oh, chicago

Armed men rob at least 14 people during 2-hour crime spree.

Doesn’t seem like anyone has been arrested. “Police issued a community alert late Friday morning linking six robberies to the crew, but a law enforcement source identified additional cases that are also believed to be part of the pattern.” | learn more

fun facts

The Bangladesh water machine.

“Published in Science, the study said that groundwater-fed irrigation had transformed much of Bangladesh’s single-crop, rain-watered floodplains into highly productive double-cropping and, in places, triple-cropping lands to make the country the world’s fourth highest producer of rice.” | learn more

on the blockchain

Having a safe CEX: proof of solvency and beyond.

Vitalik explains how it might be possible to one day trust a centralized exchange: “Rather than relying solely on “fiat” methods like government licenses, auditors and examining the corporate governance and the backgrounds of the individuals running the exchange, exchanges […]

on the blockchain

Why Nassim Taleb does not like Bitcoin.

He thinks its worthless for various reasons. “If any non-dividend yielding asset has the tiniest constant probability of hitting an absorbing barrier (causing its value to become 0), then its present value must be 0.” | learn more

big ideas

How the inside of a black hole is secretly on the outside.

If the following excerpt doesn’t scare you away, you might enjoy this link. “Eventually my colleagues and I realized that both the information paradox and the newer firewall paradox arose because our attempts to meld quantum mechanics and black hole […]