CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-22 10:09:10 (21 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Ah, that moment when you're thinking about your failed ssd.
"At least it was pretty small, so I couldn't put much on it, so I didn't lose too much."
wait, I moved all my source code onto there recently
cue sickening feeling

2013-05-21 12:58:35 (4 comments, 1 reshares, 10 +1s)

Use remote to turn on air conditioner.
Go to turn it off and find the batteries are dead and the unit is out of control.
This seems like a major failing.

2013-05-20 13:40:59 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

It was a close finish! But the ssd just managed to beat out the hdd in the suicide stakes.
The OS ssd. sigh

2013-05-19 10:53:02 (8 comments, 0 reshares, 17 +1s)

What ever happened to manuals?

Here's what came with a chunky manual for a stereo some years ago.  And it's not an anomaly.

These days you're lucky if you get any sort of manual.  Maybe a word-free 3 step picture.
Maybe a link to a website with a quickstart.

I had a dot matrix printer with a manual several hundred pages long, half of which was a programmer's reference.

These days, it's here's your warranty, register your product, Like us on Facebook, you don't need the details.

2013-05-19 06:00:55 (15 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

The Great Gatsby is public domain in all but 7 countries

Not to give away the punchline, but everywhere except:  USA, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Samoa, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, and Ivory Coast.

So you can download the story freely in Oz, but not in the USA.

In Europe it's 70 years after death, and FSF died in 1940, making his work public just a few years ago.

I don't know - that seems an awfully long time to me.

2013-05-19 00:58:51 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

Future (and no longer future) sci-fi dates

A cool list of thirteen sci-fi dates.  We've just passed the X-files colonisation from last year, and we're in the year of The Postman.  We've got just over two years to Back To The Future 2 and six years till Bladerunner.

Fun times.  Esp Demolition Man in 20 years time.  Hmm, that I could almost see... except for the eradication of crime ;)

2013-05-18 13:26:58 (20 comments, 7 reshares, 13 +1s)

Factory-produced world's tallest skyscraper gets the green light

Taller than the Burj Khalifa Sky City is a 6-7 month factory produced skyscraper at 838 m tall.  About to start construction and excavation, the Broad Group should have the building complete by the start of 2014.

But more than the height, I think what surprises me the most is the fact that they have a skyscraper factory to churn stuff like this out.  93% of the work will be performed in the factory., which will also be churning out 30-story buildings at a rate of 500 per year per factory.

* It's designed to withstand a magnitude 9 earthquake.
* The air is heavily purified and far cleaner than outside city air.
* The cost per square metre is much lower than other skyscrapers such as the Trump or Freedom towers (60 vs 300 - 1000) enabling lower cost housing and shops to be supportedr... more »

2013-05-18 04:32:47 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 16 +1s)

Transmetropolitan 2001
Issue 49 - Here comes the sun.
Coz #SpiderJerusalem and #GoogleGlass  

2013-05-17 16:37:23 (7 comments, 2 reshares, 19 +1s)

Testing

Riddick Trailer

2013-05-17 15:37:46 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

So, Westboro Baptist Church plan to do a protest at Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman's funeral.
Right.

And the WBC will sing their cover of - heavy metal vocalist - Ozzy Osbourne's Crazy Train.

Um, if they're covering a metal song, I don't know why they don't just go and cover Slayer themselves and do something like Seasons in the Abyss.  Got to be about as appropriate for them.

2013-05-16 13:28:58 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

On sci-fi and economics - recommended reading by an economist

Technically they're not all sci-fi, since he throws in Game of Thrones at the end.

So I'm reading through the list, and alas there are a fair number I haven't read.  But really want to read.

So inevitably I start reading up on some, get to stuff I think I might not want to know, and then hurriedly move on to the next vowing to push those novels up the list.

Of the ones on there that I've read, I have to say I wasn't super enthused about The Dispossessed nor Down and Out. 
Accelerando was fantastic.
Lucifer's Hammer was fun.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was pretty good - hell, better than I was expecting, to be honest.

And I'm surprised that not only haven't I read Schismatrix, I don't even own it.

Hmmm.

In thef... more »

2013-05-16 02:49:32 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Bjarne Stroustrup interview on C++11 and C++14

There's a cool interview up on informit where Danny Kalev talks to Stroustrup about the new 4th edition of The C++ Programming Language that's just started shipping, and what he thinks of the new C++11 and C++14 (upcoming) standards.

Of particular interest was the bit on C++14 and his discussion on Concepts Lite.  
Apparently the 4th edition of his book is quite restructured and rewritten, so I'm looking forward to checking that out when it arrives.

An interesting quote:
" I do not consider it the job of a programming language to be “secure.”

For the use cases of the C++ language - a systems language - I think I agree with him.

2013-05-15 21:30:33 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

2048: Almost Human

Three and a half minute trailer for the upcoming sci-fi show Almost Human by JJ Abrams, starring Karl Urban.
Set in 2048, a cop has to buddy up with a synthetic.

Looks fairly promising!

2013-05-15 11:45:58 (17 comments, 2 reshares, 8 +1s)

0.08 - A safe level for driving?

Interesting to hear how the US still has a national limit of 0.08 % BAC.
Even more interesting, that apparently there is still the "walk the straight line" etc test?

I guess here in Oz we just take it for granted that it's 0.05 and you get a breathalyser. 

I read one person commenting on the topic stating that he thought 0.08 was way too low, and it's just some nazi-nanny-state tactics.

Other people commented that it shouldn't be lowered because there isn't good public transport.

Others say it shouldn't be lowered since people are dangerous doing other things, like messing about with kids in the back seat.

Is it just a case of what people are used to?

2013-05-13 11:05:55 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

On mobile specs and speed

So samsung are now testing out 5G phones.
Alas alas, for whatever happened for the true goals of 4G?
I recall reading up on it barely a few years ago it seems, and the phrase from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G has rung in my head:

"100 megabits per second (Mbit/s) for high mobility communication (such as from trains and cars) and 1 gigabit per second (Gbit/s) for low mobility communication (such as pedestrians and stationary users)"

This is not a stab at Samsung - I'm aiming this at the industry in general.  There's plenty of 4 G out there, but I'm failing to see or even hear of it meeting these speeds.

Hearing of 5G at these speeds ... well, I'd like to see what actually ends up being rolled out to users.

Incidentally, timeframes are around 2020.

2013-05-07 14:06:23 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

OpenMP support coming to LLVM / Clang via Intel

If you've ever seen the benchmarks for Clang exes vs GCC exes you'll see they're much of a muchness ... until you hit something that uses OpenMP.  At which point GCC tears away, since there's no support within Clang for it so it's all serialised on the one core.

Looks like it's fairly minimal at the moment, but hopefully will ramp up quickly given the compiler's history of feature adoption.

On a related note, OpenMP 4 is coming along, with RC 2 out and the final spec due before year's end.  For details see http://openmp.org/wp/2013/03/openmp-40-rc2/

Will OpenMP support be the feature that catapults Clang / LLVM into the limelight?  Is it already there?  Is GCC just looking at continually losing ground from here on?

2013-05-06 21:27:25 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

14,000+ outdoor lights illuminate Melbourne. Have your say on the draft Public Lighting Strategy. http://ow.ly/krrAv

2013-05-06 13:06:32 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

2013-05-05 14:01:54 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

Computer vision on Google cars - and what this could mean for Google Maps

With recent articles surfacing about the amount of data that the Google autonomous cars are capturing - 750 MB a second - and the sort of environment picture they can build up, I'm surprised we don't see more on the possibilities for google to use the data for phenomenal mapping purposes.

Right now we wait for lengthy periods - in some cases years - to get updated data on new streets and house views.  I know people living in houses that google shows as empty patches of ground at the end of a terminating street.  But this is a limitation of the number of cars they have travelling back and forth on roads, combined with the cost of the exercise.

Once there are autonomous cars out there driving along city streets, day in, day out, hour by hour, minute by minute, there exists thep... more »

2013-05-05 10:06:53 (3 comments, 3 reshares, 9 +1s)

Music to code by

Dammit, there I was trying to just listen to some music whilst doing some housework and then I hear this:

Bouncing Dot on the album Polymorphic Code by the band The Algorithm.

I think I need to code something.  Now.

2013-05-05 04:12:16 (1 comments, 2 reshares, 7 +1s)

All your base. A video about positional base number systems.

2013-05-05 00:59:11 (24 comments, 2 reshares, 6 +1s)

The top 10 animated tv series of all time

Technically it's the top 100, but I was mostly looking over the top 10.  It's also a year or two old I think.

I don't know how the hell i ended up there, but they've got some good choices in there.  They have The Tick (!), which I think was the biggest surprise, and may interest +Mz Maau given a recent post by her.

I was surprised with the Family Guy but no American Dad, but that might just be me and my preferences.

I've seen 8 of the 10, which is ... alright?  Though for one of the rest (Beavis and Butthead) I have to admit I've seen but a negligible amount.

2013-05-02 22:43:31 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 13 +1s)

A marriage of tissue and electronics for a super ear

Sounds pretty good to me ;)

Seriously though, looks like we might be starting to see some traction in improved human organs.  

don't make me * accidentally * cut off my ear

2013-05-02 12:49:12 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 11 +1s)

LaynesLionRedCat cosplaying as Rosalind Lutece from Bioshock Infinite.

For #GingerThursday , because I couldn't resist.

Get your red hair fix for the day at her deviantart site http://layneslionredcat.deviantart.com/gallery/ including other composites of her against the game's screenshots.

j'adore le green tie

2013-05-02 10:11:28 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

And from Kentucky, USA:

5 year old shoots sister with own gun - "In this part of the country, it's not uncommon for a five-year-old to have a gun or for a parent to pass one down to their kid.''

The boy had been given the rifle as a gift - it's a Crickett's "My First Rifle", as seen on the  "Kid's Corner" section of their website. 

It's "Just one of those crazy accidents."

Hell of a gift to get a child ....

2013-05-01 14:12:01 (2 comments, 7 reshares, 7 +1s)

A Boy and His Atom: IBM creates a movie at the atomic level

Exclamation mark.
Technically that's going to be hard to beat, though they could scale up resolution and framerate.

And audiences want 3D now ;)

What you're seeing are individual atoms getting moved around to form an animation.
They say they worked with about 10,000 atoms of resolution, so approximately 100x100, or something a little more squished for a total of 242 frames.

No plans on producing sequels - this was just a tech demonstration.

Anyone know what types of atoms these are ?

2013-04-28 08:56:27 (1 comments, 3 reshares, 13 +1s)

Synthetic skin now as sensitive as human fingertips

In this case we're talking about sensitivity to pressure, where they are down to 10 kilopascals, using a 3D array of 8k piezotronic transistors.

And yes, one of the sponsors is DARPA.

Petman: let me feel your pain...

#ScienceSunday  

2013-04-28 04:50:35 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Tambourine: an astronaut sci-fi short (okay, music video!)

The title is actually from the Dave Armstrong song it was made for.
It's a beautiful 5 minute piece, and I don't know whether the astronaut's story speaks more to obsession or to loss or to blindness.

It's pretty heartbreaking.

Cute factoid: The helmet came from some obscure Russian eBay store.

#NinjasWebVideoFiction  

2013-04-28 02:09:12 (14 comments, 23 reshares, 49 +1s)

Time Crystals and Perpetual Motion

Well, it was one of the two things in the final section of the Michio Kaku book Impossible Physics.  Perpetual motion is one of those things that current physics rules out.
So if Frank Wilczek is correct - and he's someone with a Nobel Prize already under his belt - then this would be radical indeed.

The theory states that just as crystals can form a repeating lattice in space, so they can form a repeating lattice in time.

And now they think they're able to test this idea.

Over on Ars Technica they had a write up on this, and the comments were pretty amusing:
Person A) Are there any practical uses that come to mind?
Person B) Immediate practical uses for free energy?  Guess there might be one or two.

#ScienceSunday  

2013-04-27 15:37:13 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Amarok 2.7.0 is now also available for the Windows platform #Amarok  #KDE

2013-04-27 15:31:12 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

From the future with love : sci-fi trailer / short

Here's a 12 minute near-future sci-fi piece for a potential movie where the police force is a privatised group that sells their services directly to the people.

Don't pay, don't get any help.  And half the time, the cops are out doing marketing and sales pitches.

I liked the characters, though the scenes and people borrowed from quite a few other movies.  Oh, and books too.  The hilarious novel Jennifer Government came to mind straight away on reading the synopsis.

I was a little hesitant about the police costumes, but they'd grown on me by the end.  I mean, given that they want to be visible and seen to be a brand, it's actually not too unreasonable, beyond whatever augmentation and functionality is on offer.

The fact that they incorporate face recognition and from thereins... more »

2013-04-27 12:15:38 (11 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

Should watching cartoon characters have sex result in child pornography punishment?

In the case of a man from New Zealand, watching anime of "elves, pixies, and other fantasy creatures" having sex that were "clearly young" has resulted in him going to jail on charges of child pornography.

This is a pretty sad state of affairs.

Laws vary from country to country, and in New Zealand it doesn't matter if there are actual humans involved.

2013-04-27 08:16:35 (6 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

My two-week review of Google Glass: it all depends on the price

This week I gave five speeches while wearing it.
I passed through airports four times (two more in a couple of hours).
I let hundreds of people try my Google Glass.
I have barely taken it off since getting it other than to sleep.

Here's my review after having Google Glass for two weeks:

1. I will never live a day of my life from now on without it (or a competitor). It's that significant. 
2. The success of this totally depends on price. Each audience I asked at the end of my presentations "who would buy this?" As the price got down to $200 literally every hand went up. At $500 a few hands went up. This was consistent, whether talking with students, or more mainstream, older audiences.
3. Nearly everyone had an emotional outburst of "wow" or... more »

2013-04-26 10:51:06 (0 comments, 5 reshares, 7 +1s)

Visa has to start allowing wikileaks donations in Iceland or face fines

I'm pretty happy about this one.

An interesting quote: At this point, WikiLeaks does not seem to be sure whether Visa will honor the ruling or simply pay the fine.

2013-04-23 21:06:30 (6 comments, 1 reshares, 7 +1s)

#NBN #Australia  

2013-04-22 20:51:09 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 4 +1s)

OMG! This is a dream come true!

#c++ #c++14

h/t +蕭刻庭

2013-04-22 13:21:03 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 14 +1s)

This is the greatest flowchart I have seen so far. 

Thanks to +Eslley Scatena for sharing this. 

2013-04-22 13:03:53 (0 comments, 10 reshares, 4 +1s)

The Virtuix Omni omnidirectional treadmill with the Oculus Rift

Still in development, but they're saying it will be 'affordable for household consumers'.  Kickstarter coming soon. 

Check out the video to see the guy running around on the Omni whilst playing Team Fortress 2!

That looks like awesome fun.

2013-04-21 02:26:47 (5 comments, 3 reshares, 5 +1s)

It's worth pointing out that Facebook doesn't support CISPA, for those who missed it.

They did in February 2012 but they no longer do.

2013-04-21 02:15:56 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 9 +1s)

Phone as remote?

I've been a little lax on putting my phone to greater servitude, but I recently considered how nice it would be to have the phone telling me what music the computer was playing, and give me some control over it.

Since I run Amarok on the PC for music (pity the Windows version trails linux by 3 or 4 months) I've hooked up the Android Amarok2 Remote.  It's fairly basic, and the playlist view is rather chronic, but it gets the job done.

Anyone else using their phone for computer music control, and / or have recommendations or experiences?

2013-04-20 13:38:46 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Alas, for my inquisitiveness!
It seems I dug too deep into things that were best forgotten, and in my prying I disturbed this nightmare incarnate and drew its gaze more fully upon me.

~From a bit o' fiction written by +Ninja On Rye read the full story here ---> http://goo.gl/ClzRn

Due to laughing myself to tears reading Ninj's story and conspiring with +Mz Maau this is what I finally came up with! O_O

A big thank you to +Neezam Haniff and +Charlie Hoover for allowing us to pick their brains in order to create a realistic  *Server Farm Jungle*! You guys rock! :D

Now that I have this down... time to draw Llama armies!! Muahahahaha
 

2013-04-20 04:40:16 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Chameleon - sci-fi short about identity

Set in a world that's been invaded by aliens (no, it's not Defiance!) the issue for the military is one of identity.  How do you prove that someone really is who they say they are ?

Reminiscent of PKD's works, of course.

Short, sweet, focused and well acted. 

~ 5 min.

#NinjasWebVideoFiction  

2013-04-19 16:14:21 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

LLVM / Clang 3.3 Should Be Close To Building The Linux Kernel

I was discussing the state of building the linux kernel under LLVM / Clang (well, anything non-gcc, but yes ... ) with +Lars Katzfey just a couple of days ago, and coincidentally stumbled upon this article.

Looks like some good progress has been made, and Clang will be able to compile the kernel with a few patches against the kernel with the next release.  Didn't find much elaboration on this, however.

Note that this is specifically focused on ARM and x86/x64 architectures.

Release is about mid-year.

2013-04-19 13:51:35 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Australia's NBN Co offering gigabit by year's end

At the time of the last federal election, the NBN announced that speeds of up to a gigabit per second would be available on the upcoming national broadband network, not just topping out at 100 Mbit/s.
Post election ... this was all pretty quiet as to when such speeds would actually roll out.

Now NBN Co have announced that they're accelerating the upgrade based on higher than expected demand for the higher speed tiers of the NBN.

Yes, those prices are pretty high.  But yes, they'll come down.

They'll also offer 250 and 500 Mbit/s.

All upload speeds are 40% of the download speed.

2013-04-16 20:27:27 (4 comments, 6 reshares, 20 +1s)

2013-04-16 13:31:24 (1 comments, 4 reshares, 5 +1s)

LLVM auto-transforming LLVM codebase from C++98 to C++11

Well, most generally, this is work (mostly done at Intel) on providing migrator  transforms to apply to C++98 code which will produce output using c++11 features.

They have several examples, using auto, for-loops, nullptr and overrides.

The particularly interesting thing here is that for a real-world project, they've taken the LLVM 3,1 codebase and run it through the transforms (with the unit tests in place to verify the behaviour remains the same).

Doesn't sound like they actually plan on releasing a C++11-ified version of LLVM though as a future release.

Now that would be pretty awesome.  The compiler doesn't just compile itself, now it also writes itself ...

2013-04-15 00:15:51 (7 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Anyone else finding chrome to be a little unstable of late?
I'm on the dev channel and the thing has blown up on me a few times of late...

2013-04-14 12:47:56 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Short sci-fi: Spin

A fun time travel piece with music and a turntable, giving it something of an unusual manipulation.  Nothing too deep, just butterfly-effecting with some neat trappings and decoration.

~ 8 min.

#NinjasWebVideoFiction  

2013-04-14 02:59:03 (32 comments, 1 reshares, 10 +1s)

Flash Fiction Sunday: Ermintrude

Yes, it's FFS!  Okay, I totally made that up, and this has gotten a little long for flash fiction, but this is a piece of Lovecraftian fiction the bulk of which I wrote sometime previously as a comment backstory for the artwork by the inimitable +Mary C. , below, with further inspiration from +Mz Maau and +Mar Mai.   Various names and elements also already provided by others as constraints.  I swear it was like trying to bring horror to My Little Pony!


Ermintrude

I can only relate these matters as fragments, I'm afraid.  The dreams ... ahhh, the dreams.  It had been over a year since the last dream, the one I hinted at when last we met.  I hadn't told you in full for I well knew how disbelief would take you.  

The horror of it!  Even now I can barely bring myself to describe what I saw. What san... more »

2013-04-13 16:28:14 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Cargo: a loving zombie short film

This 7 minute short is more in the vein of Dead Island's cinematic trailer than, say, Dawn of the Dead or World War Z. 
A man comes to in his car, realising that he's in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse with a wife already on the far side.  Leaving him to care for their baby daughter.

It's aussie - and distinctly aussie, despite not being a dialogue driven piece - and fairly touching.  I'd say I quite liked it, but I wouldn't really rave about it the way that many have been.  For me, I'd still give the nod to the Dead Island cinematic, but this was quite well done too.

#NinjasWebVideoFiction