BREAK THE DAAMM
RELEASE THE RIVEERRR
THE RIVEEEERRRRRRR
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.
Kansas City Homes for Hackers renting room with Google Fiber access
Kansas City Homes for Hackers renting room with Google Fiber access
Klint Finley on Wired:
Google Fiber — the search giant’s brand-new, ultra-high-speed internet service — is only available in Kansas City, and even there, it only runs to homes, so there’s no trying the thing out during a Kansas City hotel stay. But if you really want a taste of those 800 Mbps speeds — that’s about 100 times faster than your average internet connection — there’s another option. You can rent a room at the hacker house.
The Homes for Hackers house is a four-bedroom Kansas City abode where a group of entrepreneurs have bedded down to incubate their tech startups on an honest-to-goodness Google Fiber connection. But only three of those bedrooms are taken. The fourth one is available for rent at a price of $49 via the online vacation rental site Airbnb.
Pretty silly, but in a way I’m kind of impressed by the idea.
Let’s talk about how Assassin’s Creed 3 depicts the American Revolution
Let’s talk about how Assassin’s Creed 3 depicts the American Revolution
Nice post on Nightmare Mode:
We thought it might be interesting to compare how the American Revolution was taught to an American vs a Canadian in light of Assassin’s Creed 3 (made by a Canadian studio!) So we got two NM contributors to examine what the game depicts.
There aren’t too many places that would post a lengthy conversation between two guys about the teaching of history and how that affects history’s portrayal in video games. Nightmare Mode is one of them. Check it out.
Google tightens controls on pornography
Google tightens controls on pornography
So Google has again changed how its SafeSearch explicit content blocking for images works. I was reading this article by Jennifer O’Mahony from The Telegraph about it and my reaction was pretty much “yeah whatever.”
Then I got to this part:
Outraged users took to social networks to claim the change to Google amounted to censorship, with the topic pushed onto the front page of Reddit after being “upvoted” by users. Discussions of how to get around the restrictions ran to hundreds of comments.
“You can take away our privacy, but if you mess with porn, the internet is going to be MAD,” wrote user okeman.
“What is this? communism?! BRING BACK THE PORN!” added user Fake_Cakeday.
Ms. O’Mahony, I am terribly sorry you had to write this. I feel for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8PQBYEkHHg
As you’ve hopefully heard by now, Dave Brubeck passed away last week. I checked our archives and apparently the only piece by Brubeck we’ve posted was a Tommy Emmanuel cover. So we’ve got to do something about that.
Here’s the Dave Brubeck Quartet performing “40 Days” in 1966: Brubeck on piano, Paul Desmond on sax, Eugene Wright on bass, and Joe Morello on drums. Desmond delivers a sax solo to end all sax solos, and Brubeck’s somber key work while the rhythm section keeps going is absolutely stunning. Enjoy, and J.I.P. (jam in peace) Paul Desmond, Joe Morello, and now Dave Brubeck.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
IBM creates first cheap, commercially viable, electronic-photonic integrated chip
IBM creates first cheap, commercially viable, electronic-photonic integrated chip
Sebastian Anthony, writing for ExtremeTech:
There are two key breakthroughs here. First, IBM has managed to build a monolithic silicon chip that integrates both electrical (transistors, capacitors, resistors) and optical (modulators, photodetectors, waveguides) components. Monolithic means that the entire chip is fabricated from a single crystal of silicon, on a single production line; i.e. the optical components are produced at the same time as the electrical components, using the same process. There aren’t two separate regions on the chip that each deal with different signals; the optical and electrical components are all mixed up together to form an integrated nanophotonic circuit.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, IBM has manufactured these chips on its 90nm SOI process — the same process that was used to produce the original Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii CPUs. According to Solomon Assefa, a nanophotonics scientist at IBM Research who worked on this breakthrough, this was a very difficult step. It’s one thing to produce a nanophotonic device in a standalone laboratory environment — but another thing entirely to finagle an existing, commercial 90nm process into creating something it was never designed to do. It sounds like IBM spent most of the last two years trying to get it to work.
This could potentially be a really big deal. The power and heat profiles of optical systems are different from those of electrical systems.
Huge Traffic Jam Persists on Moscow-St. Pete Highway
Huge Traffic Jam Persists on Moscow-St. Pete Highway
News story from RIA Novosti last week that I only heard about now:
A gigantic traffic jam on the snowbound main highway linking Moscow and St. Petersburg that began on Friday was still 34 miles long early in the evening on Sunday, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry’s State Automobile Inspectorate said.
Highway M-10 was hit with three feet of snow late last week causing massive jams in both directions.
…
“Travel remains stop-and-go for a stretch of between 135 and 190 kilometers (84-118 miles) on M-10 in Tver Region. One lane in each direction is clear of snow. Trucks are moving at roughly 5-10 kilometers per hour (3-6 mph),” the spokesman said, implying that trucks face a travel time of at least 13.5 hours to pass through the jam.
Thirteen and a half hours. Simply absurd.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlXfFNl6C_A
Here’s a bunch of bad 2012 apocalypse jokes followed by Betty White saying “deal with it.”
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
Appeals court upholds conviction in U.S. anthrax hoax
Appeals court upholds conviction in U.S. anthrax hoax
Jonathan Stempel, Reuters:
A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld the conviction of a California man for sparking a nationwide anthrax hoax in 2008, saying his mailings of sugar packets labeled as anthrax did not qualify as free speech.
…
In his appeal, [Marc McMain] Keyser, 70, said that in showing the vulnerability of the United States to an anthrax attack, his mailings qualified as political speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and were not “true threats.”
The 9th Circuit disagreed. “A reasonable sender would foresee that recipients would understand the mailings to be threats to injure them,” Circuit Judge Richard Clifton wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel.
Yes, that’s right. A political free speech defense for a disease hoax. That is a thing that happened.