CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-18 07:58:24 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 10 +1s)

I missed this. Chris Burden created a skyscraper out Erector set pieces in NYC. Glorious!

http://www.gagosian.com/artists/chris-burden-2/selected-works

2013-05-18 04:33:20 (6 comments, 15 reshares, 50 +1s)

The world: population, 7.1 billion; mobile subscriptions, 6.8 billion

2013-05-16 22:47:54 (4 comments, 6 reshares, 62 +1s)

I've been gathering more GNARL in my walks. I keep seeing it everywhere. You know, that fractal, self-referential complexity that indicates learning and evolution.

2013-05-16 04:05:29 (4 comments, 33 reshares, 57 +1s)

This one is different. I can imagine a new genre of other videos like this but with different stories.

2013-05-16 00:15:31 (9 comments, 1 reshares, 49 +1s)

I'm trying out +G's new awesome big picture look.  This was taken in a wild  mustard field in Marin last week.

2013-05-15 08:41:21 (3 comments, 9 reshares, 50 +1s)

Several hundred folks showed up this evening in San Francisco for a massive photowalk. Everyone walks a short route encouraging each other to see and photograph different. It was led by photographers  +Trey Ratcliff and +Thomas Hawk who were also wearing their brand new Google Glasses, trying them out as a new type of camera. In fact dozens of others in the crowd were also wearing brand new Google Glasses, adding an air of the future to the event. Some of the initial images from the Glass are beauties. Naturally I took some snaps (san Glass) of the photo walkers.

#treyhawkwalk   #glassphotowalk  

2013-05-13 06:45:17 (9 comments, 4 reshares, 21 +1s)

The Drone Wars
"But to offset China’s numerical advantage and technological advances, the United States Navy is betting heavily on drones — not just the X-47B and its successors, but anti-submarine reconnaissance drones, long-range communications drones, even underwater drones. A single hunter-killer pairing of a Triton reconnaissance drone and a P-8A Poseidon piloted anti-submarine plane can sweep 2.7 million square miles of ocean in a single mission.

The arms race between the world’s largest navies undermines the likelihood of attaining a new balance of power, and raise the possibility of unintended collisions as the United States deploys hundreds, even thousands of drones and China scrambles for ways to counter the new challenge. And drones, because they are cheap and don’t need a human pilot, lower the bar for aggressive behavior on the part of America’s militaryleaders —... more »

2013-05-13 01:32:35 (9 comments, 7 reshares, 57 +1s)

"It is not the camera," to paraphrase Lance Armstrong's parellel quip: "It's not the bike."

A few nights ago I was in Memphis, TN, on Beale Street, and a parade of motorcycles pulled into the street. I grabbed the only camera I had with me at the time: my iPhone. You can do amazing photography with an iPhone and your attention.

2013-05-12 20:59:16 (100 comments, 143 reshares, 452 +1s)

In 10 days I am headed back to the Circle. I go there to see what our future is. I'll be in China for two weeks. May 30, 31 I'll be hiking some parts of the Great Wall that I haven't seen. I could use a hiking partner who speaks better Mandarin than me.

Image from: http://i.imgur.com/CK6aONG.jpg

2013-05-12 02:15:09 (21 comments, 3 reshares, 13 +1s)

Gun control that Republicans can approve! 3D printed guns may upset the bifurcated polarity that exists in the US. Could this be the slippery slope?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/09/3d-printed-guns-plans-state-department

2013-05-10 23:56:22 (5 comments, 26 reshares, 76 +1s)

Smart headlights see through rain, snow. Turn your headlights into projectors, then use a camera pair and fast computer to calculate where the raindrops are going to be and turn off those pixels on the projectors, and voilà, you can see through the rain like it's not there. 

2013-05-08 07:12:19 (24 comments, 12 reshares, 37 +1s)

A decade ago, the idea that the "right" to personally photograph things around us might be imperiled -- slowly closed up and shrunk over time -- would have struck me as ludicrous.

Now, as the coming war over Google Glass and public surveillance cameras will show, this idea is more possible. Maybe one day we'll need permission to photograph EVERYTHING! People, buildings, national parks, etc. I don't think it likely, but it is becoming more plausible.

The Coming War Against Personal Photography and Video
 http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/001022.html

2013-05-07 18:29:30 (52 comments, 26 reshares, 57 +1s)

The future is shrinking. The far future has less appeal to us now than it once did. Why?

http://io9.com/5911520/a-chart-that-reveals-how-science-fiction-futures-changed-over-timew 

2013-05-06 19:02:34 (19 comments, 2 reshares, 38 +1s)

Honeywords

"Clever idea: Seed password files with dummy entries that will trigger an alarm when used. That way a site can know when a hacker is trying to decrypt the password file."
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/05/honeywords.html

2013-05-06 07:41:12 (18 comments, 33 reshares, 53 +1s)

Until someone writes a great biography of +Stewart Brand this profile of him will have to serve as his introduction. Stewart has a lot to teach you. Read any of his books.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/may/05/stewart-brand-whole-earth-catalog

2013-05-04 04:38:20 (17 comments, 14 reshares, 91 +1s)

If you had a solar airplane that could fly at night, you could fly around the globe non-stop with no fuel! That's what SolarImpulse is going to do. We went to visit the plane now parked in Moffett Field, CA. I held up one of its carbon fiber wing structs (that's it against the plane in the background) and it weighed nearly nothing -- a tissue. In fact the entire plane, with a wingspan of a 747 jet, weighs only as much as a compact car. Cool technology, rocking goal. Main problem now -- keeping the single pilot awake for the week long trip.

2013-05-04 04:19:02 (26 comments, 9 reshares, 28 +1s)

Sometime in the next month, a sensor atop Mauna Loa in Hawaii is expected to record a daily concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of more than 400 parts per million, a value not reached at this key surveillance point for a few million years. For what this means for the planet, read on... http://www.nature.com/news/global-carbon-dioxide-levels-near-worrisome-milestone-1.12900

2013-05-03 04:06:44 (28 comments, 49 reshares, 133 +1s)

This guy leaves the internet for one year. Hoping it would do him good. Now he's back and not so sure his unconnected year was a good idea.

He says: "I'd learned how to make a new style of wrong choices off the internet. I abandoned my positive offline habits, and discovered new offline vices.....So much ink has been spilled deriding the false concept of a "Facebook friend," but I can tell you that a "Facebook friend" is better than nothing."

Good read. More complicated than what I am quoting.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/1/4279674/im-still-here-back-online-after-a-year-without-the-internet

2013-05-02 07:25:16 (11 comments, 6 reshares, 25 +1s)

What other business would turn away 150 million customers? JSOTR, an online aggregator of scientific journals (many supported by tax funding) each  years blocks 150 million eager visitors who come to read an article. They turn them away saying, "we don't sell individual subscriptions."  This reminds me of when in the 1970s HBO turned away individual subscribers, stupidly selling only to cable stations. Duh!  So now JSTOR are going to think about it for a few years.

"But the number of would-be users JSTOR was turning away at the door had grown too staggering to ignore. It says it stymied 150 million attempts to access its content in 2010."

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/13/jstor-opens-limited-free-access-option-non-subscribing-scholars#ixzz2S7JtwbXI 
Inside Higher Ed  

2013-05-01 20:30:01 (8 comments, 14 reshares, 51 +1s)

If your favorite color animal is "clear" you'll love these prepared transparent specimens. It's done with special scientific enzymes and dyes as teaching aids. This guy does this for art. If someone can point me to instructions how to do this, I'd be grateful.

http://www.shinsekai-th.com/en/photo.php

2013-05-01 20:22:37 (1 comments, 6 reshares, 15 +1s)

Cool bio-inspired camera design. Just a low-res prototype but a promising direction:

2013-05-01 07:06:03 (6 comments, 6 reshares, 43 +1s)

If you live in the Bay Area consider taking a tour with Kirk Lombard who will introduce you to harvesting your own unusual sea food. This morning Kirk showed us how to dig for razor clams, ghost shrimp, rough neck clams, and eels in the super low tide at Half Moon Bay. He's a great teacher and entertaining. I'm ready to sign up for his San Francisco shore line harvest tours.

http://seaforager.com/

2013-05-01 06:43:55 (4 comments, 8 reshares, 31 +1s)

"Why shouldn’t we expect Google to give users an option — and a simple process — to have news stories about them down-ranked or omitted from future search results?"... asks Bill Keller of the New York Times.

Because the most complete search engine will win in the long run. Some other engine will offer the un-erased version of history, Which one will you use?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/opinion/keller-erasing-history.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0

2013-04-29 21:06:39 (15 comments, 7 reshares, 92 +1s)

This strange wild landscape is just a mile or so from the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco. Those Dr. Suess stalks are larger than you, about 3 meters tall. I witnessed them on a birthday hike this weekend. What wonders surround us!

2013-04-26 18:46:09 (9 comments, 13 reshares, 61 +1s)

"On average people with more friends tend to have friends with more friends," says Stephen Wolfram from his analysis of 1 million Facebook members.

http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/04/data-science-of-the-facebook-world/

2013-04-26 19:00:31 (18 comments, 4 reshares, 10 +1s)

Prediction Postdiction: the dark world will harness botnets to mine bitcoins.

2013-04-26 19:01:04 (24 comments, 77 reshares, 152 +1s)

Fast, funny, 10 tips for using computer and digital stuff. I bet you find at least one useful. I did.

2013-04-24 19:34:03 (24 comments, 8 reshares, 76 +1s)

I'm learning how to grow mushrooms.  First step is a kit based on inculcated coffee grounds. Add water in right conditions. Yield: Oyster Mushrooms. They test nutty, extremely delicious. Next, increasing yield.

2013-04-24 07:52:17 (3 comments, 9 reshares, 21 +1s)

A really good adventure travel "magazine" on the web, for free, is SIDETRACKED. Each issue has articles and photos about crazy long-distance hikes, bick rides, hairy scientific expeditions, vehicle trips in remote places. My kind of thing.

http://www.sidetracked.co.uk/edition-09/

2013-04-24 06:15:12 (2 comments, 16 reshares, 49 +1s)

Lab Craft

Nice term for the new generation of art produced with the help of laser cutters, 3D printers, origami software, scanners, CNC machines, and so on. Hi-tech aided craftmanship. Here's a nice site in England with a round up of some current practitioners. 

http://labcraft.org.uk/

2013-04-23 23:29:18 (19 comments, 20 reshares, 36 +1s)

The takeover of the US by the Security-Corporate Complex is documented by main stream press. It is worse than I thought.

According to Dana Priest and William M. Arkin of The Washington Post, "Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States. ... An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances. ... In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings -- about 17 million square feet of space."
... more »

2013-04-23 23:08:11 (11 comments, 4 reshares, 22 +1s)

2013-04-23 22:52:42 (6 comments, 2 reshares, 12 +1s)

+Jason Kottke raved about the 20th Anniversary issue of Wired saying: "I applied for an internship at HotWired but never heard back. I wanted to work there so bad, to be at the center of all the excitement of the web, but I'm sure it was an easy decision for them to pass over an unemployed grad school drop-out living with his dad on a farm in rural Wisconsin in favor of any one of the thousands of other applicants who had likely taken more than zero design, programming, or even art classes."

Too bad because Jason would have fit right in. The co-founders at Wired used to joke -- but it was no joke -- that we were starting the magazine because we were all unemployable. Had any of us had to apply for a job at Wired, I doubt any of us would have ever been hired.

2013-04-21 00:47:30 (17 comments, 46 reshares, 85 +1s)

Why is everyone working so hard? All these startups, going 1,000 mph, where are they headed? If you are working in a tech company, what are you working for? What is your dream?

I asked this question to 100 people working for tech companies within a one-block radius of Wired's office in SF for the 20th Anniversary Issue.

Our answers are here: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2013/04/dreams/

2013-04-19 22:12:26 (17 comments, 3 reshares, 43 +1s)

Senate Blocks All Gun Control Measures. Bonnie responds. 

theonion.com/articles/senate-blocks-all-gun-control-measures,32108

2013-04-19 22:10:03 (2 comments, 3 reshares, 12 +1s)

2nd International Psychedelic Science Conference 2013
Apr 18-23 Oakland CA 

2013-04-18 22:17:43 (15 comments, 12 reshares, 48 +1s)

$12 cell phone. Soon the most expensive part of the phone will be the plastic case.

http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3040

2013-04-17 04:24:34 (10 comments, 86 reshares, 125 +1s)

This is the coolest example of the hive mind I've seen in a long while. It reminds me of the first demonstration of crowdsourced behavior I saw in the early 1990s, and now order emerges from chaos. Give it a try!
http://donottouch.org/

2013-04-16 06:05:25 (13 comments, 8 reshares, 35 +1s)

Another good oral history of Wired, on it's 20th anniversary. I like what Louis Rossetto said, which can apply to any audacious endeavor.

Rossetto: There's something about investing your humanity, your eccentricity, your exuberance in the things you do. Why do people watch tightrope walkers? Not to see them get to the other side. It’s because they might fall. Not everything you do is going to be successful, but that’s part of the allure. It’s also what makes the work valuable: That you’re really present and invested in what you’re doing. That’s what the first issue of Wired was about.

http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/how-wired-magazine-changed-way-we-talk-about-technology-148425

2013-04-16 05:51:34 (3 comments, 19 reshares, 58 +1s)

REFUSE TO BE TERRORIZED

That's the patriotic and most constructive thing to do.

 Take it calmly. Don't make any sudden moves in response.

Bruce Schneier explains:

"How well this attack succeeds depends much less on what happened in Boston than by our reactions in the coming weeks and months. Terrorism isn't primarily a crime against people or property. It's a crime against our minds, using the deaths of innocents and destruction of property as accomplices. When we react from fear, when we change our laws and policies to make our country less open, the terrorists succeed, even if their attacks fail. But when we refuse to be terrorized, when we're indomitable in the face of terror, the terrorists fail, even if their attacks succeed."
more »

2013-04-15 17:58:48 (30 comments, 29 reshares, 81 +1s)

It seems that we are all aliens. Using Moore law and extrapolating evolution backwards, scientists have determined that life began 9.7 billion years ago (+- 2.5 billion). Since the Earth is only 4.5 billion years old life may have started elsewhere. 

I am going outside now to eye my alien neighbors with suspicion. 

#aliens   #alienconspiracy   #evolution   #lol     #funny  

2013-04-13 18:32:22 (14 comments, 19 reshares, 77 +1s)

Scary 'walkway' on the west side of Taihang Mountain, Shanxi, China

#scary   #china   via https://secure.flickr.com/photos/rezaahmed/8326489793/?dur=4947

2013-04-11 17:57:24 (25 comments, 24 reshares, 70 +1s)

Google has taken the first step to address the issue of what happens to your online account when you die.

When you die, what do YOU want to happen to your accounts?

Do you want your website to continue? Do you want everything deleted? Do you want only some folks to have control over what you made? Who?

http://dataliberation.blogspot.com/2013/04/plan-your-digital-afterlife-with.html

Me? I'd like to have my postings and website continue forever, like a book in a library.

2013-04-09 02:06:02 (21 comments, 5 reshares, 80 +1s)

On a morning walk at a friend's house in Napa spotted this vulture showing off his wings in the early morning sun. He'd stay in this position this for 10 minutes. It may be male display behavior.

2013-04-08 17:53:33 (10 comments, 7 reshares, 47 +1s)

At the edge of the world. I've been there yesterday. It just drops off to nothing. Only way to go is back.

2013-04-06 18:37:20 (4 comments, 5 reshares, 35 +1s)

+Alexander Rose at the Long Now Foundation has been designing a bar that would sit within a 10,000-year library. It's planned to be in Fort Mason. It's a pretty cool idea. To have conversations in the middle of ancient conversations in print. But the idea of a book-lined bar seems to be on a trend. Witness these other book bars.

http://flavorwire.com/382271/15-amazing-book-filled-bars-where-wed-like-to-drink/view-all

2013-04-07 20:57:54 (24 comments, 42 reshares, 123 +1s)

International Dark Sky Week

In 2001, “The First World Atlas of the Artificial Night Sky Brightness” reported two-thirds of the U.S. population and more than 50% of the European population had already lost the ability to see the Milky Way with the naked eye (http://bit.ly/16BdS69). The report also showed that 63% of the world population and 99% of the population of the European Union and the United States (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) lived in regions where the night sky is brighter than the threshold for light-polluted status set by the International Astronomical Union. 

In 1994, an earthquake knocked out the power in Los Angeles. Many residents called local emergency centers reporting a strange “giant, silvery cloud” in the dark sky. That giant, silvery cloud was the Milky Way, which many residents had just seen for the first time.

#IDSweek  
http://... more »

2013-04-05 18:15:30 (23 comments, 38 reshares, 94 +1s)

Biosphere 2
I had a fascination with the sealed glass ark of Biosphere 2. They built this huge air-tight greenhouse in order to rehearse for going to Mars and as a "cyclotron" for ecology, in order to study how ecosystems work. The idea was that 8 people would live inside the closed structure, and grow their own food and oxygen, clean water, etc. from inside. Nothing from outside for 2 years -- except sunlight. I was able to visit a number of times before, during and after the 2 years and took a bunch of photos. The story of what happened to it is too complicated to tell here, but in short it was abandoned after the first 2-year "trip". I  did write up what I thought science learned fromt the experiment here: http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch8-e.html
 Enjoy the pictures.

2013-04-04 20:24:20 (6 comments, 10 reshares, 35 +1s)

Next step in the Quantified Self is a device to measure the biochemicals in your breath as a way to monitor your health. Years away, but coming.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22013700

2013-04-04 06:29:34 (36 comments, 31 reshares, 60 +1s)

Bitcoin, the decentralized, secure, but bankless currency is like the Wikipedia: impossible in theory, but possible in practice. Despite doubters, it continues.

However a sophisticated analysis of it by Felix Salmon, a financial guy, makes a clear argument that while Bitcoin has many good qualities, it is not a good currency.

Bitcoin was invented to be based on mistrust, instead of trust. If you have currency based on trust -- trust of a bank, or government -- then sooner or later they will fail and destabilize the currency. Bitcoin is based on the trust of math, so is hard to destabilize. But it is also hard to stablize.

The problem with bitcoin is that it acts more like a commodity, going into bubble mode, run up by speculation, and gyrating in value like a scarce commodity. That's no way to run a currency, which you want very stable.

So Salmon says, a... more »