The short film Sunspring was written by a set of algorithms, including the lyrics of the song. Humans performed and recorded it, and wrote the music of that song, and while the results are a bit strange it is an interesting beginning.
New York City is rolling out its LinkNCY FREE Gigabit Wifi access points, which take the place of existing phone booths. When they are done they plan to have 7,500 public hubs throughout the city, each including USB charging ports and a touchscreen web browsing display for those without tablets or smart phones. To defray the cost of this free public service they are using two 55-inch advertising displays at each hub site, which they estimate will generate more than $500 million in add revenue over the next dozen years.
To me, the Rufus Cuff looks like someone took an Android based smart phone, mounted it on a wristband, and rotated the buttons to a different edge so they worked for that positioning. Definitely easier to get at and use than those smartphones that strap onto your upper arm and monitor your heart rate and play you music while you jog along, but functionally the same critter. But it seems to have gotten a few folks all excited, so perhaps I missed something. Take a look at the videos and let me know what you think.
The first very simple Quantum Computer Calculation has been made using room temperature silicon rather than ultra-cold superconductors. This was done by a team lead by Andrew Dzurak of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and it could mean true Quantum Computing is almost here. If that is the case, the world is about to go through another paradigm shift just as intense as the personal computer revolution itself. You can read about it at the New Scientist Basic Quantum Computation article.
This is about a terminally kawaii game called Mice and Mystics which Wil Wheaton brought in and showed on his program Tabletop!. Not being content to let it stop there, he also brought in some family members, specifically Anne Wheaton, Ryan Wheaton, and Nolan Kopp to demonstrate how the game should be played. Or maybe he was trying to show us how his family plays simple but interesting games together, which quite frankly reminded me about how my families gaming sessions go. This is the TableTop Season 3 finale, or at least the first part of it, and if you haven’t been following from the beginning this episode should make you realize why you want to go back and binge-watch the entire season. And then maybe the 2 before that. And if you have missed this, perhaps the channel the program is on might have snuck past you in the darkness; Geek And Sundry is a Felicia Day project that has gathered together some of my favorite people on the planet and given them a platform to prove to the rest of us why they are fun folks.
Genius and Scam Artist, Visionary and IP Thief (he lead the way; Bill Gates came in a poor second, and had to steal from him what he had stolen from Park Xerox), Steve Jobs was one of a small handful of people who changed the world while I watched. I won’t know until I see it, but I have hopes this movie might be as entertaining as Pirates of Silicon Valley, another film that covered the same topic. I look forward to watching this new iteration of the story when it hits the big screen on October 9th.