fffff.at slaps a GPS tracker on a Google streetview car so you can follow it: a first step in reverse-engineering that particular algorithm.
WiiTF
Searching the Wii's "Virtual Console" for "mari" — as in Mario — turns up one possible autocompletion that might explain why the Wii is so popular:
0 notes
5th Pillar's zero-rupee note (in Tamil, front and back:), intended as a means of protest for those too poor to pay a bribes: they're supposed to hand this over rather than actual currency.
This seems ill-conceived all around: a private protest likely to transform impersonal corruption into personal persecution (where shouting, say, at least can attract attention); an expensive surrogate for one of the few things the poor have (speech); a general approach to a problem that is everywhere specific; and so on. And, of course, who are these people too poor to pay a bribe but not too poor to print a jpeg from the web? Third parties might intervene by printing and distributing them to the poor — central banks for anticorruption. But who knows?
Also available in Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayam.
( World Bank | Felix Salmon )p
Even George started small
A great improvement over an inexplicably beloved brand franchise:
As American as shooting fireworks at a homebrew surveillance UAV
Said without a hint of irony. Looks like fun:
(gl)
The New CDO
under economics, finance, government, international, network, trend
One Goldman Sachs derivatives trader, who asked to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak about company strategy, said that the firm is planning to create a market for derivatives that airlines can use to hedge against the risk of having to return planes to the terminal or having to pay fines to the FAA. Goldman is thinking of creating “collateralized delay obligations,” or CDOs, which will diversify wait-time risk by including flights from across the entire country.
LAX in 3 images
under architecture, neighborhood, rural, trend, urban
LAX, ca. 1928 (via rick prelinger)
Now, with the same map in overlay (lower right):
LAX flight paths ca. 2004 (source):
]
Home naming is killing the, oh, nevermind…
IPR ideology trickles down:
A former South Dakota lawmaker convicted of [a bunch of awful stuff] has sent news organizations what he claims is a copyright notice that seeks to prevent the use of his name without his consent. A letter and an accompanying document labeled "Common Law Copyright Notice" said former state Rep. Ted Alvin Klaudt is reserving a common-law copyright of a trade name or trademark for his name. It said no one can use his name without his consent, and anyone who does would owe him $500,000.
Plan B: the national-security argument.
Pretty much
under crime, government, law
Posner snarks: “If you get old enough, you can commit a white-collar crime.”
“Commercial jingle mail”
“This isn’t a default or foreclosure situation,” [Morgan Stanley spokesmodel Melody] Barnes said. “We are going to give them the properties to get out of the loan obligation.”
Next up: Dubai sends Dubai World to debtor's prison.
gMeta
Google Sandbox redirects to the page "unavailable.html," which in turns gives a 404:
A War in Afghanistan…
under design, government, military, trend
...hundreds of billions. A counterinsurgency strategy:
Priceless.
(tpm)
An iPhone app you can wrap your fish in
under media
The NYTeims tries out newspaper as website iPhone app as newspaper:
The founder is no doubt spinning sliding in his grave.
Hobbesian ’80s
under art, neighborhood, trend, urban
NYTeims takes a walk down memory lane: “Justen Ladda leads people to the basement of an abandoned school in the South Bronx to show them an installation he’s created featuring the Marvel comics character known as the Thing.”
This one, from Ladda's site:
Kitchen of the future
under architecture, art, food
Zeger Reyers's “Rotating Kitchen,” in the Eating the Universe at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf:
Rotating through 28 Feb 2010.
(jg)
“In an insane world, the sane man must appear to be insane”
Also sprach Hauptmann Kirk.
LAT:
With the birth of his son 15 years ago, dedicated linguist d’Armond Speers embarked on the ultimate experiment: He spoke to him only in Klingon — the language of the alien race of “Star Trek” fame — for the first three years of his life.
“I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language,” Speers said. “He was definitely starting to learn it.”
So when Ultralingua, a dictionary, translation and grammar software company in Dinkytown, honored requests from customers to create applications for a Klingon dictionary, they turned to Speers, a self-employed software consultant.
“It was right square in my sweet spot,” said Speers, who graduated from Georgetown University in 2002 with a doctorate in computational linguistics.
If he'd used Europanto, his son would still speak it fluently.
Reality sues fiction
under architecture, crime, security, standards, urban
NYTeims (Bagli, “A Whistleblower at the Deutsche Bank Building Is Now an Outcast,” 30 Nov’09):
[Marshal Greenberg] is suing the contractors who employed him, Bovis Lend Lease and the John Galt Corporation, accusing them of retaliating against him for telling the truth. Bovis, in court papers, has denied his claims.
The kicker:
Galt has yet to file its court papers, and declined comment.
Maybe it's gone?
Queen, bishops, pawns
under economics, government, media
The Guardian (formerly known as Teh Grauniad but since displaced by the NY Teims) does a number on HM:
Early example of B1FFness
Courtesy of the early Clay Shirky.
( lloyd wood )
Disclaimer
under LDCs, crime, finance, government, international, law, military, security, trend
Xe:
The joint audit by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction and the United State Department of State Inspector General released yesterday does not, as some press reports have suggested, allege that Blackwater was ever complicit in overbilling the United States government for work it performed in Iraq in 2006 and 2007.
The audit does not even state that the government overpaid Blackwater for staffing issues. All it suggests is that invoices spanning a period of time are reviewed. A $55 million penalty has in no way been determined.
In fact, the government contracting officer determined that Blackwater was compliant with the terms of the contract at the time for which they were reviewing and the therefore did not apply any deductions or penalties. Blackwater only billed for services provided.
But we thought you were "Xe."
(yeti)