Tag: future

Bookmarks for June 23, 2014

  • Maximum Happy Imagination | Magical Nihilism
    This has sort of crystallised something for me. From where we currently stand, we can just about see a "maximum happy imagination" future ahead of us – not a challenge free future, not by any means, but one where basic material needs can be catered for, for everyone, for free – and yet it seems we keep electing people who are ideologically set against taking the steps that would be required to achieve this. It's almost like pre-emptive future shock.
    Tags: future, economics

Bookmarks for May 22, 2014

  • Signs from the near future
    On the one hand, this is interesting because it's about the practical applications of design. On the other, quite a lot of these feel a bit retro-future to me. Which is kind of weird, and an idea I probably want to explore a bit in some form when time permits.
    Tags: future
  • On the Future of MetaFilter — Technology Musings — Medium
    Relatedly to one of today's other links here's a write up of what's going on with Metafilter, which basically comes down to "it's business model is built on Google being helpful in a specific way". Which is a flaw in their model, but it's also an interested outside perspective on things changing inside the Google black box.
    Tags: internet, google
  • Jeremy Palmer — Google is Breaking the Internet
    This is insane to me. I know I'm on record as not being a Google cheerleader, but this is weird, even for them – their business is built on accurately rating the trustworthiness of links, and yet they're mis-classifying trustworthy links as untrustworthy? This says to me that something is broken internally in Google, and if they don't get if fixed, it's going to be long-term bad for *everyone*. I'd like to see this do the rounds and get outcry about it, not because I believe Google are being Evil here, but because I think they need to be made very aware of the mistake, for everyone's good, including theirs.
    Tags: google, seo
  • Read This If All You Know About Hyenas Came From The Lion King
    OK, I now understand why Del is a fan of these creatures. Absolutely fascinating.
    Tags: hyenas, wildlife, animals

Bookmarks for March 3, 2012

  • Start Developing iOS Apps Today: Introduction
    Any once again, I mutter "I'll get round to it one of these days" to myself… (In case you're wondering, I've been largely away from the t'internet for a week, being either parked in front of the Xbox or out doing museums and galleries, and I'm catching up on what I've missed.)
    Tags: ios, development
  • In the Future Everything Will Be A Coffee Shop
    I find the sort of future he's describing here quite pleasing, as he's essentially saying that the one aspect of modern life that cannot be reduced away is the idea of a social hub. The practical reality of the matter is that someone with an internet connect does not need to go to the shops, the office, or really anywhere, except places where they can be among other humans.
    Tags: future, ideas, coffee
  • CERN | booktwo.org
    Here's a nice, easy to understand, and very readable bit of writing about CERN, what they do there, and why it's important.
    Tags: science, physics
  • Olloclip vs iPro Lens review | The TechBlock
    Been vaguely wondering about getting one of these. On the strength of this, it looks like the iPro is the one to get.
    Tags: iphone, photography
  • Verisign seizes .com domain registered via foreign Registrar on behalf of US Authorities. » blog2.easydns.org – Happenings and observations
    The US government have just demonstrated that they will sieze the internet based assets of foreign entities, even though no transaction related to those assets took place on US soil, and the crimes it thinks the company may have committed are not illegal in the places they may have committed them. This is (very) roughly like the US government marching into someone's home in London, and taking away their TV (that was purchased in London), on the grounds that it can be used to watch programs made in the US, because the owner, while living in London, drank alcohol at the age of 19. (I pick a trivial offence only because it's the first thing I can think of as an easy and everyday difference between US law and the law elsewhere.)

    To quote the article: "This is no longer a doom-and-gloom theory by some guy in a tin foil hat. It just happened."

    Tags: internet, dns
  • 15+ Google Chrome extensions for better privacy control
    Every time I need to set up a new install of Chrome, I have to hunt this page out. I'm bookmarking it so as to save myself a little time next time. Some of you may find a lot of it useful, too.
    Tags: privacy, chrome

Links for Tuesday November 8th 2011 through Wednesday November 9th 2011

  • A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design
    This is utterly brilliant. It very neatly skewers several big flaws in that Microsoft vision-of-the-future thing, and actually suggests several interesting possibilities for transformative technologies, if anyone can figure out how to do them. It also makes me think of a whole new spectrum of problems for people with certain disabilities that will need solving. If you give even a little shit about how you interact with the technology around you, this is a must read.
    Tags: UX, design, future, interaction
  • Custom input types for edit in place
    I think I'm about to fall down a JS hole. This, specific, JS hole. Lucky me.
    Tags: javascript, jquery

Bookmarks for November 9, 2010

Bookmarks for October 19, 2010

Bookmarks for October 6, 2010

  • The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe | :Ben Metcalfe Blog
    This could get slightly interesting if they ever come for bit.ly – engendering the single most massive dose of instant linkrot the intertubes have ever seen. (This is, of course, why URL shorteners are evil, and why anyone who uses them outside of twitter is a fuckwit). It's strongly suggest that if you need to post a shortened link anywhere, you use is.gd or goo.gl or another similar service. (Incidentally, in case anyone's wondering, it's stuff like this that made me use black-ink.org and not sda.ir as my primary domain when I consolidated everything.)
    Tags: dns, censorship, libya
  • Say hello to mechanically separated chicken. It’s…
    Horrifying. I knew about this, but I didn't *know* about this. From now on, I'm only eating chicken where I can name the specific part of the chicken it came from.
    Tags: food, chicken
  • Is your private phone number on Facebook? Probably. And so are your friends' | Technology | guardian.co.uk
    I know I sound like a broken record when I link this stuff. Tough. I can't decide if Facebook are stupid, or actively malevolent, but here's the bottom line: a service I quit using, because I didn't trust them with my person data, as a result of a number of breaches of privacy and security, has my phone number, something I regard as one of my most personal items of data, despite my best efforts. It's not something I give out to just anyone. Yet, tt's an accepted social norm to meet people at parties, and become friends on Facebook, and that's fine. But just because I'm someone's friend on Facebook does not mean I want them to have my number. A practical example: I do have a work account on there. It has two friends. I have neither of their phone numbers. Or rather, I *had* neither of their phone numbers. Now I've got them both. Neither of them has uploaded their number to Facebook. (I checked.) Read this article, then write to Facebook.
    Tags: facebook, privacy
  • russell davies: something something something
    Lot of interesting stuff about the lack of future (for lack of a better term) that's around at the moment. Playing join the dots with Mr Stross' idea that we might be suffering from massive future shock as a culture, it's not hard to see why we might be lacking a bit
    Tags: future
  • Think Progress » Tennessee County’s Subscription-Based Firefighters Watch As Family Home Burns Down
    There's so much going on here, it's just not funny. Mob jokes, political commentary against a conservative/libertarian point of view. But here's the thing: it's just not funny. A family's home burned down, and people with the equipment to help them stood and watched the flames. In what world is selfishness on that scale not a crime punishable by imprisonment?
    Tags: politics, libertarianism, fire, subscription

Bookmarks for September 30, 2010

  • Murray 4 Mayor
    Because Toronto deserves something nice. There are a number of Torontonians around these parts. I urge you all to vote Murray, in the strongest, tenderest possible terms.
    Tags: politics, toronto
  • Newly discovered planet may be first truly habitable exoplanet – UC Santa Cruz
    And yet we're still not funding space travel properly. What's up with that?
    Tags: science, space
  • 50 years of cyborgs: I have not the words. | Quinn Said
    This ones doing the rounds, and with excellent reason. A bit of writing on posthumanity that encompasses all the usual stuff and cyborgs and tool using and modern infrastructure, and goes to some fascinating and non-generally considered places beyond that. For example: "a cyborg revolution was happening the same year Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline coined the term. A hostile environment was being tamed by a newly and artificially capable people. It escaped notice and critique though, because the modified weren’t men, and then environment wasn’t space. The modified were women, and the environment was men. The women of the 60s were the first to modify and control their uteruses."
    Tags: future, writing, cyborg
  • The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism, By Jonathan Lethem (Harper's Magazine)
    An absolutely superb essay on influence, creativity, and copyright. The absolute best writing I have read on this subject, anywhere. And with a truly superb sting in the tail…
    Tags: writing, culture, copyright, essay, literature
  • Subtraction.com: The Only Thing a Router Is Good For
    This is one of those "so simple it's obvious" things, that clearly, no-one has ever thought of. I have one (semi-)regular physical interaction with my internet router, and I bet it's the same one you do. I turn it off and on again. That's the only thing I ever do with it. And yet, the switch to do that is hidden at the back, and there is absolutely no reason why this should be so. No reason at all.
    Tags: design

Bookmarks for September 20, 2010

  • Make Games – Finishing a Game
    Applicable to just about any creative endeavour, and there are a number of things in here I could do with remembering more often.
    Tags: design, games, productivity
  • Looxcie Wearable Camcorder: Capture Unexpected Moments
    Mildly tempted by this, if they produce an iphone version. It's a bit deep geek, but that's never stopped me from doing anything before. (Not so much interested in it from a sharing-with-the-world POV, more as a personal outboard memory tool – the ability to clip the last 30 secs of my life is potentially useful in a number of contexts.)
    Tags: video, gadgets
  • How to get search engine (Google, Yahoo, MSN) referal keywords using PHP, php, Steven York.com
    Reasonably trivial task, but once I'm going to have to do at work soon, I imagine. No sense re-inventing the wheel, and this looks like some decent code snippets to build into what we'll need.
    Tags: php, seo, reporting
  • DarkPatterns.org
    A listing of intentionally bad design patterns – tricks websites use to get you to do things that they want, or that cost you money. I'm happy to say that most of our clients don't ask us to do these, and those that do are usually dissuaded by us. But still, this is a good list of tricks to learn, so you can be aware when various sites might be trying to use them on you.
    Tags: design, psychology, usability
  • A working hypothesis – Charlie's Diary
    I had been blaming the decade long rise of extremism and authoritarian clampdowns on some kind of post-millennial fallout – the calendar ticks over, and nothing changes, and all that pent up stress has to go somewhere – but the idea that a significant chunk of the population of the planet might actually be suffering from future shock hadn't occurred to me, but it's an idea worth acknowledging, I think. (And playing connect the dots with – qv. Clay Shirky's Gin and Sitcoms ideas about cognitive surplus as an exacerbating factor.)
    Tags: future, culture, religion, tolerance