A meteor decimates the U.S. government. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated timeline in the earth’s efforts to colonize space. One of these new entrants in the space race is Elma York. But with so many skilled and experienced women pilots and scientists involved with the program, it doesn’t take long before Elma begins to wonder why women can’t go into space, too... This book …
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I hate creating Alexa skills. What should be a 3-click process inevitably ends up requiring trips to multiple websites, to set up weird parameters, and reading outdated tutorials for obsolete libraries. So this is how to create a self-hosted Skill, using PHP. It runs on your own server and doesn't require any interaction. The Skill At a basic level, all your website has to do is spit out a…
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A successful entrepreneur living in Southern California, Scott Rieckens had built a “dream life”. But underneath the surface, Scott was creatively stifled, depressed, and overworked trying to help pay for his family’s beach-town lifestyle. Follow Scott and his family as they devote everything to FIRE. Playing with FIRE is one family’s journey to acquire the one thing that money can’t buy: a simp…
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After five long years, The Pod Delusion is back! This is a quick chat with host & producer James O'Malley. 🔊 💾 Download this audio file. You can listen to back-episodes at https://poddelusion.co.uk/blog/ and I thoroughly recommend sticking it in your podcast app. …
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I review a lot of tech kit. It is amazing just how bad the consumer experience is when you have a brand-new box in your hands. It can be as simple as difficult to open packaging, to the existential horror of a poorly translated manual. The first time a customer holds your product in their hands should be a moment of joy. Something to reinforce the notion that they have been wise with their…
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What is it like to be a brain surgeon? How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands, to cut through the stuff that creates thought, feeling and reason? How do you live with the consequences when it all goes wrong? Henry Marsh reveals the exhilarating drama of surgery, the chaos and confusion of a busy modern hospital, and above all the need for hope when faced with life's most…
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After a mysterious schooner runs aground in an English harbor with no human passengers -- only the dead captain, drained of blood -- a series of bizarre nocturnal crimes takes place in London. It can only be the work of Count Dracula, and only one man can save the city: the world’s greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes. This is a very silly book! I recently watched the amazing film "Batman Vs t…
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Like all security minded people, I use a unique email address for every service I sign up to. This week, I noticed I had started receiving spam to an email address associated with my Join.me account. Join.me is a screen sharing service now owned by LogMeIn. I signed up for a trial of Join.me back in 2012(!) and as far as I'm aware, never used it again. Checking my records, this piece of spam…
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I've spent a week cosplaying as a disabled user. And I hate it. A couple of months ago, I attended a private talk given by a disabled colleague of mine. "Everyone should believe disabled people's stories about accessibility problems," she said. "But, given that people don't, here's what I want you to do. Spend one week pretending to be disabled. Pick a disability and try to interact with…
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If two blokes meet up and don't record a podcast, did it even happen? Social Media Maven Documentally showed off his podcasting rig - an app called Backpack Studio. You can listen to the ramblechat we recorded on his feed. Here's our quick chat about this nifty podcasting app - which I hope will one day come to Android. 🔊 💾 Download this audio file. …
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I've been a vegetarian for half my life and I have been blogging about crappy vegetarian labelling for a decade. Usually it's a rant about how a seemingly innocuous dish has hidden bone jelly in it - but today I experience the reverse situation. So, I was in the "veggie snacks" aisle of my local supermarket. I grabbed some tofu bites, mushroom sausages, a bean burger - and then I saw this. …
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One of America's top doctors reveals how AI will empower physicians and revolutionize patient care. Medicine has become inhuman, to disastrous effect. The doctor-patient relationship - the heart of medicine - is broken: doctors are too distracted and overwhelmed to truly connect with their patients, and medical errors and misdiagnoses abound. In Deep Medicine, leading physician Eric Topol…
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