Life got in the way of updating, so here’s a slightly longer list of readings from the past several days. In no particular order…
- In the Reign of the Gay Magical Elves – I’m a big fan of Bret Easton Ellis’ work though he does have a reputation for being a bit cantankerous. This is a long form article that provides a less pithy criticism of the role of homosexuality in modern popular culture in a structure that encourages discussion.
- Nomiku Project update XV: Mass Production! – I backed this project for an easy to use, convenient sous vide device and am extremely excited about them making it to production. It has been really interesting watching their updates along the way of what goes into mass production.
- Ben and Andrew discuss gaming’s canon: Games you need to play to understand the history of the art – I like gaming, but am very conscious to limit the amount of time I spend on it, so I get really interested in articles like these that try to point to the important games worth playing.
- Axciom Opens (Some) Consumer Data; What Should You Do? and Marketers may think they know all about me, but they don’t – I deal with Axciom data at work and it is an interesting move. Hopefully there will be some follow-up discussing their strategy in taking this approach – initial feedback seems to be that their data really isn’t very good.
- What Happens to Little Startups After Everyone Forgets? – Read this hoping for more than ‘still going’ or ‘dead’ with some analysis. Still interesting for a visceral reminder of the startup failure rate.
- Some Clarification, Indie Developer Pulls Out Of PAX, Citing Penny Arcade Controversies, and Why I’m Never Going Back to Penny Arcade Expo – I really didn’t want to get sucked into this story, but it is just all so frustrating…
- PayPal freezes $45,000 of Mailpile’s crowdfunded dollars (Updated)_ _and How can I stop Paypal from freezing my crowdfunding campaign? – Crowdfunding has some interesting quirks and the first big lawsuit feels like it is coming and the companies involved are trying to figure out how to protect themselves.
- The NSA Security Story – I couldn’t help myself and got dragged into reading everything that appeared in my reader. Should have stayed away while the world digests it.
- Revealed: The NSA’s Secret Campaign to Crack, Undermine Internet Security
- Why We Published the Decryption Story
- The US government has betrayed the internet. We need to take it back
- NSA attains the Holy Grail of spying, decodes vast swaths of Internet traffic
- NSA’s pipe dream: Weakening crypto will only help the “good guys”
- Let us count the ways: How the feds (legally, technically) get our data
- The NSA’s Cryptographic Capabilities
- The NSA’s work to make crypto worse and better
- Conspiracy Theories and the NSA
- What We Use, 2013 Edition: The Apps, Tools, Devices, And Other Stuff Liam Can’t Do Without – The android world is big and I crave curation. I was hoping for some more insight, but basically this didn’t reveal anything for me.
- Two chances to get sneak peek at new Gorge bike path – I’ve biked this loop before and plan on doing so again. Look forward to not having to ride on the shoulder of 84. Thought it was already open though…
- Where Nokia went wrong (via Penny Arcade Report) – I was really hoping, given the source of the article, that there would be more of a gaming spin, but really it is a rehash of the “dominant player misses the boat” story.
- A really, really tiny microcontroller board – Someday I’ll be able to pick up some of my electronics projects and tiny/low power devices interest me.
- Jack the DVD ripping robot – I have visions of a similar project for my slide scanner.
Recipe of the day: Green Onion Manicotti
More Than 800,000 Scientific Papers In One Beautiful Infographic