June 18th, 2013 § 0 comments §
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I love experiments that turn the invisible, visible. In this case it’s the vibration of a metal plate and it’s pretty neat.
Leave a commentAmazing Resonance Experiment on Devour.com: “With a tone generator, a metal plate, some salt, and a little voodoo, different frequencies create unique geometric patterns during this Chladni plate experiment.”
June 18th, 2013 § 0 comments §
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As a security guy Rich Mogull was perplexed by his invite to attend the recent WWDC keynote. With the announcement of Keychain and Activation Lock he understood why he was invited and is impressed by Apple’s approach to tackling real world security problems.
Leave a commentThe consistent thread through all these advances is Apple attempting, wherever possible, to use security to improve the user experience and make common security problems simply go away. By focusing so much on design, Apple increases the odds users will adopt these technologies and, so, stay safer.
June 12th, 2013 § 0 comments §
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Marco Arment thinks iOS 7 is the most disruptive thing to come to the platform since the launch of the app store.
Leave a commentI don’t think most developers of mature, non-trivial apps are going to have an easy time migrating them well to iOS 7. Even if they overcome the technical barriers, the resulting apps just won’t look and feel right. They won’t fool anyone.
This is great news.
Apple has set fire to iOS. Everything’s in flux. Those with the least to lose have the most to gain, because this fall, hundreds of millions of people will start demanding apps for a platform with thousands of old, stale players and not many new, nimble alternatives.
June 11th, 2013 § 0 comments §
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A great overview of what happened yesterday at the WWDC keynote. Even though I caught most of the keynote I still found it informative. The author also doesn’t digress into opinion beyond a few NBD (no big deal) comments.
Leave a commentJune 7th, 2013 § 2 comments §
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Three months ago the TSA announced they were going to start allowing small knives back on airplanes. As someone who has lost two key chain knives to the TSA I was thrilled. As someone who has long hated the security theater that the agency provides I was honestly dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe that someone actually had the balls to rollback one of the many stupid rules that give us a false sense of security. My joy was short-lived. Faced with pressure from flight attendants and legislators the TSA re-banned small knives. *Facepalm*
I understand why though. Who is going to remember the person that makes our lives easier by paring back security? Who is going to be crucified the first time a flight attendant gets cut by some drunk asshole? The political calculus is simple and it’s depressing. Enter the NSA’s PRISM project. In news that surprised nobody it turns out the NSA is keeping track of who we are calling. And by “we” I mean every man, woman and child in the country and then some to be sure. The lack of surprise makes it all the more appalling.
So who do we blame? We can’t really blame Obama because he simply did the same thing that any other viable presidential candidate would have done. At least he got a warrant.
Blaming the Obama Administration for permitting the NSA to request this type of information is like blaming a dog for eating the steak you left on the counter while you were at work. Maybe the perfect dog wouldn’t do that. Maybe. You really should have seen that one coming.
The PATRIOT Act is a tool often used to violate our civil liberties but you can’t really blame the tool. In reality it’s our own irrational fear of terrorism that has brought us here. When three people die in a bombing we call it a national tragedy and congress launches hearings to find out how on earth we failed to stop two morons from building a bomb out of fireworks. Spoiler alert, it’s impossible. If we can’t even figure out how to stop our kids from shooting each other in school, how the hell are we going to stop the Tsarnaev brothers?
When nineteen fundamentalists with box cutters can paralyzed our country with fear something is wrong. The 9/11 terrorists killed 3,000 people and we started two wars, killed hundreds of thousands, spent trillions of dollars, created a giant government agency and made air travel a living hell. Yet 30,000 Americans are killed by gunfire at home every year and it’s par for the course. Something is wrong.
There is an adage that I try to live my life by when it comes to fear.
If it makes the evening news, you probably don’t have to worry about it.
Namely if something happens that is interesting enough to garner national news coverage then it is almost certainly a rare and isolated occurrence. If we can, as a society, accept this reality then I believe we will be able to start making meaningful change. We can make the world safer for our children but we aren’t going to do it by confiscating bottles of water and collecting massive amounts of private data.
Leave a commentJune 5th, 2013 § 0 comments §
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Interesting development in the ongoing fight against Multiple Sclerosis.
MS is believed to turn the body’s immune system against itself to destroy the nerve-insulating myelin, disrupting how signals travel from the brain and spinal cord. Current treatments thus suppress the overactive immune system—but in the process they leave the patient more vulnerable to infection and relapses of symptoms.
The treatment approach in trials now instead ‘retrains’ patients’ immune systems to tolerate myelin. Previous studies in mice have shown that delivering pieces of the myelin protein to the bloodstream can desensitize the immune system to myelin and slow degeneration.
It was a small trial and was only designed to tolerability, not efficacy, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
Leave a commentJune 4th, 2013 § 0 comments §
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Some great news from the EFF regarding the ongoing battle against patent trolls. The White House has waded into the fight with some legislative ideas as well as five executive actions. Julie Samuels sums them up for the EFF:
This sounds like a great stop gap while we debate the merits of software patents1. These things take time after all.
May 17th, 2013 § 0 comments §
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Using a vaguely described 3-D structure researches have developed a micro battery that they claim out powers even the best super-capacitors.
With so much power, the batteries could enable sensors or radio signals that broadcast 30 times farther, or devices 30 times smaller. The batteries are rechargeable and can charge 1,000 times faster than competing technologies — imagine juicing up a credit-card-thin phone in less than a second.
No mention of the cost to produce these batteries or whether it’s even feasible to manufacture them in bulk but that’s really besides the point. The battery revolution is coming and it’s going to change everything.
Ions flow between 3-D micro-electrodes in a lithium ion battery.
May 16th, 2013 § 0 comments §
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In a strange twist astronomers are reaping the benefits of the US Government Spy Satellite program. The spy agency announced last year that it was giving NASA two satellites with the same 7.9 foot-wide mirror that The Hubble Space Telescope has. Designed for looking down rather than up it’s estimated that it could pick out objects a mere 5 inches across. Throw in some computer processing and it might get down to 2.5 inches.
Of course NASA has not shortage of ideas about what to do with their new toys but one of the more recent ideas is to ship this satellite to Mars for some unprecedented research of our red neighbor.
Leave a commentMay 14th, 2013 § 0 comments §
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Marco Arment on the disconnect between the photos in the Facebook Home demos and reality1.
Facebook Home was flat-out badly designed: it’s designed for optimal input and failed to consider real-world usage.
Chat Heads
The two fundamentally flawed assumptions that Facebook made in designing their app was that a) people have recognizable profile pictures and b) people post great pictures that I want to see on my lock screen. If I was using Facebook Home to chat with friends half of their icons be of babies and the other half would be pink equal signs2. Great for representing solidarity with gay marriage, terrible for representing whom I’m chatting with. Also, their pictures suck.
Which brings us to this fantastic advice from Lukas Mathis.
Don’t use placeholder data when designing. Get as much real-life data generated by real human beings as possible and design for that. If you don’t, you’re in for a surprise.
