Mike's List 236

Vaccine passports, dancing robots, tiny monitors, giant eBooks and much more!

8 reasons why vaccine passports are a bad idea

Everyone is talking about vaccine passports this week. The idea is simple: After being vaccinated against Covid-19, you would be able to prove it with a vaccine passport — a card or app that tells anyone you got the shot. 

A vaccine passport is considered a license to attend crowded events, travel, dine in restaurants and go without a mask -- to enjoy what The New York Times calls "immunoprivilege."

So what's the problem? In fact there are 8 reasons why vaccine passports are a bad idea. (For subscribers only.)

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4 brilliantly bad ideas of the day

1. Dancing robots

After programming robots to walk, run, jump and do other impressive behaviors, roboticists at Boston Dynamics have finally taught Robots how to get jiggy with it. Reminder: We were promised jetpacks, not this.

2. A house with its own prison

A charming little house is currently for sale in Vermont. Listed at $149k, the cottage features four bedrooms, two bathrooms, nearly an acre of land and a 7-cell prison! The home, built in 1878, was built for a "jailer" and is attached to the Essex County Jail, which was closed in 1969. 

3. Keyboard keys with tiny displays

Nobody likes Apple's Touch Bar. But now Apple is doubling down on extra, unwanted screens. The company recently won a patent for a keyboard featuring keys with tiny screens on top. The idea is to enable "dynamically adjustable key labels for the keys,” a direct rip-off of Art Lebedev Studio's Optimus Maximus keyboard from 13 years ago (pictured). 

4. Giant e-Ink desktop screens

A company called Dasung plans to sell its Paperlike 253 product, which is a 25-inch eInk desktop monitor. Why enjoy dazzling clarity and color when you could have 16 shades of grey? As a bonus, the screen might cost as much as $3,000. 

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3 tools of the day

1. Outline is a simple web page that lets you paste the URL of a paywalled article and then it shows you the whole article free. This doesn't work on all paywalled sites, but it does work on most of them. 

2. AutoDraw is a Google experiment where you scribble a messy drawing, and Google artificial intelligence tries to figure out what it is. It shows you options, you pick one, and you get a perfect machine-drawn version. It's like autocorrect for doodles. 

3. Little Alchemy 2 is a game, of sorts, where you can combine basic elements to get new materials or objects, which you then have to combine to get ever more complex results. Eventually, you can make houses, plants, metals and even people. 

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2 Shameless self promotions

1. Buy my book, GASTRONOMAD!

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