Watching the Google event last week, I was struck by how exciting it was. We were seeing new products that are some of the most beautiful , and even more importantly, new ideas. The Clips and the Pixel Buds are nice looking products but their differentiatior is the software they run.
This is as much for me as for anyone else, just to track what I've read and what I haven't:
Everyone hates passwords. It's hard for people to come up with passwords that they can remember and which match the inconsistent standards set by websites. The result is that they figure out one password that generally fits the standards and then use that everywhere they can. Password expiration policies that prevent users from reusing passwords actually make the problem worse, since they encourage users to use simpler passwords than they would otherwise.
I settled into bash back in college, and I rarely think about it. It quickly became my default option once I spent most of my time in a Unix environment, and was one of the primary reasons why I switched from using Windows to OS X long long ago.
There's a lot of things to admire and fear about the oceans, but the prescence of giant isopods is right up there at the top. You no longer need to endanger your health and the health of your pets to have one in your life, though. Amazon has you covered. I'm guessing they're going to be hot for Xmas, so get one now!
This is a pretty incredible simulation and it's the best thing I've seen all day.
A flight through the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, the most distant visible-light view of the universe. The redshifts of 5,333 galaxies were converted to distances to assemble a 3-D model of the data. This scientific visualization flies through the data to showcase its true 3-D nature.
The Atlantic has put together this great video by Annie Lennox on creativity and how she maintains a creative approach to her work. It's so great hearing more about how people see their work and how they manage to make it look effortless even when it's difficult.
I'm biased, but I love discussions of the nature of mathematics, especially when they're targeted at mathematical novices. Algebra was one of the areas of math that I spent quite a lot of time on in college, and it holds my interest like no other. Keith Devlin has a very interesting analysis of what algebra actually is:
This is a week old, but if you didn't already avoid feeding your kids soda, here's another reason to consider it.
Coming on the heels of the various revelations about the NSA's activities, this article in MIT News is fascinating reading: