May 2012
31 posts
31 Acronyms and Initials All Spelled Out →
What the initials from people and brands such as BMW, DNL and JC Penney stand for.
“Remember the name, because you might see it again: Aisha Mustafa, a 19-year-old...”
– Mustafa’s Space Drive: An Egyptian Student’s Quantum Physics Invention
Volvo's self-drive 'convoy' hits the Spanish... →
Not to be outdone, the Europeans are on the road to automated convoys.
Fast-food burgers have tripled in size since the... →
Deskography - Share photos of your desk →
Deskography is a simple little service where you upload photos of your workspace. Why? Well, the idea is that it’s fun to invite the world to see where you work.
“The broad moral of the story is different: aid does not seem to have been the...”
– African child mortality: The best story in development
Nasa chief hails new era in space →
The era of commercial space is here.
DIY, a Site for Children, Is Instructive for... →
I’m loving the idea.
“The upside is that after two million years it should be mostly harmless.”
– Alun Ellis, Nuclea Decommissioning Authority
The Lake District: Nuclear waste bunker plan for farmland in Cumbria
Again highlighting the little thought-of problem of nuclear power: dealing with the waste! I’ve said before that I don’t like nuclear, not because of the problems if it...
Intel CEO says Windows on ARM will struggle... →
I tend to agree with that, the power of Windows is all of the applications and experience it has built up. With RT you won’t have the familiar desktop (by the looks of it) or those apps. You get the feeling Microsoft is purely paying the platform lip-service.
SpaceX Falcon rocket aborts launch in last second →
Looks like we have to wait a bit longer for space history and the next step in space development: commercialising it.
The Floppy Disk means Save, and 14 other old... →
Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever... →
A perhaps slightly OTT celebration of Nicola Tesla, who I concur was awesome (and that Edison was a douchebag).
Are Twitter and Facebook changing the way we... →
Absolutely it is, I’ve been waiting for a response to a support query for over a week, via Twitter I had a response in four minutes and a full reply within a few hours (although it didn’t fully answer my query). Definitely worth a try though.
“There are fears in Germany that the Opel factory in Bochum is vulnerable to...”
– Vauxhall’s Ellesmere Port plant to build new Astra
I know nothing about the respective plants, but I couldn’t miss a chance to put down German efficiency. The Brits kick out more than 1.5 times as many cars using one less shift.
China builds 'instant high-rise' in just 9 days -... →
If we can built a three-storey building in nine days (and they say it would have been much less but for a public holiday and some delivery issues) why do we struggle to put up shelter after a disaster?
Imagination Technologies: A British technology... →
Sounds very similar to ARM, but much less well known (at the moment).
Copenhagen Consensus: How to save the world on a... →
Granted the money was to improve conditions over four years, but there’s a decided lack of foresight. Surely they should be looking to invest in programmes to provide sustainable, long term help.
Don’t buy drugs, build a factory to manufacture them. Don’t provide nutritional supplements, help increase crop yields to reduce prices and educate people on proper nutrition.
...
UK tech firms fight for MacRobert Award →
Ethical smartphones: An upgrade dilemma →
Is there room in the market for the mobile phone equivalent of Patagonia, or electronics in general, where you can buy products built by not exploiting workers, offering long-term support and repair, and minimising waste?
Patagonia's Founder is America's Most Unlikely... →
I’ve never heard of Patagonia (the clothing company), but it’s a fascinating story of how a business can be vast and profitable will still being socially and economically responsible.
World War II fighter found in Egyptian desert →
Driverless cars and how they would change motoring →
Bless the BBC, a little behind yours truly, but they get there. Here are my posts on technology and car safety and whether technology can solve road congestion.
Motorized Polo Gains a Foothold in East Africa →
Moto-polo, I am loving this, it’s like the masses have taken the idea of polo and brought it down to their level. Mind you, my first thought was maybe they should rename it hick-polo or redneck-polo.
Google gets Nevada driving licence for self-drive... →
Roll on (no pun intended) driverless cars.
Lion tries to eat baby through glass at zoo →
“The firm’s smartphone efforts are also concentrated on “Ubuntu for...”
– Ubuntu’s Mark Shuttleworth on shaking up system software
Quite an exciting idea from the Ubuntu team, which <a href=”http://thedigeratipeninsula.org.uk/2005/05/29/multi-function-devices/”>I’ve mentioned before</a>. I’m looking forward to seeing how it...
April 2012
22 posts
Warner Bros launch film scripts as e-books →
Interesting idea, though I’ll wait to see what they look like before I get too excited.
How Technicolor created ruby slippers without... →
Some things I didn’t know about the technicolor process. And the reason for ruby slippers rather than silver? They’s look better on screen and in colour!
“Being a geek is all about your own personal level of enthusiasm, not how your...”
– What It Means To Be A Geek
The whole post is well worth a read, geek or non (and I think a lot of people will find they’re actually geeks).
via Binary Bonsai
“I’m not as interested in the stated goal of mining asteroids as what the...”
– The investment we all have in asteroid mining
Yep, I agree, we need to start forming some colonies as a backup to a planet level event.
Me and My Spectrum, 1980s on Retronaut →
Pictures of people (typically kids) with their Spectrums.
“While sifting through Von Schönwerth’s work, Eichenseer found 500...”
– Five hundred new fairytales discovered in Germany
You can read one of them, The Turnip Princess, here.
“Early retirement” sounds wonderful. It certainly did that cold night in...”
– Jets’ Trevor Pryce Is Retired, and Getting Tired of It
via Kottke
“But tech projects represent just one portion of Kickstarter’s funding base. Back...”
– Kickstarter funding explodes, on pace to triple this year to around $300M
I am loving the Kickstarter stories in yet another way the web joins producers and consumers directly.
Microsoft aims to make iPad an underdog with... →
I was going to write a big rant about this, backing it up with some stats, but I can’t be bothered, so here’s my view instead:
The iPad only have 62% market share? I’m not sure how they’re measuring that, but it’s blatantly wrong, how many people have you ever seen with something other than an iPad? Me: none.
Anyway, then we move on to Windows tablets. I like the...
Bulk-buying razor blades in the UK
Reading about the Dollar Shave Club (I’m not keen on the monthly ongoings) and Dorco to enable you to buy razor blades in bulk so you pay a lower cost per unit I wonder why we don’t have similar services in the UK? The most I can see you can buy here is a pack of 12 blades.
Come on netpreneurs, get on it (although with postage costs rising, maybe it’s not viable). 3D printers...
Is James Cameron's next big venture... →
Okay, so I may have said this should happen to help pay for our ventures into space, I also think it’s inevitable asteroid mining will happen, otherwise we’re looking at wars being fought over dwindling resources, but if that’s what they announce it’ll be freaking awesome.
More comment from The Verge.
Official announcement is set for next Tuesday.
“The spider— according to Hadleigh — is “about the size of your hand.”
– This photo of a spider eating a 1.5-foot-long snake will burn into your brain
There’s a video too! I am officially never going to Australia.
This insanely sinister infographic illustrates the... →
When you think Little Boy (15 kilotons) and Fat Man (21 kilotons) destroyed entire cities, why have something as immensely powerful as the Tzar Bomba (50,000 kilotons)?
Smartwatch breaks record for Kickstarter funding →
Having been looking at watches recently I was wondering why the tech hadn’t really moved on, it’s a bit like what I’ve been saying about alarm clocks. Maybe this signals a change.
Atari illustrations predicted Wikipedia in 1982 →
I’m not sure they 100% show Wikipedia, but it’s an impressive display of the modern world of computing when you consider these were drawn 30 years ago when consumer laptops didn’t exist.
Coding Horror: Speed Hashing →
After a lot of interesting analysis on how face passwords can now be broken, Jeff states we should all be using passwords of 12 characters or more.
That’s unrealistic to start with, never mind the fact that as technology moves on, those will be breakable too. I’ve argued for a while that we need to get rid of passwords and find another method.
Can computers have true artificial intelligence? →
Interesting article and nice to see it belittles Deep Blue and Watson as the party tricks they are. Don’t get me wrong, they’re impressive, but Watson is basically just a natural language processor attached to a search engine and Wikipedia. It succeeded at Jeopardy because it could breakdown a question and look up an answer. If they’d asked it what its favourite colour was, it...