Back to work

🌳 My family and I spent the last four days out in the German countryside. Getting a change of pace was so very nice after spending months at home in Berlin, and lovely to spend time social distancing in a place where it’s so easy to have space. Unfortunately, I had a head cold during the first few days, but being in nature certainly helped.

😷 N95 masks aren’t just strainers. In fact, N95 masks leverage some interesting physics to ensure that they can filter out particles smaller than the fibers they are made of. (via @dimsumthinking’s daughter Maggie)

☢️ Sensors in Sweden have detected a rise of isotopes produced by nuclear fission reactions. Cs-134, Cs-137 & Ru-103, to be exact, which indicate active fission reactions. I sure hope we’re not getting an early warning of the next crisis to hit humanity in 2020.

💸 Tim O’Reilly thinks that venture capital is starting to do more harm than good and is no longer as focused on finding small companies that might one day change the world. I agree a zillion percent. One of my pet peeves at the day job is that we use VC terms like “seed” and “series-A” too much when we’d be much better off talking about startup phases in terms of where their product development is.

🕵️‍♀️ If you embed videos, like I do sometimes, Dries Buytaert shares a tip that serves YouTube videos without Google’s tracking cookies. I’ve updated my embeds to use the GDPR compliant youtube-nocookie.com server. (Via Gruber)