Category Technology

SquirrelFish Extreme (SFX)

The people behind the best HTML engine around (yep, that's WebKit for those that don't know it yet) just announced the next generation of their new Javascript engine, SquirrelFish Extreme, just a few months after SquirrelFish itself was announced and before it was even adopted in any product. In the performance chart they posted in the linked page the engine is around 3 times faster than JavascriptCore and two times faster than SquirrelFish. Impressive.

Central planning and Research

Diomidis Spinellis wrote earlier today about the EUs planning priorities for research and how he thinks that’s bad for innovation. I agree with his thesis, but I find his complaint somewhat naïve. Let me explain myself: If I could only give one reason to the question “What’s wrong with EU Funded Research?”, I don’t believe […]

Δημόσια Δεδομένα, Δικά μας Δεδομένα

Στον κόσμο του διαδικτύου δυο ημέρες φαίνεται να είναι αρκετές! Με κάποια καθυστέρηση λοιπόν υποστηρίζω κι εγώ τις θέσεις της πρωτοβουλίας Δημόσια Δεδομένα, Δικά μας Δεδομένα, της οποίας τον δικτυακό τόπο θα βρείτε στο www.publicdata.gr. Είναι ακόμη νωρίς και --- χωρίς αμφιβολία --- οι θέσεις όσο και οι απαιτήσεις των συμμετέχωντων είναι ακόμη ρευστές (όμως και εύπλαστες). Οι βασική ανάγκη παραμένει: τα δημόσια δεδομένα πρέπει να είναι διαθέσιμα σε όλους, δωρεάν είτε αυτά είναι προϊόν του κράτους ή κυβερνητικών υπηρεσιών. Τα πλεονεκτήματα είναι πολλά, η ανάγκη για τα δεδομένα μεγάλη και η ευρωπαϊκή (αλλά και παγκόσμια) τάση δεδομένη. Το διαδίκτυο καθιστά την παροχή αυτών των δεδομένων εύκολη και φθηνή απομακρύνωντας βασικές ενστάσεις που ίσως μπορούσε κανείς να παραθέσει ως εμπόδιο προ εικοσαετίας. Μπορείτε να συμμετάσχετε διαδίδωντας τη προσπάθεια, συμμετέχωντας στην συγγραφή των θέσεων αλλά και στηρίζωντας τη προσπάθεια υπογράφωντας.

Chrome. Another piece in the puzzle

Google just announced Chrome, its own browser based on Webkit, Gears, the V8 VM and a host of features inspired by Opera, Safari and Firefox. The move will no doubt be considered ‘controversial’ by some, given Google’s dominance of the market, but the company seems to have taken many steps to avoid this: everything in […]

Printing Buildings

This is not the first time I'm reading about this; some five years ago I remember reading a related article online or in IEEE Spectrum. I'm somewhat hopeful that the technology will mature soon enough for mainstream use and will be affordable in the parts of the world that proper housing is desperately needed (e.g. Africa, India). It goes without saying that the newly found ease of building should be accompanied by renewed building regulations in order to avoid cases where buildings appear 'overnight' without any building permits authorising their construction. Another concern might be whether architecture could be compromised by the technology in the long-term leading to the replication of a single or few designs destroying the feel and character of cities or regions.

Λίγο πριν τις Βρυξέλλες

Λίγο πριν την αναχώρηση για τις Βρυξέλλες, έκατσα και συγκέντρωσα σημειώσεις, bookmarks και σκέψεις σχετικά με τα θέματα προς συζήτηση. Μπορεί κανείς να συνοψίσει τα βασικά ζητήματα στο παρακάτω πίνακα: Στη κορυφή του πίνακα παραθέτω τις χαρακτηριστικές ‘εφαρμογές’, ή αν προτιμάτε δραστηριότητες που φέρονται να ‘απαιτούν’ επιπλέον νομοθετική ‘ρύθμιση’. Αφ’ενός το peer to peer, ή […]

Mistagged? Misprogrammed.

I regularly listen to last.fm radio stations, be it from my friends, neighbours or people that I stumble upon by checking out groups that may interest me. One of the problems I’ve noticed is that music that Last.fm serves over its radio is sometimes mistagged; the problem is that the Last.fm software seems to identify […]

Hard Drive Data Recovery Talks

Open hard drive Excellent talks on hard drive data recovery by computer forensics and data recovery specialist Scott Moulton, for those that feel confident messing with their hardware. Extremely informative and very useful especially in those cases where you'd like to salvage your data from a broken drive, but don't want to shell out ~€2,000 for a professional data recovery company to do it. Two lectures, one from DEFCON 14 (2006) and another from 15 (2007). There's some overlap, but they're both interesting to watch nevertheless. Around 45 minutes each. Hard Drive Recovery (at DEFCON 14): Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Advanced Hard Drive Data Recovery (at DEFCON 15): Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Image by Flickr/Roberto F. Used under Creative Commons BA-NC-ND licence

Taking over Hollywood

It may be the case that the Red One camera has been around for a while, but it's only lately that some of Hollywood's leading directors have started to use and promote it. And that's only three years after the company was established and less than six months since the camera has been available to the general public (although apparently there's a considerable backlog before you can get your own Red, even if you're willing to spend the $17,500 it costs to buy). After Soderberg, a known fan of digital technology and longtime user of digital video along with or instead of film, Doug Liman jumps on the Red bandwagon and talks about the camera and how its changed the way he films.
Wired had a great article on the Red recently. You can find more clips from Red (at 720p) on the Vimeo Redusers group.

Canon EOS 50D

It’s been almost four and a half years since I got my venerable Canon EOS 20D. And, in DSLR time, that’s quite a lot. The 20D was a fantastic camera for its time, highly valued by both amateurs such as myself and pros (mostly as a second body). Sadly, most updates to the series by […]