Security Through Nail Polish

Want to be sure that your computer hasn't been tampered with? Break out the glitter polish:

The idea is to create a seal that is impossible to copy. Glitter nail polish, once applied, has what effectively is a random pattern. Once painted over screws or onto stickers placed over ports, it is difficult to replicate once broken. However, reapplication of a similar-looking blob (or paint stripe, or crappy sticker) might be enough to fool the human eye. To be sure, the experts recommend taking a picture of the laptop with the seals applied before leaving it alone, taking another photo upon returning and using a software program to shift rapidly between the two images to compare them. Even very small differences – a screw that is in a very slightly different position, or glitter nail polish that has a very slightly different pattern of sparkle – will be evident. Astronomers use this technique to detect small changes in the night sky.

Sarah Palin and The War on Christmas

Dan Savage's angry, hilarious, and inspiring review of Sarah Palin's book is a (justifiably sweary) must-read. (Thanks to MyAppleMenu for the heads-up.)

What was inspiring that anti-gun chatter in Washington in December of 2012? Oh, right: Twenty children and six teachers were shot dead in their classrooms by a deranged asshole with a "powerful gun." And before the grieving mothers and fathers of Newtown, Connecticut, could put their dead children in the ground, Sarah Palin ran out gun shopping. Buying Todd a gun in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary was "fun," Palin writes—and, again, an act of "civil disobedience." Because gun nuts are a persecuted minority.

Smartphone Competition Fuels the next Wave of VR

Seems like we've been talking about virtual reality forever, but Oculus is definitely making headway, partly due to how smartphone makers have driven down component costs:

“Those guys are tearing each other apart trying to get the next best thing,” he says. “That has basically driven the costs down to where they’re affordable: displays and sensors that used to be hundreds of dollars now cost pennies.” Oculus charges just $300 (£180) for a low resolution “developer kit” – a kit for companies interested in developing software for the device – and has shipped more than 40,000 worldwide, the biggest deployment of virtual reality headsets in history. It has raised $91million (£55.5 million) in investment funding and done this without actually having a product on the market: you can’t buy it in shops until next year.

Falling In Love With An AI Agent

Spike Jonze's new film Her looks prescient, touching, and thought-provoking. I can't wait.

The Siri romance angle might be uncomfortable for some, but how is Theodore and Samantha’s relationship that different from anyone else’s? Although Samantha happens to be a computer, Jonze is speaking to our most deep-seated fears about falling for another person; love is, after all, what Adams’s character describes as a “form of socially acceptable insanity.” In many ways, Her is a cautionary tale about what happens when we rely on our computers to connect us, instead of taking a chance on other people, but it’s also an exploration of the openness and wonder that gives life a sense of purpose. With Samantha, Theodore might not have met the one, but in their conversations, he finds himself able to be more free—to see what love might be like. It’s not connection, but surely it’s a step.

Gruber Takes on Mims, and the Technology Cynics

Superb piece on Daring Fireball taking apart the Christopher Mims Quartz piece that I criticised yesterday. Much more than Apple in his riposte, but this needs repeating:

He’s got it all backwards. The nature of progress is to move incrementally. The great leaps are exceedingly few and far between. One needs to pay attention, to learn to appreciate fine details, in order to appreciate progress as it churns. Compare today’s iPhone 5S to the original 2007 iPhone and the differences are glaringly obvious. But some petulant tech critics dismissed every single subsequent iPhone as disappointingly incremental, lacking “innovation”. The iPhone 3G merely added faster cellular networking, which the iPhone “should have had” all along. The iPhone 3GS was “just” a faster 3G. The iPhone 4 introduced retina-caliber displays, which almost everyone, no matter how cynical or inclined to piss on anything nice, agreed was innovative — but soon forgotten by those who bought tickets on the Antennagate Express, a train which took a months-long trip to Nowhereville. (The iPhone 4 was in production for three years, and the GSM antenna design remained unchanged throughout.) The iPhone 4S? Just a faster iPhone 4. Lather, rinse, repeat each successive year. Yet here we are today with an iPhone 5S that’s 40 times faster than the original.

Photographs Reveal Faces Reflected in Subject's Eyes

You can't hide from a high-resolution image. This reminds me of the Esper photo analysis in Bladerunner. (Thanks to @pigsonthewing for the heads-up.)

High-resolution face photographs may also contain unexpected information about the environment of the photographic subject, including the appearance of the immediate surroundings, Jenkins explained to KurzweilAI.

“In the context of criminal investigations, this could be used to piece together networks of associates, or to link individuals to particular locations. This may be especially important when for categories of crime in which perpetrators photograph their victims. Reflections in the victims eyes could reveal the identity of the photographer.

Virtual Reality 2.0

Linden Labs founder Philip Rosedale is back, with plans to take virtual reality beyond its Second Life days:

Rosedale is also back on the virtual reality scene with the new venture. His company, High Fidelity, wants to build a new avatar world enabled by sensors on phones, computers, and tablets—the goal is to incorporate virtual reality seamlessly into everyday life. His goals go far beyond gaming: He thinks virtual reality technology will eventually become just as ubiquitous as smart phones and laptops.

Rosedale is probably right to back education as the frontier for virtual reality, though there's a long way to go. Just because education tends to be early adopters of this kind of stuff, I wouldn't bet on those early adopters getting it right, at least not in a way that translates to broader consumer experiences. Still, some interesting insights here, from a guy who certainly has the experience on which to base his predictions.

Om Malik's Clearer Vision of 2013

I'm not the only one to take issue with Christopher Mims' pessimistic view of 2013; Om Malik takes it up here:

The latest such example is a piece in Quartz, a sister publication of The Atlantic. This article, under the headline 2013 was a lost year for tech bemoans Silicon Valley and all its failures, has turned intellectual trolling into high art. It is fairly easy to focus on the lack of whiz-bang technologies like the iPhone or the Kindle. It is pretty easy to focus on the tech-NSA nexus, which I agree is deplorable. And it is also very easy to focus on what some think of as pointless apps.

 "Intellectual trolling" indeed.

2013 a "lost year for tech"?

I like Quartz, but this piece from Christopher Mims feels opinionated and lazy. Case in point:

The most that Apple could think to do with the new, faster processor in the iPhone 5S was animate 3D effects that make some users feel ill and a fingerprint sensor that solved a problem that wasn’t exactly pressing. Apple’s new iOS7 mobile operating system, which felt “more like a Microsoft release,” crippled many older iPhones and led to complaints of planned obsolescence.

So, delivering the first 64-bit mobile platform and putting an SLR-level high speed camera and 120fps video in a phone counts as zero-innovation? What about the thinnest, lightest tablet with a full-day battery? No? How about a radical new professional workstation-class computer built around multi core graphics cards? Nothing? And using a widely-panned link bait article as proof of this? Lazy.

Oh hang on: Mims seems to have supported the original "planned obsolescence" article before. Maybe this whole piece is just an excuse to trot out the same line again.

Nokia Pulls its iOS Maps App

Pretty strange, but then the mapping wars are still a long way from over.

In the wake of Maps-gate, Nokia was one of several outfits that rushed to Apple's aid with a navigation app of its very own. A year later, however, and that same offering has been yanked from the App Store before it could send a note to its neighbors. When we asked, Nokia responded with the below quote, saying that iOS 7 harms the user experience of HERE, but users can still access the mobile edition of the service. Which is all well and good, unless you were a big fan of the app's ability to cache offline data.

The Logic Behind The Doctor's Regenerations

Wonderful piece by Emily Asher-Perrin, and utterly deserving of your attention. For my money the Christmas apecial—and the regeneration—were beautifully handled. 

But does regeneration make sense, even if you're no good at it? I think it does. In fact, I'd argue that the events leading up to each regeneration have a very heavy impact on how the next incarnation turns out. Though he can't pick out faces and then discard them the way other Time Lords can, subconsciously, the Doctor is clearly and cautiously reconstructing himself, adapting according to his triumphs and failures each time.

Scanadu isn't quite a Tricorder yet

There's a lot coming in personal sensors and healthcare in 2014 and the years to follow. This is one to watch. 

The object Scanadu is working on is an oval disk about two inches wide and a half-inch thick. Held to the forehead, it uses light to measure oxygen intake, an accelerometer to figure out how far the chest extends in breathing, and a small electrical plate under the thumb to measure heart rate. Other sensors, some still in development, will measure temperature, blood pressure and other body functions.

Scanadu isn't quite a Tricorder yet

There's a lot coming in personal sensors and healthcare in 2014 and the years to follow. This is one to watch. 

The object Scanadu is working on is an oval disk about two inches wide and a half-inch thick. Held to the forehead, it uses light to measure oxygen intake, an accelerometer to figure out how far the chest extends in breathing, and a small electrical plate under the thumb to measure heart rate. Other sensors, some still in development, will measure temperature, blood pressure and other body functions.

Amazon & Target Refuse to sell Beyoncé CD

All because she gave Apple a one-week exclusive. Make no mistake, the Amazon war with iTunes is only just beginning.

and Target may be cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Despite Apple's head start, Billboard reports that Sony and Columbia still managed to ship more than 500,000 units of the CD before the general release date. (Amazon is selling the MP3 version of the album; Target is selling neither the digital nor CD edition.)

The Problem with Gamers

This really needs saying, and bravo to Matt Gemmell for saying it.

There are naturally many, many gamers who behave themselves, of course. That’s not in question. There are naturally many, many football (in the British sense) fans who behave themselves too. But their respective entertainments are notorious for appalling misbehaviour on the part of their most zealous proponents.

The existence of an unremarkable majority isn’t an excuse to wash our hands of the actual problem. The gaming industry owns it. The parents who sit downstairs while their teenager is upstairs playing online on his Xbox or PlayStation own it. Everyone else who’s playing owns it.

NYC Bans Styrofoam Cups, and E-Cigarettes

I don't agree with the vapouriser ban, but we should all be pushing for companies to follow their lead on food and drink packaging.

Foam coffee cups and takeout containers will be outlawed under the bill, which passed unanimously.

“Most foam ends up in landfills where it can sit for literally 500 years or longer,” Quinn said. “The only thing in the world that lives longer than cockroaches or Cher is styrofoam.”

At the urging of the foam industry, the Council agreed to delay the ban from taking effect for a year, during which time the industry will have a chance to prove that the substance can be recycled. Sanitation officials currently say it can’t be.

When Your Mother Says She's Fat

Not the kind of thing I normally link to, but Kasey Edwards just moved me to tears. 

The older we get, the more loved ones we lose to accidents and illness. Their passing is always tragic and far too soon. I sometimes think about what these friends — and the people who love them — wouldn’t give for more time in a body that was healthy. A body that would allow them to live just a little longer. The size of that body’s thighs or the lines on its face wouldn’t matter. It would be alive and therefore it would be perfect.

When Your Mother Says She's Fat

Not the kind of thing I normally link to, but Kasey Edwards just moved me to tears. 

The older we get, the more loved ones we lose to accidents and illness. Their passing is always tragic and far too soon. I sometimes think about what these friends — and the people who love them — wouldn’t give for more time in a body that was healthy. A body that would allow them to live just a little longer. The size of that body’s thighs or the lines on its face wouldn’t matter. It would be alive and therefore it would be perfect.

Touch, and the Post-Physical Shopper

Daring Fireball picked this up earlier in relation to the "touch beats click in shopping" angle, but another aspect jumped out at me too:

“They used to say nobody would ever buy a diamond online. Not true. People are even buying homes without seeing them [in person] online,” Cohen said. “We are entering a period where we’re using our imagination rather than touch, feel, or smell. We’re using our brain differently.” Some surveys of online shoppers have reported that people believe they can imagine the smell of a perfume while shopping for scents online, for example, Cohen said.

Interesting. Of course great advertising has always done this, creating a real sense of connection with the product through the communicative and evocative power of words and images. Nevertheless it's always seemed a giant leap to get people weaned on physical presence to take the leap of faith required to respond positively to online purchasing (especially, perhaps, for physical products).

I've written and spoken many times about the increasing degrees of physical connection introduced by first the laptop computer and later the handheld and tablet, and I wonder if engaging our sense of touch enables our memory to fill in the gaps for other senses. It might be considered akin to a smell triggering our memories of taste.

Perhaps wearable computing will amplify this effect, but only, I think, if it engages more than our vision. I don't anticipate heads-up-display-style devices to have the same direct sense of connection, but time will tell.

Writer Pro looks Gorgeous

I've used—and liked—iA Writer on and off over the last couple of years, and while it's never become my primary writing environment I'm very keen to try out the new Writer Pro environment. This looks like quite an achievement. No surprise to hear it was four years in the making.

Writer Pro’s simple workflow is built around how you work: Start with your ideas in Note, move to Write to flesh them out, progress to Edit for refining, then move to Read when you’re done. The different workflow states keep you focused on the task at hand, and each has a task-specific font and color.

 $19.99 for iOS, $19.99 for OS X. Strikes me as very fair—and I hope sustainable—pricing. I'll be downloading and testing the iOS version when it goes on sale tomorrow.