Strange but true

I spent way too long last week configuring a new PC (aka learning -- doing battle with -- Windows 10). That makes today a good day to recover a bit of time by posting from my stockpile of accumulated SF and Nonsense-relevant esoterica.

Too often, how we all feel

Is the problem that I haven't been getting enough sleep? In simpler times, before much in the way of artificial lighting, did people evolve to need a lot of sleep? Say, to need the oft-recommended eight hours per night? Well, maybe no one ever got that much sleep. See (from Reuters, via Yahoo News), "What a nightmare: sleep no more plentiful in primitive cultures."

The outlook is cloudy

Does having your data in the cloud keep you up nights? Sure, you can encrypt your data. But if you also want to use cloud apps, then surely your data must be decrypted for the app's use. And then your data is vulnerable, right?

Maybe it doesn't need to be. See (from IEEE Spectrum), "How to Compute With Data You Can’t See: Web applications could increase security by keeping data encrypted even during computations." That's seriously cool.

The more we learn about biology, the more imaginative seems the phenomenon of life. As in (from Popular Science), "Have We Found Alien Life? Microbes that eat and breathe electricity have forced scientists to reimagine how life works—on this planet and others."

Down the digital rabbit hole

Figures lie and liars figure. So what's the story regarding the trend in ebook sales? Good question! See (from The New York Times), "The Plot Twist: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far From Dead" and (from Fortune magazine), "No, e-book sales are not falling, despite what publishers say."

Will humans ever get back to space beyond LEO? NASA (and Congress, its funders) shows no sense of urgency. See (from Space.com) "NASA's 1st Manned Flight of Orion Space Capsule May Slip to 2023."

Here's hoping I've beaten Windows 10 into submission by next time ...