5L #048
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From the Moon ..
Every time someone talks to you about any high-risk investment, but especially crypto coin, just remember that this can happen.
I hope none of my subscribers were burnt by any of the recent ‘corrections’.
(via CoinDesk - which you should probably stay away from)
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Ahoy to the phone-without-a-phone ..
Some sad news this week. The iPod has officially been retired. The little white box with the big circle-scroll-wheel hasn’t been sold for a while but its successor, the iPod Touch, was this week taken out of service.
I quite liked this piece by John Gruber, which picks up something I also felt for the iPod Touch.
Turns out, 15 years ago, making an iPhone without the phone meant you could make something remarkably thinner. The original iPhone was 11.6mm thick and weighed 135g. The original iPod Touch was just 8mm thick and weighed 120g. The difference in thickness was particularly remarkable. It was like a vision of the iPhone’s future.
The dimensions of the touch were just about perfect. I too was hopeful Apple would release an iPhone that was as thin and as light as the iPod Touch, and felt that it was just a matter of time as the technology progressed. Unfortunately though they went the other way, with the phablets and the huge screens and bigger batteries and all the pocket-dragging-weight that comes with that.
A Touching Goodbye for iPod | Daring Fireball
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Floating house ..
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Happy Red Noses ..
A wonderful update out of Australia’s Mayo Clinic. It appears there is now research that has demonstrated the cause of sudden-infant-death-syndrome as being an inherent issue within the child rather than something environmental.
These cases are tragic; and cause severe angst even for those families lucky enough not to be directly affected. It would be wonderful if scientists could discover a way to identify at-risk children and help prevent SIDS from occurring.
According to Mayo Clinic, many in the medical community suspected this phenomenon could be caused by a defect in the part of the brain that controls arousal from sleep and breathing. The theory was that if the infant stopped breathing during sleep, the defect would keep the child from startling or waking up.
The Sydney researchers were able to confirm this theory by analyzing dried blood samples taken from newborns who died from SIDS and other unknown causes. Each SIDS sample was then compared with blood taken from healthy babies. They found the activity of the enzyme butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) was significantly lower in babies who died of SIDS compared to living infants and other non-SIDS infant deaths. BChE plays a major role in the brain’s arousal pathway, explaining why SIDS typically occurs during sleep.
and
She went on to explain why this discovery is so important for parents whose babies suffered from SIDS.
"These families can now live with the knowledge that this was not their fault," she said.
Researchers Pinpoint Research Infants Die from SIDS
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More life advice ..
These links always play well. Some more life advice, this time from Kevin Kelly. Who I now see runs his own ‘weekly links’ project. I reckon he’s on to something.
Some snippets below.
• Dont ever work for someone you dont want to become.
and
• When you lead, your real job is to create more leaders, not more followers.
and
• The consistency of your endeavors (exercise, companionship, work) is more important than the quantity. Nothing beats small things done every day, which is way more important than what you do occasionally.
and
• Your time and space are limited. Remove, give away, throw out things in your life that dont spark joy any longer in order to make room for those that do.
103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known
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Bennett