1) SAC's Steinberg Convicted Of Insider Trading (FIN Alternatives) - Michael Steinberg is going down for the count. The jury was out less than two days before returning a guilty verdict on all five charges, and Steinberg now faces up to 85 years in prison.
2) Facebook, Zuckerberg Plan to Sell $3.9 Billion of Shares (Businessweek) - It's hard to feel bad for Zuckerberg because he's got more money than 3 generations would ever be able to spend, but if I have any sympathy at all for the guy it's because he has to give up a significant portion of his company just to pay the taxes. Say what you will, but $4 billion ain't chump change and he has to be wondering how he'll ever get anywhere near that much utility out of the expense.
3) Being a North Korea 1 percenter just got dangerous (CNBC) - A lot of really dark and oddly fascinating things are taking place in North Korea at the moment. On top of the wealthy being under the gun, a number of senior diplomats are being called home from abroad to face the firing squad. It's scary to think about the instability this might cause in a nuclear-armed nut-job country like North Korea.
4) McLaren to replace windshield wipers with a force field of sound waves (Geek.com) - There's no other way to describe this but bad ass. In other news, they're also working on a hybrid fuel cell that runs on stripper tears.
5) Seriously, Enough With This Apple Holiday Ad (Gizmodo) - This kid needs his ass kicked. Apple either hates its customer base, or has a really low opinion of humanity in general. The hero of their big ad is a misfit creeper.
6) Shia LaBeouf plagiarizes Daniel Clowes comic for his film, responds with plagiarized apology (A.V. Club) - What a dick.
7) Simulations back up theory that Universe is a hologram (Nature) - Could the universe be a hologram? And if so, who's projecting it and for what reason?
8) Video shows fire ants are capable of acting like a liquid and a solid (I Fucking LOVE Science) - Liquid...solid...doesn't fucking matter. These things are evil incarnate. I remember my oldest son walking through the grass barefoot in shorts when he stepped on a fire ant pile. He screamed and before I could get to him, his right leg was already completely covered to the knee. Nightmare fuel.
9) Chuck Norris Tops Jean-Claude Van Damme's Epic Split (Mashable) - Because Chuck Norris. Feliz Navidad, bitches.
10) Breaking Bad Spinoff Better Call Saul To Stream On Netflix In The U.S. And Other Countries In 2014 (Television Blend) - Can't wait for this one. It's gonna give House of Cards a run for its money.
Video of the Week:
We're all looking forward to the Wolf of Wall Street this week, but there's another movie coming out soon that looks even more powerful. Lone Survivor is based on the book of the same name about a doomed SEAL team that held out against overwhelming odds. The following is a brief featurette showcasing both the movie and the production team - AND the families of the deceased. I can't wait to see this flick:
That's it for this week, fellas. Have a magnificent weekend and let me know what you think about this week's Bananas in the comments!
Thanks for mentioning Lone Survivor. If you like these types of books then you need to read Lone Survivor ASAP. Just ordered American Sniper for my brother for Christmas, excited to steal it from him for a few days and knock it out.
American Sniper was a very interesting read. Highly recommend it.
Great! I just read Howard Wasdin's book, although not as good as Lone Survivor it's still worth a read.
Taken from a Reddit thread on the subject a week or so ago after someone asked them to explain it to them like they were five ("ELI5")
The basic principle is rather "simple" once you understand the concept of entropy which can be slightly more difficult to get a grasp on. I usually see "entropy" described in two different ways, though these two ways are actually explaining the same thing. One way to think of entropy is as the amount of "disorderliness" of a closed system. This closed system could be a deck full of cards or it could be a box full of molecules. If the cards are nicely ordered from Ace to King and from Hearts through Spades, the system is very ordered and as such has a low "entropy". If the molecules in the box are all sitting still in one of the corners, they are ordered and the system has a low "entropy". If you shuffle your deck multiple times, the cards become disordered and the entropy in the system increases. If the molecules in the box are all wildly mixed and moving in all sorts of directions, the system is very disordered and the entropy is high. The second way to think about entropy is as "the amount of hidden information" in a closed system. If you look at the box full of molecules, it's practically impossible to keep track of every single molecule's position and momentum because there are just too many of them. Instead we might choose to look at the box as a whole, ignoring the information of every single molecule and instead describe the system with some overall, average information such as "temperature", "pressure" and "density". By doing this, we don't have to keep track of every single molecule in the box, but it also means we "hide some information" about the system. The more information hidden, the higher the entropy. Now, as another example, imagine instead we have a bath tub full of hot water. The entropy of this hot water is high because we don't look at each water molecule in the bath tub, but we just say "the average temperature of the water is 60 degrees Celsius". A lot of information about the system is thus hidden from us. How much information? An amount proportional to the volume of the bath tube. Why the volume? Because it's logical that the amount of hidden information about all the molecules is proportional to the amount of molecules in the bath tub and the amount of molecules in the bath tub is proportional to the volume. If you want to retrieve this hidden information, you have to look inside the bath tub and measure each single molecule carefully. Now, Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein have shown that black holes must have entropy by the argument given by proffrobot. The question now is, how much entropy does a black hole have? A naive answer may be that the amount of entropy in a black hole is proportional to its volume by the same argument as the bath tub. This is wrong. The amount of entropy, e.g. hidden information, contained in a black hole is proportional to its surface area. Why is this such a big deal? This is because if you want to retrieve information about what's happening inside the black hole, you only need to look at its surface. Not through its surface, but at its surface. In other words, the inside of a black hole is being "projected" onto its surface like a hologram. Black holes are the densest things in the universe and as such contain the most amount of entropy in least space. Hence, if the maximum amount of information is being projected from its inside to its surface, our universe may be just something similar.
Lone Survivor got pretty bad reviews. Not that critic reviews should bear any weight on your personal opinion, just a thought.
"7) Simulations back up theory that Universe is a hologram (Nature) - Could the universe be a hologram? And if so, who's projecting it and for what reason? "
since it wont allow me to quote, ill just do this ^^^^^^
----I've been interested in this concept and others like it for years now, glad to see some interest from WSO users as well.
@dickfuld lol, @ first the concepts and ideas seem difficult to understand, but if you really have an interest in these types of ideas, stick with it. It takes time, but it will start to make sense...... and in a few years you'll be coming up with your own theories.
3 We can't have the average income of the top 1% in North Korea exceeding $30,000 USD a year now can we.
@"S3V3N30" You can run down some serious rabbit holes with this shit if you let yourself. I mean, do you even exist at all? Or are you just a projection of my virtual reality?
5 : I wanted to retch seeing this commercial. Aww, the special little flowers are just misunderstood? Take a sledgehammer to the thing for one day.
The only real objection I have to the projection theory is, physics. It seems really unlikely that it is possible to project mass. Mass can be neither created or destroyed, it can only change forms. You can project light, however light in a projected form can not contain mass in a solidified form. You can project data over light however the data does not contain solid mass.
Unless all of "reality" is a computer simulation like The Sims. Think about it: does anything actually exist if it isn't in your direct and immediate line of vision? Can you prove it?
Mind blown...
I can prove that the chair behind me is there even if I can't directly see it. How? I can reach behind me and touch it. If you are saying that everything we are interacting is a direct virtual simulation, I can understand that. But the real question is who would waste resources on that. Sure we have games like the Sims that are simulations, however to simulate entire universes would take an incredibly complex and powerful machines and computer systems not to mention incredibly complex AI systems that allow everything to evolve and move through time and space at different, individual and collective paces. So yea, it seems like an extreme stretch of stretches.
I don't think you understand E=mc^2. Mass can be created or destroyed in an open system.
A holographic projection is not an open system.
You guys realize that the idea that our universe is like a hologram is basically an analogy, right? I'm no physics expert but I'm pretty sure their basic point is about dimensions. Just like a hologram in our world is a construct that appears 3-dimensional but is actually composed of lesser dimensions (two), likewise, our universe might appear to have 10+ dimensions (if you consider string theory, etc), but in reality the universe has a lesser amount of dimensions than it appears to have.
It is an interesting idea but also a lot of physics mumbo jumbo that doesn't really have much impact on the human experience. Nobody is saying anything about a "virtual reality"...this isn't The Matrix.
4) it's true that a lap dance is so much better when the stripper is crying. Side note, it's also fun when you and your Marine buddies pay a stripper to come to your house and dance to that song.
That ant thing is creepy as fuck. And fire ants are one thing I do not miss about the South.
Lone Survivor was an awesome book. However, the movie (from the previews I have seen) looks to be Mark Walbergs Medellín (Vince Chase/Entourage). The weight gain looks strange. Hope I am proven wrong & I'm excited to see it none the less.
2 - Zuk is unloading as many shares as he can before people realize FB is a steaming turdpile.
3 - SOP for dictators. Next he'll start a trash talking grudge match and launch a missle into the ocean, just to rile everyone up. China's getting tired of NK though so I think the marching orders will come down along the lines of "knock that crap off". I think the difference between North and South Korea clearly illustrates the end game difference between what China and the US have set as their ideal goals. Keep your perfect social 'order' and 'stability', I'll take my chances with some 'chaos' and liberty.
6 - I need to go full local bartender on this for a second: Will someone please beat the shit out of Shia, and publicly!? This twerp has been running around acting a fool and he needs a good ass whooping. He thinks he's going to call a hit? I raise your empty threat and see you a beating out back. While you're at it, you'll drink for free for the next week if you take down Beiber too. We've all had it and now it's time to turn some local bruisers loose on his sorry carcass. PAGING DANNY TREJO! SMACKDOWN IN ISLE FIVE!
+1 Liked.
I read Lone Survivor awhile ago, I liked it. It is exciting and explains what went down pretty clearly. It's not some piece of literature, the guy was a warfighter not an English major --- so take any criticism with a grain of salt.
@goingconcern The whole simulation theory argument isn't just a different way of explaining physics. It revolves around the idea that we are actually living in a computer simulation. One of the ideas they use to explain it is that matter at the smallest scales appears to be discrete, almost like pixelation seen on a computer game. That's what makes it way stranger.
Are you using "computer simulation" as another analogy like "hologram", or are you suggesting a literal computer?
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