Briefs
Friday, March 15th, 2019
Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2018 [PDF] by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Monday, March 11th, 2019
Putting the ack! in acquihire: Our Incredible Journey.
Tuesday, March 5th, 2019
SpaceIL’s live page, featuring the Beresheet mission to the moon. This video diagrams the mission.
Saturday, December 15th, 2018
Ashdod-based Aleph Farms is growing bovine steak within 3 weeks.
Sunday, September 23rd, 2018
John Gruber’s Daringfireball reviews — no, essays — on The iPhones XS and Apple Watch Series 4 are a pleasure worthy of their subject matter. They feel informed, informal, thoughtful. “Series 4 is to Apple Watch what iPhone 4 was to iPhone,” Gruber writes. “The model that takes the original design to a new level.”
Thursday, September 6th, 2018
9to5Mac presents 50 new watchOS 5 features.
Thursday, August 30th, 2018
“Breaking Smart” by Venkatesh Rao. This is the first collection, “Software is Eating the World”, inspired by a residency at Andreessen/Horowitz.
Thursday, June 7th, 2018
The Web is coming to the Watch! No webfonts yet though.
Wednesday, April 4th, 2018
Transparent aluminium, coming soon enough no doubt to an iPhone near you.
Friday, March 30th, 2018
When Galileo looked up at the night sky with his new-fangled teslescope one profound effect was the dislodging of the nonsensical metaphysical notion from Aquinas of the perfection of the stars.
Thursday, March 29th, 2018
A conversation with Kai-Fu Lee at edge.org. He’s an AI researcher who has worked at Apple, Microsoft and Google, and wrote AI Super-powers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order.
He believes SkyNet fears are ridiculous but that much needs to be done to handle the coming massive loss of jobs.
Sunday, March 25th, 2018
Craig Mod’s interview with Offscreen Magazine. “In my life, America is three locations: New York City, the Bay Area, and Asheville in North Carolina.” This writer/designer, who first impressed me with his review of the Apple Watch, lives in a small coastal town in Japan — some sort of digital-hipster James Bond. Things are very considered.
Friday, March 23rd, 2018
If you’re worried about Facebook, just take a look at WeWork.
Here’s one thing today’s richest man does: hold a spaceflight/robot-themed conference.
Saturday, March 17th, 2018
Check it out, How We Made, a weekly series by The Guardian interviewing two collaborators on a seminal work of art — from 2001: A Space Odyssey to the Swatch watch.
Tuesday, March 6th, 2018
A review of the new disenchantment with our overly-enchanting digital lives by one Arianna Huffington of all people.
Sunday, March 4th, 2018
Like latter-day cave painting, people are getting creative with their iPhone home screens. The main aesthetic beyond spacing seems to be color-coding, which may be admirable but also a bit precious. The tool to do it all is the very cool Makeovr.
Monday, January 22nd, 2018
Amazon Go physical grocery store opens in Seattle, featuring no check-out.
Thursday, December 7th, 2017
On the eve of US recognition of Israel’s capital, very much in-the-loop Ambassador Ron Dermer speaks (three paragraphs at a time!) to the Global Politico podcast.
Saturday, November 25th, 2017
50 startups that will boom in 2018, according to VCs. An article at Business Insider.
Thursday, November 9th, 2017
In these recent interviews by Maureen Dowd, Jarod Lanier is less interesting than Tom Hanks.
Tuesday, October 31st, 2017
TechCrunch takes iPhone X to Disneyland. A great review of considered real-world use.
Thursday, September 28th, 2017
Vitalik Buterin video interview on creating Ethereum.
Tuesday, May 2nd, 2017
Tuesday, January 31st, 2017
“Yesterday we had a fight about whether I’d been dismissive about him saying his feelings had been hurt by my dismissing his feelings during a previous fight…” From the amusing but very dark Narcissism: a reflection by Laura Kipnis in Spiked.
Tuesday, October 4th, 2016
New British prime minister Theresa May’s first major decision was the nuclear plant at Hinckley Point and it seems she took the easy way out.
Tuesday, September 27th, 2016
I’m wrestling with taking too many pictures these days, and why don’t I just stop, but not as well as does the author in “What We See When We Look at Travel Photography”.
Tuesday, September 20th, 2016
At last — birth control for rats! A Long Read in The Guardian.
Monday, September 5th, 2016
This article explains — and demonstrates — all the advanced basics we need to know regarding photography with the iPhone. The aperture is fixed but everything else — shutter speed, focus, ISO, white balance — can be set. Only three apps are required: Camera+ (for the manual stuff), AfterFocus (to compensate for the lack of aperture control), and Slow Shutter Cam (because Camera+ doesn’t go slower than 1/4s).
Tuesday, July 26th, 2016
Gateway
Frederik Pohl
Published in 1976, the themes nonetheless feel contemporary some 40 years later: environmental destruction, economic inequality, social alienation, childlessness. It’s all very naturalistic. We never encounter any aliens because they are long gone, and we don’t understand their amazing technological artifacts at all. And the people are in constant emotional turmoil.
Monday, July 18th, 2016
Tuesday, June 14th, 2016
As announced at WWDC 2016, Macworld summarizes the new things in iOS 10. Among them are voicemail transcription, a new Home app for HomeKit-enabled devices, and a redesigned Control Center.
Tuesday, June 7th, 2016
Tuesday, May 17th, 2016
Centralized or distributed computing? It’s a pendulum.
Tuesday, April 5th, 2016
I scrolled straight past the recent entries at The Setup and clicked only on Charlie Lloyd’s based on his job description. And I guessed right. “At work we’re on small MacBook Pros with maxed-out RAM and external monitors on standing desks,” he writes. Check. “I do my coding and writing in TextMate.” Check. Since he passes these tests of sameness with me, the rest is all gold.
Sunday, April 3rd, 2016
It’s been a couple of days since reading “What’s Next in Computing?” by Chris Dixon and I’m still harking back to it. It’s kind of made me a quasi-believer in the Singularity, made me think that these are the final handful of years in which there’ll be some continuity with what has always been. Disconcerting.
Sunday, January 10th, 2016
A story and video of a young reporter kind of blown away, so to speak, by some new VR porn demoed at CES. [Via DrudgeReport]
Thursday, December 31st, 2015
Interesting, easy-to-understand breakdown of colors used in iOS app icons in 2015. Reds are most popular, then blues. By Hwee-Boon Yar. [via MacStories]
Friday, December 25th, 2015
A professor of medieval history laments the contemporary propensity to be surveilled just as Europeans were by the Church. [Via aldaily.com]
Friday, December 18th, 2015
China is taking the lead on converting from fossil fuels to renewables, which is one major reason it’s happening. This is predicted to foster a WWII-scale economic boom, which is the other.
Tuesday, December 15th, 2015
Web site heat map tool HotJar is so impressive and so is Maltese founder David Darmanin, interviewed here by Stephen Esketzis in Feb 2015.
Tuesday, December 8th, 2015
Fallout from Apple’s lawsuit against Samsung, this article by Yoni Heisler contains images of abandoned iPhone designs and the lengthy agenda of a 2010 executive team meeting written by Steve Jobs himself.
Wednesday, November 4th, 2015
I found this quite exciting: Mike Maas of Cisco expounds on how the Internet of Things will be integrated into the factory floor. (1:11:34)
Thursday, May 21st, 2015
Nice piece by a watch aficionado yet to remove his Apple Watch. [via DaringFireball.net]
Saturday, May 16th, 2015
Once they see it they say, Oh is that the thing? And I say, Yes it is the thing. And they ask, Has it changed your life? And I shrug. And they are so disappointed.
Tuesday, April 14th, 2015
I’m not sure that I agree with the author’s criticism of the Apple Watch screen, and unlike him I like how small the thing is, but his comparison—that Apple Watch leather is to leather as the pink chicken sludge of chicken nuggets is to chicken is insightful and in retrospect obvious. Article is complete with apt photo illustrations. [via Daring Fireball]
Sunday, March 15th, 2015
Watch, enjoy and learn from Scott Galloway’s whirlwind macroscopic tour of the bleeding edge of the economy.
Wednesday, March 11th, 2015
Anyone noted the similarity between an Apple Watch and a NASA astronaut? I think we should be sold.
Oh I’m enjoying tab toggling between 38mm Space Grey Aluminium Case with Black Sport Band and 38mm Space Black Case with Space Black Stainless Steel Link Bracelet.
Wednesday, February 25th, 2015
Awe-inspiring handywork (diagnostics, 3d-printing, junkyard salvage) by Paul Mangiamele on Bilford, an Audi A6 that had been standing around for 2 years and didn’t start. He paid $450.
