Becoming a designer
Boy, it’s been a while. An oxymoronic combination of being lazy and busy, I guess. Anyway, for this post I wanted to talk about design. It’s a topic that comes up a More »
Support for Windows 7 ends today
It is a sad day, as Microsoft is officially ending updates and security patches for Windows 7, the popular OS still being used by a large majority of PCs. Windows 7’s popularity More »
Returning Home: World of Warcraft Classic Comes Online
On August 26th, fans of the original World of Warcraft (henceforth referred to as WoW), and those who are just curious to see what all the hubbub is about, were finally able More »
The Lawnmower Man, and Vintage CGI
Inspired by a couple of Reddit forums to which I am subscribed, VintagePixelArt and VintageCGI, and being a fan of all things historical as it pertains to technology, I uploaded to the More »
Jony Ive leaves Apple
As someone who teaches extensively about design as it intersects with technology, and is also a computer and technology historian, I am conflicted about Jonathan (Jony) Ive leaving Apple. Mainly because he’s More »
Henderson residents can now text 911
Normally I would mention something like this via the is301 Twitter account, but this is so important I’m going to announce it here instead (although since this site and the Twitter account are linked, I guess I announced it via both anyway!).
Henderson residents can now text a message to 911 instead of calling. Henderson is the only department in the state to offer this functionality, and it is carrier-neutral. This would be very useful in circumstances of, G-d forbid, a home invasion where you are trying to stay hidden, or if you wanted to avoid the appearance of making a call for whatever reason, or for people who are deaf or hard of hearing and are therefore unable to make emergency calls.
A Magna Carta for the Internet
Now this is a great idea. The British library has asked children aged 11-18 to suggest ideas that should be included in a Magna Carta for the Internet era.
Based on the responses, safety and privacy are the main thrusts of what was submitted. That’s interesting, because it shows that kids have the same concerns as adults when it comes to life in the digital frontier. Once all the submissions were collected, voting was opened to the general public to see which ones resonated most with the public.
Voting on the Internet Magna Carta
The idea of the Magna Carta is especially poignant since it was the document that held the King of England beholden to the same laws as the people. On top of that, and somewhat ironically, England is one of only a very few countries that has no written constitution.
Who knows? Perhaps this can serve as a beginning to creating an actual Magna Carta of some sort for the Internet and Online, to which people online would be expected to adhere and for which violations could result in actual consequences.
PixelSense display at the Mob Museum
A few weeks ago I went to the Mob Museum, and although I was skeptical I have to admit it was quite interesting. There were many displays, both static and interactive, including a Tommy gun you could fire (not real bullets, of course, that would end badly). You could sit in a replica electric chair, stand in a lineup, and they had the actual wall from the St. Valentines Day Massacre. Macabre, but this is the Mob we’re talking about.
It Begins
You may notice in the Twitter feed over there on the right side of the page, I recently sent out a Tweet stating a July 29 release date has been confirmed for Windows 10.
Ironically, I made that Tweet on my Mac. About an hour later, when I started up my Windows machine, I saw what many of you likely saw on your own machine – this little guy in the system tray!
Well hello there!
A brief comment about affect, technology, and the Uncanny Valley
By ‘brief,’ I apparently meant ‘very long.’
While researching another post recently, I came across several articles describing some research going on at MIT as “creepy.” There’s this one from Wired that discusses MIT’s research into probabilistic code, which reduces code by offloading the process of writing algorithms to a set of pre-written general algorithms. It’s described as creepy because it shows how this reduced code an still derive 3-D modeled faces from 2-D images.
3-D faces from 2-D images (source: MIT)
Impressive, and not terribly off-putting to me, although I can understand how some might skip the amazing development of the code structure in the first place and jump right to creepy.
New motherboards from ASRock will have DC-in
Two posts in a row mentioning power standards! I’m excited about it, anyway. Over on Anandtech (a great site for very technical reporting), they have a brief post about the upcoming Braswell motherboards from ASRock.
ASRock is one of the main motherboard manufacturers, and Braswell is a line of processors by Intel that are low-power and low-to-moderate performance, for use in inexpensive PCs and what are known as home-theater PCs (HTPCs), which usually are primarily for serving media. You wouldn’t use a system built on these components for hardcore gaming or graphics processing or piloting the space shuttle.
Jobs v. Gates: Go!
As a (virtual) card-carrying member of the Computer History Museum, I love anything that involves the history of technology or computing. Imagine my glee when I discovered the National geographic Channel has created a mini-series called “American Genius,” which focuses on famous rivalries throughout history. It also has a fantastic webpage you should really click over.
There are more than you might think: The series includes such rivalries as firearms manufacturers Colt and Wesson and publishers Hearst and Pulitzer. But the one I am most interested in is the one between computer luminaries Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
Want to see a sunrise?
Instagram to the rescue, sort of. A coder named Michelle Chandra has created a few maps that give an interesting look at all the photos uploaded to Instagram with the…sigh…hashtag #sunrise or #sunset.
On top of that, the maps will show in real time as the uploads are being made, and the size of the dot representing the geographical location will be larger depending on how close to sunrise or sunset the person actually is, geographically speaking. In other words, if they wait six hours to upload the photo, the dot will be smaller.
There’s even a map showing what the author refers to as ‘synchronicity,’ in which one person uploads a sunset as someone else uploads a sunrise, and vice versa.
There are a lot of nice pictures, and fro all the hyperbolic prose on the site it’s a neat application and some of the pictures are stunning. If you just need a sunrise or sunset, especially from distant parts of the world, give it a look.
Beware of the Rombertik virus
A vicious, yet serendipitously topical computer virus is making the rounds, and it has an added capability that can cause you great difficulty and lost data.
Known as Rombertik, it does what most viruses do: Infects your machine, steals data, remains hidden, that sort of thing. Mundane, in the parlance of malware.
But it has an additional capability that makes it infinitely more insidious:
Let’s hear it for the Prime Minister of Singapore
Incredible, I’d be surprised if *any* of our leaders, anywhere in this country, would be able to do something like this. After mentioning that he had written a sudoku-solving program in C++ while addressing an IT conference, people asked to see it so the Prime Minister of Singapore decided to post it on Facebook and ask for feedback!
