Unbiased.

Recent developments on physically accurate, unbiased raytracers --- and more to the point, GPU powered raytracers that provide near real-time, interactive manipulation of fully textured and shaded models and environment --- promise an unmatched workflow that makes the creation of super-realistic images and animations very easy. I won't write much about the technologies behind them, but I think the video below is a great example of some of the things that become possible for a single person using commodity technology and hardware --- in this case Blender and Octane Render (one such raytracer), especially given how much of the lighting setup and performance trickery, that would otherwise be absolutely necessary, are 'handled for free' by the renderer.

A PC Emulator in Javascript.

You read this right: this is a 'full-fledged' PC emulator written in pure Javascript. It can boot linux. Amazing stuff, let's hope we get 'readable' source code sometime soon.

/ˈpōgrəm/

My generation has been fortunate enough to grow up in a society where the horrors of racial hatred were not the norm but the exception, where the rule of law — despite the rampant, by Scandinavian standards, corruption — prevailed over extremism, mass murder, hate crimes, street mobs and racial violence. The events that took […]

Some thoughts on Ubuntu Unity

A lot has been said and written about Ubuntu Unity, the new ‘shell’ that’s replaced the ‘classic’ default GNOME desktop in Ubuntu 11.04. Despised by many that interpreted Canonical’s break from the ‘open-source’ norm of restricting modifications to upstream platforms to a bare minimum, as a threat to the upstream projects’ existence (a valid point […]

Location and Privacy

Yesterday a story about Apple’s unauthorised logging of timestamped location data on iPhones running iOS 4.x versions of the system software was published in several articles in technical and mainstream media worldwide. This is important, not only because of the ubiquity of location-based services available to consumers worldwide and the significance of location in safeguarding […]

Μια Προσωρινή Πολιτική Τρικλοποδιά ή Μόνιμη Απαξίωση της Ευρώπης;

Διαβάζω το άρθρο στο BBC για τα παιχνίδια με Προσωρινές Άδειες Παραμονής σε Τυνήσιους μετανάστες στην Ιταλία, το Σένγκεν και τα τρένα. Η γειτονική μας χώρα, χρόνια ‘σκληρή’ απέναντι στους μετανάστες που κατέφθαναν στα λιμάνια της από την Αφρική, αλλά και την Αλβανία, αντιμέτωπη με αυξημένη, ενδεχομένως υπερβολική, εισρροή μεταναστών από την βόρεια Αφρική μετά […]