Postcards

Reverse Showrooming

October 30, 2014 No Comments

Laura Slattery in the IT reports two interesting nuggets from the latest Google Consumer Barometer: When it comes to buying home appliances, the Irish are also notably fonder of a practice known as “reverse showrooming”, where they research a purchase online before heading into a physical shop to have it rung up a till the […]

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People

Hero

October 16, 2014 No Comments

You know who is my goddamn hero these days? Anita Sarkeesian. She's right, brave and not backing down. All my respect and admiration. — John Scalzi (@scalzi) October 15, 2014 Anita Sarkeesian, Video Game Critic, Cancels Speech After Threats of Massacre (NYT) On Monday evening, members of the administration at Utah State University received an […]

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Space

The recovery of Salyut 7

October 14, 2014October 14, 2014 No Comments

Ars Technica has an good story on the Soviet mission to rescue Salyut 7, which was left floating dead in space due to a power malfunction with nobody on board. It’s a tale of engineering know-how, luck and hard work, largely based on the high level of experience of Soviet cosmonauts and the mission control […]

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Bits & Bobs Internets

Little Pork Chop

October 2, 2014 No Comments

This little app will neatly chop you message into multiple linked tweets – http://little.porkchop.io/

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Aircraft & Flying

Automatic Pilot: Dropping the Crutches

October 2, 2014October 2, 2014 No Comments

There’s a great article in Vanity Fair covering the Air France Flight 447 disaster, and it asks Should Airplanes Be Flying Themselves?. It details the events leading up to the fatal impact and also covers the changes that have taken place in cockpits over the years with increased automation leading to increased safety, but also […]

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Politics

Jobs for the Boys

September 27, 2014September 27, 2014 No Comments

Who said poltics was going to be reformed? Oh, wait, Fine Gael did. In their election manifesto for 2011 they aimed for a ‘New politics’ to eliminate cronyism and the like. Fine words, but then along came a Seanad by-election, and as Eamon Delaney notes, (“Art museum appointment shows political cronyism has not change”) a […]

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Arts Politics

Immigration

September 27, 2014September 27, 2014 No Comments

Very well done. Via @spleenal

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Middle East

Clear as Mud

September 27, 2014July 10, 2015 No Comments

Apparently this letter appeared on September 5th in the Daily Mail. It could be the best summary of the Middle East situation you’ll ever see. Via @kingdomman66

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Internets Privacy ReadWriteWeb

A new approach to social networks?

September 26, 2014September 26, 2014 No Comments

Ello is a new ‘social network’ which claims to be free, while not selling you ads or selling your data to any third party. Laudable goals, indeed. But it costs money to run services like these, and that money has to come from somewhere. Traditionally (if the commercial internet is even old enough for tradition), […]

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Computing

When the simple (sounding) is impossible (maybe)

September 24, 2014September 24, 2014 No Comments

As Randall says, “In the 60s, Marvin Minsky assigned a couple of undergrads to spend the summer programming a computer to use a camera to identify objects in a scene. He figured they'd have the problem solved by the end of the summer. Half a century later, we're still working on it.”

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Postcards

Who?

Murf

Reverse Showrooming

Hero

The recovery of Salyut 7

Little Pork Chop

Automatic Pilot: Dropping the Crutches

Jobs for the Boys

Immigration

Clear as Mud

A new approach to social networks?

When the simple (sounding) is impossible (maybe)