John Matrix is the Spotify hit artist created by internet security consultant Peter Fillmore. Not being a musician Fillmore…

algopop:

John Matrix is the Spotify hit artist created by internet security consultant Peter Fillmore. Not being a musician Fillmore generated short midi clips using WolframTones: “WolframTones works by taking ‘simple programs’ from Wolfram’s computational universe, and using music theory and Mathematica algorithms to render them as music.“ Fillmore’s scripts would then splice these with public domain samples, creating a generative sound unlike anything else.

Then to get these songs to the top of the charts, the engineer created some bot fans that would listen to John Matrix’s music 24/7. Running on Amazon servers, a bash script would automate the act of playing the tunes on Spotify. John Matrix soon had amassed millions of plays and made $1000 in royalties. The high chart positions of these songs prompted human listeners to complain, resulting in the account being shut down after a month.

Fillmore narrates the whole story with technical details at his Ruxcon talk.

Via Tech Dirt, The Register, HT Nicolas Nova

Orwochrom-Prozeß 9165

Orwochrom, Agfachrome, 9165, AP-41, film, film chemistry

Vielleicht hat ja noch jemand Orwochrom-Filme rumliegen und will sie selbst entwickeln. Einen fertigen Entwicklungssatz gibt es schon seit Jahren nicht mehr. Hier ist nun die komplette Vorschrift 9165 für Orwochrom-Umkehrfilme und die Rezepte für den Selbstansatz der Verarbeitungsbäder zu lesen. Selbst habe ich den Ansatz nicht ausprobiert; ich habe damals meine Orwochroms noch im von Calbe erhältlichen Entwicklungssatz verarbeitet.

http://www.grosskabinett.de/labor/Rezepte/11.php

Forget Big Data, Small Data is the Real Revolution

OKF, Rufus Pollock, small data, decentralisation

There is a lot of talk about “big data” at the moment. For example, this is Big Data Week, which will see events about big data in dozens of cities around the world. But the discussions around big data miss a much bigger and more important picture: the real opportunity is not big data, but small data. Not centralized “big iron”, but decentralized data wrangling. Not “one ring to rule them all” but “small pieces loosely joined”.

http://blog.okfn.org/2013/04/22/forget-big-data-small-data-is-the-real-revolution/

Bullipedia

food, online, elBulli, cuisine, creativity, design

The ini­tial idea of Bul­li­pedia was to cre­ate a the­matic ency­clo­pe­dia from elBulli by using all the infor­ma­tion that we had in our Gen­eral Cat­a­logue. In fact, in a press release in Jan­u­ary 2010 where we announced the trans­for­ma­tion of elBulli, we already talked about cre­at­ing an ency­clo­pe­dia of tech­noe­mo­tional cuisine. In order to turn this project into a real­ity we started doing the­matic works for the dif­fer­ent fam­i­lies of the evo­lu­tion­ary analy­sis. How­ever, already in Feb­ru­ary 2012, we real­ized that in order to do a cor­rect evo­lu­tion­ary analy­sis, we needed infor­ma­tion ear­lier than elBulli itself. At that moment we decided that Bul­li­pedia was not going to be just about elBulli. In fact we decided to extend the project to include all the west­ern culi­nary art.

http://hackingbullipedia.org/bullipedia3–2

A Work in Progress: Notes on Food, Cooking and Creativity

Noma, René Redzepi, books, food, cooking, work in progress

Like the restaurant on which it is based, A Work in Progress is unconventional with a mix of both high and lowbrow elements. It is packaged as a plain looking three-volume set that is bound together by a rubber band. Unwrapping the package, you will discover in ascending size, Snap Shots, a pocket sized book of candid photos taken at Noma; René Redzepi Journal, a plain paperback designed to look like a composition notebook set in typewriter font; and finally the end product, Noma Recipes, a hardback book with beautifully photographed dishes—each one a presentational masterpiece—that were created during the 12-month journaling period.

http://nyjournalofbooks.com/review/work-progress-notes-food-cooking-and-creativity

The Web as a Preservation Medium

small data, archiving, digital archives, memory, data, www, access

The archival record … is best understood as a sliver of a sliver of a sliver of a window into process. It is a fragile thing, an enchanted thing, defined not by its connections to “reality,” but by its open-ended layerings of construction and reconstruction. Far from constituting the solid structure around which imagination can play, it is itself the stuff of imagination.

http://inkdroid.org/journal/2013/11/26/the-web-as-a-preservation-medium/

The Anti-Reactionary FAQ

reactionary, neoreactionary, antireactionary, monarchy, theocracy, democracy

Neoreaction is a political ideology supporting a return to traditional ideas of government and society, especially traditional monarchy and an ethno-nationalist state. It sees itself opposed to modern ideas like democracy, human rights, multiculturalism, and secularism. I tried to give a more complete summary of its beliefs in Reactionary Philosophy In An Enormous, Planet Sized Nutshell.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-faq/

Bitcoin Survival Guide: Everything You Need to Know About the Future of Money

wired, bitcoin, BTC, introduction

Bitcoin is a digital currency, meaning it’s money controlled and stored entirely by computers spread across the internet, and this money is finding its way to more and more people and businesses around the world. But it’s much more than that, and many people — including the sharpest of internet pioneers as well as seasoned economists — are still struggling to come to terms with its many identities. With that in mind, we give you this: an idiot’s guide to bitcoin. And there’s no shame in reading. Nowadays, as bitcoin is just beginning to show what it’s capable of, we’re all neophytes.

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/11/bitcoin-survival-guide/all/

How Antisec Died

Quinn Norton, antisec, anonymous, FBI, truth, power, corruption

These intrusions took place in January/February of 2012 and affected over 2000 domains, including numerous foreign government websites in Brazil, Turkey, Syria, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Nigeria, Iran, Slovenia, Greece, Pakistan, and others. A few of the compromised websites that I recollect include the official website of the Governor of Puerto Rico, the Internal Affairs Division of the Military Police of Brazil, the Official Website of the Crown Prince of Kuwait, the Tax Department of Turkey, the Iranian Academic Center for Education and Cultural Research, the Polish Embassy in the UK, and the Ministry of Electricity of Iraq

https://medium.com/quinn-norton/654abf6aeff7

Mort du compositeur Bernard Parmegiani, un des pères de l’électroacoustique - Libération

Parmegiani, RIP

Le compositeur Bernard Parmegiani, un des pères de la musique électroacoustique et ancien membre du Groupe de recherches musicales de l’Ina, est mort dans la nuit de jeudi à vendredi à 85 ans, a-t-on appris auprès de l’Ina. Bernard Parmegiani a composé 78 opus, 27 musiques de films, 14 musiques pour chorégraphies, 12 musiques de scène… dont «La création du monde» et «De natura sonorum.» Sa création la plus connue du grand public est le jingle de l’aéroport Roissy-Charles de Gaulle, utilisé de 1971 à 2005. «Le monde de la musique électroacoustique est en deuil avec la disparition d’une de ses figures emblématiques et un de ses pères fondateurs», a dit dans un communiqué le Pdg de l’Ina Mathieu Gallet. Il a exprimé sa «fierté» que l’institut ait «aidé à construire sa mémoire pour les générations futures» en publiant un coffret de 12 CD de ses oeuvres en 2008. «Son influence musicale a traversé plusieurs générations de mélomanes et de musiciens et il est aujourd’hui considéré comme l’un des pionniers et maître du genre électroacoustique», écrit-il

http://www.liberation.fr/culture/2013/11/22/mort-du-compositeur-bernard-parmegiani-un-des-peres-de-l-electroacoustique_961333

Why the world’s most talented dreamers may hold the secret to a new state of consciousness

consciousness, dreams, lucid dreaming, LaBerge

When sleep scientists turned to the study of dreams in the 1950s, few considered the notion of lucid dreaming to be more than a curiosity. It was the province of occultists and parapsychologists. Not until LaBerge produced the first evidence for lucid dreams, during graduate work at Stanford University in the 1970s, did the topic gain a modicum of scientific respectability.

https://medium.com/matter/c85e3bb29693

The Coming Asperity

designedconflictterritories:

Asperity

1. A policy of cutting resource use and consumption via a reduction in carbon dioxide (or equivalent emissions) and resources that are available/provided to a population. Asperity policies are often used by governments to try to reduce the emissions of a defined population, system or activity.

The Coming Asperity

The Girl with Machine Synaesthesia

metanautics:

A teenager in Texas reportedly experiences what psychologists are describing as “machine synaesthesia”. She says:

“I feel a connection to pretty much everything with some kind of mechanically-powered moving part." 

"The best analogy I can use to explain it is a radio. My senses are my radio, picking up stimulus and playing it back in my brain”

“It’s as if the machine and I are connected, and I can feel what it feels through that lens without actually “becoming” it." 

Popular analysis here: http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/10/5087706/extreme-synesthesia-texas-teenager-says-she-can-feel-the-machines-around-her

The Girl with Machine Synaesthesia

NASA’s Next Frontier: Growing Plants On The Moon - Forbes

moon, plants, NASA, terraforming, citizen science, astrobotany

The Lunar Plant Growth Habitat team, a group of NASA scientists, contractors, students and volunteers, is finally bringing to life an idea that has been discussed and debated for decades. They will try to grow arabidopsis, basil, sunflowers, and turnips in coffee-can-sized aluminum cylinders that will serve as plant habitats. But these are no ordinary containers – they’re packed to the brim with cameras, sensors, and electronics that will allow the team to receive image broadcasts of the plants as they grow. These habitats will have to be able to successfully regulate their own temperature, water intake, and power supply in order to brave the harsh lunar climate.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarunwadhwa/2013/11/20/nasas-next-frontier-growing-plants-on-the-moon/

Drone Imagery for OpenStreetMap

OSM, cartography, aerial photography, drones, UAV, automation

The drone operates less like an RC plane and more like a Roomba. You can define an area of interest on a laptop, beam it to the eBee, and then just toss the drone in the air where it will autonomously collect imagery. Within 40 minutes, the drone took 225 photos covering 100 acres from an altitude of 120 meters. Larger areas of 2,500 acres and more are possible, but this was sufficient for our needs.

https://www.mapbox.com/blog/drone-imagery-openstreetmap/

Dahala Khagrabari

well bounded, Cooch Behar, enclaves, enclave in an enclave, encalve in an enclave in an enclave

In the Indian state of West Bengal lies a district known as Cooch Behar which is curiously merged with its neighbor, Bangladesh. The Indian land contains 92 Bangladeshi enclaves, and the Bangladeshi land contains 106 Indian enclaves. The largest Indian enclave itself contains a Bangladeshi enclave, and that Bangladeshi enclave contains a bare hectare of Indian farmland known as Dahala Khagrabari. That makes Dahala Khagrabari the world’s only instance of an enclave in an enclave in an enclave.

http://www.futilitycloset.com/2013/11/16/well-bounded/

Bodies are both primordial matter and what that matter makes when it coheres. As for the primal seeds themselves no force can…

“Bodies are both primordial matter
and what that matter makes when it coheres.
As for the primal seeds themselves no force can shatter them: their solid particles survive on all onslaughts. And yet it seems hard to credit the possibility of anything in nature quite so solid.
Thunderbolts transgress the walls of houses as does the human voice and other noise; iron glows incandescent in the fire, stone splits in heat, and gold’s solidity dissolves; bronze, hard and smooth as ice, melts, overcome by flames warmth suffuses silver, cold penetrates it- we can feel them both:
let a goblet take the blood-heat of your hand then pour in water from a chilly spring.
Nothing, in fact, seems absolutely hard.
But wait; we are compelled to follow reason and the reality of things. In a few lines I will explain: there do exist solid, everlasting particles, my ‘seeds of things’, ‘primordia’, from which is built the sum of all existing things.”

–Lucretius, On the nature of things, 1.483–502 (viamyancientworld)