August 11, 2014
Out of thousands of typefaces, all we need are a few basic ones…
Why the Security of USB Is Fundamentally Broken
Computer users pass around USB sticks like silicon business cards. Although we know they often carry malware infections, we depend on antivirus scans and the occasional reformatting to keep our thumbdrives from becoming the carrier for the next digital epidemic. But the security problems with USB devices run deeper than you think: Their risk isn't just in what they carry, it's built into the core of how they work.
A nice story about baseball
Baseball writer Rany Jazayerli tells us about his online acquaintance Sung Woo Lee, fan of the Kansas City Royals, who is having a good week. He's been a Royals fan since the 1990s and this week, he came to the US to see them play for the first time. KC rolled out the red carpet and the Royals are even winning. [more inside]
Everyone thinks they can DJ (SLYT)
Wired Profiles Stewart Butterfield
Like Ouroboros
RIP Robin Williams
Robin Wiliams famous for his impressions, role as Genie in Aladdin, standup comedy, Mrs. Doubtfire and many other comedy roles has died at the age of 63.
The Interstate Limburger War of 1935
"Burkhard challenged Miller to a 'Cheese Duel': Burkhard and Miller would sit at a table, and if Burkhard could cut a piece of Limburger cheese and Miller not wretch, Miller would be forbidden from complaining about Wisconsin and her cheese ever again." [more inside]
The humanity has been reduced to nothingness.
"The world isn't being destroyed by democrats or republicans, red or blue, liberal or conservative, religious or atheist -- the world is being destroyed by one side believing the other side is destroying the world. The world is being hurt and damaged by one group of people believing they're truly better people than the others who think differently. The world officially ends when we let our beliefs conquer love. We must not let this happen."Andrew W.K. (previously applauded advice columnist) offers advice to a guy who reduces even his own father to a set of beliefs and political views and how it relates to him.
Amazon vs. Hachette, an Epic Battle Faught with Letters and Addresses
Best Selling author Douglas Preston, along with 907 other authors, signed a letter that ran as a double full-page ad in yesterday’s print edition of the New York Times, asking Amazon to stop blocking or delaying the sale of books on their site as a tactic to lower the e-book prices that Amazon is charged by the publisher Hachette.* The three month dispute between Hachette and Amazon previously prompted a response by Amazon’s self-published authors and readers, but it took an odd turn Saturday night when Amazon posted this letter on a site called ReadersUnited.com, after sending it as an email to all of its Kindle Direct Publishing authors. In that letter they include Hachette’s CEO’s email, and have asked their KDP authors to write to Hachette’s CEO telling him what they think about cheaper ebooks. [more inside]
The bike of the future?
Automatic gear shifting, auto-adjusting lights, built-in fenders and platform rack, an electric motor (with detachable rechargeable battery) for pedaling assist, and a detachable handlebar that turns into a bike lock: "The Denny," designed in Seattle, has won a nationwide design contest and will be produced by Fuji.
Beyond menswear and womenswear
Gender-neutral fashion + The right to be handsome: Clothing for gender non-conforming people on the rise.
What does it mean to follow Metroid?
Maddy Myers of Paste magazine connects the influence of the film Alien on the game Metroid and looks at how subsequent imitators have failed to live up to the promise of Metroid's original design. 'Troid Rage: Why Game Devs Should Watch Alien—and Play Metroid—Again
Talking the Talk
Guest Comics are as much a part of Webcomic Culture as missed deadlines and hiatuses (but often intended to prevent the other two)*. But occasionally there's a special reason to drag other creators into your webspace. Semi-infamous Penny Arcade artist Mike Krahulik has been featuring his young son (actually named Gabriel after his comic alter-ego) as a plot device, but when the real Little Gabe started asking about "where babies come from", he did what any successful media creator would do: "have a carousel of strangers explain 'the penis' to you while I hide in the basement". And it's an All-Star Carousel of Strangers (by webcomic standards), obviously kinda NSFW, but with NO rapewolves, thankyouverymuch. [more inside]
An Aussie waxes eloquent about a quirky bit of artwork
Up, up and g'day: Superdoreen is Miss Galaxy 1982 A fascinating peek into Australian history and culture through a tiny sliver of artwork. [more inside]
dermokratiya
Watching The Eclipse - "Ambassador Michael McFaul was there when the promise of democracy came to Russia—and when it began to fade."
In the three months between McFaul’s appointment and his arrival in Moscow, a great deal changed. Putin, feeling betrayed by both the urban middle classes and the West, made it plain that he would go on the offensive against any sign of foreign interference, real or imagined. A raw and resentful anti-Americanism, unknown since the seventies, suffused Kremlin policy and the state-run airwaves. As a new Ambassador, McFaul was hardly ignorant of the chill, but he launched into his work with a characteristic earnestness. “Started with a bang,” he wrote in his official blog. During the next two years, McFaul would be America’s primary witness to the rise of an even harsher form of Putinism—and, often enough, he would be its unwitting target.[more inside]
Today We Honor Ralph Wiggum
There is no place on the social structure for a second-grade boy who thinks rats are “pointy kitties” and calls his teacher “Mommy.” Kids can be misfits (Milhouse), or they can be brownnosers (Martin), or they can be troublemakers (Nelson), or they can be tattle-tales (Sherri and Terri), but being Ralph is simply not a taxonomically viable option. Ralph Wiggum's Finest Moments.
shaky cam + time lapse + inferred geometry + smoothed path =
Reasoning with your muscles.
Every Good Boy Does Fine: A life in piano lessons. [SLNewYorker]
Mostly a watery anti-war movie. (mostly)
"Twenty-five years after its release, The Abyss remains an oddity in director James Cameron's filmography. But the fact that it's an oddity seems like an oddity. The underwater sci-fi epic, about a team of commercial drillers who stumble upon a deep-sea alien civilization, wasn't a flop by any means. It made more money than The Terminator and came very close to matching Aliens at the box office. It holds a higher critical rating than Avatar and Titanic (according to the almighty Rotten Tomatoes, at least). And yet it has utterly failed to reach the same levels of cultural saturation as Cameron’s other works."
“How well I would write if I were not here!”
Italo Calvino profiled on the BBC TV show Book Mark in 1985: [SLYT] Rare interview with the great Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels.
"...because they tell us dragons can be beaten."
Digital artist Laurie Fauvel knows about the terrors that haunt children's dreams. In her "Terreurs" series of digital manipulations, children fight against the monsters menacing them in their beds
You're 16. You're a pedophile. What do you do now?
Inside a group of young paedophiles and their fight to stop themselves from offending. Needless to say, trigger warning. [more inside]
How dope was the Arsenio Hall Show? This dope.
One-armed bandits
Slot machines and video gambling were once marginal to the success of casinos — but nowadays, they account for up to 85 percent of the gaming industry's profits. And casinos have devised a dizzying array of strategies to make these machines as addictive as possible, from the elaborate algorithms beneath the hood to the position of the armrests.
and it's making me feel like my trousers are torn...
American Nazi summer camps
I have one great party trick. Anytime someone asks me if I’ve ever come across something really cool while working in the Motion Picture Preservation Lab, I tell them about the time we had what looked like footage of a Boy Scout camp and then the Boy Scouts raised a Nazi flag along with the red, white, and blue.Audrey Amidon, of the (US) National Archives Motion Picture Preservation Lab, tells the story of that time they found 1937 film footage of an upstate New York nazi youth summer camp.
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