Project Tango

Johnny Chung Lee reveals Project Tango.

And, of course, it's his level of genius. And it's awesome. But, hell, aren't we scared yet?

Given everything we now know about the end of privacy, the fact that the NSA have back-doors to all our mainstream social software that Google are legally prevented from telling us about? And that Google are putting always-on cameras onto everyone's face?

Is the thing that we are really missing the ability to have millimetre accurate models of all the geometry (and therefore, via recognition algorithms, inventories of all the objects), in every room we enter? Collected automatically? And potentially streamed to Google's servers? Do I want to have someone walk into my room and immediately start telling Google / the NSA everything I have in it?

Sure, it's going to make amazingly competent robots, though.

Marx and the Middle-Class

Dillow points out that Marx was probably right about the inevitable decline of the middle-class under capitalism.

iBeacon

Interesting thought :

But iBeacon is much more than that. It is the infrastructure on which the iWatch will run. For all intents and purposes, iBeacon is the iWatch. The advantage of a wearable device, after all, rests in its ability to interact with the Internet of Things. All that remains for Apple is to build its Internet around the world’s things.

Everything You Need To Know About Blair

Guardian :

According to the email, sent the day after the News of the World's final issue and six days before Brooks was arrested, Blair also told her he was "available" to her and Rupert and James Murdoch as an "unofficial adviser" on a "between us" basis.

Transparency Helps Terrorists

Glenn Greenwald :

But what has struck me is how seriously many media figures take [the claim that public scrutiny of the secret service "helps terrorists"]. In the vast majority of interviews I’ve done about NSA reporting, interviewers adopt a grave tone in their voice and trumpet the claims from U.S. officials that our reporting is helping the terrorists. They treat these claims as though they’re the by-product of some sort of careful, deliberative, unique assessment rather than what it is: the evidence-free tactics national security state officials reflexively invoke to discredit all national security journalism they dislike.

Immortal Technique

Impressively smart and interesting political hip-hop artist.

Immortal Technique - The Poverty of Philosophy

Wealth Addiction

Excellent article describing the experience of being a money addict.


My ThoughtStorms page for it.

Google's For-Profit Surveillance Problem

Good article

Fiverr Accepts BitCoin

Now this is big.

Fiver is a great place to experiment with online commerce. Both with buying and selling new product ideas. And it's users are both innovative and internationalized. And the prices are so cheap that the fluctuations of BitCoin's pricing might be less of an issue. (What does it matter if your $5 gig fluctuates between $1 and $15? )

In other words, it seems like an excellent test-bed, place to grow.

The Day We Fight Back

Drone As Driving Accessory

Full story

Wired on GCHQ vs. Anonymous

Read it :

The key difference, however, is that while those involved in Anonymous can and have faced their day in court for those tactics [DDoS], the British government has not. When Anonymous engages in lawbreaking, they are always taking a huge risk in doing so. But with unlimited resources and no oversight, organizations like the GCHQ (and theoretically the NSA) can do as they please. And it’s this power differential that makes all the difference.

SoundCloud

Things I wish I could do on SoundCloud.

OWL Screenshots

Over on SmartDisorganized.

Gbloink! ... in the Browser!

Oh yeah, I'm on a roll, at the moment, of actually "releasing" stuff I've been doing over the last few months.
This one's really exciting for me : a version of Gbloink! that's written in CoffeeScript / Javascript and running in the browser. Longer story over on the Gbloink! site.
Try it here ... but be aware it's still pretty experimental. However, it is Gbloink! And it runs in the browser. w00t!