Faces of Facebook Image Shows All 1.2B+ FB Profile Pics Arranged Chronologically, via Petapixel. I didn’t realize just how early in the facebook phenomenon I got in.
Here’s an interesting project that captures, in one fell swoop, just how many of us are connected through the social life suck network known as Facebook. Called Faces of Facebook, it’s a website/webapp that compiles all 1.2 Billion+ Facebook users’ profile pics into a single static-like image, in which each picture is a different colored pixel.
Web History, a timeline. Very cool.
Ubuntu 13.10 Final BETA released and available for download
Ubuntu 13.10 BETA continues the previous-cycles’ centering of quality and robustness, delivering a stable, fast and further optimized operating system (yet, Ubuntu 13.10 stable is to be released on October 17th 2013, OS version aimed at production machines).
Getty Critics pokes fun at horrible stock photography.
But for every “right one” they found, there were hundreds of “wrong ones.” And for every hundred “wrong ones” there were at least one or two that were downright hilariously absurd. It seemed only right that these ridiculous stock photos be shared with the world: thus was born Getty Critics.
In a shocking turn of events, the LA school district found out that kids are smarter than adults.
The LA Times is reporting that the distribution of iPads to all 640,000 students in the LA school district may be temporarily halted after high school pupils worked out how to bypass the restrictions placed on the devices.
GNOME 3.10 us out the door!
The GNOME project is proud to present GNOME 3.10. The release comes six months after 3.8, and contains 34786 changes by approximately 985 contributors. It contains major new features as well as a large collection of smaller enhancements. 3.10 provides an improved experience for users, as well as new capabilities for application developers.
Valve announces Steam Machines hardware beta for SteamOS:
Today the company announced the second part of the puzzle with the launch of a hardware beta program for “Steam Machines” that will run the operating system…
Valve has a page with details, FAQ, etc. Very interesting.
New “FilmSpeed” ad for Forza Motorsport 5 makes very cool use of strategically placed billboards and a very fast car. Embedded below for your pleasure.
Popular Science] explains [Why We’re Shutting Off Our Comments(http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-09/why-were-shutting-our-comments):
Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to “debate” on television.
According to Apple, the entry-level 21.5-inch iMac features a 2.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor and new Iris Pro integrated graphics. The high-end 21.5-inch model and both 27-inch models feature quad-core Intel Core i5 processors up to 3.4GHz and NVIDIA GeForce 700 series graphics with twice the video memory and up to 40 percent faster performance than the previous generation.
My fully maxed out machine is still $3400. Of course, that’s the same price as it was for the last version, with lesser specs, and half the ram. Still an expensive bit of kit, but a damn nice bit of kit.
Valve changes the game, announces its own Steam OS:
Valve has been teasing announcements surrounding its much rumored Steam Box platform on its website, and today the company revealed “SteamOS” as the first of three announcements. There aren’t many details available just yet, but Valve says the Linux-based platform will be available soon as a “free stand-alone operating system for living room machines” and “freely licensable operating system for manufacturers.”
Well, that is interesting.
Microsoft announces Surface Pro 2, updating some of the hardware, speed, kickstand, a 60% battery life improvement, and a lot more. Pricing goes from $899 to $1799 based on configuration.
Unicode and UTF-8 explained in 10 minutes, on the back of a napkin.
A fantastically good explanation of just how it works, why, and how damn good it is compared to other systems.
Via Daring Fireball, here’s Microsoft’s opinion of the iPhone over the years: What A Difference Six Years Makes….
How many megapixels do you need?
So how many megapixels do you need? Here’s the shortest answer we can muster: for most purposes 3MP is plenty, but you might want to shoot at around 8MP for the crispest possible details. 8MP is a sensible minimum for big prints and 4K TVs, and even higher resolutions allow you to crop photos without sacrificing quality too much. However, make sure that very high resolutions are matched by an equivalent increase in sensor size.
Just to prove we’re not all about Apple, or Linux, or Windows, or mobile, or Movies, here’s FreeBSD 10′s New Technologies and Features.
Via OSNews.
If you search for nothing on Google Play, or go to this link, you get the result of what I can only imagine is a great google easter egg. Screenshotted here for posterity.
The Instapaper blog details InstaRank - v1.0:
To fully shape InstaRank, we explored questions like “Did many web pages of this domain get likes, or did just one article get many hits?” and “Have links of this domain performed well historically, measured in terms of likes, reads, saves?”. We found users prefer some web domains or sources of information more than others, and used visualizations like the one shown below (which shows the top 18 domains that Instapaper users most interacted with on Sept. 4th, 2013) to identify what domains might generate popular links.
Yes, you can hack into the code and change the location of the commonly accepted awkward lock button…but why should I have to spend a single minute of my time doing that? Is it not HTC’s job to find the best location for the lock button?
Interesting read, even knowing that the author started as an iPhone fan. His points regarding some of the overwhelming ability to customize mirror some of my own experiences with comparing something like KDE. The biggest point I identified with was the Keyboard:
Sure, I can customize the keyboard and change it if I don’t like the stock one…but why should I have to spend any time doing so? Shouldn’t the keyboard be optimium right out of the box?
Still, if you’re an iPhone fan this will read as justification for following the Cult of Jobs, if you’re an Android fan this will read as just another lame attempt to discredit Android by an iSheep. However you fall in this stupid and pointless religious battle, it’s an interesting read.
So if you see your more Apple Fanboy friends sweating and breathing a bit harder this morning, you might want to be aware of a few things going on:
- The iOS 7 Download is Now Available for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, currently only showing in the Over The Air update on the phone, not in iTunes. I’m sure it’ll be out in a few minutes though.
- Tons of apps are releasing updates last night and this morning, to ride the wave of iOS 7 updates.
- Tap Tap Tap released Camera+ 4
- Omnifocus released a new version of Omnifocus for iPhone
- Many many others…
- All the iPhone 5c and 5s reviews are coming out
- iTunes 11.1 is now available
So be patient, if they’re fiddling with their phone more today than normal just smile and understand, and if they show you something amazing and new (“look how it bounces… it’s boooouuunnncccciiinnnngggg!!!!”) be kind to them and pretend you care :)
Ron Howard: ‘The Dark Tower’ Is Alive, Enjoying Quiet Development via /Film.
I’ve written about the Dark Tower as a film many times before, mostly with a bit of trepidation as to how you do justice to such a huge story in a film or 3 (or for that matter, 10). Well, sounds like it’s setup as a three film series linked with a TV series.
As with all things, I’ll believe it when I see it, and I’ll go see it, no matter what.
Via The Loop: Guy finds his house plumbed with beer. These are the best friends ever!
Yesterday Evernote introduced a Referral Program:
Today, we’re launching a new program to say thanks for spreading the word. Now, whenever you invite your friends, family and coworkers to Evernote, you’ll earn points that you can use towards Premium subscriptions, monthly upload limit increases and more.
Basically if you’re an evernote user, you can get access to premium features by getting your friends to sign up to evernote through a referral link. You collect points which you can redeem against a ton of interesting stuff.
As an evernote user, and someone who is a huge fan and has written about them a lot in the past, I’ll encourage you to now go and sign up and check out the benefits of Evernote.
Not only do you get bonuses, but if you sign up through a referral link like this one, you’ll get a month of Evernote premium and all the benefits associted with it. Hard to say no at the deal.
OpenZFS made this Announcement today:
ZFS is the world’s most advanced filesystem, in active development for over a decade. Recent development has continued in the open, and OpenZFS is the new formal name for this open community of developers, users, and companies improving, using, and building on ZFS. Founded by members of the Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and illumos communities, including Matt Ahrens, one of the two original authors of ZFS, the OpenZFS community brings together over a hundred software developers from these platforms. […]
Read more on the link.
While I don’t endorse Miley in any shape or form…. but the 2 Irish guys watch Miley Cyrus’s Wrecking Ball is pretty damn funny :)
Map of Europe: 1000 AD to present day.
Miley Cyrus Overload? Chrome Extension Solves That:
Yesterday, as Digital Spy points out, a Google Chrome browser extension launched under the name “No Cyrus.” Chrome users simply install the extension and it will use hashtag symbols to block out every single online mention of the following phrases:
Finally.
If “Breaking Bad” Had Been Set In The U.K seems particularily relevant as I just started watching it from Season 1.
Another awesome Simon’s Cat - Mirror Mirror:
The All New Evernote Web Clipper 6 for Chrome is a huge update, and looks awesome.
That thinking led us to completely redesign our popular Evernote Web Clipper for Chrome. It’s all new, super powerful and amazingly simple. Let’s take a look.
Miley Cyrus - Wrecking Ball (Nicolas Cage Edition)
I have no words.
NASA Spacecraft Embarks on Historic Journey Into Interstellar Space
PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft officially is the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. The 36-year-old probe is about 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) from our sun.
Which is more awesome/freaky:
- Voyager is only two years younger than me
- Something that we meat bags built is in intersteller-freakin’ space
I’ll go with a little from column A, a little from column B…
A Look At The Special Effects Created For ‘Pacific Rim’ Prologue from Geeks of Doom.
Amazing stuff, shocking sometimes to see just how little “there” is there. Keep an eye out at around 2:58 to see just how little of the scene is “real”.
Reeder 2 for iOS leaps back into the RSS battle according to The Verge. I’m a bit annoyed at buying it at $4.99 again, but I paid that much a couple of years ago, and the cost of a fancy coffee for some excellent RSS reading iOS software is truly a small price to pay!
The updated app functions much as Reeder 1 did, is now a universal app, so no need to re-buy Reeder for iPad, and is now more iOS7-feeling.
More info in the story, or just head over to the App Store Link and buy it yourself, it’s worth it if you have an RSS reading addiction like I do :)
Apple details Fingerprint Sensor/Touch ID security as well as a bunch of other questions answered.
Via the Wall Street Journal, an Apple spokesperson fleshes out some of the finer details surrounding the fingerprint sensor and Touch ID. To use Touch ID, it is mandatory to also set up a passcode. This acts as a fallback in case the fingerprint sensor fails temporarily or experiences a permanent hardware fault. iOS may necessitate a passcode under some other conditions, as well.
Assuming that you believe them, and don’t think they’re a front for the NSA to get everyone’s fingerprints as well as location, contacts, etc (the iPhone does seem to be the phone of choice for terrorists), this is good news.
Tim Ferris, author of the “4” series (4 Hour Body, 4 Day Workweek, and 4 Hour Chef), has released the audiobook (and more) for his latest book The 4-Hour Chef for free on bittorrent.
I am today releasing the audiobook of The 4-Hour Chef…for free.
He goes into some of the reasoning behind things in the blog post.
I’ve always thought that the Holy Grail was a bit more grand than it was made out. Luckily with a bit of editing and the right music, ‘Monty Python and The Holy Grail’ Gets A Modern Epic Trailer.
Buzzfeed story: Basically Every Apple Rival Bought Twitter Ads Against The iPhone Event Today
Nokia UK , Samsung, LG, and Microsoft’s Windows Phone all bought Twitter ads to show up at the top of users’ timelines on searches for “Apple” or “iPhones,” today, taking advantage of an event that generated more than 25,000 related tweets per minute. According to Twitter, that’s on par with the volume of tweets sent about Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps’s race at the 2012 Olympics — in other words, huge.
On one hand, if Apple did this, I might applaud them, but probably not (and frankly they’d probably be less douchey). Not like Apple hasn’t done things like this before (anyone remember the “Redmond start your photocopiers”?).
The buying tweets for it just seems…. ugly. I don’t care so much about these being ads for/against Apple, it’s more corrupting the “purity” of twitter. Or something like that.
Everyone ready for the keynote?
Updates: (Basically everything that had already leaked).
- iWork suite of apps will be free
- iPhone 5C colorful and less expensive (99/199 for 16/32 on contract)
- iPhone 5S the new big phone
- Separate motion chip (basically they killed the Fuel Band type products)
- Better camera sensor/lens/software
- Dual type flash for better color
- Fingerprint sensor
- iPhone 5S 16/32/64 at 199/299/399 on contract
The version of Apple Keynote Bingo for this year seems more awesome than usual. Awesome in a snarky way that is.
Via Inspired by Apple.
Sony Officially Debuts Two Revolutionary Lens-Style Cameras for your Smartphone.
Earlier today, after weeks worth of rumors and leaks, Sony finally announced the ‘lens cameras’ we had heard so much about. No need to parse through rumors and speculate about what’s truth and what’s fiction, the company’s QX100 and QX10 smartphone-attachable lens-style cameras are officially here.
These are the detachable lenses that will wirelessly beam to your smartphone, but also give you high megapixels and high quality glass.
I’m all over this, though there are a ton of questions to answer first :)
bsolutely Insane Live-Action ‘Mirror’s Edge’ Parkour Video](http://www.geeksofdoom.com/2013/09/08/because-awesome-absolutely-insane-live-action-mirrors-edge-parkour-video):
Awesome. Big screen required.
Macgasm lists The Only 5 Things You Can Count On At Apple’s Event Tomorrow. The only thing I question is number 3, “Goddam Game Demos”, as those have been a bit lighter later. The rest are a lock though :)
Yahoo’s Logo Reveals the Worst Aspects of the Engineering Mindset from the Glog is a dissection of the thinking process in a very geeky way.
If there is one sentence in the entire blog post that tells the whole story, that is it. This shows that not only does she lack an understanding of design — which is fine, it’s not where her strengths lie — but that she also doesn’t know it; that designers consulted were unable to disabuse her of this ridiculous notion; and that the final result pleased her, when it is obviously flawed in this regard.
‘Teen Exorcists’ Girls Believe Harry Potter’s Magic Comes From Satan from Geeks of Doom.
First of all, I know they put stuff shit like this for the shock value of “I didn’t think people were really this stupid”, and I still have to say “I can’t believe people are this stupid”. Of course, as you watch them talk you can tell that even they don’t believe the crap they’re talking about.
If people stopped watching this crap, maybe they’d stop putting it on TV.
Excellent dissection of the “iPhone 5S will have a fingerprint reader” rumors in Fingerprints by Craig Hockenberry.
And anytime you want to access this data, you’re logging into iCloud. Wouldn’t it be great if you could skip the part where you have to type in your Apple ID?
This is a similar conclusion I came to a couple of days ago. I’ve been on the “this doesn’t make sense for apple to do” train since the rumors started. Adding this sort of gratuitous “extra tech” onto a smartphone felt more like Samsung and their plethora of extras on the Galaxy S4 and not the (in general) tight integration that Apple is known for.
But then I thought about all the times that I still need to enter my password or login on the iPhone. Websites, purchases, buying apps, logging into Google’s search app, unlocking the phone. What if that could be just replaced with “put your thumb on the home button?
Apple has:
- All that information stored in the keychain
- Keychain syncing is going to be part of iOS7 / OS/X Mavericks
- Credit card information will be stored in your keychain
- All your purchases of apps, music, movies, tv shows, and books tied to your account
Putting it all together, and making the iPhone your mythical “digital wallet” really does now seem like it’s one of those “of course” ideas. Thinking of it this way instead of a simple concept of “your thumb unlocks your phone” really turned me around.
Craig goes into the reasoning in far better a way than I, so I recommend you read his article as well.
Of course, there are also rumors that on launch the fingerprint reader will just be for unlocking the phone, so maybe Craig and myself will be sorely disappointed :)
I guarentee that watching The Fox music video over on The Loop will be the oddest 3:45 you’ll spend this entire day. Actually a catchy song.
Pressgram, a response to Instagram’s Terms of Service, has launched.
- Capture your photos, add a filter, and then publish to a self-hosted .org and WordPress.com site!
- Then share your photos with your social network and follow your friends via our passionate and growing community!
- Join the REVOLUTION and have true creative control over what is rightfully yours!
The question of whether it’ll be like Diaspora was to Facebook is still to be answered.
Either I’m missing something, or The New Yahoo! Logo is not exciting enough to save the company. Did anyone else wait breathlessly for the new and final logo to be announced?
On the Omnigroup blog today: We’re unable to offer upgrade pricing for Mac App Store purchases.
My apologies: I’m afraid we will not be able to offer upgrade pricing to our Mac App Store customers after all. So long as we continue to sell our apps through the Mac App Store, we are not allowed to distribute updates through other channels to apps which were purchased from the App Store.
The reasoning is basically Apple says they’re not allowed to offer upgrades “out” of the App store while continuing to sell apps in the App Store. So either you are in, or you’re out. They are allowed to continue to sell their apps both in the app store and from their own online store, but they can’t offer to let people upgrade from the App Store version to their own version.
This is the sort of crap that Apple fans deal with all the time. 90% of the time everything in the Apple World(tm)(r) is happiness and unicorns, but the 10% of the time that Apple does their thing, they really make people mad.
Please Apple, just offer upgrade pricing in the store already!
Coworker pointed me to this Jay Larson Stand-Up. Hilarious.
Samsung’s Galaxy Gear is a smartwatch like no other says The Verge.
So we finally know for sure now: Xbox One Release Date: November 22.
Microsoft announced today that it will launch the Xbox One on November 22 in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, UK, and USA. Microsoft previously delayed the launch of its next-gen gaming system in eight countries: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and Switzerland. The console will now launch in these markets sometime in 2014.
Thanks forgetfoo!
VMware Fusion 6 released, with lots of new goodies for the new hardware and operating systems rumored and planned for this fall.
VMware has just released the immediate availability of VMware Fusion 6 and VMware Fusion 6 Professional. The new version of the virtualization software boasts over 50 new features and is prepared for the new operating systems coming from both Apple (Mavericks) and Microsoft (Windows 8.1).
Evernote 5 for Windows Desktop is Here, and it looks like it’s in feature parody with the Mac version.
In the years since we first launched Evernote for Windows, a lot has changed in the world of application design. With Evernote 5, we’re embracing modern aesthetics to bring you a beautiful, flat interface that feels at home on multiple versions of Windows. By stripping unnecessary elements, we’ve made it easier to browse and create notes. Anything that might have distracted you from achieving your goals is gone.
Looks pretty great, great work Evernote Team!
Android KitKat is announced. This time concentrating on lower end devices.
Interesting look at the types of Porn Across America, broken down by type and state. Interesting look into what the states are into.