notes.husk.org

slavin: algopop: Google executive Eric Schimdt discusses...

Tue, 28 May 2013 18:43:00 +0100

algopop:

Google executive Eric Schimdt discusses Google concerns which include ongoing improvements to search algorithms to use artificial intelligence to deliver ‘truth’ rather than distorted results caused by ‘Google-Bombing’ and misleading marketing. In response other talkers suggest that perhaps the algorithms are worryingly given power to establish truths. That conversation happens around minute 30.

I remember pitching this basic idea four years ago to Someone Prominent Who Decides What People Hear, and I remember him saying: the thing is, there is not really anyone besides you who will be interested in that.

Which is a reminder that when decisions were made entirely by humans, that wasn’t so great, either.

If you’d rather have a copy of the file to keep, Start the Week has a podcast. (Apparently James Bridle’s Under The Shadow Of The Drone is also discussed.)

"Battlefield 3′s realism was largely hampered by the lack of birds,” says DICE technical director..."

Wed, 08 May 2013 17:05:14 +0100

““Battlefield 3′s realism was largely hampered by the lack of birds,” says DICE technical director Henrik Karlsson, “We did a survey and found that when players first entered Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, many complained about the lack of birds. Our partnership with AMD has allowed us to render up to 500 unique birds at once without any slowdown.””

- Battlefield 4 Uses New AMD Bird Rendering Technology: PecksFX at Play4Real.

Yes, AAA games studios are now spending their time worrying about rendering birds, and no, this isn’t an Onion article.

c86: How to use a Dial Telephone, 1951 This is a whitened...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 20:44:00 +0000

c86:

How to use a Dial Telephone, 1951

This is a whitened version of a scan of Bell Telephone’s booklet for schooldchildren, The Telephone And How We Use It.

"Otherwise, Wang poured out his unhappiness. The hackers were required to speak English, the..."

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:15:30 +0000

“Otherwise, Wang poured out his unhappiness. The hackers were required to speak English, the international language of technology, as well as an essential for phishing attacks on mostly U.S. targets. But when Wang tried to hone his English skills by reading magazines such as the Economist and Harvard Business Review, his boss rebuked him for reading too much foreign press.”

- China hacker’s angst opens a window onto cyber-espionage - latimes.com (via iamdanw)

"Imagine an always-on 360 degree HD wearable video camera. With a constant feed of all that she might..."

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 19:26:17 +0000

“Imagine an always-on 360 degree HD wearable video camera. With a constant feed of all that she might see, the photographer is freed from instant reaction to the Decisive Moment, and then only faced with the Decisive Area to be in, and perhaps the Decisive Angle. Evolve this further into a networked grid of such cameras, and the photographer is freed from those decisions as well, and is then merely a curator of reality after the fact. Any “live” input would consist of a “flag” button the photographer presses when she thinks a moment stands out, much like is already used in recording high-speed footage.”

- Clayton Cubitt: The future of photography is now.

This does seem to be the logical end point of developments like HTC’s Zoe technology. (However: see also seven of the other’s thoughts about the time taken in “curating” photography.)

"The most exciting is “Zoe” mode (from which the camera gets its name). Zoe lets you take..."

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 19:22:05 +0000

“

The most exciting is “Zoe” mode (from which the camera gets its name). Zoe lets you take full-resolution videos while simultaneously taking full-resolution still photos in burst mode. Shoot a video and the camera is taking photos for you.

“We invented a way of dual-path encoding where we would shoot still and video simultaneously with no data loss,” Whitehorn says. “We wouldn’t drop data yield down at all. We would bring in full-resolution video and full-resolution stills at the same time… What that means is you have this living asset, that moment will be alive — you can always scrub that moment and get that perfect smile.”

This is by far the most useful addition to a smartphone camera. You can return to a video and literally scroll through the images, select one and save it to your camera roll or share it. Instead of pulling a low-res screenshot, you can pull a full-res photo of the exact moment you want.

”

- Alexandra Chang: HTC One Busts the Megapixel Myth With ‘UltraPixels’ for Wired (via).

"The Maps app is important because it is an essential phone feature, a feature that almost everyone..."

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 02:03:00 +0100

“The Maps app is important because it is an essential phone feature, a feature that almost everyone uses. Insofar as users have expectations, it’s shaped by how much they’ve come to rely on the app in their daily lives.”

- Raging Thunderbolt, in John Gruber Is A Smart Guy (Or, Maps).

He’s not wrong to state this, but a little historical perspective: at this point five years ago, the only phone that came with a mapping application installed was the iPhone, with its Maps application (coded by Apple, data from Google). Nokia at this point had begun to offer mapping applications (and built-in GPS), but my memory of trying to install one on an N73 (after they’d stopped charging for the app) was one of failing repeatedly.

If you go back just another five years, the state of the art was Streetmap and Mapquest, both of which had interfaces with what seems now to be startlingly primitive indirect manipulation: if you wanted to look a tile to the right, you clicked on the little arrow to the right of the maps. If you were very lucky you had a big enough screen to expand to a 5x5 view, instead of the default 3x3.

Nonetheless, maps are now essential. It doesn’t matter that this is a change that took less than five years; whether or not we deserve to feel entitled to them, we definitely miss it when they’re not there.

From jocochrane, the cover of g2 containing Oliver...

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 20:51:00 +0100

From jocochrane, the cover of g2 containing Oliver Burkeman’s excellent article on how Google and Apple’s digital mapping is mapping us. Some choice quotes:

In an era of previously unimagined opportunities for exploring the far-off and strange, we want mainly to stare at ourselves.

It’s hard to interpret the occasional aerial snapshot of your garden as a big issue when the phone in your pocket is assembling a real-time picture of your movements, preferences and behaviour.

What happens when we come to see the world, to a significant extent, through the eyes of a handful of big companies based in California?

NASA Ad by bustbright on Flickr. Ad Agency: S.G. Stackig, Inc.

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 18:49:46 +0100

NASA Ad by bustbright on Flickr.

Ad Agency: S.G. Stackig, Inc.

An advert for the Burroughs 205 Computer, designed...

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 01:48:00 +0100

An advert for the Burroughs 205 Computer, designed by Campbell-Ewald Company, posted to Flickr by bustbright.