Robot Thursday
This is absolutely the best robot I've seen today. Watch the whole thing. Trust me.
bshort's blog
Is College Worth It?
Why are many many college students going into fields that will never allow them to repay the debts they're incurring? Part of the problem is that it's very easy for students to get loans for whatever amount they want. Of course, once they have them, nothing, not even bankruptcy can erase the debt.
Alex, over at Marginal Revolution has an excellent take on the whole thing:
In 2009 the U.S. graduated 89,140 students in the visual and performing arts, more than in computer science, math and chemical engineering combined and more than double the number of visual and performing arts graduates in 1985.
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There is nothing wrong with the arts, psychology and journalism, but graduates in these fields have lower wages and are less likely to find work in their fields than graduates in science and math. Moreover, more than half of all humanities graduates end up in jobs that don’t require college degrees and these graduates don’t get a big college bonus.
The best thing about this article is this graph, which exactly shows what the problem is:
currency.io
It seems like "web apps" have unfortunately fallen by the wayside. It's a real shame. They don't require any approval from Apple, they can work offline, and they're built with HTML5 and javascript.
If you want to see how they're built take a look at Currency.io. It's open source and very very slick.
Microlending, Visualized
Here's a video showing the growth of the microlending site Kiva.
In Plain Sight
I love hidden compartments and careful craftsmanship, and this movie has both.
Planet of the Apes?
I'm still a little pissed about Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes, but this looks great.
Note: Tim Burton is not involved in this production. That's a good thing.
The Brunello Cucinelli Factory
This is a factory unlike any you've seen before.
Canadian cracks NYT paywall during his lunch break
An enterprising programmer donated his lunch break and put together a workaround to the new New York Times paywall.
"It’s just an iron rule of nerd-dom, if you put an interesting looking wall in front of us, we’ll try to get around it.”
If your business model can be broken by a programmer with 30 minutes to spend then you didn't really have a business model to start with.
The New York Times Paywall Returns
The New York Times is finally putting their paywall back up.
On NYTimes.com, you can view 20 articles each month at no charge (including slide shows, videos and other features). After 20 articles, we will ask you to become a digital subscriber, with full access to our site.
On our smartphone and tablet apps, the Top News section will remain free of charge. For access to all other sections within the apps, we will ask you to become a digital subscriber.
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Readers who come to Times articles through links from search, blogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter will be able to read those articles, even if they have reached their monthly reading limit. For some search engines, users will have a daily limit of free links to Times articles.
I understand how tough the newspaper business has become, but making content hard to read and access on the Internet has not been a successful business model for anyone yet. I'm sure NYTimes.com knows what they're doing, but these changes raise an awful lot of questions about what content is going to be available from which sources.
If a friend emails me a link to a NYTimes.com story will I be able to read it? Will services such as Twitter have to be whitelisted to enable access to content via links?
By biggest question, though, is "how will this affect Instapaper?" If I can't Instapaper content then I'm going to find similar content elsewhere.
Prices and details are here.
Modular Robots
When I was a kid I grew up surrounded by Legos. I spent hours rooting through boxes searching for the perfect pieces to make the array of spaceships and cars that occupied my younger years. At one point one of my friends got a Capsela set and my interest was peaked. There seemed to be a world of possibilities with those little spheres. I think it was the modularity that I loved so much.
I'm a still a sucker for things that click together in any sort of functional way, and especially if they're robots. If these Cubelets are half as cool as they look then I'll be first in line.
