interesting piece of internet history.
The Rise and Fall of AIM, the Breakthrough AOL Never Wanted
Month: April 2014
On CT scanning
subtle use of cinemagraphs
CT scanners let scientists peer inside objects while keeping them intact. Frohlich has scanned everything from mummies to Stradivarius violins.
Japan copied US culture and made it better
If you’re looking for some of America’s best bourbon, denim and burgers, go to Japan, where designers are re-engineering our culture in loving detail. This movement of American style across the ocean to Japan and back to America with a Japanese twist is happening more frequently. The most famous example is probably Daiki Suzuki, who was design director for the quintessentially American brand Woolrich Woolen Mills and now produces his own menswear line—Engineered Garments, a Japanese-run American brand that manufactures its unique take on vintage Americana in New York and sells it in both Japan and the US One of his former employees, Shinya Hasegawa, now has a Brooklyn-based line called Battenwear that offers his interpretation of American outdoor wear from the ’60s to the ’80s. I had never encountered the brand in the States, but I found it in Kyoto.
Tambora
On 10 April 1815, Tambora produced the largest eruption known on the planet during the past 10 ka. As described in Gillen D’Arcy Wood’s new book, the explosion was only the first dose of Tambora’s destructive power. In terms of its enduring presence in folklore, as well as its status in the scientific literature, 1816’s cold summer was the most significant meteorological event of the 19th century. After the tsunami and famine came cholera, opium, and failed Arctic expeditions.
Portus archaeology
On this course you will chart a journey from the Imperial harbor to its connections across the Mediterranean, learning about what the archaeological discoveries uncovered by the Portus Project tell us about the history, landscape, buildings, and the people of this unique place. Although the site lies in ruins, it has some of the best-preserved Roman port buildings in the Mediterranean, and in this course you will learn to interpret these and the finds discovered within them, using primary research data and the virtual tools of the archaeologist.
Ramen PSA
Woolworth Building
Woolworth Building is typically closed to visitors due to security paranoia. a shame, the interior was designed to attract attention. the basement now houses a lonely and forgotten bike rack, a far cry from the swimming pool and german beer cellar it used to.
Nambian hipster fashion
dapper as fuck. see also the earlier Gentlemen of Bacongo
OpenSSL
note lack of any tests for the change that added heartbeat support to openssl. the open source “quality” process has a long way to go.
2014-04-17:
No central architectural authority, 6740 goto statements, Inline assembly code, Multiple different coding styles, Obscure use of macro preprocessors, Inconsistent naming conventions, Far too many selections and options, Unexplained dead code, Misleading and incoherent comments: it became the default landfill for prototypes of cryptographic inventions
2014-05-20: good overview of how the cleanup of openssl progresses, 1 month in.
side note, is this the state of open source slide programs? static images without accessible text? oy
Openworm
Nice overview about openworm
“This is much more difficult to do in worms so it hasn’t been done as much, and as a consequence there is not as much data present. Scientists are catching up to the last 50 years of understanding neurons in rodents.”
There’s an explosion of data on its way and they’re doing their best to collect as much insight from this work so that they can build these neural behaviors into their model.
“We can also use some clever tricks from computer science to help us fill in some of the gaps. The good news is that this will only get easier as the tools and techniques get better over time.”
Gregor J. Rothfuss 