“The Association of American Publishers released a report today that shows that ebooks have beaten hardcover revenues for the first time. Ebook revenues topped out at $282.3 million YTD while hardcovers hit $229.6. Almost exactly a year ago the tables were turned with ebooks hitting $220 million and hardcovers brushing past $335 million. The only growth in hardcovers is in the young adult/children’s category where hardcover revenue rose to $187.7 million and children’s ebooks rose to $64.3 million, up from $3.9 million in 2011. In short, ebooks are winning.” - × × ×
Playing God (BBC Documentary 2012) * Adam Rutherford meets a new creature created by American scientists, the spider-goat. It is part goat, part spider, and its milk can be used to create artificial spider’s web. It is part of a new field of research, synthetic biology, with a radical aim: to break down nature into spare parts so that we can rebuild it however we please. This technology is already being used to make bio-diesel to power cars. - × × ×
“
Что касается Муратова, то у него открытый конфликт отнял бы силы, время, деньги. Какой-нибудь самый Басманный суд в мире вкатил ему неустойку, и, может, пришлось бы закрыть газету. В «Новой» ведь хорошо понимают, что такое остаться без денег. Когда на банкира Лебедева попытались надавить сверху и у него начались небольшие проблемы, в редакции все знали: зарплат какое-то время не будет. Но не это пугало — пугало, что не будет командировок. А командировки — это жизнь газеты.
«Новая» никогда не была столичной газетой. Она была общероссийской. Их материалы с Кавказа уникальны, потому что больше никто так долго и упорно не занимался регионом. Четыре журналиста газеты много лет работают на Кавказе. Пишут о нарушениях прав человека. О терроризме. О войне. О людях, которые живут в этом аду. Если бы Муратов встал в позу и пошел судиться, об этих людях больше никто бы не писал. Вся миссия газеты была бы сведена к нулю.
”
- «Я не понимаю позиции многих моих коллег» — Ольга Алленова, Ъ-Блоги - × × ×
“In an interview today, Taylor said that he understands that his departure will be perceived as a disruption, although he noted that Facebook had a deep bench of talented technical staff under CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.
“I had always been upfront with Mark that I eventually wanted to do another start-up,” he said. “And we felt now is the best time after the IPO and the launch of some recent things for me to do that.” - × × ×
“I don’t have thoughts about the future. I probably have fewer than the average person. I’m not a fortune-teller. I construct very large, highly inaccurate models in my head, built from memory and random junk, and run them. Sometimes they seem to have predicted things, in some very vague way, that happen later, but I don’t think of that as prediction. It’s closer to augury, and I can’t do it without, so to speak, pulling the entrails from a real bird. Otherwise, the last thing I am is someone who walks around knowing what the future’s going to be.”
- William Gibson (via betaknowledge) - × × ×
“Our Robot Future: Imagine police drones patrolling at treetop level down city streets, their cameras scanning crowds for weapons or suspicious activity. “Newsbots” might follow in their wake, streaming live video of the goings-on. Drones belonging to protest groups hover over both, watching the watchers. In nearby zip codes, drones belonging to real estate agents scope out hot properties. Robots deliver pizzas by following the signal from customers’ cell phones. Meanwhile, anti-drone “freedom fighters,” alarmed by the spread of cheap, easy overhead surveillance, take potshots at the robots with rifles and shotguns.” • #будущее_прекрасно • #trendtaste • #гудрон - × × ×
"Сайт ege.spb.ru, на котором публиковались результаты сдачи Единого государственного экзамена петербургскими школьниками, был взломан днем 15 июня. Об этом сообщает "Фонтантка.ру". При попытке зайти на ресурс пользователи видели сообщение: "После сдачи ЕГЭ у меня не хватает баллов для поступления на факультет компьютерной безопасности. Придется обеспечить работой тех, кто поступил"." - × × ×
«Геймер Никита, отказавшийся от друзей и карьеры ради возможности быть гномом в компьютерной интернет-игре, рассказывает журналу Esquire о преимуществах виртуальной жизни перед реальной.» • #проигры - × × ×
«В какой-то момент я устроился работать дизайнером в одну компанию — разговорился там с одним человеком из совета директоров. У него за год не было ни одного свободного вечера, потому что каждый вечер он играл в Grand Theft Auto. Взрослый мужик. Сидим, обсуждаем, как винтовку взять, как мента замочить. Спрашиваю: «А что тебя там заводит?» Не смейся, говорит, но это единственное место, где я могу что-то изменить. Вот здесь, в этом мире, я ничего не могу изменить, а там — все. И каждый вечер он делал одно и то же: брал все оружие, доступное в игре, садился в уголок и убивал прохожих. Когда он начинал убивать прохожих, приезжала полиция, потом приезжали танки. Мужику нравилось держаться до конца. Маленький революционер, который по эту сторону экрана ни в какие революции никогда не ввяжется.» - × × ×
"Apple will bring a high-resolution Retina display to its 13-inch MacBook Pro with a product update set to launch this October, according to one insider." - × × ×
“Like the next-generation Retina display MacBook Pro, the 13-inch variety is expected to lack an optical disc drive and rely solely on solid-state flash memory storage. Kuo expects the screen to have a resolution of 2,560 by 1,600 pixels, and he said the 13-inch model will be slightly thinner than the 15-inch model, at 18 millimeters.” - × × ×
"Here’s a simple arithmetic question: A bat and ball cost a dollar and ten cents. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? The vast majority of people respond quickly and confidently, insisting the ball costs ten cents. This answer is both obvious and wrong. (The correct answer is five cents for the ball and a dollar and five cents for the bat.) For more than five decades, Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Laureate and professor of psychology at Princeton, has been asking questions like this and analyzing our answers. His disarmingly simple experiments have profoundly changed the way we think about thinking. While philosophers, economists, and social scientists had assumed for centuries that human beings are rational agents—reason was our Promethean gift—Kahneman and his scientific partner, the late Amos Tversky, demonstrated that we’re not nearly as rational as we like to believe." • #схватил_за_мозг - × × ×
I analyzed the chords of 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found. | Blog – Hooktheory - http://blog.hooktheory.com/2012...
“For many people, listening to music elicits such an emotional response that the idea of dredging it for statistics and structure can seem odd or even misguided. But knowing these patterns can give one a deeper more fundamental sense for how music works; for me this makes listening to music a lot more interesting. Of course, if you play an instrument or want to write songs, being aware of these things is obviously of great practical importance.” • #говоря_статистически • #музыкальная_шкатулка - × × ×
Сейчас прочту. Я тоже анализировал параметры сотен песен в свое время. - tcharge
Собственно, там все и пишут в комментах, и у меня была такая же wtf-реакция - как можно рассматривать на всех графиках конкретные аккорды и тональности, а не относительные ступени? Автор в теории музыки где-то на уровне начальной школы. Обидно. - tcharge
Он же транспонировал всё в С, этого недостаточно? (Я тоже не настоящий сварщик, если чо). - anatoliy
Это бессмысленно, в музыкальной теории так не делается. Для любителей сгодится, но серьезному анализу сильно мешает. - tcharge
"I've been playing the same game of Civ II for 10 years. Though long outdated, I grew fascinated with this particular game because by the time Civ III was released, I was already well into the distant future. I then thought that it might be interesting to see just how far into the future I could get and see what the ramifications would be. Naturally I play other games and have a life, but I often return to this game when I'm not doing anything and carry on. The results are as follows. The world is a hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation. There are 3 remaining super nations in the year 3991 A.D, each competing for the scant resources left on the planet after dozens of nuclear wars have rendered vast swaths of the world uninhabitable wastelands." - × × ×
“fundamentalism is ideal for what you need:
* nobody is ever unhappy ever for any reason
* 8 units supported from each city
* happiness buildings give you money instead” - × × ×
"If any of you old Civ II players have any advice, I'm listening." —
Nice try, Skynet.” :) - × × ×
“EDIT: this thread has spawned the subreddit /r/theeternalwar/, created by trendykendy.
Also, I think this is now my highest rated comment, all because I said something created by someone else was great. I'm feeling some strange existential shit regarding karma right now.” - × × ×
"You may not realize that living in the present is one of the hardest things to do. I suggest taking just one minute to stay focused only on your breath and attempt to have no other thoughts. Now imagine doing this for 10 hours a day sitting on a pillow in a meditation hall." - × × ×
Везде, где не толпа, стоят курящие существа. И их не то, чтобы прямо много, но площадь они занимают непропорциональную своим размерам.
"Sure, you know you should be reading. All your friends keep saying how inspired they were by Eat, Pray, Love or Tuesdays With Morrie or The Bible, but to you, it all seems to be just staring at a bunch of squiggles on a page! Is that really the best way to spend this precious gift of life? We submit it is not. Luckily, Sony used its E3 keynote to announce the Wonderbook, an augmented reality application for the PS Move that makes those boring squiggles into a toy begging to be played with." • #проигры • #прокниги - × × ×
Причём сначала выглядит как идиотская затея, а потом вдруг не выглядит. - × × ×
RT @AndrewCrow: I've just set up a direct deposit from my paycheck to the Apple Store. Like a morphine drip. It's much easier.
"It's an economy in itself. It operates in 120 countries around the world. And I'm pleased to announce that we're adding an additional 32." • #говоря_статистически - × × ×
Есть что-то противоестественное в том, что новый 15" макбук с ретиной стоит дешевле, чем мой первый купленный ноутбук. - × × ×
"And we've added something called Eyes Free. We're working with car manufacturers to include a button that will bring up Siri — so you can keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road. A number of manufacturers have committed to delivering this in the next 12 months." - × × ×
“Photo Stream sharing with friends. Choose the photos, choose the friends — friends will get a notification. The photos will appear in an album... and friends can comment. Weird, this is like a Facebook feature. Almost like Apple's own social network.” - × × ×
"Hi, Neal Stephenson here. My career as an author of science and historical fiction has turned me into a swordsmanship geek. As such, I'm dissatisfied with how swordfighting is portrayed in existing video games. These could be so much more fun than they are. Time for a revolution." - × × ×
“According to Stevens and de Weger, the collision attack was unlike any that cryptographers have seen before. They arrived at that conclusion after using a custom-designed forensic tool to analyze Flame components. ¶ "More interestingly, the results have shown that not our published chosen-prefix collision attack was used, but an entirely new and unknown variant," Stevens wrote in a statement distributed on Thursday. "This has led to our conclusion that the design of Flame is partly based on world-class cryptanalysis. Further research will be conducted to reconstruct the entire chosen-prefix collision attack devised for Flame." ¶ The analysis reinforces theories that researchers from Kaspersky Lab, CrySyS Lab, and Symantec published almost two weeks ago. Namely, Flame could only have been developed with the backing of a wealthy nation-state. Stevens' and de Weger's conclusion means that, in addition to a team of engineers who developed a global malware platform that escaped detection for at least two years, Flame also required world-class cryptographers who have broken new ground in their field.” - × × ×