Cooper Griggs

The unbearable slowness of light:

jkottke:

Nothing is faster than the speed of light. But compared to the unimaginable size of the Universe, light is actually extremely slow. This video is 45 minutes long and during that time, a photon emitted from the Sun¹ will only travel through a portion of our solar system.

In our…

Google is on the verge of getting into the ride-sharing business, creating a rift with the market leader Uber, Bloomberg reports. Uber and Google have been allies since Google invested $258 million in Uber in 2013 and got a seat on its board of directors. But Bloomberg says David Drummond, the Google executive who holds that Uber board seat, has recently informed Uber of its plans to get into the market itself.

Bloomberg suggests the move is part of Google's larger plan to build a business around self-driving car technology. That would make a lot of sense.

A lot of people assume that a self-driving car is a product that customers will buy the way people buy conventional cars today. But Google has never been very good at selling physical products; its strength has always been in the provision of services. And that makes the taxi business the perfect place for Google to introduce its self-driving car technology.

Another advantage of renting self-driving cars instead of selling them is reliability. Manufacturers will face lawsuits every time a self-driving car injures or kills someone, so they'll want to do everything they can to prevent errors. And this will be easier to do if manufacturers, not customers, own the vehicles. The last thing Google wants is for a car to crash because its owner forgot to bring it in to replace a key sensor. If Google owns all of the cars running its software, it can ensure that software is upgraded promptly and defective hardware is swapped out immediately.

Another reason to start in the taxi business is that, for all the talk about Uber and Lyft being disruptive business, they are themselves ripe for disruption. When you take an Uber ride, the majority of the fare goes to pay your driver. With no driver, Google should be able to charge dramatically less than Uber and still make a profit. That big price advantage won't exist if Google tries to sell cars to consumers directly.

To capture the taxi market, Google needs an Uber-style ride-sharing service to pair with its self-driving technology. It could try to acquire Uber or Lyft, but these companies are now worth billions of dollars.

So, according to Bloomberg, Google is going to build its own service. This would be an uphill struggle if Google were just trying to create another conventional ride-sharing business, since Uber and Lyft have a huge head start. Ride-sharing services are hugely dependent on what economists call network effects: the more drivers you have, the more attractive the service will be to passengers, and vice versa. Google will be starting with zero drivers and zero passengers, putting it at a big disadvantage.

Luckily, Google has a lot of money. It can afford to heavily subsidize the service while it develops the software and expertise it needs to connect customers with rides. Then, once the self-driving technology is ready to go, it can beat Uber and Lyft with much lower prices.

Disclosure: My brother is an executive at Google.

These guys.

Mt. Hood is Oregon’s highest peak, clocking in at 11,250 feet. North Drinkware, a team of Oregon-based glass blowers decided to commemorate this prominent landmark and immortalize it in glass by creating a 3D model of the peak that’s integrated into the base. Working from topographically accurate data obtained from the Using United States Geological Survey (USGS), the team hand-blows each glass and incorporates the model “so your beer cascades around the mountain when you pour it into the glass.”

Mt. Hood is visible up to 100 miles away, which helps to explain the affinity that many working and living in Oregon feel towards the peak. “We have a really strong connection with the mountains,” says one of the creators. “We stare at them, we play on them and we identify with them.” That’s what led North Drinkware to embark on a path to creating a glass that embodies a connection with Mt. Hood. The Oregon Pint brings technology, a sense of place and old world craftsmanship together. You can order your own glass on Kickstarter, where the company has recently launched a campaign to fund their first creation. (via Laughing Squid)

Rumor: Author Roald Dahl penned an open letter in 1988 urging parents to get their children vaccinated against measles.

It's long been rumored that Google, among other companies, has been paying Adblock Plus in order to get through its filters. Now, Financial Times says that it's not only Google that's been paying the ad-blocking service to be part of its whitelisted ...

Someone, somewhere thought it was a good idea for HTC to make its own hip hop music video. Whoever approved the project might be regretting that decision right now, but never mind -- at least we get a hilariously cringeworthy tune to stick on repeat ...

4gifs:

[video]

This is the dorkiest shirt we will ever do.

(via iheartcatgifs:aimlessme)

Last week, 10-year-old Alex Kettler stumbled upon three mysterious cases in a corner of his grandmother's attic. Neither his grandmother nor his father knew what was inside — so they pried them open to take a look. You can imagine their surprise at discovering a large sarcophagus holding a true-to-life mummy.

Read more...

humanoidhistory:

"It’s a childhood dream come true to be able to build ships like this and photograph them. It’s something I have waited my whole life to do."

—Christopher Nolan, director of Interstellar, talking to USA Today

spicyshimmy:

when people are like ‘you see homosexual subtext in everything you’re stretching ugh!!!!! you have an agenda!!!!’ and you’re just standing there like

sixpenceee:

Each September the Alaskan wood frogs freeze. Two-thirds of their body water turns to ice. If you picked them up, they would not move. If you bent one of their legs, it would break. Their hearts stop beating, their blood no longer flows and their glucose levels sky rocket. BUt then during the spring, they thaw out and return to normal. (Source)

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via http://www.vvork.com/

Rumor: Photographs show a pair of black and white fraternal twin girls.

Photo by John Grade

Recently unveiled at the MadArt space in Seattle, Middle Fork is the lastest sculptural work by artist John Grade who worked with countless volunteers to realize this enormous scale mold of a 140-year-old tree.

The process began a year ago when Grade and a crew of assistants scaled a Western Hemlock tree in North Bend, Washington with help of a team of arborists. At nearly 90 feet in the air they created sectional plaster molds of the living tree which were carefully lowered and transported back to the MadArt space over a period of two weeks. Over the next 12 months, hundreds of volunteers (some who walked in right off the streets) helped to create a hollow sculpture of the tree using hundreds of thousands of small wood blocks. The final piece was carefully sanded down and is now suspended in the gallery. Watch the video below to see how it all came together.

Middle Fork is the first exhibition at the new MadArt space in Seattle and will be on view through April 25th before it goes on tour to galleries and art fairs around the U.S. In two years the pieces will be transported to the base of the living tree from which the mold was taken where they will decay and disintegrate back into the ground.

Photo by John Grade

Photo by John Grade

Photos by John Grade

Photos by John Grade

Photos by John Grade

Photos by John Grade

Photo by Tim Detweiler

Photo by Katie Wood

It's only been a few months since President Barack Obama urged the Federal Communications Commission to start treating the internet as a utility, but it's enough time to have gotten the gears of policy a-spinning. According to a pair of new reports f...

Believe it or not, the US government doesn't always keep its cyberwarfare code a secret. The Army Research Lab has quietly posted the source code for Dshell, a tool it uses to both spot and understand cyberattacks against the Department of Defense. T...