For instance, at the age of 22, [Caesar] was captured by pirates while crossing the Aegean. He heard the pirates were asking for 20 silver talents for him and he insisted they take no less than 50. He’s Caesar, damn it, he deserves 50. So the pirates got their ransom and released him. Caesar raised a fleet, chased down the pirates, and had them all crucified.
From a few questions for David Benioff, co-creator of Game of Thrones on HBO.
Kickstarter page for The Siva Cycle Atom, a rechargeable battery and generator that collects energy from your bike to use to power your gadgets via USB.
What I really need is a gadget I can plug into myself to generate power from any excess body fat. Weight loss and an extra hour of texting on my iPhone? Biggest Kickstarter project ever, no contest!
I mean honestly, the Matrix painted a terrifying scenario of the future in which we were all batteries for this race of alien overlords, but I can't be the only one who thought Neo looked pleasantly thin.
Via a coworker, some clever uses for Google Reverse Image Search over at Lifehacker. For example:
Whatever your social network of choice is, a number of fake profiles exist that try to friend you. Since most of these use stock photos or random pictures of the internet, finding the fakes is easy with a reverse image search.
If only this had come out earlier for Manti Te'o's sake.
Where this really becomes powerful is on a mobile phone, especially as image recognition algorithms become better at identifying objects from different angles.
It only works for a limited set of products, but the iOS app Flow intrigued me early on with its ability to identify products from simply an image. It wasn't that useful at the time because most products it could identify were products that were, well, self-identifying, like a book with its title on the, ahem, cover. But the germ of something cool is there. Think facial recognition databases and Google Glasses, however creepy it might sound, and you get some sense of the potential.
Of course, we knew this day was coming. The internet has always excelled, above all other uses, at moving information more efficiently, and the day when pictorial information is so easily identified is easily correlated to metadata is not far away. When I was at Hulu we already had facial recognition working fairly well for characters on screen in video, and they've since rolled it out on some videos.
Personally, I'd love that feature for Game of Thrones, where I spend half of each episode asking people I'm with who so and so is. And if such technology existed back in the day, a show like The Americans would seem more implausible, since even without that technology it's pretty clear it's Keri Russell under the endless supply of strange wigs and hairpieces she dons as costumes.
Which reminds me, I'm glad the new Man of Steel trailer seems to hint that they won't even bother establishing the whole Clark Kent persona (they also try to explain the S on his chest which is why I'm guessing they're going for a more realistic depiction of the fantasy, much like Nolan's Dark Knight did for Batman). I have never been able to get over the fact that Superman's disguise was simply a pair of glasses. Everything else about him, his hair, his voice, his build, was exactly the same.
You might wonder why I'd pick on that implausibility and not any of the other ridiculous things like his red underwear (overwear), the fact that he could fly, the fact that they speak English on Krypton, all that stuff. And the answer is, there is no reason, at least none that is acceptable for a grown adult.
When Japan’s real-estate bubble burst, young people had no point of reference other than boom times. So when the job market dried up, many of them welcomed the chance for self-exploration. In 1990, the Los Angeles Times reported on these young freeters, who rejected “conformist Japanese culture and its 15-hour workdays” in favor of “working odd jobs for spare cash” and “hanging out.” The freeters pioneered funemployment.
But while the term freeter stuck, the choice to be out of work was soon anything but free. The first freeters are now in their late 30s and early 40s. Almost one-third do not hold regular jobs, and some never have. One-fifth still live with their parents. This perpetual failure to launch has taken a psychological toll. Aging freeters file six of every 10 mental-health insurance claims. Japan’s suicide rate rose by 70 percent from 1991 to 2003, and the proportion of suicide victims in their 30s has grown each of the past 15 years.
What is most alarming is that things keep getting worse for subsequent generations. Today, more than 20 years after Japan’s bubble burst, youth unemployment is higher than ever. Only half of working 15-to-24-year-olds have regular jobs, and another 10 percent are unemployed. The rest are “nonregulars.” Somewhat akin to temp positions in the U.S., Japan’s nonregular jobs pay half as much as regular jobs, offer few benefits, and can be eliminated on a whim—which they often are. The portion of young Japanese working as nonregulars exploded in the mid-1990s and has marched upward ever since.
Ethan Devine in the Atlantic on lessons the U.S. should learn from Japan about surges in unemployment. They can self-perpetuate. Also instructive for teaching me the terms "freeter" and "funemployment."
The lesson I took away was about the importance of continuing to learn new skills after graduation. Of course, college is much about signaling, and not necessarily about your exact course of study. But it's not clear that the traditional degrees that colleges tend to guide students toward are necessarily the optimal ones for employment in this next phase of our economy.
It's a post for another day, but I see students coming out of undergrad and graduate school these days missing some very basic and important skills which would boost their employability significantly.
To twist a well-known aphorism, being employed won't necessarily make you happy, but being unemployed can make you very unhappy.
I admire [CNN's] commitment to covering all sides of a story...just in case one of them happens to be accurate.
When Obama leaves office, one of the things I'll miss the most are his comedy routines at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. The one he gave last night was one of the best yet.
I recognize that the Press and I have different jobs. My job is to be President, your job is to keep me humble. Frankly I think I'm doing my job better.
Seriously, he has some serious comedic timing, that's a gift. He also has some great joke writers, and they deserve some recognition. Who are they? Conan O'Brien could've used them last night.