from White House Goes On Lockdown After Sneaky Toddler Breaches Fence.
Logical Conclusion of AI
There’s been some great threads going around inspired by the book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, including Elon Musk hoping we’re not just a biological bootloader. Via Automattician Matt Mazur I came across this fantastic review of the book on Amazon that gives a great counter-balance and lots of additional information you wouldn’t get from the book itself, and also summarizes it quite well.
We’ve talked about the Fermi Paradox here and here before, my long-time friend David Galbraith, ever the architect, tackles the Fermi Paradox from the point of view of the natural limits of communication in Minimum & Maximum Viable Civilizations.
As reported by the Boston Globe, four-star Admiral Samuel Locklear, Commander of U.S. Pacific Command, provided an “unexpected answer” when recently asked “what is the biggest long-term security threat in the Pacific region?”
I usually don’t do this, but check out the link to see what the United States Navy admiral who currently serves as the commander of the U.S. Pacific Command said. Hat tip: Jim Meyer.
Brentin Mock from Grist looks for evidence that Hip Hop is not down with Monsanto.
Ants Are Amazing
[A]ll of California’s Argentine ants belong to only four colonies. The largest, euphemistically named the Very Large Colony, contains hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of ants, and extends from the Mexican border to San Francisco. In the largest battles ever recorded, millions of ants die each month along this colony’s border with its rivals in San Diego County.
That’s from this article by Mark W Moffett that describes his book Adventures Among Ants.
In 2010 Wired took a cool look at Looting, Cannibalism and Death Blows: The ‘Shock and Awe’ of Ant Warfare.
Finally as a 2013 update, there’s a new boss in town, the Asian needle ant which is literally eating Argentine ants for lunch:
All ants essentially hibernate when wintertime hits, but the Asian needle ants “wake up before other ant species wake up,” Spicer-Rice explained.
This head start allows them to build nests, find sources of food, and start reproducing before the other ants get going.
Amazing ant photo by János Csongor Kerekes and CC-licensed.
I bet you didn’t know today that you wanted to play a game with Jay Z’s head eating cupcakes while his Pound Cake verse plays in the background, but you do. Use the keyboard instead of mouse and it’s way more challenging. (Also worth mentioning Childish Gambino had the best freestyle on Pound Cake.)
Somebody once told me, “Manage the top line, and the bottom line will follow.” What’s the top line? It’s things like, why are we doing this in the first place? What’s our strategy? What are customers saying? How responsive are we? Do we have the best products and the best people? Those are the kind of questions you have to focus on.
— Steve Jobs
Today we hear from two Automatticians: Nikolay talks about his first open source contribution ten years ago and the path his life has taken since, and Andrea says she “can’t wipe this grin off my face” at the start of a new journey.
WordPress 4.0, code-named Benny, is now available. The response so far has been great, over 200k downloads in just a few hours. Today we celebrate, watch the counter, and tomorrow go back to work on 4.1. 🙂 For those following along at home, the 3.x series of WordPress was downloaded 300 million times.
ALS Challenge Fails
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQlvW0aFnKo
Pretty hilarious compilation of ALS Ice Bucket Challenges gone wrong. I’ve been challenged and it’s not going to happen, but did make a donation to the foundation. Really clever marketing, reminenscent of charity: water’s birthday campaigns.
Downtown Vegas Podcast
I’m a fan of Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project and try to do something with the community whenever I’m in town. On Thursday I’m going to be on the Downtown Vegas Podcast which will be filmed live at 9 pm at Inspire Theatre. Please come by if you’re in the area!
Luca Sartoni writes The Rules of A/B Testing by Tyler Durden. “1st Rule: You don’t talk about A/B Testing.”
You Can’t Tell This is 3D Rendered
Khoi Vinh writes about How 75% of the real-looking photographs you see in an Ikea catalog are actually 3d-rendered. Hat tip: Hafiz Rahman.
Posts like this are why @wordpressdotcom and @jetpack offer LaTeX / Beautiful Math support. http://t.co/rYUbyq2IpR
— george ?ephanis toots on mastodon (@daljo628) August 26, 2014
Matthew Ingram writes for Gigaom: Journalism is doing just fine, thanks — it’s mass-media business models that are ailing. Hat tip: Ben Thompson.
Tom McFarlin writes Everything Is Bloated, Nothing Is Good.
How The Sun Sees You
This video really makes you want to wear sunblock, something I haven’t been as good about this week. (Sorry Mom!) Hat tip: Sara Rosso.