Blogmarks
What Makes A Beautiful Photograph?
You’ve heard this before. “That picture is beautiful.” That’s easy to say and hard to understand. Why? Because trying to describe “beautiful” is a real chore.
US government finally admits most piracy estimates are bogus
Can we trust any of these claims about piracy?
The US doesn't think so. In a new report out yesterday, the government's own internal watchdog took a close look at "efforts to quantify the economic effects of counterfeit and pirated goods." After examining all the data and consulting with numerous experts inside and outside of government, the Government Accountability Office concluded (PDF) that it is "difficult, if not impossible, to quantify the economy-wide impacts."
More specific studies that focus only on single industries don't fare much better because "the illicit nature of counterfeiting and piracy makes estimating the economic impact of IP infringements extremely difficult." And when it comes time to choose a substitution rate (how much of the infringing activity should be counted as a lost sale), we're left only with "assumptions... which can have enormous impacts on the resulting estimates."
7 Reasons To Hate Your Code
Incompetence is the cause of many ills in the software world, but increasingly I’m seeing a certain kind of competence as being just as destructive. You see, there are a lot of programmers who care deeply about their code. I did, but it turns out there are good reasons we shouldn’t do that; reasons why we should hate our code…
Facebook Privacy: A Bewildering Tangle of Options - Graphic
When you graph it this way, it's no wonder why people get majorly confused and privacy is out of the window
Hubble Telescope at 20: NASA Astronomers' Top Photos
Some awe-inspiring pictures our trusty Hubble space telescope took in its 20 years in space
[Dutch] Scheikundefabriek in ons lichaam werkt met pieken en dalen
Interesting article on the daily cycle and rhythm of the human body.
Tegenlicht - Backlight: English version of VPRO's Tegenlicht, weekly 50-minute Future Affairs-program
Good stuff
The Swinger - Music Machinery
One of my favorite hacks at last weekend’s Music Hack Day is Tristan’s Swinger. The Swinger is a bit of python code that takes any song and makes it swing. It does this be taking each beat and time-stretching the first half of each beat while time-shrinking the second half. It has quite a magical effect.
Programming languages, operating systems, despair and anger
Wondering when people start implementing really useful (programming) languages instead of rehashing the same old paradigms or introducing awful syntax
The Science-Doktor’s Vengeance
Science-Doktor Vondurdauðahöfuðkúpa watched through the tall, sloped windows as Eyjafjallajökull began to spew clouds of brown, billowing ash.
Nicholas Sparks
- Nicholas Sparks is an author who churns out about one romance novel a year.
- All of these books are almost immediately made into movies.
- All of these books are the same book.
Android to layered Photoshop file
Take a screenshot of an Android application and don't get a flat bitmap, but a nicely layered file with all the GUI elements.
RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us
Impressive animation on what really motivates us; hint: it's not the money. Or at least not for everything.
How to Reboot Your Sleep Cycle and Get the Rest You Deserve
Who wouldn't want more sleep? We live in a 24/7 world where the work of the day doesn't have to end when it gets dark, work can start long before the sun comes up, and even when the work is done you've got a million-and-one distractions to keep you up well into the wee hours surfing, clicking, and not getting a good night's sleep. This guide aims to help get your sleep cycle back in order and start getting the rest you need.
The Periodic Table Of Super-Powers - ComicsAlliance
With 70 years of super-hero comics behind us, there have been a lot of super-powers on the printed page -- so many, in fact, that even the most dedicated comics reader can occasionally have a hard time keeping them straight. That's why ComicsAlliance senior writer Chris Sims took it upon himself to finally get things organized with The Periodic Table of Super-Powers, an arranged listing of 84 common (and decidedly uncommon) characteristics of your favorite super-heroes!
An Open Letter to Our Industry
Conference organizers and publishers, [...] it is your personal prerogative to hold a conference or publish a book or magazine featuring whomever you chose. It is your professional duty to reach outside your existing circle of friends and colleagues, outside of your snug familiar comfort zone to find new voices and new perspectives.
China Girls
Working as a production assistant on a low-budget movie teaches and rewards the novice cineaste in ways that might not immediately pay off. One of the most enduring lessons I learned during my internship involved an archaic slab of film technology. While the film's director was working on color correction, I frequently almost-spotted the image of a woman's face at the start and end of a reel.
The People's Manifesto: Mark Thomas and friends' suggestions for UK political reform
At each tour stop, Thomas asked his audience to write out political reforms they'd like to see, and then he'd read them aloud from the stage, riffing on them and letting the audience vote (by cheering) for their favourites.
Some good stuff :)
IPC performance, the report
Interesting piece on three ways of doing inter-process communication on Linux
More Moons Around Earth? Its Not So Loony
So we actually have two moons! Well, it depends a bit on your definitions, as Cruithne has an odd trajectory and will likely not last long as a companion; it's only expected to remain in the orbit for a few thousand to tens of thousands of years and then it "may become a Near Earth Asteroid on a different close-to-Earth orbit, or move onto an orbit more similar to our Moon's orbit, in which case it would be more like a "real" moon. No one seems quite sure which scenario will happen." [source]
Is free music worth your privacy?
A Spotify Premium subscription is about $15 a month, and to get that one month free you just told half the marketing companies in Scandinavia to contact you whenever they want to. If you selected to invite 6 friends instead, even better!
National Geographic Photos You May Have Never Seen Before
A set of stunning and plain beautiful photographs
Why you should not use client-side window decorations…
Let's hope Canonical is listening...
Color Survey Results « xkcd
Extensive research to what names people gave to colours ("Over five million colors were named across 222,500 user sessions"). Interesting finds!
Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook
Good read; boils down to Facebook having quite shady standards, but read for yourselves
So You'd Like to Send Some Email (Through Code)
The gotcha's when sending email in an automated fashion (say, from your web application); there are quite a lot and most tend to be overlooked.
Ten Word Wiki - the ultimate express till for the internet
The encyclopedia for the ADD generation. Here at TWW we try to collect and distribute knowledge in exactly ten words, no more no less.
What the iPad is Missing (No, it’s not a Camera)
It just has looks; typography et cetera are not for comfortable reading and a lot of layout things are fluff instead of being functional. Very shiny, not very useful.
[A List Apart] Web Standards for E-books
Structured e-books are a need-to-have before this kind of reading will go mainstream. Having some flat text book just does not work well; it can even result in a wall of text. And this even ignores the fact that most e-books are OCR'd hardcopies, with all the errors coming with that process.
A lament for the bookshelf
I'd really love to have a nice library when I grow up
ODF at 5 Years
An interesting trip down memory lane on word processors in general and to the end more about the formats used
Creative Characters interview with Richard Lipton, April 2010
Love beautiful typography? This is one of the people making it happen.
Blogmarks by month
2010
- December (10)
- November (12)
- October (4)
- September (2)
- August (9)
- July (9)
- June (2)
- May (35)
- April (4)
- February (4)
- January (26)
