tumblog / bennyp

inky: xkcd: Wisdom of the Ancients

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 10:02:21 -0500

inky:

xkcd: Wisdom of the Ancients

inky: Enforced by Dom & Roland. New D&R! From his new...

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 19:01:46 -0400

inky:

Enforced by Dom & Roland.

New D&R! From his new album The Big Bang.

"Lost in the “Is it an iPad Killer?” hype is the audacious introduction of the Silk browser. Under..."

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 02:08:57 -0400

“

Lost in the “Is it an iPad Killer?” hype is the audacious introduction of the Silk browser. Under the guise of increasing speed (on WiFi; there is no 3G Fire where download speed would be a larger issue), Amazon is performing astonishing jujitsu on Google.

The “split browser” notion is that Amazon will use its EC2 back end to pre-cache user web browsing, using its fat back-end pipes to grab all the web content at once so the lightweight Fire-based browser has to only download one simple stream from Amazon’s servers. But what this means is that Amazon will capture and control every Web transaction performed by Fire users. Every page they see, every link they follow, every click they make, every ad they see is going to be intermediated by one of the largest server farms on the planet. People who cringe at the data-mining implications of the Facebook Timeline ought to be just floored by the magnitude of Amazon’s opportunity here. Amazon now has what every storefront lusts for: the knowledge of what other stores your customers are shopping in and what prices they’re being offered there. What’s more, Amazon is getting this not by expensive, proactive scraping the Web, like Google has to do; they’re getting it passively by offering a simple caching service, and letting Fire users do the hard work of crawling the Web. In essence the Fire user base is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, scraping the Web for free and providing Amazon with the most valuable cache of user behavior in existence.

And all of this on Google’s dime. They use a back-revved version of Android, not Honeycomb; they don’t use Google’s web browser; they can intermediate user click through on Google search results so Google doesn’t see the actual user behavior. Google’s whole play of promoting Android in order to aggregate user behavior patterns to sell to advertisers is completely subverted by Amazon’s intermediation.

Fire isn’t a noun, it’s a verb, and it’s what Amazon has done in the targeted direction of Google. This is the first shot in the new war for replacing the Internet with a privatized merchant data-aggregation network.

”

- Apple employee CHRIS ESPINOSA, remarking on Amazon’s Kindle Fire via his personal blog.

Something to think about.

Also, I can’t believe I understood everything I read just now.

(h/t The New York Times)

Gold Coins: The Mystery of the Double Eagle

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 17:24:43 -0400

Gold Coins: The Mystery of the Double Eagle:

The most valuable coin in the world sits in the lobby of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in lower Manhattan. It’s Exhibit 18E, secured in a bulletproof glass case with an alarm system and an armed guard nearby. The 1933 Double Eagle, considered one of the rarest and most beautiful coins in America, has a face value of $20—and a market value of $7.6 million. It was among the last batch of gold coins ever minted by the U.S. government. The coins were never issued; most of the nearly 500,000 cast were melted down to bullion in 1937.

Most, but not all. Some of the coins slipped out of the Philadelphia Mint before then. No one knows for sure exactly how they got out or even how many got out. The U.S. Secret Service, responsible for protecting the nation’s currency, has been pursuing them for nearly 70 years, through 13 Administrations and 12 different directors. The investigation has spanned three continents and involved some of the most famous coin collectors in the world, a confidential informant, a playboy king, and a sting operation at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan. It has inspired two novels, two nonfiction books, and a television documentary. And much of it has centered around a coin dealer, dead since 1990, whose shop is still open in South Philadelphia, run by his 82-year-old daughter.

inky: 54 Cymru Beats by Aphex Twin. One of the greatest...

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 15:16:01 -0400

inky:

54 Cymru Beats by Aphex Twin.

One of the greatest endings in noise history.

fuckyeahphish: Phish - “The Curtain With” (6/10/11)

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 18:29:46 -0400

fuckyeahphish:

Phish - “The Curtain With” (6/10/11)

inky: Change Is Gonna Come, by Pretty Lights.

Tue, 31 May 2011 01:07:43 -0400

inky:

Change Is Gonna Come, by Pretty Lights.

inothernews: (via The Daily Show)

Tue, 03 May 2011 12:17:03 -0400

inothernews:

(via The Daily Show)

seawitchery: I started out clicking strategically… and by the...

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 21:23:35 -0400

seawitchery:

I started out clicking strategically… and by the end was just wildly clicking and dancing in my chair.

biancavirina:

CLICK THE SQUARES.

THE WHOLE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT THIS.

THIS THIS THIS THIS!

canadianthings: Fort Howe National Historic Site, Saint John,...

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 11:32:43 -0400

canadianthings:

Fort Howe National Historic Site, Saint John, New Brunswick

inky: Nedroid!

Sat, 19 Mar 2011 12:03:48 -0400

inky:

Nedroid!

fuckyeahhiking: landofthefreehomeofthebrave: Top of Mount...

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 00:10:33 -0500

fuckyeahhiking:

landofthefreehomeofthebrave:

Top of Mount Katahdin, Appalachian Trail

Northern terminus of the AT. I can’t wait to kiss this sign.

"Watson has lots in common with a top-ranked human Jeopardy! player: It’s very smart, very..."

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 16:29:27 -0500

“Watson has lots in common with a top-ranked human Jeopardy! player: It’s very smart, very fast, speaks in an uneven monotone, and has never known the touch of a woman.”

- Ken Jennings