The illusion of choice I know there are people I know who boycott Nestle chocolate, while buying from other Nestle brands, I presume because they're unaware Nestle own them.
Got tagged in a twitter discussion between friends while I was asleep last night – always a weird thing to wake up to, as I sort of feel like the discussion as passed me by, and it’s not appropriate to response. The vague context for the tagging was something about how I believe all corporations are evil. The comment wasn’t meant seriously, but it did start me thinking. Must try and find the time to write up something coherent on the subject at some point.
Saw a book review on-line today, for a YA book called Fair Coin. Thought “that sounds interesting, I should read that” and went to try and buy it there and then. There doesn’t appear to be a digital edition available. There’s a lost sale, right there. And while two years ago, confronted with the same thing, I’d have shrugged and moved on (and OK, that’s actually what I’m doing now, I’m hardly weeping blood about this), today this feels like publisher incompetence. There is no excuse for not having day-and-date ebook editions available any more. Two years ago, sure, the contracts for the books being published then may not have included digital rights, or the publisher may simply not have gotten it’s digital distribution deals in place. But what’s the excuse today?
I really like this “distraction free” mode that’s baked into wordpress now. How long has that been there?
Contemplating a very severe book purge. Anyone out there interested in acquiring complete TPB runs of Preacher, Transmet, Invisibles, etc? I haven’t decided for sure one way or the other, I’m just wondering how easy they’d be to give away? (Other than to the charity shop, of course.) I sort of suspect that most folk I know who’d be interested already own them.
CMAP #2: How Books Are Made – Charlie’s Diary I have had a few conversations recently with people who have kvetched about having to pay the same price for an ebook as they do for the paperback, and I have wished that I was able to easily find this post to point them at. Short version: the cost of your paperback book is *not* a materials cost. Physical production, shipping and distribution account for around a quid of the price. The other six of seven quid is labour, and there's a lot more labour goes in that you might think, and most of it isn't the author's.
Twitter Blog: Introducing the Innovator’s Patent Agreement This is quite a good idea, although one might quibble over what "only used defensively" means – it's possible that I'm misunderstanding the legalese, but it looks to me that any company who has filed a patent infringement suit for any reason in the last ten years (and who might be infringing, obviously) would be fair game. Which in turn means that this is meaningless, and will be just as innovation-stifling in practice as any current agreement. But I await being told that I've misunderstood.
I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave | Mother Jones I feel guilty about shopping with amazon (and other internet-only retailers). Not guilty enough to stop, yet, but guilty nonetheless.
Just how big are porn sites? | ExtremeTech YouPorn apparently accounts for around 2% of the web's traffic (by volume) per day. Personally, I'm interested to see that they're using a lot of the obvious technologies, rather than anything really ultra-custom.
Rogers’ “Cybersecurity” Bill Is Broad Enough to Use Against WikiLeaks and The Pirate Bay | Electronic Frontier Foundation Americans! Are you aware of CISPA? Here are the facts: it is not a replacement for SOPA. It is however, badly drafted enough that it could very likely be similar in effect. Please write to your representatives, and make the point that while you don't necessarily oppose the aims of CISPA (many of them are actually quite sensible), the problem is that that bill as currently drafted is absolutely as bad as SOPA was. Seriously: if you got up in arms about SOPA, you need to write to them about the current draft of CISPA.
iTunes: Time to right the syncing ship | Macworld "When it comes to hardware, Apple is bold in replacing popular old products with something new that’s different, but better. It’s time for the company to do the same with iTunes." Time, and more than time. I want a lightweight media library manager, a lightweight store and a lightweight sync management tool. iTunes has become slow and painful to use.
ANU Quantum Random Number Server An actual random number generator! Really random numbers. That's quite exciting. The next time I need a cryptographic salt, I shall be coming here.
Space Jam Do you remember what the promotional websites for movies used to look like? Here's one from 1995!
Why the New Aesthetic isn’t about 8bit retro, the Robot Readable World, computer vision and pirates | If you've been wondering why the New Aesthetic looks like 30 year old computer graphics (or if you haven't heard the term, but have wondered why half the fashion industry appears to have fallen down a pixelated 80s hole) then here is one possible answer. Short version: what computers can see and understand (in realtime) now is at about the level of 30 year old graphics. Where it gets interesting is where it talks about what we can extrapolate this to mean for machine vision over the next decade or so.
Cartes Infernales by Ariana Osborne — Kickstarter Every time I see Kickstarter used for something cool, I die a little inside, because I cannot contribute, because Amazon are a bag of dicks. So once again, I do what I can, and point you at yet another project that I would love to contribute to. I've used the Dictionnaire Infernal as a source of inspiration many times in the past, and would love a deck of these to use a a prop. But instead one of you will have to stump up the cash, and let me look on in envy. Which is kind of appropriate, I suppose.
Learn Touch Typing Free – TypingClub I was asked if I touch type while away in Northern Ireland. I don't, but I've always wanted to learn. Might give this a go, if I haven't go too many bad habits from my self taught typing.
When the cops subpoena your Facebook information, here’s what Facebook sends the cops – Phlog Not actually posting this as a dig at Facebook, it's just interesting stuff. I'm not personally wild about the fact that subpoena relating to getting information relating to one user can result in the forking over of messages relating to unrelated users – I would prefer it if they were required to specify that they were interested in correspondence between parties A and B, rather than just getting all party A's correspondence, but I know that's not how the world works, and that's not actually Facebook's fault. See? I can be rational about this stuff, if I try hard!
