Rise Of The Mesopredator
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Year: 2018
How analog TV worked
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Today, just about all monitors and screens are digital (typically using an LCD or Plasma technology), but a decade or two ago, computer displays were based on the analog technology inherited from TV sets.
These analog displays were constructed around Cathode Rays Tubes (commonly referred to as CRTs).
Analog TV has a fascinating history from when broadcasts were first started (in Black and White), through to the adoption of color TV (using a totally backwards-compatible system with the earlier monochrome standard), through to cable, and now digital.
Analog TV transmissions and their display technology really were clever inventions (and the addition of colour is another inspiring innovation). It’s worth taking a look about how these devices work, and how they were designed, using the technology of the day.
After a couple of false starts, an analog colour TV system, that was backwards compatible with black and white, became standard in 1953, and remained unchanged until the take-over by digital TV broadcasts in the early 2000’s.
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205. DAVID BOWIE: Go a little further
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If you don’t follow Zen Pencils already, here’s a great diving-in place.
Dan Q will attend GC7QN1Z Yorkshire 2018 Roadshow – Oxfordshire
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Fantastic idea. My little geotribe and I are just down the road and I think we’re free, so I’ll hope to see you there.
AMPstinction
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I’ve come to believe that the goal of any good framework should be to make itself unnecessary.
Brian said it explicitly of his PhoneGap project:
The ultimate purpose of PhoneGap is to cease to exist.
That makes total sense, especially if your code is a polyfill—those solutions are temporary by d…
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When Google first unveiled AMP, its intentions weren’t clear to me. I hoped that it existed purely to make itself redundant:
As well as publishers creating AMP versions of their pages in order to appease Google, perhaps they will start to ask “Why can’t our regular pages be this fast?” By showing that there is life beyond big bloated invasive web pages, perhaps the AMP project will work as a demo of what the whole web could be.
Alas, as time has passed, that hope shows no signs of being fulfilled. If anything, I’ve noticed publishers using the existence of their AMP pages as a justification for just letting their “regular” pages put on weight.
Worse yet, the messaging from Google around AMP has shifted. Instead of pitching it as a format for creating parallel versions of your web pages, they’re now also extolling the virtues of having your AMP pages be the only version you publish:
In fact, AMP’s evolution has made it a viable solution to build entire websites.
On an episode of the Dev Mode podcast a while back, AMP was a hotly-debated topic. But even those defending AMP were doing so on the understanding that it was more a proof-of-concept than a long-term solution (and also that AMP is just for news stories—something else that Google are keen to change).
But now it’s clear that the Google AMP Project is being marketed more like a framework for the future: a collection of web components that prioritise performance
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You all know my feelings on AMP already, I’m sure. As Jeremy points out, our optimistic ideas that these problems might go away as AMP “made itself redundant” are turning out not to be true, and Google continues to abuse its monopoly on search to push its walled-garden further into the mainstream. Read his full article…
Taking Stock, Fraud
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Nowadays, fraudulent online stock-trading schemes are common. But even before the first electric telegraph, two bankers committed the equivalent of modern-day Internet stock fraud.
Nowadays, fraudulent online stock-trading schemes are common. But even before the first electric telegraph, two bankers committed the equivalent of modern-day Internet stock fraud.
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Fabulous article from 1999 about how two bankers in 1837 hacked additional data into the fledgling telegraph system to surreptitiously (and illicitly) send messages to give them an edge at the stock exchange. Their innovative approach is similar to modern steganographic systems that hide information in headers, metadata, or within the encoding of invisible characters.
Dan Q performed maintenance for GC1G4E3 Kinkering Congs Their Titles Take
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Over the course of two visits I’ve removed all of the remnants (or what I could find of them) of the previous cache container and replaced it with a new one.
Three’s Company by Natalie Dupille
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Erika and I did a long weekend in the woods as part of a victory lap/recovery from the Kickstarter. SO GOOD, and SO NEEDED. It's with great thanks that I share this wonderful comic from Natalie on her non-monogamous life. I hope you all like this slice of autobio and honest comic. Drop her a word of
Erika and I did a long weekend in the woods as part of a victory lap/recovery from the Kickstarter. SO GOOD, and SO NEEDED. It’s with great thanks that I share this wonderful comic from Natalie on her non-monogamous life. I hope you all like this slice of autobio and honest comic. Drop her a…
Oh Joy Sex Toy is a fabulous webcomic anyway, but it was especially pleasing to see some poly-representation in a guest comic on the site recently. Especially when that guest comic mirrors a broad part of my own experience of polyamory: that it may look exciting, sexy, scandalous or crazy to other people, but – for the most part – to us it’s pretty everyday, domestic, and mundane.
Totally-Compatible-Planet adventures
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Masterclass
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I definitely didn’t read this comic well-enough on the first pass, because I failed to spot the same thing that the King did…
Community characters in Monkey Island-style/minipops pixel art
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The Poetics of Empire
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Pop quiz: In your typical James Bond movie, who is the protagonist?
Seems like a strange, obvious question, right? It’s obviously Bond. He’s the hero. He’s played by the top-billed actor. The franchise is basically named after him. So, clearly, Bond is the protagonist. Right?
Put a pin in that…
Pop quiz: In your typical James Bond movie, who is the protagonist?
Seems like a strange, obvious question, right? It’s obviously Bond. He’s the hero. He’s played by the top-billed actor. The franchise is basically named after him. So, clearly, Bond is the protagonist. Right?
Put a pin in that, and we’ll come back to it.
Now, here’s a similar question: In the new Avengers: Infinity War, who is the protagonist?
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This article mirrors almost-exactly the conversation that Ruth and I had coming out of the cimena after seeing Infinity War the other week.
Daft Lego
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You’ve seen Daft Punk music videos before. You’ve seen remixes of Daft Punk music videos before. You’ve seen Lego remixes of Daft Punk music videos before. But you haven’t seen anything like this before (unless you’ve seen this before).
Orkambi Protests, 22nd June 2018, Belfast and London
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www.youtube.com/watch This video was made to raise awareness about the campaign to make a life saving cystic fibrosis medicine available on the NHS. Please share far and wide and go to a protest in…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVCZqWu5_Lk
This video was made to raise awareness about the campaign to make a life saving cystic fibrosis medicine available on the NHS. Please share far and wide and go to a protest in Belfast or London on 22nd June if you can! Thanks to everyone who contributed to the video and huge thanks to…
Dan Q posted a note for GC1G4E3 Kinkering Congs Their Titles Take
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Kinkering Congs Their Titles Take was transferred from Stemonitis to user Dan Q