Monday, September 30, 2013

Visual Economy Data

The Boom Towns and Ghost Towns of the New Economy - Richard Florida - The Atlantic


Number of Venture-Capital Deals, 2012


Job-Growth Change, 2009–13


Booming Or Busting: Cities And Regions After The Recession | On Point with Tom Ashbrook

One need to be careful interpreting such data... for example if some value was already high,
even without "change" it may still be higher that some other region that started low and has big change.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Algorithms @ Coursera

online class: Algorithms, Part I | Coursera:
"Algorithms, Part I
Kevin Wayne and Robert Sedgewick (Princeton)
This course covers the essential information that every serious programmer needs to know about algorithms and data structures, with emphasis on applications and scientific performance analysis of Java implementations. Part I covers basic iterable data types, sorting, and searching algorithms."

book @ safari Algorithms
By: Robert Sedgewick; Kevin Wayne


materials @ Princeton



Coursera has collected a huge number of classes from many elite universities, lead by Stanford. The format may not be always optimal for online teaching, but the quantity, and brand names, are there.

Udacity has nice custom classes, but it will require a breakthrough
("revolution") to make such custom method compete with "classic"
("evolution") recordings from existing universities.

edX is similar to Coursera, just a smaller "club" of MIT, Harvard, Berlekey, etc.

Common for Udacity and edX is that they are using YouTube for storing videos. Coursers appears to have a custom storage.

In any case, this are all fascinating resources for learning.

iOS App Store Statistics

Million dollar expense: Buying out the App Store — Tech News and Analysis



So, to purchase all apps from the store it would cost $1.1 M

Sublime Text 2: Tuts+ Premium Course

Free Video Classes:
Tuts+ Premium Course: Perfect Workflow in Sublime Text 2
:
From author: "Sublime Text 2, the best code editor available today. Don’t believe me? Let me convince you in this course."

"Tuts+ Premium courses teach you a single skill from top to bottom, inside out."

a book about Sublime Text 3

@ Jesse Liberty

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Running on JavaScript

Combining JavaScript with Other Languages on the Web @ InfoQ :
"Emscripten (is) open source project which utilizes LLVM to compile C and C++ to JavaScript, with the goal of allowing existing codebases to be automatically ported to standard web technologies."



Most of VMs of "managed" programming languages/platforms, such as Java, .NET, Ruby, Python etc. are written in C or C++.
With ability to compile C/C++ to JavaScript, it is now possible to run complete VMs on JavaScript in any web browser or node.js!
Then, it is possible to call between host (JavaScript) and hosted languages.

To make optimization of languages compiled to JavaScript faster,
a subset of language is used ("js.asm").
So JavaScript is now a real "assembly language of the web" (and more).

When this could be useful?
Re-using existing code, maybe.

IBM Analytics for Retail

"Free" book from IBM (in exchange for contact info)

IBM: Business Analytics in Retail for Dummies


Friday, September 27, 2013

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Carbon Nanotubes Computer

First Computer Made From Carbon Nanotubes Debuts - IEEE Spectrum:
"The computer is rudimentary by modern standards: it contains just 178 carbon-nanotube-based transistors... It operates on only 1 bit of information.... And it clocks in at just 1 kHz"
...the machine, developed at Stanford... is the first of its kind and an important step for a material that has long shown promise as an alternative to silicon"

GUID in 20 ASCII characters

Coding Horror: Equipping our ASCII Armor:

A GUID is 128 bits, or 16 bytes.

Hex encoded GUID... uses ASCII values 0-9, A-F and results in a 32 byte string:
22da5537-de54-459d-9b33-f40f2101143b

An ASCII85 encoded GUID..... uses ASCII values 33-118 (decimal) and results in a 20 byte string:
[Rb*hlkkXVW+q4s(YSF0



Netflix's "Simian Army" (Chaos Monkey and others) @ InfoQ

Resiliency through Failure - Netflix's Approach to Extreme Availability in the Cloud:
"Ariel Tseitlin discusses Netflix' suite of tools, collectively called the Simian Army, used to improve resiliency and maintain the cloud environment. The tools simulate failure in order to see how the system reacts to it."


LinkedIn: Scalability & Availability @ InfoQ

Building Modern Web Sites: A Story of Scalability and Availability

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Agile Mindset

The Agile Mindset with Linda Rising on the Hanselminutes Technology Podcast: Fresh Air for Developers: "Scott talk to consultant Linda Rising about the Agile Mindset. Are our skills fixed or are with always growing? Does that change if we change our mindset? Can organizational mindsets affect our performance? What does the research say about these tapes we're listening to in our heads every day?"

Agile Alliance :: KEYNOTE: The Power of an Agile Mindset
... much of Agile's success was the result of the placebo effect, that is, good things happened because we believed they would. The placebo effect is a startling reminder of the power our minds have over our perceived reality. Now cognitive scientists tell us that this is only a small part of what our minds can do. Research has identified what I like to call "an agile mindset," an attitude that equates failure and problems with opportunities for learning, a belief that we can all improve over time, that our abilities are not fixed but evolve with effort.


MindSet: A Book written by Carol Dweck. Teaching a growth mindset creates motivation and productivity in the worlds of business, education, and sports.

Chrome Native Client vs. Firefox asm.js

Google's dilemma: A faster but fragmented Web? | Internet & Media - CNET News:
"What is Native Client?

NaCl is a special-purpose environment for running adapted C or C++ programs in a browser at close to the native speed. It provides security mechanisms to ensure that people aren't just clicking on a link and running malware that could wreak havoc on their machines. It can handle software that's heavily threaded -- meaning different elements run simultaneously for better performance.

By running programs adapted from their original form written in the C or C++ programming languages, Native Client reaches close to the speed of native software on a PC. Google thinks NaCl speeds can approach a few percent of native-software speed."
...

"Brendan Eich, the original creator of JavaScript and now Mozilla's chief technology officer, prefers an alternative that his team is building into Firefox: asm.js. With asm.js support, a browser can run a special subset of JavaScript instructions much faster, and with tools like Mozilla's Emscripten, programmers can convert their C or C++ software into that subset.

In raw computation speed asm.js could match Native Client" for a project like the Google+ photo-editing software, Eich said,"



'via Blog this'

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Google buys more buildings in Silicon Valley

Google buys more buildings in Silicon Valley - San Jose Mercury News

"Google is in very-high-growth mode, obviously"

Honda Accord Hybrid 50 mpg

Honda Accord Hybrid boasts 50 mpg in 2014 model - Autoweek

"The 2014 Accord Hybrids most impressive feature has to be the company’s claimed 50 mpg city/45 mpg highway/47 mpg combined, making it one of the more competitive hybrid four-door sedans on the road today"

Regular @ Edmunds

Plug-in Hybrid @ Edmunds

Monday, September 23, 2013

Microsoft's Surface 2

Under the Hood of Microsoft's Surface 2 | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

@ PC World

@ CNET

Porsche 911

911 Turbo and Turbo S cabriolet LA auto show Specs price unknown - Autoweek



2014 Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet Details Revealed, Starts at $161,650 - Motor Trend WOT

2014 Porsche 911 Turbo S road test, review, specs, photos and pricing - Autoweek

Mercedes S-Class vs Tesla Model S

Mercedes-Benz's S-Class redefines luxury - Autoweek


When Mercedes-Benz axed its Maybach brand last year after an unsuccessful revival of the nameplate
... Mercedes would have you call the sixth-generation S-class “the best car in the world,”


And the car really has impressive features...

It is just that Elon Musk is sure that Tesla Model S
will be worth more 3 years after purchase than Mercedes Class S
.
And reviews so far say that Tesla Model S is the "best car"...
(At least it was until new Class-S is reviewed...)

And since Tesla is all electric, there no smell of exhausts,
so it does not need a fragrances, like Mercedes's gasoline cars :)

And it has bigger 17" touchscreen...

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Windows 8.1 boot to desktop

3 Quick Tips for Windows 8.1


"To access the feature, you will need to find a blank space along the taskbar at the bottom of the screen and right-click on it. Choose “properties” and then select the “Navigation” tab.

Here,you will find an option called “Go to the desktop instead of Start when I sign in”. Simply check the box next to it, click OK, and you are done."

Google 10x company "Calico"

WTF Is Calico, And Why Does Google Think Its Mysterious New Company Can Defy Aging? | TechCrunch:
"Led by former Genentech CEO and current Apple Chairman, Arthur D. Levinson, Calico has big plans in health care — at least over the long term. From what we’ve heard thus far, the new project will leverage Google’s massive cloud and data centers to help facilitate research on disease and aging by mining its trove of data for insight into their origins."


Portable Sun and Weather Shelter

Clever idea (and product)

Amazon.com: Sport-Brella Umbrella, Blue: Sports & Outdoors



Friday, September 20, 2013

Femtoduino: smallest arduino clone

smallest arduino clone | Femtoduino


"A cheap ($12) and easy way to add the full power of an Arduino UNO to any project. It weighs less than 2 grams, and fits almost anywhere!"


Google: Cookies => AdID

Google Moving Towards Trashing Cookies for Good? : Tech : Latinos Post:
"Google is considering changing the way it tracks online browsing activities, retiring the "cookie" and replacing it with an anonymous identifier called AdID."

Why you should be worried about Google ditching cookies | PCWorld

Reactive Extensions

.NET Rocks!:
"Carl and Richard talk to Matthew Podwysocki about the latest news around Reactive Extensions. Matthew starts out talking about how Reactive Extensions has moved into open source in a big way, with lots of cross platform support 
- .NET, JavaScript, C++, Ruby, Python, even Java itself!"

RxJava @ GitHub, by Netflix



The reactive manifesto
  • react to events: the event-driven nature enables the following qualities
  • react to load: focus on scalability rather than single-user performance
  • react to failure: build resilient systems with the ability to recover at all levels
  • react to users: combine the above traits for an interactive user experience

"The End Of Average"

Economist Tyler Cowen On The End Of Average | On Point with Tom Ashbrook:
American inequality grows again. 

Economist Tyler Cowen says it’s going to change us, and describes how.
book: Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation

Joseph Stiglitz, Economist and professor at Columbia University, recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001, former senior vice president and chief economist at the World Bank and author of “The Price of Inequality

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Phonebloks: A Customizable Smartphone

Phonebloks - A Customizable Smartphone That Could Revolutionize The Industry - Forbes

Phoneblocks "A phone worth keeping"

Windows 8.1

Microsoft makes Windows 8.1 more DIY-friendly with full versions | PCWorld:
$120 for Windows 8.1 by itself, and $200 for the Pro edition. If you already have Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 and wish to upgrade to the Pro version, you can still do so for $100.
Users who already own Windows 8 will receive Windows 8.1 as a free upgrade from the Windows Store.

Tesla: Fully Autonomous EV

Tesla Job Listing Reveals Push for Fully Autonomous EV | Autopia | Wired.com

Pluralsight Academic Grants

Pluralsight Academic


Pluralsight is offering grants to educational institutions (Universities/Colleges, Vocational School, K-12)

Discounted and No Cost access to online training,
in exchange for using names of institutions (and exposure).
Clever, and useful. Pluralsight has a bright future.


Sunday, September 15, 2013

Device to Cloud, Hands-On (Microsoft 'Devices & Services')

Device to Cloud, Hands-On. Part 1: Prototyping Platforms | Subscribe! | Channel 9
"Arduino, Gadgeteer, Netduino, Android ADK, Seeedstudio Grove, and Raspberry Pi. "

It is likely that Microsoft's "Devices & Services Company" strategy is "inspired" by Apple and Google.
High-end devices are fairly profitable (for Apple at least),
and with Google undermining price of software (can't beat free),
online services are a relatively safe bet...

For enthusiasts there are now many choices for DIY gadgets...
That may not be Microsoft's business strategy,
but sure is interesting...


book: ‘How to Create a Mind' by Ray Kurzweil

#25. A Summary of ‘How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed’ by Ray Kurzweil | New Books in Brief

A nice explanation how human brain works with hierarchy of abstract concepts and pattern recognition,
that enable solving complex situations.

With enough computing power, that could be emulated with AI.
Ray is now working with/for Google, so computing power may be available...

Singularity may be coming :)

Abandoned Mansion$ in Desert

Economic Collapse Seen Through Aerial Photos of Abandoned Mansions | Raw File | Wired.com

"Roma Hills homes and foreclosed Obsidian Mountain develpment, Ascaya lots beyond. Henderson, NV 2012."
$250 million spent for terraformation, wasted.

A crazy world. Why would somebody terraform desert hills in Nevada?
Same as expanding Las Vegas, or making artificial islands in Dubai: money and energy.
Gambling on making money, while using enormous amounts of energy...

Many times such gambles fail, and money and energy gets wasted..

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Friday, September 13, 2013

Nokia Lumia Android

Nokia Lumia Android phone confirmed and doused - SlashGear


"Nokia Lumia Android device was not only a possibility, it was real. "

The contract with Microsoft was expiring in 2014, so if Microsoft didn't act as it did,
they could have lost a major manufacturer of Windows Phones...
So they almost didn't have a choice... Maybe that was Nokia plan anyway,
to force Microsoft to buy them...


And here is one crazy idea: how about running Android apps on a Windows Phone?

That should be possible with a little bit of tweaking...
Instant access to many apps, and a reason for developers to develop for both...

Online Education’s Millionaire Teacher

Online Education’s Millionaire Teacher | the pluralsight blog

"Since he has been a part of Pluralsight, Scott Allen has earned more than $1.8 million in royalties and fees, and is on track to earn more than $1 million in 2013 alone!
...
In 2013 alone, Pluralsight instructors will take home over $5 million in royalty income. Pluralsight’s top 5 instructors will earn an average of $400,000 this year for their courses. The average annual royalties across all 125+ Pluralsight instructors is over $40,000 this year."  podcast @ Herding Code

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Marc Benioff explains Steve Jobs' spirituality

Marc Benioff explains Steve Jobs' spirituality and chides Apple | Apple - CNET News: ".

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff has a message for Apple and the tech industry:
"Develop yourself, find that greatness, and then be mindful and project the future."
That's what Steve Jobs told Benioff over the years as Benioff grew from an intern in 1984 writing assembly code for the Macintosh at Apple to the co-founder and CEO of a pioneering cloud computing company with a market cap of nearly $30 billion.





@ Amazon @ Wikipedia

APPSTORE trademark by SalesForce

APP STORE trademark by Apple

iPhone 5C, 5S; iOS 7

Everything You Need to Know About Tuesday's Apple Event, Period | Gadget Lab | Wired.com:
"Apple will sell its 700 millionth iOS device next month. 
“iOS 7 will quickly become the world’s most popular operating system,”"


How about Android, and Windows?
Clever Statistics :)
iOS is auto-updated to latest version,
and both Android and Windows keep many old versions...

Windows 8.1 may try to fix that, by providing a free upgrade.
A strange thing is that most of iOS mobile devices cost more than average Windows desktop or laptops...
A good business... while it lasts...

Getting Windows 8.1 RTM bits

Getting Windows 8.1 RTM bits:
"Based on the feedback... (Microsoft) will be making available our current Windows 8.1 and Windows 8.1 Pro RTM builds (as well as Windows Server 2012 R2 RTM builds) to the developer and IT professional communities via MSDN and TechNet subscriptions. 

The current Windows 8.1 Enterprise RTM build will be available through MSDN and TechNet for businesses later this month. For developers, we are also making available the Visual Studio 2013 Release Candidate,"

Stack Exchange Data Explorer

Stack Exchange Data Explorer


SQL queries for exploring data from StackOverflow and many related sites.
The tool was created by sam.saffron


Monday, September 09, 2013

Verizon wireless subscriber value

Philip Greenspun's Weblog » Value of each Verizon wireless subscriber:
"Verizon is trying to buy 45 percent of Verizon Wireless from Vodafone (Reuters) for $130 billion. This values the wireless portion of Verizon at about $288 billion. There are approximately 100 million Verizon Wireless subscribers. Therefore, each one of us is worth nearly $3000 in expected future profits"


Saturday, September 07, 2013

Elon Musk: gesture-controlled 3D printing rocket parts

Hyperloop creator invents Iron Man-inspired 3D software system to design ROCKET PARTS | Mail Online:

"Elon Musk has invented a gesture-controlled 3D printing system for rocket parts inspired by the design process in the first Iron Man film
...
In the video he uses hand gestures and a special controller to assemble wire frame blueprints that could be sued in a SpaceX rocket"

Leap Motion

@ Best Buy

Google's Chrome Apps

Google's Trojan horse: how Chrome Apps will finally take on Windows | The Verge

"on Chrome's fifth birthday, (2013-09-05) Google is announcing the rollout of what it's calling Chrome Apps... Chrome has been serving up web apps since 2010 when the Chrome Web Store opened up alongside the launch of the Chrome OS. Chrome Apps, however, are different than what's been offered before...

The new apps look and behave much like the native apps you find on Windows and OS X. They're built using web technologies, but also with Chrome-specific code that means they won't be able to run on other web browsers...

They can exist outside of your browser window as distinct apps, work offline, and sync across devices and operating systems. They can also access your computer's GPU, storage, camera, ports, and Bluetooth connection. "



Essentially, this is an equivalent of PhoneGap now bundled with Chorome browser, so web-based apps can access other resources of computer (to work offline), and to avoid tabs, address bar and other "chrome" of the browser... Clever, but how secure it is?

"HTTP Performance Is a Solved Problem"

an opinionated and informative presentation:
HTTP Performance Is a Solved Problem @ InfoQ
Take away message:
HTTP Performance is a solved ... for now.
SPDY/HTTP/2.0 does not help
Varnish will rock on:
http://varnish-cache.org

'Android KitKat' Candy Bars $

Google's 'Android KitKat' Will Appear on 50 Million Candy Bars | Adweek

"Hershey and Google are offering consumers the chance to win 1,000 Nexus 7 tablets, 150,000 Google Play credits worth $5 apiece and 20,000 coupons for eight-ounce bags of Kit Kat Minis. Starting Friday and running through Jan. 31, 2014, the giveaways will be advertised on Kit Kat packaging."

Google's Android already garners 46 percent of the domestic (USA) smartphone OS market, besting Apple's iOS (38 percent)

Thursday, September 05, 2013

QuadCopters, NodeBots, RobotsConf

podcast & links: NodeBots and RobotsConf with Chris Williams @ .NET Rocks!: "Carl and Richard talk to Chris Williams about building and programming robots - all kinds of robots! After Carl opens with a conversation about the Internet of Things, Chris digs into the cool tiny computers that make it possible, like Arduino and Raspberry Pi. Communicating with small computers takes cleverness too, so don't forget about serial and serial's grown-up cousin USB. From there, the conversation turns to different robots, especially quadcopters. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadcopter





@ Amazon

RC Helicopters could be very dangerous...

Wednesday, September 04, 2013

Reactive Programming

Reactive Programming as an Emerging Trend @ InfoQ

Reactive programming (RP) is based on data flows and the propagation of change, with the underlying execution model of a programming language automatically propagating changes through the data flow. With the popularity of event-driven, scalable, and interactive architectures both on the server and the client, the concept of “reactiveness” is increasingly gaining attention.

Principles of Reactive Programming | Coursera
from Nov 4th 2013 (7 weeks long)
Martin Odersky, Erik Meijer and Roland Kuhn

"Learn how to write composable software that is event-driven, scalable under load, resilient and responsive in the presence of failures. Model systems after human organizations or inter-human communication."


Erik Meijer is creator of Reactive Extensions

Latest Dart VM Beats JVM in DeltaBlue Benchmark

Latest Dart VM Beats JVM in DeltaBlue Benchmark @ InfoQ


Shortly after Dart2js outperformed hand-written JavaScript, the latest Dart VM now beats JVM 7 64-bit Server, and other versions, in the DeltaBlue benchmark.
...
While we cannot draw final conclusions based on a single benchmark, we can safely say that Google has enhanced Dart VM’s performance to the point where it becomes a serious contender.




This is not surprising, since it is the same person, Lars Bak
who created Java HotSpot VM (that made Java fast),
V8 JavaScript engine (that made JavaScript fast)
and Dart language...

Tuesday, September 03, 2013

Android 4.4 "KitKat"

BBC News - Android KitKat unveiled in Google surprise move

The news comes as a surprise as the firm had previously indicated version 4.4 of the OS would be Key Lime Pie.

Best tablets lists

The Tablet Show, show 100 (review of 2 years of tablets)

Best tablets - CNET Reviews:

Who Forced Microsoft Change?

ValueAct Hedge Fund's Huge Microsoft Victory - Forbes:
"Despite owning a mere 0.8% stake in Microsoft, ValueAct Capital Management has forced its way onto the board of the software giant days after longtime Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced he would be quitting within a year
...
hedge fund wants Microsoft to become more of an enterprise software and business services company as opposed to one focused on the retail consumer."


Microsoft to buy Nokia "devices and services" for $7.2B

Microsoft Enters Into $7.2B Deal To Buy Nokia’s Devices And Services Business And License Its Patents | TechCrunch


Also as part of the deal, Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop will be stepping aside as Nokia President and CEO to fill a new role at Microsoft as “Nokia Executive Vice President of Devices & Services.” Being that Elop has emerged as a leading rumored contender for the soon-to-be-vacant spot at the helm of Microsoft, this could be a strong signal about the future of Microsoft’s executive leadership.

@zdnet Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft will acquire around 32,000 people Nokia employees, including 4,700 people in Finland and 18,300 employees directly involved in the manufacture, assembly, and production of devices worldwide. Nokia will also assign its long-term patent licensing agreement with Qualcomm, a smartphone chip maker, and licensing agreements, to Microsoft as part of the deal.

Next in line: Blackberry...

Compiling MSIL to JS

Google is using GWT (Google Web Toolkit), that is compiling Java to JavaScript.
Some prominent people in Microsoft have been developing similar system for .NET, and apparently that is now abandoned.
Instead, a new language TypeScript is developed
(by other prominent Microsoft people :)

From the Archives: Erik Meijer and Mark Shields - Compiling MSIL to JS | Charles | Channel 9:
"today it lives here I believe https://github.com/Reactive-Extensions/IL2JS
...
This was open-sourced. Mark and Erik no longer work at MS and so this project is no longer alive inside MS."

Success of projects, in particular in Microsoft, is tricky...
It at least as much "sales and marketing" skills as the technical excellence...


Monday, September 02, 2013

Silicon Valley, VC Entrepreneurship "University"

Tim Draper On Silicon Valley And Entrepreneurship @ On Point with Tom Ashbrook

interview with Timothy Draper, venture capitalist, and founder of 
"Draper University of Heroes, a boarding school for young entrepreneurs."
(8 weeks, $9000)


CSS Transforms & Animations

How to Create Full-page Animations Using CSS


body {
transform-origin: 50% 100%;
transform: rotateX(45deg);
}

Bringing pages alive with CSS Transforms & Animations:
"CSS Transforms are a powerful feature that allows you to manipulate elements of your Web Content in much more interesting and flexible ways than traditionally possible through CSS markup. The specification provides support for rotations, translations, scaling and skewing (as well as arbitrary transforms and compositions of multiple transforms). Combined with the ability to manipulate elements in 3D space, alter the center of projection and affect the origin of transformations, CSS Transforms can be somewhat daunting at first sight for the uninitiated. "

Given the four corner points of an image to be drawn in a perspectively distorted coordinate system @ StackOverflow

Sunday, September 01, 2013

Visualization: Maps Size

The TRUE Size of Africa – Have Our Maps Been Misleading For Over 500 Years? | Collective-Evolution

Visualization: Data/Time (History)

Interesting idea... same could be applied to any data set over time... The 1931 Histomap: The entire history of the world distilled into a single map/chart.

Micro-USB vs Mini-USB

USB - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Types of USB connectors left to right (ruler in centimeters): Micro-B plug, UC-E6 proprietary (non-USB) plug, Mini-B plug, Standard-A receptacle (upside down), Standard-A plug, Standard-B plug
Counter-intuitively, the "micro" is the most durable 

Fusing WebGL, CSS 3D and HTML

Web graphics is getting seriously fast, in particular in Chrome...

Zero to Sixty in One Second — Acko.net:
"Hence the goal: to fuse 3D elements into the page like before, but with full 60 fps rendering. Plus to use WebGL instead of CSS 3D where possible, and be free of the constraints of the DOM."

Visualization: Maps Distributions

The Best Map Ever Made of America's Racial Segregation | Wired Design | Wired.com (20 maps)

"White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown

This map, created by Dustin Cable at University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, is the most comprehensive representation of racial distribution in America ever made. Here: New York City. Image: Dustin Cable

Tesla Model S REST API

Tesla Model S REST API Authentication Flaws - Programming - O'Reilly Media

"For the most part, people use the Tesla REST API via the iPhone and Android mobile apps. The apps enable you to do any of the following:

  • Check on the state of battery charge
  • Muck with the climate control
  • Muck with the panoramic sunroof
  • Identify where the hell your car is and what it’s doing
  • Honk the horn
  • Open the charge port
  • Change a variety of car configuration settings
  • More stuff of a similar nature"

The authentication protocol in the Tesla REST API is flawed...There’s no immediate danger from this architectural flaw that compromises the safety of the Model S...

Nissan Self-Driving Cars

Nissan Sets Goal of Introducing First Self-Driving Cars by 2020 - Bloomberg


"Nissan Motor Co. (7201), which grabbed a global lead in electric car sales with its Leaf hatchback, wants to do the same thing with self-driving vehicle technology and plans to offer such models by 2020...

Nissan has sold more than 75,000 Leaf electric vehicles worldwide since late 2010. Including alliance partner Renault SA (RNO) of France, they have delivered about 100,000 electric cars.

The company showed off self-driving Leaf models at a former U.S. military base in Irvine yesterday, with the robotic cars ferrying passengers in simulated urban driving conditions."

Book: ‘The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet’

An optimistic view on the future, powered by innovation and market forces

#34. A Summary of ‘The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet’ by Ramez Naam | New Books in Brief

And the really wonderful thing about our ability to innovate is that, unlike natural resources, it does not shrink over time. Rather, it only expands. This is because innovation is built on ideas, and ideas themselves only grow and multiply. Ideas can even be shared without ever being diluted. Instead, the sharing of ideas often generates even more ideas. The power of ideas—and the innovation that goes along with it—truly is an infinite resource.

about author: Ramez Naam (scientist, ex Microsoft executive)


One observation from the book is that patents have enabled easier
sharing of ideas. Patents laws started in 1474 in Venice,
and this coincided with greatest expansion of technology, science and wealth creation...

Trouble is that the system of patents now really protects only biggest companies (Microsoft, Apple and similar).
From this book such semi-monopolistic system was main reason for China not to progress as fast as Europe, where a dynamic market of small players enabled fast evolution of ideas...

Time to improve market of ideas?