Everything You Wanted to Know About Synchronization But Were Too Afraid to Ask (PDF) — This paper presents the most exhaustive study of synchronization to date. We span multiple layers, from hardware cache-coherence protocols up to high-level concurrent software. We do so on different types of architectures, from single-socket — uniform and non- uniform — to multi-socket — directory and broadcast-based many-cores. We draw a set of observations that, roughly speaking, imply that scalability of synchronization is mainly a property of the hardware.
Inside YouTube’s Fame Factory (FastCompany) — great article about the tipping point where peer-to-peer fame becomes stage-managed corporate fame, as Vidcon grows. See also Variety: If YouTube stars are swallowed by Hollywood, they are in danger of becoming less authentic versions of themselves, and teenagers will be able to pick up on that,” Sehdev says. “That could take away the one thing that makes YouTube stars so appealing.”
Living Light — 3D printed cephalopods filled with bioluminescent bacteria. PAGING CORY DOCTOROW, YOUR ORGASMATRON HAS ARRIVED. (via Sci Blogs)
Repacking Lego Batteries with a CNC Mill — check out the video. Patrick programmed a CNC machine to drill out the rivets holding the Mindstorms battery pack together. Coding away a repetitive task like this is gorgeous to see at every scale. We don’t have to teach our kids a particular programming language, but they should know how to automate cruft.
My Thoughts on Google+ (YouTube) — when your fans make hatey videos like this one protesting Google putting the pig of Google Plus onto the lipstick that was YouTube, you are Doin’ It Wrong.
Improving Content ID (YouTube) — finally they’re adding some human intervention to lower the number of false positives.
OECD’s Internet Economy Outlook (OECD) — lots of stats, from growth of streaming media to crime and EHRs. This caught my eye: In 2010, on average, 35% of all businesses with ten or more persons employed used the Internet for purchasing, and only 18% for selling goods and services.
Half Of What You Know Is False — The field of scientometrics – the science of measuring and analyzing science – took off in 1947 when mathematician Derek J. de Solla Price was asked to store a complete set of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society temporarily in his house. He stacked them in order and he noticed that the height of the stacks fit an exponential curve. Price started to analyze all sorts of other kinds of scientific data and concluded in 1960 that scientific knowledge had been growing steadily at a rate of 4.7 percent annually since the 17th century. The upshot was that scientific data was doubling every 15 years.
Mobile Numbers (Luke Wroblewski) — eBay’s mobile shoppers and mobile payers are 3 to 4 times more valuable than Web only […] Yelp runs ads on the mobile web, and those ads see a higher clickthrough rate than their desktop counterparts.
Data-Driven Restaurants (Washingtonian) — Did Elizabeth bring your Pinot Gris within three minutes of the time you ordered it? Were your appetizers delivered within seven minutes, entrées within ten, desserts within seven? Were these plates described at the table before they were set in front of you? Were napkins refolded when you went to the restroom? Was non-bottled water referred to as “ice water” (correct) or “water” (incorrect)? (via Daniel Bachhuber)
Content Detection Fail (Ars Technica) — five other media organizations (mostly television stations, including some from overseas) had claimed the content of his video through YouTube’s Content ID system. That video? A Google+ hangout where he played NASA videos of the Mars landing. Shonky rights verification is a problem, as Google pays ad royalties to those who claim the rights–creating incentives to lie. And as Google doesn’t pay any royalties while material is disputed and the dispute is unresolved, it’s not really in Google’s interest to make this work either. (via Andy Baio)
Pirates Adopt H.264 — no more XViD encoded avi files, now it’s x264. I’m impressed by the rigid rules and structure of The Scene.
YouTube’s ContentID Disputes Are Judged By The Accuser (Andy Baio) — the last couple years have seen a dramatic rise in Content ID abuse, using it for purposes that it was never intended. Scammers are using Content ID to steal ad revenue from YouTube video creators en masse, with some companies claiming content they don’t own, deliberately or not. The inability to understand context and parody regularly leads to “fair use” videos getting blocked, muted or monetized.
The Month of 50% in Mobile (Luke Wroblewski) — 47.6% of mobile Internet users use native mobile apps and 47.5% use the Web browser on their devices. This is the first time (in ComScore data) native apps have had more use than the browser.
No Copyright Intended (Andy Baio) — Thoughtful piece on how copyright ignorance may lead to copyright reform. Everyone over age 12 when YouTube launched in 2005 is now able to vote. What happens when—and this is inevitable—a generation completely comfortable with remix culture becomes a majority of the electorate, instead of the fringe youth? What happens when they start getting elected to office? (Maybe “I downloaded but didn’t share” will be the new “I smoked, but didn’t inhale.”)
How to Fix Copyright — new book, written by Google’s Senior Copyright Counsel, which lays out the confused current copyright laws and the ways in which they aren’t working. As Cory’s review says, Patry offers two important (but rare) commodities: facts, and solutions. The solutions are simple: stop making copyright laws until you know whether the ones you have are working; and require strong evidence for further changes.
Oblivious Supreme Court Poised to Legalize Medical Patents — Prometheus claims much more than its specific testing process. It claims a physician administering thiopurine to a patient can infringe its patent merely by being aware of the scientific correlation disclosed in the patent—even if the doctor doesn’t act on the patent’s recommendations. (via Ed Yong)
You Have Downloaded — site which collects information from trackers and lets you see what was downloaded from a particular IP address. One ISP in NZ wrote: I plugged in the IPs for the last 6 infringement notices I received as an ISP. It turned up: a) all of the downloads that these IPs had been pinged for; b) as many downloads again that they had not been pinged for.
Massive Wikimedia Donation — I missed it when it happened, but the State Library of Queensland made the 4th largest ever donation of high-resolution out-of-copyright images to the Wikimedia Foundation. The image metadata are available through Wikimedia under liberal licensing terms, too. This is what your national and state libraries should be doing!
Face-Tracking KiddyZoom Video Cam (YouTube) — I’m always startled most when the future turns up in kids’ toys. Tablets and face-tracking? Soon it’ll be face recognition (“hello mommy!” says the doll), brainwave-triggered activity, and 3D printers. (via BERG London)
Science Hack Day SF Videos (justin.tv) — the demos from Science Hack Day SF. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a Hack Day.
A Cross-Sectional Study of Canine Tail-Chasing and Human Responses to It, Using a Free Video-Sharing Website (PLoSone) — Approximately one third of tail-chasing dogs showed clinical signs, including habitual (daily or “all the time”) or perseverative (difficult to distract) performance of the behaviour. These signs were observed across diverse breeds. Clinical signs appeared virtually unrecognised by the video owners and commenting viewers; laughter was recorded in 55% of videos, encouragement in 43%, and the commonest viewer descriptors were that the behaviour was “funny” (46%) or “cute” (42%).
RSS Died For Your Sins (Danny O’Brien) — if you have seven thousand people following you, a good six thousand of those are going to be people you don’t particularly like. The problem, as ever, is—how do you pick out the other thousand? Especially when they keep changing? I firmly believe that one of the pressing unsolved technological problems of the modern age is getting safely away from people you don’t like, without actually throttling them to death beforehand, nor somehow coming to the conclusion that they don’t exist, nor ending up turning yourself into a hateful monster.
Generating Text from Functional Brain Images (Frontiers in Human Neuroscience) — We built a model of the mental semantic representation of concrete concepts from text data and learned to map aspects of such representation to patterns of activation in the corresponding brain image. Turns out that the clustering of concepts in Wikipedia is similar to how they’re clustered in the brain. They found clusters in Wikipedia, mapped to the brain activity for known words, and then used that mapping to find words for new images of brain activity. (via The Economist)
What Mozilla is Up To (Luke Wroblewski) — notes from a talk that Brendan Eich gave at Web 2.0 Summit. The new browser war is between the Web and new walled gardens of native networked apps. Interesting to see the effort Mozilla’s putting into native-alike Web apps.
Ultrasound for iPhone (Geekwire) — this personal sensor is $8000 today, but bound to drop. I want personal ultrasound at least once a month. How long until it’s in the $200-500 range? (via BERG London)
Redefiners Capturing Media Growth Dollars — Anil Dash’s corporate presentation about innovating within large (media) companies. The initial slides are money posturing to get the attention of the audience, but after that there’s some heavy-hitting drumming of the message: how to make startup success happen within big companies. Nothing new, but well said.