Worthy stuff to watch and read - issue 4

4-minute read

####Read

  • The most comprehensive guide on drone photography. Detailed instructions on choosing your first drone, extra parts, gymbal stabilizer, notes on the max time of flight and carried weight (aka how big camera can you attach to the drone without it falling back to Earth). The article is filled with pictures and videos of drones in action, explaining every intricate detail of owning and flying the camera drone.
  • Last Kodak film factory is about to be closed. Handful of Hollywood directors managed to convince their studios to try and save this factory. JJ Abrams is filming new episode of StarWars on film, Quentin Tarantino is also full of warm feelings towards the analogue feeling of shooting on celluloid. The plan is to order as much film as they can for the future needs, and so provide factory with necessary money to continue operations (for some time). Personally I’m not a huge fan of 35mm film, but 70mm IMAX film with 15 perf still remains the best way of capturing moving pictures (if you know what you doing, of course). Likely not for long.
  • Nice post by Jean-Baptiste Quéru on the complexity of our world and software.

Тechnology has done such an amazing job at hiding its complexity that the people regulating and running the patent system are barely even aware of the complexity of what they’re regulating and running. That’s the ultimate bikeshedding: just like the proverbial discussions in the town hall about a nuclear power plant end up being about the paint color for the plant’s bike shed, the patent discussions about modern computing systems end up being about screen sizes and icon ordering, because in both cases those are the only aspect that the people involved in the discussion are capable of discussing.

  • City of London police figured out their own way to fight piracy on the Internet. They are buying ad placements on the (allegedly) illegal sites and putting banners that urge visitors to leave the site immediately. Interestingly enough, this way they are actually sponsoring said sites.
  • Film director Martin Koolhoven asked good people of the internet to share his featured film on torrents. He didn’t own the copyright on his film titled Suzy Q (which is a normal practice), and those who did, didn’t own the copyright on the music used in the film. The original license on the soundtrack has expired and nobody wanted to renew said licenses. In the end there was a film, which nobody could legally distribute or broadcast. Thanks to the torrents, the film and it’s cultural values are again available to the humanity.

More…

####Watch

  • Gadget for virtual telecommunication. Basically, iPad on a Segway. It can roll around the office and keep the balance when crashing into the obstacles. Gadgets from the Big Bang Theory are coming to our world.
  • What it can be like to pilot an airplane with Google Glass? Here is one vision.
  • BBC story on the free wifi. As usual, nothing is free, but the frightening part is that wifi spots can gather plenty of info about you even when you are not (deliberately) connecting to these spots but just walking by.

####Personal notes

  • Wikipedia started accepting donations Bitcoins. They are doing the same way as Dell does, using Coinbase for instant conversion of BTC into a local currency. It feels like bitcoins are becoming mainstream.
  • Recorded a podcast this week. A random thought in the corporate chat suddenly grew into something bigger, and last Tuesday me, @roisiproven and @robbiemccorkell recorded an inaugural episode of a podcast with the codename Badger Don’t Care. It will take a few (tens) of episodes to reach any sort of quality level, but it was fun nevertheless. We are going to share random thoughts on tech, internet, apps, games, films, trends and life in London. Currently making the first cut, release at some point next week.