antimeria » nerdiness

Linkwad (updated).

martin — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:58:02 +0000

Make your own Android apps (Via Engadget).
Lawsuit over Apple’s AT&T lock-in, App Store moves forward.
Harry Reid and Sharron Angle’s fair-use fight.
Radley Balko interviewed about police-recording arrests.
Update: YouTube now supports 4096p video.

Linkwad.

martin — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:24:51 +0000

Comic Sans Dan Gilbert hates LeBron James (who has just replaced Kobe Bryant in the public’s mind as “Biggest Figurative NBA Dick”).
Drowning doesn’t look like drowning (via @Maryvale).
Android gains market share, thanks entirely to awesome circuit board live wallpapers (probably).
Catholic Church vacillates on welcoming drug addicts and drug dealers, still pretty much against gay dudes. (via Andrew Sullivan)
Updated: Nope. A potential AIDS research breakthrough which might also work against the flu (via AS, again).

Not sad about this.

martin — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:25:34 +0000

“[O]ne thing we don’t have in the oceans today — a macropredator, a hypercarnivorous whale.”

Wikipedia has more.

Linkwad.

martin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:01:30 +0000

Kindle = iTunes.
Android Netflix app coming (eventually). Still seems like a better deal than Hulu+.
Dell sold crappy computers.
538′s Richard Sexton¹ discovers that World Cup fandom is…exactly the same as fandom anywhere else.
Clay Shirky argues that the Web allows for “cognitive surplus,” a combination of free time and creative technology. Worth watching, even if the audio and video don’t sync and he’s wearing a shirt buttoned to the neck with no tie:

I was just having a discussion about names you shouldn’t bestow on your progeny, and “Dick Sexton” seems like a perfect example. ↩

Farmville sucks.

martin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 20:25:47 +0000

Is Farmville a success because it’s a social obligation?

Farmville is popular because [it] entangles users in a web of social obligations. When users log into Facebook, they are reminded that their neighbors have sent them gifts, posted bonuses on their walls, and helped with each others’ farms. In turn, they are obligated to return the courtesies. As the French sociologist Marcel Mauss tells us, gifts are never free: they bind the giver and receiver in a loop of reciprocity. It is rude to refuse a gift, and ruder still to not return the kindness.[11] We play Farmville, then, because we are trying to be good to one another. We play Farmville because we are polite, cultivated people.

Or, put another way, we guilt each other into playing a shitty game. Admittedly, most Farmville players aren’t deliberately trying to ensnare me in an infinite loop of guilt-induced aggravations–and at least a few of them must actually enjoy the game¹. However, Farmville and other noisy Facebook apps (Pieces of flair, Mafia wars, etc.) are the Internet version of Amway, and it doesn’t seem particularly polite or cultivated to foist unwanted, poor-quality garbage on your friends.

Via Boing Boing

As a devoted SimCity fan, I understand the appeal of games you can’t “win,” Magnasanti notwithstanding. ↩

Get off the wall.

martin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:40:15 +0000

Anil Dash has some good advice:

If you care about startups, get involved. Do you think the AT&Ts and Verizons, let alone the Halliburtons and BPs of the world, are going to just let the government leave startups alone? If you have a cool new music startup, and the RIAA sends 100 lobbyists to DC to crush you, and the current administration asks “What can we do to help you innovate?” and your answer is “STOP PISSING ON OUR FLOWERS YOU SOCIALISTS!”, how do you think it’s gonna play out?

Here’s a hint: It doesn’t end up with you sitting happily in a rose garden.

The whole post is worth a read. More generally, you can replace “startups” with your cause of choice and still get some good advice.

Incredible machines.

martin — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 17:29:04 +0000

If you like Rube Goldberg machines, check out Fantastic Contraption 2. It’s a little dumbed-down and cutesy, but it’s got magnets!

Also, while looking up Rube Goldberg machines, I found a Wikipedia article for The Incredible Machine, a game I remember from junior high industrial tech classes.

Bonus Rube Goldberg reprise: OK Go’s “This Too Shall Pass.”

Linkwad and an update.

martin — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 15:02:10 +0000

If Wired keeps putting out articles like this, I might finally have to subscribe.
For the seventeen other people who watched Treme, a “post-mortem” Q&A with David Simon. (Via Andy)
“It could always be worse” sums up the MARC train situation pretty well.
It is entirely legal to build a fusion reactor. It’s also awesome. (Via Steve)
If you haven’t read the Rolling Stone piece on Stanley McChrystal, you should. My primary concern involves his affinity for Bud Light Lime.

Updated: “To buy or not to buy” with opt-out information for targeted iAds, via Katy O’D-P.

To buy or not to buy.

martin — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 14:13:44 +0000

That is the Apple fanboy question.

I’ve stated that I probably won’t buy an iPhone 4, so this is the official, inevitable post where I backtrack and reconsider buying the damn thing. The phone sounds awesome, and battery life is tremendously improved, which was one of my biggest issues.

Still, all my previous objections hold, it’s unfortunate that iOS4 doesn’t have unobtrusive notifications, and Apple is doing their best to be bigger creepos than Google. From Consumerist:

Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services.

/. points out that anonymous data is not anonymous.

Update: Via Katy O’D-P and Lifehacker, here’s how to opt out of targeted iAds (but not tracking).

Your attention, please.

martin — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:02:43 +0000

Best of Wikipedia is back, you guys. More potentially-related posts:Splorp. Not sad about this. Balkanization.