Andreasmb

Official video for LFO's self-titled anthem, released 26 July 1990.

“That was the one that turned us into a “real label”. We just weren’t really prepared for what would happen with that record. It was at the time when a single could come out and keep sneaking up and up; at first it was just into the top 40, next week it was in the top 20, then it was 12. We sold 130,000 12"s, which was just unbelievable, you’d get the same position now from selling 3,000.” – Steve Beckett (2007)

→ warp.net/artists/91279-lfo

Oh, this is just a little brilliant. Steve Reich is a composer famous for his experimentation with musical looping and phasing. His 1967 piece Piano Phase featured a pair of pianists repetitively performing the same piece at two slightly different tempos, forming a continually evolving musical round. Seth Kranzler took this idea and made a Reich-like piece with two iPhones ringing at slightly different tempos. Here’s a video of the effect in action:

Man, this is nerdy on so many levels and I am here for it.

Tags: iPhone   music   Seth Kranzler   Steve Reich   video

Wolfgang Laib. Nerd.

Danila Tkachenko / Projects / Restricted Areas:

A beautiful photo series.

In an interview with Yahoo Movies UK, Rogue One editor Colin Goudie shares how he made a full-length story reel for director Gareth Edwards from similar scenes from 100s of other movies so that Edwards could work out the pacing for the action and dialogue.

There was no screenplay, there was just a story breakdown at that point, scene by scene. He got me to rip hundreds of movies and basically make ‘Rogue One’ using other films so that they could work out how much dialogue they actually needed in the film.

It’s very simple to have a line [in the script] that reads “Krennic’s shuttle descends to the planet”, now that takes maybe 2-3 seconds in other films, but if you look at any other ‘Star Wars’ film you realise that takes 45 seconds or a minute of screen time. So by making the whole film that way — I used a lot of the ‘Star Wars’ films — but also hundreds of other films too, it gave us a good idea of the timing.

For example the sequence of them breaking into the vault I was ripping the big door closing in ‘Wargames’ to work out how long does a vault door take to close.

So that’s what I did and that was three months work to do that and that had captions at the bottom which explained the action that was going to be taking place, and two thirds of the screen was filled with the concept art that had already been done and one quarter, the bottom corner, was the little movie clip to give you how long that scene would actually take.

Then I used dialogue from other movies to give you a sense of how long it would take in other films for someone to be interrogated. So for instance, when Jyn gets interrogated at the beginning of the film by the Rebel council, I used the scene where Ripley gets interrogated in ‘Aliens’.

So you get an idea of what movies usually do.

That’s super interesting! Like a moving Pinterest mood board or something. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to see that story reel.

Tags: Colin Goudie   Gareth Edwards   movies   remix   Rogue One   Star Wars

Here’s to the next president.

Most non-PC album cover ever?

Check out more great covers at the NY Times, Buzzfeed, and The Casual Optimist. Compare with last year's picks.

Tags: best of   best of 2015   books   design   lists

By Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

In PC World, Martyn Williams of North Korea Tech has an interesting piece on the story of Orascom in North Korea:

An Egyptian company that launched North Korea’s first 3G cellular network and attracted as many as 3 million subscribers has revealed that it lost control of the operator despite owning a majority stake.

The plight of Orascom Telecom and Media Technology in North Korea takes place against a backdrop of rapid telecom modernization and a public eager to adopt a new technology. It’s ultimately a lesson in the perils of getting into bed with a government that’s not known for respecting international law.

When Orascom announced plans to launch the 3G service in 2008 it met with skepticism. The North Korean government severely limits its citizens’ ability to communicate and has jailed or killed anyone who speaks out against the regime. The regime has regularly threatened war against its foes and was under sanctions at the time for a 2006 nuclear test.

But Orascom Chairman Naguib Sawiris saw something else: a land that technology had forgotten. He’d successfully built cellular networks in other developing countries, and North Korea seemed a perfect candidate, especially with its low fixed-line penetration.

Read the full story:

How a telecom investment in North Korea went horribly wrong
PC World
Martyn Williams
11-17-2015

Jemima Stehli, ‘Table’, 1997-8

Versace

Penelope Bateman, ‘Artist as object - table in the style of Allen Jones’, 2005

Alva Bernadine

BDSM community

Phillip Toledano, ‘Abu Ghraib Coffee Table’, 2008

Someone on Twitter said this is the best piece about the upcoming Star Wars movie, and I think he's right. But it's not so much about Star Wars specifically as it is about how Hollywood studios are trying to build infinite series of movies.

These new movies won't just be sequels. That's not the way the transnational entertainment business works anymore. Forget finite sequences; now it's about infinite series. [...] Everywhere, studio suits are recruiting creatives who can weave characters and story lines into decades-spanning tapestries of prequels, side-quels, TV shows, games, toys, and so on. Brand awareness goes through the roof; audiences get a steady, soothing mainline drip of familiar characters.

Forget the business implications for a moment, though. The shared universe represents something rare in Hollywood: a new idea. It evolved from the narrative techniques not of auteur or blockbuster films but of comic books and TV, and porting that model over isn't easy. It needs different kinds of writers and directors and a different way of looking at the structure of storytelling itself. Marvel prototyped the process; Lucasfilm is trying to industrialize it.

Harry Potter could be a great infinite series, but it'll be interesting to see if Rowling is interested in heading in that direction. Ditto Middle-earth and Tolkien.

Tags: Hollywood   movies   Star Wars

In the latest installment of Every Frame a Painting, Tony Zhou talks about the different techniques filmmakers use to make shoot locations like Vancouver (Zhou's hometown) look like New York, India, Chicago, Shanghai, and San Francisco in the finished films.

Tags: movies   Tony Zhou   Vancouver   video

Netflix and Charlie Brooker have agreed to make 12 more episodes of the fantastic Black Mirror.

Netflix has commissioned House of Tomorrow to produce the twelve new episodes as a Netflix original series. House of Tomorrow's Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones, who executive produced the first seven episodes of the series, will continue to serve as executive producers and showrunners for the new episodes. Brooker has commenced writing the new episodes, which are scheduled to begin production in late 2015 from the series' production base in the UK.

"It's all very exciting -- a whole new bunch of Black Mirror episodes on the most fitting platform imaginable. Netflix connects us with a global audience so that we can create bigger, stranger, more international and diverse stories than before, whilst maintaining that 'Black Mirror' feel. I just hope none of these new story ideas come true," said Brooker.

My three favorite TV shows from the past 5 years: Mad Men, Transparent, and Black Mirror. Second tier: Breaking Bad, Sherlock, Game of Thrones, Halt and Catch Fire, and Boardwalk Empire. (via @mccanner)

Tags: Black Mirror   Charlie Brooker   Netflix   TV

From a paper presented at SIGGRAPH Asia by a group from Stanford, a system for tracking the facial expressions from one person and putting them on the face of a second person in real-time. This is crazy. (via @gavinpurcell)

Tags: video

In what may be one of the most ground-breaking developments in creating artificial sunlight, a group of Italian scientists recently announced CoeLux, a new kind of skylight that perfectly mimics the feel of daylight. The creator’s claim the system is so effective that it tricks unknowing individuals into thinking they are looking up at the actual sun.

The inventors are somewhat tight-lipped about how CoeLux works, but it involves filtering a light source through a layer of nanoparticles that mimic Earth’s atmosphere. Because of this, not only does the color match sunshine but the quality does as well. In the photos above—which CoeLux insists aren’t digitally altered—you can get an idea of how realistic the light is, and see it in action in the video.

The light is currently available in three different configurations that mimic sunlight at different points on the globe including tropical, mediterranean, and nordic environments. Applications for CoeLux might involve anywhere light is scarce, from extreme environments like scientific outposts to underground parking garages or even in hospitals. You can see more on their website. (via PetaPixel)

Nato Green: "Mayor Ed Lee, I found locations for the 30,000 units you want to build. They're in the 408."

San Francisco lets Silicon Valley push it around like the school bully in an '80s teen comedy. We're at each other's throats trying to cope with soaring housing costs, while Silicon Valley gets off scot-free for creating problems we get to solve.

Local governments dump housing problems onto the places that do build, mostly San Francisco and Oakland. For example, late last year, Mountain View approved plans to add 3.4 million square feet of office space around the Google and LinkedIn fortresses, adding 20,000 jobs. No new housing. Supposedly the newly elected City Council eventually will vote to allow 1,500 to 5,000 units in the area, but the other 15,000 are San Francisco's problem by default.

Sunnyvale, Milpitas, Palo Alto, Santa Clara and all these tedious South Bay hamlets debase themselves to offer tech titans expansion upon expansion to corporate campuses without any new housing. One UC Davis study suggested those cities have a combined below-market-rate housing deficit of 20,000 units. Mayor Ed Lee, I found locations for the 30,000 units you want to build. They're in the 408.

San Francisco should sue Mountain View and the rest of these fools. San Francisco could challenge all these cities to adopt a Jobs-Housing Linkage Program like we did years ago, to comply with their own housing elements. Even to the point of bringing dreaded California Environmental Quality Act lawsuits against big office projects that don't mitigate the housing problems they send us.

A relevant precedent is Urban Habitat v. the City of Pleasanton. State law requires local governments to adopt a housing element with land-use regulations to meet local housing needs. Pleasanton didn't comply with its own housing element and used a bunch of obscure zoning gimmicks to prevent new housing from being built, especially below-market-rate housing. Pleasanton lost in 2010 and had to rezone and allow more below-market-rate housing. San Francisco could adapt this approach to sue over the refusal to build in the deep south.

We progressives are accused of being NIMBYs, of reflexively opposing higher density new development. I support lots of it. In Silicon Valley. Build all the market-rate housing you want down there. I've been to Mountain View. There's nothing there worth preserving, except Taqueria La Bamba on Rengstorff Avenue. Their carnitas is the rapture. When I started stand-up, the bar Ron's Farmhouse in Mountain View had a weekly comedy night. That fetid hole of regret closed. Build a 50-story luxury condo tower there.

The reason these adorable towns resist more housing is basically racism. It's in the guise of alarms about "preserving neighborhood character," "school overcrowding" and "crime," but that's all code for poor brown people. They moved to a subdivision in 65 percent white Palo Alto to enjoy good schools and make little James Francos in peace. Fine!

South Bay: You left a lot of your rich white people here in San Francisco. Please come collect them. In San Francisco, we're upset about the displacement of working-class communities of color. You can preserve your historic landmark whiteness and we'll happily welcome "those people" here. Bring your people home. That's a win-win.

I know the techies in San Francisco feel embattled and beleaguered. They're blamed for things that are out of their control. I'm here for you, Google Bus riders. I'm concerned that all the hours you spend commuting are bad for your health. I want you to live close enough to bike to work. Santa Clara and Sunnyvale are both "All-America Cities." There's a sign on the freeway saying so. I don't know what that means, but I want you to have down time after work to find out. You deserve linguica from Neto's in Santa Clara. Help me help you.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

via Evan (via | Le Memé)

A killer robot is a fully autonomous weapon that can select and engage targets without any human intervention. They do not currently exist but advances in technology are bringing them closer to reality.

Those in favour of killer robots believe the current laws of war may be sufficient to address any problems that might emerge if they are ever deployed, arguing that a moratorium, not an outright ban, should be called if this is not the case.

However, those who oppose their use believe they are a threat to humanity and any autonomous “kill functions” should be banned.

“Autonomous weapons systems cannot be guaranteed to predictably comply with international law,” Prof Sharkey told the BBC. “Nations aren’t talking to each other about this, which poses a big risk to humanity.”

(via BBC News - ‘Killer robots’ to be debated at UN)

Dead media fetishization on display: Jack White talks about his new “Ultra LP” (by OfficialTMR)

“Enter Pyongyang” – A video to encourage tourism to North Korea.

Sochi Six Months After

Astana, EXPO 2017 – 
“Astana is an unusual town. Each of the founders left his own little world here, his vision of beauty. This mosaic has merged into a living person, a reflection of our soul. The energy of the soul is the most powerful, life-giving, all-encompassing and powerful force on the face of the Earth.”

(by Ministry of Foreign Affairs Kazakhstan)

Oplab 03: Triggers - via Raphael (by teenageengineering)

Wearable Intelligence in Energy (by Wearable Intelligence)

Qaeda Quality Question Quickly Quickly Quiet (by Will Guzzardi)

“

Nearly half of US jobs could be susceptible to computerisation over the next two decades, a study from the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology suggests.

The study, a collaboration between Dr Carl Benedikt Frey (Oxford Martin School) and Dr Michael A. Osborne (Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford), found that jobs in transportation, logistics, as well as office and administrative support, are at “high risk” of automation. More surprisingly, occupations within the service industry are also highly susceptible, despite recent job growth in this sector.

”

- NEWS RELEASE: Oxford Martin School study shows nearly half of US jobs could be at risk of computerisation | Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology

“If you try to make technical arguments about whether or not a company has broken the law, you’ll probably go mad because it’s so complex. But from a political or economic perspective, it is much clearer. They tell their investors how profitable they are, then tell the tax authorities how unprofitable they are. They and their mostly wealthy owners are free-riding off ordinary taxpayers: taking the benefits of society—the roads, educated workforces, the rule of law, the courts and police, and not paying for them. That’s the heart of the matter. And of course they lobby fiercely to eviscerate the tax laws.”

- How to Write About Tax Havens and the Super-Rich: An Interview with Nicholas Shaxson | Longreads