"Netflix’s data indicated that the same subscribers who loved the original [House of Cards] also…"

[Algorithmically determined movie-making. Only gonna get bigger…-egg]
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“Netflix’s data indicated that the same subscribers who loved the original [House of Cards] also…”: “Netflix’s data indicated that the same subscribers who loved the original [House of Cards] also gobbled down movies starring Kevin Spacey or directed by David Fincher. Therefore, concluded Netflix executives, a remake of the BBC drama with Spacey and Fincher attached was a no-brainer.”

– igowen: “How Netflix is turning viewers into puppets, an overly alarmist title (and conclusion) for an otherwise interesting article.”, via blech.

White House promises open access to all federally funded research

[Well, this is some great news! -egg]
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White House promises open access to all federally funded research: Jim Dezazzo sez, John Holdren, Obama’s science advisor, issued a directive on Friday to all research funding agencies to develop plans to make the results of federally-funded research publically available free of charge within 12 months of publication. It also requires that scientists receiving taxpayer dollars to improve upon the management and sharing of scientific data. This is huge! By my rough calculation, that means that approximately 20 US agencies will now make the science they fund available to the public. This is all in response to a We The People petition I signed over the summer (along with 65k other people).”


World’s largest panorama: London

World’s largest panorama: London:

Jeffrey sez, “I spent the last 4 months stitching 48 THOUSAND images together into a single panorama which lets you see things up to about 15 miles away.

This image is about 4 times larger than the previous world record image, a 114-gigapixel image of Shanghai (at the time incorrectly labeled as 271 gigapixels)

The panorama was shot from the top of BT Tower, using 4 cameras, lenses, and robots for moving the cameras. Three photographers using about $100,000 of gear spent 5 days up there. Ultimately we used 1 set of images which was shot over 90 minutes.

Stitching was done on two workstations with 192GB and 256GB of RAM, using Kolor Autopano Giga stitching software.

Sadly, the software choked on the gigantic dataset, and the stitching work ended up taking about 3 months longer than planned. This took a serious toll on my mental health. I am extremely happy to be finally putting this image out to the public and letting it see the light of day.

Of course there are errors in the image. In the end we had to deliver it to the client with a deadline which had already slipped by months. At any rate, there are FAR fewer errors in the image that I expected.

I hope you enjoy it. Can anyone find the pig?”

BT Tower 360 Panorama of London

(Thanks, Jeffrey!)


The semiotics of Double Dragon

[Good stuff. My new knowledge about the sociological effects of leaded gasoline seems to be coloring how I read a lot of things these days. -egg]
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Sent to you via Google Reader

The semiotics of Double Dragon

Finally, someone has written the in-depth article about the cultural ethos of classic 1980s beat-em-up Double Dragon. Dan Whitehead:

Like its closest peers—namely Renegade and Streets Of Rage—Double Dragon represents the vigilante myth at its most naked and vicious. In brief: The hero is a square-jawed white guy, clad in a blue-collar uniform of wifebeater and sleeveless denim jacket. … It’s the Reagan-era fantasy in a nutshell—the “one good man” of frontier myth updated for a world of crack dens and moral sleaze, taking down feral street punks with a bone-crunching kick to the face rather than a six-shooter.

A great article. However, I’m going to be that guy and suggest that he’s not quite nailed the time period. Double Dragon was more a delayed echo of gritty 70s crime flicks such as Death Wish and The Warriors than Reagan-era neon paranoia (in arcades: Narc). Likewise, Double Dragon’s elements of mysticism were more akin to Roger Moore Bond movies and kung-fu exploitation flicks than the contemporaneous Big Trouble in Little China. The lurid late-eighties glow–as resurrected in a 2012 reboot that owes as much to Ninja Turtles cartoons as the original game–only became the focus with the movie and later franchising. And this stuff about corn-fed Skynyrd types fighting urban america to the death? Not sure about that at all.

How it saddens me that Charles Bronson was not recalled from advanced retirement to play the the bad guy in a modern, Tarantino-esque Double Dragon film.


Graphene supercapacitors could make batteries obsolete

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Graphene supercapacitors could make batteries obsolete

A battery can hold a lot of energy, but it takes a long time to charge it. A capacitor can be charged very quickly, but doesn’t hold a comparable amount of energy.

A graphene supercharger is the best of both: it takes just seconds to charge, yet stores a lot of energy. Imagine being able to charge your spent laptop or phone battery in 30 seconds, and your electric car in a few minutes. Also, unlike batteries, Graphene supercapacitors are non-toxic.

The Nobel Prize was awarded to the inventors of Graphene in 2010. Wikipedia defines Graphene as a “substance composed of pure carbon, with atoms arranged in a regular hexagonal pattern similar to graphite, but in a one-atom thick sheet. It is very light, with a 1-square-meter sheet weighing only 0.77 milligrams.”

(via Tony Moore at the Boing Boing G+ community)


Music For Shuffle sketch #15 (by Matt Brown)“Been playing…

[This is a generative music approach I’ve thought a lot about but haven’t ever tried to implement. Cool stuff. -egg]
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Music For Shuffle sketch #15 (by Matt Brown)
“Been playing…:

Music For Shuffle sketch #15 (by Matt Brown)
“Been playing around with Unity a bit. It’s got amazing potential as a musical tool. So far, I’ve not done much – I made a crappy little room you can walk around. All the coloured objects and surfaces have loops of music attached to them, so you can go and listen to things by walking up to them, or whatever.”