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.

They all think they're playing Grand Theft Auto

The Guardian (re)visits the increasingly troubling gun culture in the United Kingdom. "It's getting like the US now, like 'The Wire'", the interviewee says, although British Police is by no means used to it or capable to respond, at least in the short-term.

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.