Yin Dynasty Revealed
It's more than knowledge, it's truth.
Stolen Credit Card
012 years
by Bailey Yin
in Uncategorized
My house seems to be having a bad string of luck with respect to credit cards getting stolen. Mt credit card number was stolen this past spring. It was a huge pain in the ass to get the investigation start but even more a pain to remember all the accounts that I needed to update with new auto-pay info. Some of the accounts couldn’t be updated online so i had to send in paperwork to get the credit card changed. I also forgot a couple of things until I got emails saying that the services would stop soon. I never learned how my number was stolen.
This past week one of my housemates had his credit card stolen. He found out about it because he first received a game from GameFly (NetFlix for games) without actually signing up. He then received some roses in the mail. When he check his credit card statement it turned out the person who stolen his number donated money to World Wildlife Fund and ASPCA. All of this seems like a strange way to use a stolen credit card number. This evening I did get an email from the Hideout Theater stating that their website was hacked. They even stated that some of the reported fraudulent charges were to the World Wildlife Fund, ClickInks.com, and Gamefly. At least my housemate knows how his number was stolen.
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12 years
by Bailey Yin
in Uncategorized
Cool use of a robot to reduce human drudgery without reducing quality. I also like that it has a body, head, and face.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukNkCnNJuR8
Found this video of The Piano Guys on a friend’s blog. Amazing music. They do some great remakes of other people’s songs. You can find them on iTunes.
Time Machine Chefs
012 years
by Bailey Yin
in Uncategorized
My housemate sent me an article about a cooking show called Time Machine Chefs. The show is a cooking show with the twist that the chefs don’t use modern kitchen equipment and are supposed to cook meals from different periods of time. I am looking forward to watching some episodes. The full articles is here.
More Videos
012 years
by Bailey Yin
in Uncategorized
An interesting movie I want to see about the imaginations of kids playing war and taking the play too far.
An M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank firing.
A hilarious video promoting the Dollar Shave Club where you are shipped new blades every month (or every other month) for a low price.
Interesting Youtube Video about Taxes in Texas
012 years
by Bailey Yin
in Uncategorized
Dick Lavine (on the right) is a friend of my family. This video was interesting which is amazing since it is about taxes which I normally don’t want to think about.
Aphids are now my mortal enemies
112 years
by Bailey Yin
in Uncategorized
I am having a huge problem with aphids pooping on my car. Before cleaning my car today, I could barely see out the back window. Apparently it is a big problem for a lot of Austin. http://jalopnik.com/5934367/bugs-in-austin-wont-stop-pooping-on-peoples-cars
Update: Academic Olympics
012 years
by Bailey Yin
in Uncategorized
I realized that there is one potential problem with Academic Olympics. Scientist celebrities might try to fudge data or analysis data to fit popular beliefs to stay on the public’s good side akin to doping for athletes. Academics would be worried about public perception (more than usual).
Academic Olympics
112 years
by Bailey Yin
in Uncategorized
I have been watching the 2012 London Olympics these past two weeks and I have been immensely impressed especially since I have been able to watch more than usual. I have also gotten to see some of the more unique events like synchronized swimming in which I would probably drown if I tried it.
It is awesome that we are leading the medal count but today I wondered what would happen/how we would feel if the US got very few or no medals since we normally do very well. I assume we would be very embarrassed and dump a lot of money into our training programs. I heard during this Olympics that either China or Russia did something similar when they lost an event in the Beijing Olympics.
This thought lead to the thought that it is too bad we don’t have an academic Olympics (grades ~3 through senior in college) so we would put a lot of money into our country’s education programs so we wouldn’t lose since we were ranked average in reading and science and below average in math by PISA in 2009 (we should want to be first). I then realized that there are some problems with this plan. First, it would take some work to make the academic Olympics as interesting to watch as the summer or winter Olympics and including enough events to make it last long enough to be a big thing. Second, the US would probably do well since we would be sending our best students so we probably wouldn’t feel compelled to dump more money into our education.
One benefit of the academic Olympics might be that we would have more academic stars. Currently, it seems that in the US most of our stars and people that we want to emulate are athletes, musicians, and actors/actresses (Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of the few academic celebrities). I want to see the same fandom for engineers, scientists, mathematics, and other academics that other celebrities get.
Mars: The Next Frontier?
012 years
by Bailey Yin
in Uncategorized
It was inspiring to watch the landing of the Mars rover, Curiosity, at the beginning of this week especially when I saw the video below about how complex and how much engineering went into the landing. I also liked the video of how excited the controllers at JPL were when the landing was confirmed.
I hope the landing and the data/pictures from Curiosity will get more people interested in funding and getting involved with space exploration. It seems that eventually we will need to colonize other planets and that it can only help to have missions like landing the rover and collecting data on Mars to increase our knowledge of space. I also believe that progress in space will translate to progress on earth e.g. technology for sustainable living in space. It would be awesome if there was space travel and colonization of space before I die (doesn’t seem likely).
Here are some pictures from Curiosity and of the team members.