Joshua Katz has been studying American dialects and has made more than 120 maps of some of the differences in American speech. Here are a few examples:
(thx, everyone)
These maps are a fascinating representation of the differences in American speech. I was surprised by several of them. I’d be interested to see one for the pronunciation of “gif”.
President Obama Comes Out Strongly Against Patent Trolls; Here Are The Details | Techdirt
That said, get ready for the pushback. Pharmaceutical companies, giant patent trolls like Intellectual Ventures (and some other legacy tech companies who are long past their innovation days) and a gaggle of people claiming vaguely to represent “small inventors” are about to go ballistic over these proposed changes, and will seek to block any real progress, while simultaneously looking to water down the proposals as much as possible. It’s what they did the last time, and it worked. Of course, the problem has only gotten progressively worse since then, so hopefully people realize that their complaints are really more about protecting their own chosen business models, rather than innovation as a whole.
Nice to see the President come out against patent trolling. Though it sounds like the most beneficial elements will require Congress to act. Let’s hope these efforts won’t be watered down as they wind through the sausage-makinglegislative process.
Windows 8.1 given first official outing, and yes, the Start button is back | Ars Technica
Another article on Ars Technica detailing the changes in Windows 8.1.
A video showing new features coming in Windows 8.1, such as better multitasking, better customization for the start screen (animated backgrounds, using the desktop background and more tile sizes) and improved search. Mostly focuses on the start screen, but does contain a glimpse of the desktop and the start button.
The ability of use the desktop background on the start screen should make the transition between the two less jarring.
(via Ars Technica)
As Vandals Deface U.S. Parks, Some Point to Online Show‑Offs – NYTimes.com
It was the latest example of a trend that has been unnerving park officials from Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado to Arches in Utah and Joshua Tree in California. Just as drought and rapid development have caused a rise in encounters between humans and wild animals on the edges of many American cities, the wilder side of urban life — vandalism, graffiti and litter — has found its way into the wilderness.
This is truly sad. I don’t understand this lack of respect for our public lands.
How you and I could become nodes in the internet of things
A group of French researchers believe that the sensors and transmitters we wear will route and relay data, not just collect it. We won’t just be connected to the network. We’ll be the network.
Ever wonder what the network infrastructure of the future will be? Try looking in the mirror.
Some day our bodies — or at least the clothing or accessories that adorn them — could become key network nodes in the internet of things. European researchers think that sensors and transmitters on our bodies can be used to form cooperative ad hoc networks that could be used for group indoor navigation, crowd-motion capture, health monitoring on a massive scale and especially collaborative communications. Last week, French institute CEA-Leti and three French universities have launched the Cormoran project, which aims to explore the use of such cooperative interpersonal networks.
The concept of wireless body area networks (WBANs) isn’t a new one. WBANs could be used to sever the cord between patients and their monitoring equipment. Companies like Apple and Heapslylon are exploring the possibility of connected clothes with embedded sensors. We’ve already begun embracing a new era of wearables, such as Google Glass to Fitbit (see disclosure), designed to become extensions of our senses and movements.
Cygnus Constellation
The image depicts part of Cygnus, a northern constellation lying on the plane of the Milky Way.
Cygnus is one of the most recognizable constellations of the northern summer and autumn, featuring a prominent asterism known as the Northern Cross (in contrast to the Southern Cross), dominated by Deneb (Alfa Cygni), a blue-white supergiant star of visual magnitude 1.3, very bright despite its distance of some 3,200 light years from Earth. [**]
— Davide De Martin; Data credit: Caltech, Palomar Observatory, Digitized Sky Survey
From Astrophotographer Davide De Martin:
“There is no way to properly present a 2.5 gigapixel image on a computer screen (I am talking about 2.5 billion pixel, or 2500 megapixel, one thousand times higher than a modern digital camera, which can take pictures containing around 20-25 megapixel). For this reason,I thought a videoclip could do a better work showing how much there is in the image. My advise is to watch it with quality set at 720p or 1080p and on full-screen.”
Chandra, Spitzer study suggests black holes abundant among the earliest stars
The cosmic microwave background, shown at left in this illustration, is a flash of light that occurred when the young universe cooled enough for electrons and protons to form the first atoms. It contains slight temperature fluctuations that correspond to regions of slightly different densities, representing the seeds of all cosmic structure we see around us today. The universe then went dark for hundreds of millions of years until the first stars shone and the first black holes began accreting gas. A portion of the infrared and X-ray signals from these sources is preserved in the cosmic infrared background, or CIB, and its X-ray equivalent, the CXB. At least 20 percent of the structure in these backgrounds changes in concert, indicating that black hole activity was hundreds of times more intense in the early universe than it is today.
By comparing infrared and X-ray background signals across the same stretch of sky, an international team of astronomers has discovered evidence of a significant number of black holes that accompanied the first stars in the universe.
Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, which observes in the infrared, researchers have concluded one of every five sources contributing to the infrared signal is a black hole.
Credit: Karen Teramura, UHIfA
You’re Too Cheap to Fly Faster — Lift and Drag — Medium
But there’s a big difference between this hypersonic flight and the ever faster computers that have penetrated nearly every corner of society, and now travel everywhere in pockets and purses, and even on some people’s faces. We don’t get to use the really fast airplanes. We’re actually flying slower than we were 50 years ago.
It turns out we’re just too cheap to fly faster.
