January 22, 2015
2015: The year that sci-fi becomes real
"After locking away all my recording instruments and switching to the almost prehistoric pen and paper, I had a tantalizingly brief experience of Microsoft's HoloLens system, a headset that creates a fusion of virtual images and the real world. While production HoloLens systems will be self-contained and cord-free, the developer units we used had a large compute unit worn on a neck strap and an umbilical cord for power. Production hardware will automatically measure the interpupillary distance and calibrate itself accordingly; the dev kits need this to be measured manually and punched in. The dev kits were also heavy, unwieldy, fragile, and didn't really fit on or around my glasses, making them uncomfortable to boot. But even with this clumsy hardware, the experience was nothing short of magical." ... [more inside]
aphextwin
Diskhat ALL Prepared1mixed [snr2mix] Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments Pt2
que será, será
Soot is not food.
If, like me, you're a sucker for a vaguely Eastern European accent, you may well enjoy the tale of Little Greggorio, in which a family dreams of journeying to America, where a little boy can become... a legend.
Why sell Thin Mints when you could be starting a revolution?
Meet the Radical Brownies. In Oakland, activists from Black Lives Matter have started a Girl Scout-style troop of girls of color ages 8-12 that puts the focus on social justice, taking the girls on marches for police accountability and offering merit badges in "Radical Beauty" and "LGBT Ally." [more inside]
A very specific sequence of weird tricks that Bowsers HATE
Speedrunner Minecraft SethBling explains how he beat Super Mario World in around 6 minutes by using in-game actions to manipulate the game's memory so that it glitches to the end credits. The glitch had already been pulled off in-game using emulators, but this is the first time it has been done on an actual SNES. Very technical details available here.
Yes: he still has the hair
John Romero Plays Doom, personably. Doom history enthusiast and Spacebase creator JP LeBreton joins id Software co-founder John Romero as the two play though the first episode of Doom, “Knee Deep in the Dead,” in its entirety. John Romero’s run through each level turns up fresh and encyclopedic insight into how this genre-defining title was designed and set the stage for first-person action games for years to come.
Mop Top Not
In the early 60s, the Beatles' signature haircuts rapidly became de rigueur for any and all rock bands seeking a crack at the big time. Conformity to the new look became, almost overnight, the norm. One band, though, said later for all that, and went for a truly radical look. That band, of course, was The Eggheads. [more inside]
Veeptopus
Hey, Spirits. Y'all Look Creepy.
Does she get any respect?
Serena Williams, America's greatest athlete (New Yorker)
... But it’s not enough to say that Williams would be more uniformly adored if she were a white woman, or a man. Instead, the failure to fully appreciate her importance is perhaps evidence of our inability to appreciate the stubbornly unfamiliar narrative arc of her career. Williams is underloved because, at times, she has been unlovable and, in the end, mostly unrepentant about it—something that might be admired as iconoclastic in a male athlete, but rarely endears women to a wide audience. ... [T]he great crisis in her public persona came later, in 2009, when she was penalized the final point in her U.S. Open semifinal against Kim Clijsters after berating a line judge over a foot-fault call on the previous serve. Williams is indeed singular: she is likely the only person ever to utter on a professional tennis court, “I swear to God, I’m fucking going to take this fucking ball and shove it down your fucking throat, you hear that? I swear to God.” (Of course, John McEnroe said things that weren’t so different, and he is beloved for it.)Just the other day, she was asked to twirl in front of male reporters during an interview.
"Haskel programmed the world's first video game inside joke"
Reaching for inspiration, Haskel based his first program on the prevailing trend in the video game market: sporty, ping-pong type games popularized by the [Magnavox] Odyssey and Atari's Pong arcade machine. The games made a big impact on Haskel, who vividly recalls the first time he saw the Odyssey in action during a visit to a department store. "I was going to see the furniture department, and there was a little kid playing Odyssey," recalls Haskel. "I sat down and played with him for probably an hour. It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. I couldn't get that out of my mind."—The Untold Story of the Invention of the Game Cartridge by Benj Edwards of Vintage Computing and Gaming, who started researching the subject after interviewing one of the people involved, Jerry Lawson, in 2009.
Tour the US with the Tichnor Brothers' full color postcards, ca. 1930-45
From the Boston Public Library's Postcard Collection, enjoy approximately 25,000 office proofs of postcards of the United States published by the Boston firm Tichnor Brothers Inc. The collection is sorted by state, plus a few miscellaneous US-related cards and other postcards, including two different color charts. Some images are also available on Digital Commonwealth, and Wikimedia Commons.
What Value-Creating Winners Do All Day
Artist Tony Ruth has turned Richard Scarry's BusyTown into the Silicon Valley inspired BusinessTown. (via)
You can never have too many hockey sticks.
Yes, it is that time of year again. Prepare your senses for the wonder and spectacle that is the 2015 Miss Universe National Costume Competition. Do this years entries live up to the understated subtlety of their predecessors? Has the bar for taste and refined class once again been raised? Are there any giant robots, aliens, or costumes thrown together at the last minute with materials bought at Target? Let's find out!
The dream of the 1890s is alive in Portland
As Neda Maghbouleh pointed out for an article in the January 2009 issue of Center for New Racial Studies, the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama gave Portland newspapers a striking image of its racial makeup. Just look at the photo above from Portland during Senator Obama's presidential campaign. You'd be forgiven for thinking that maybe Dave Matthews Band was about to go on stage.There's a reason why Portland, and Oregon in general, are so whitebread: it was founded as a whites-only, racist utopia with no room for black or Asian people.
Tarnished Silver
The New York Times is reporting that Speaker of the New York State Legislature Sheldon Silver has been arrested on federal corruption charges related to income received from a NYC legal firm specializing in real estate. New York has background on the investigation and charges. [more inside]
Narcodrones
"Police in a Mexican border city said Wednesday that a drone overloaded with illicit methamphetamine crashed into a supermarket parking lot." Fox News, AP. [more inside]
Don't Try Too Hard to Please Twitter
The NYT Social Media team pulls the curtain back on how Twitter works for them with detailed examples of how changing text and descriptions and focus in their short messages resonated with readers, and which fell flat. Really interesting bit of transparency on their process, and results.
An intersex perspective on gender critical ideas
Mickey has the measles
At least 67 cases of the measles have been reported in the last month, largely stemming from an outbreak that began at Disneyland in mid-December. Although largely considered to have been eradicated in the United States in 2000, this latest outbreak follows the 400 cases reported last year in Ohio. [more inside]
Relief. Anguish. Certainty.
Do you know the time?
Today, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will set the hands of the Doomsday Clock again. You can watch it live at 11 a.m. EST (1600 GMT).
How doomed are we?
As in past years, the board said climate change and nuclear warheads are the two major threats in 2015 that will influence its decision to move the hands of the clock.
You’d think it was Dominion Day
A presentation about Ontario's lost villages, ten communities which were flooded as part of the creation of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in 1958.
Before Zack Morris
The Mobile Telephone in Bell System Service, 1946–1993. Descriptions and photographs of car phones and briefcase phones on the "0G" pre-cellular mobile systems.
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