Friday, December 9, 2016

Summa Everything

-- Amazon has created a store that doesn't actually need to take your money. Check in with your smartphone, load stuff into your cart and sensors enter it into your "virtual cart" so when you walk out your Amazon account is charged for the items you take with you. I'm guessing some real people are needed for the folks who might decide to take "walk out without paying" more literally than they should, or for those knuckle-dragging Philistines actually insisting on using cash. One problem I can see -- if you decide you don't actually want an item it gets removed from your ticket when you put it back on the shelf. I've shopped Wal-Marts, K-marts, and grocery stores big and small for 30 years. The number of shoppers who put something back where they got it can be totaled up on one hand.

-- I may offer something else on this piece from Physics World -- providing I can manage to understand it -- but in the meantime, I must note that it contains the phrase "sonic Lamb shift" which my Dave Barry fan club membership required me to note would make a great name for a rock band.

--Scientists studying neutrinos have seen hints that there are differences between neutrinos and anti-neutrinos which could tells us why we have a universe made up of matter instead of one of antimatter (in which everyone, even babies, would wear evil goatees) or one that's empty because all of the antimatter and matter annihilated each other. And by annihilated, I don't mean a Buzzfeed-Voxy EVISCERATION, but literal wiping out until none are left. Which not even Jon Stewart could do on his best day.

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