Google Glass Is Great

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Robert Scoble offers a review of Google Glass following two weeks of use - he loves it:

I’ve been telling people that this reminds me of the Apple II, which I unboxed with my dad back in 1977. It was expensive. It didn’t do much. But I knew my life had changed in a big way and would just get better and better.


Dean Takahashi, VentureBeat, writes about the making of Pixar’s Monsters University. Most impressive is the computing power required to render the film - 24,000 cores and 29 hours for a single frame:

Rendering means that the computers build the 3D world in its full colors as the scene is meant to be viewed in a theater. The machines create the frame and it is then captured as one of thousands of frames in the movie. When you watch the movie, you see anywhere from 24 frames to 60 frames per second.

All told, it has taken more than 100 million CPU hours to render the film in its final form. If you used one CPU to do the job, it would have taken about 10,000 years to finish. With all of those CPUs that Pixar did have, it took a couple of years to render.

(via: Stephen Hackett)


Stephen Wolfram On Facebook

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Stephen Wolfram analyzed Facebook data from over one million users of their Wolfram|Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook:

Some of this is rather depressingly stereotypical. And most of it isn’t terribly surprising to anyone who’s known a reasonable diversity of people of different ages. But what to me is remarkable is how we can see everything laid out in such quantitative detail in the pictures above—kind of a signature of people’s thinking as they go through life.

There’s too much to cover here in a small post. Just go read the article - Wolfram’s work is always pretty interesting to follow.


Pretending To Be A Drug Dealer

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Dave Stopera, BuzzFeed:

Nathan Fielder, star and creator of one of the funniest shows on television, Comedy Central’s Nathan for You, asked his Twitter followers to text their parents saying they had weed for sale. And the results are as good and as painful as you’d imagine.

Hilarious. I particularly enjoyed this exchange:

Kid: Dad leave me alone, I didn’t mean to text u.

Dad: I didn’t mean to have you.


Those were the words of Alexander Graham Bell in a newly released recording, as detailed by Charlotte Gray of Smithsonian Magazine:

Today, however, a dramatic application of digital technology has allowed researchers to recover Bell’s voice from a recording held by the Smithsonian—a breakthrough announced here for the first time.

Be sure and check out both the audio clip and the video that details how they extracted the recording. If you close your eyes, it’s as if you are transported back in time. So cool.


The Marketplace Fairness Act

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Jonathan Weisman, The New York Times:

The bill, known as the Marketplace Fairness Act, is that rare piece of legislation that has turned Democrat against Democrat, Republican against Republican and business against business, while uniting states as different as New Hampshire, Montana and Oregon — which have no sales taxes — against virtually every other state.

An odd confluence of events has swung the political momentum to one side. Less than a week after the Senate could not muster 60 votes to expand gun background checks supported by a vast majority of voters, lawmakers from both parties are poised to steamroll opponents and greatly broaden the imposition of sales taxes on the Internet.

Say goodbye to those tax-free purchases on Amazon. I’m surprised it took so long. States will receive increased tax revenue and brick-and-mortar stores hope for improved sales. However, I think these stores misunderstand why people shop online. Except for the occasional large purchase, I bet most consumers don’t really care about sales tax. The truth is, that for a comparable price, buyers get a fast and convenient sales experience - all while avoiding busy stores and pushy salesmen.


55 Strong-Ass Beers

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David Ramsey:

We’ve compiled a list of over 50 Extra-Strong Beers that will knock you flat on your ass. Each beer on this list was specially chosen for one reason, and one reason only, a minimum of 10% alcohol by volume (ABV).

No mamby-pamby light beer here. With names like Korruptor, Devil’s Milk and Double Bastard Ale you can bet these bad-boys will deliver a swift kick and leave you crawling to bed on the bathroom floor.

No DNR? For shame.


In Which The FCC Doesn't Suck.

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Saturday’s Red Sox game was filled with emotion following the arrest of Boston Marathon bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. David Ortiz concluded the pre-game celebration, ending with this statement - aired on live television:

This is our fucking city. And no one is going to dictate our freedom. Stay strong.

Despite the emotional origin of Ortiz’s statement, one had to wonder how the usually prude FCC would respond. To my surprise, they (correctly) turned a blind eye.

Kudos to FCC chairman Julius Genachowski.


Chechen Stereotypes

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Another winner from The Onion:

“Our research shows that, while many Americans would like nothing more than to make sweeping, insensitive generalizations about these two individuals based purely on their ethnic identity, this process is largely impeded by the fact that 9 out of 10 Americans truly know next to nothing about Chechnya, including even the very barest details of what or where Chechnya is,” said lead researcher Dr. Tim Kinane

The best thing about The Onion is how much truth exists in jest.


About That Subway Map.

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As Dr. James Correia correctly pointed out to me, the data contained in The New Yorker subway inequality map did not match the words in the description. Specifically, this line (emphasis mine):

New York City has a problem with income inequality. And it’s getting worse

The problem is that only 2011 data is shown. The New Yorker’s statement is passed along as if the reader should know this fact - the presentation is sloppy. It wasn’t my intent to post information that self-confirmed some economic worldview. Instead, I was mainly intrigued to see how much the local economy changed across various subway lines. In fact, the graphic shows that there is a link between commute time and income (income decreases as one moves away from downtown Manhattan). To that end, I agree with Dr. Correia that a more apt title would have been “Financial Melting Pot And The New York Subway.

In regard to the statement of worsening income inequality, it is true. One has to click through several levels of links to actually find supporting data (again, a sloppy presentation). The U.S. Census Bureau does track income inequality through the Gini Index. In the latest report, published in 2012, the Gini Index is described as:

Summary measure of income inequality. The Gini Index varies from 0 to 1, with a 0 indicating perfect equality, where there is a proportional distribution of income. A 1 indicates perfect inequality, where one household has all the income and all others have no income.

According to the report, there was an increase in income inequality across the entire country between 2010 and 2011. The Gini Index increased during that time for 20 states, while the remaining 30 states and Washington, D.C. showed no statistically significant change. One of the states that demonstrated a widening income gap was New York. In fact, New York is one of only five states to have a Gini Index higher than the U.S. value.

In short, the New Yorker presented a cool graphic, but in a sloppy manner. With a little more work, it could have been great. For instance, it would have been more meaningful to see how the economic disparity for each subway line changed between 2010 and 2011.

This is just something to consider when viewing the New Yorker’s inequality subway map.