Friday, June 1, 2012

Tech Links: June 1, 2012

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Business


How Amazon is changing the rules for books and movies

How Tim Cook is changing Apple

Motorola Will Be Google’s Most Interesting Project Yet

Why Apple needs to settle its e-book suits

Entertainment


In the age of the internet and negative reviews, you need to be able to turn that one customer’s bad experience into a PR boost.

Life in Life: Using something called an OTCA metapixel (Outer Totalistic Cellular Automata Meta-Pixel), which is a pattern in Conway’s Game of Life, someone has implemented the Game of Life inside of another Game of Life.

The Most Magical Event in Twitter History Just Happened

The Romney Campaign released an app so you can illustrate the phrase "A Better Amercia. I'm with Mitt." People are going with it, and you can see the results at the blog Amercia is With Mitt!

Gadgets


3D printing can now make replacement jaws, thousands of user-designed widgets, electromechanical computers - but also ATM skimmer fronts, handcuff keys and gun parts. But can you own the shape of a thing?

As they become more readily available to consumers, LEDs will undoubtedly replace CFLs as the primary light source for residential and commercial, inside and out, due to their dramatic efficiency gains. In an unexpected turn of events, however, MIT researchers have developed an LED with 230 percent efficiency. Impossible, you say? Supposedly , the Law of Thermodynamics is not violated because the device converts ambient heat into photons.

A Facebook Phone: Ambitious Leap or Fatal Mistake?

Internet


46% of Americans Call Facebook A Fad

Google Lifts Veil On Copyright Takedowns: Detailed Data On Who Requests Removals

News


New York Legislation Would Ban Anonymous Online Speech | Threat Level | Wired.com

A Scary Precedent: Hackee Allowed To Decide Hacker’s Fate
Senator admits: SOPA “really did pose some risk to the Internet”

U.S. and Israel have been confirmed as the authors behind the Stuxnet virus. The program — codenamed "Olympic Games" — was started under Bush and accelerated under Obama. The virus was never meant to expand beyond the Iranian nuclear facility it targeted.

Reading & Discussion


Pandora's Vox: On Community in Cyberspace:  "when i went into cyberspace i went into it thinking that it was a place like any other place and that it would be a human interaction like any other human interaction. i was wrong when i thought that. it was a terrible mistake."

Resources & Software


Do SLR cameras confuse you? Then try the SLR Camera Simulator.

Science


Apocalypse Soon: Has Civilization Passed the Environmental Point of No Return? Four decades ago, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer model called World3 warned of such a possible course for human civilization in the 21st century. In Limits to Growth, a bitterly disputed 1972 book that explicated these findings, researchers argued that the global industrial system has so much inertia that it cannot readily correct course in response to signals of planetary stress. But unless economic growth skidded to a halt before reaching the edge, they warned, society was headed for overshoot—and a splat that could kill billions.

MIT Scientists Figure Out How to Get Ketchup Out of the Bottle

Minus 40 degrees is the same temperature in both Celsius and Fahrenheit. It is also the temperature where skin freezes, and the point where water is completely frozen (and mercury too). Strangely, it's also the average temperature of the record lows for all 50 United States, though normal in Alaska.

Science off the Sphere is a video series by Don Pettit aboard the ISS showing off the neat things you can do in zero-gravity.

Software


An anti-censorship software package Simurgh, aimed towards aiding dissidents in Iran and Syria, has been circulated with a backdoor that reports keystroke logs back to a server hosted in the U.S. but registered with a Saudi Arabian ISP.

JavaScript at 17 Brendan Eich on the language he initially created in just 10 days in 1995, and on its state now, 17 years later.

Technology


Apple's Crystal Prison and the Future of Open Platforms.

How Headphones Changed the World

Smartphones Reignite the OS Wars

Tutorials


Journey into Cryptography is a multipart video introduction to the subject for beginners, created by Brit Cruise and hosted by Khan Academy. There are several interactive tools to help explain some key concepts. Also, a recent lecture entitled "Principles of Security" was given by noted Javascript curmudgeon Douglas Crockford, focusing on security and the web, with a detour into Volapük.

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