June 2013
8 posts
“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.”
— Brian Eno, A Year With Swollen Appendices (via volumexii)
April 2013
3 posts
“As women of extraordinary privilege and unprecedented ability to speak out, we are in a unique position to threaten the patriarchy. We are granted a rare opportunity for change and agency, to use their bribes as weapons against the institution. They will never see us coming. They think they have us beat. So why are we sitting here like frightened, submissive weaklings? Why are we doing nothing? We are we so quiet? Why can’t I hear you?”
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An Open Letter to Women in Technology — about work — Medium
I’ve sometimes been irked by the flavour of feminisms I’ve seen espoused by women-in-technology groups: I’ve felt they lack class consciousness and general political awareness, and possess a downright conservative streak.
I like this quite a bit more.
March 2013
11 posts
“But in the long run that’s a problem for Google. Because we tend not to entrust this sort of critical public infrastructure to the private sector. Network externalities are all fine and good to ignore so long as they mainly apply to the sharing of news and pics from a weekend trip with college friends. Once they concern large swathes of economic output and the cognitive activity of millions of people, it is difficult to keep the government out. Maybe that deterrent will be sufficient to keep Google providing its most heavily used products. But maybe not.”
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Utilities: Google’s Google problem | The Economist
Huh. This Economist article seems to be in favour of nationalizing the internet? And most other services?
(via towerofsleep)
Or maybe just regulating it like a utility, like say, how phone service was traditionally run.
“Hackers can influence real-time traffic-flow-analysis systems to make people drive into traffic jams or to keep roads clear in areas where a lot of people use Google or Waze navigation systems, a German researcher demonstrated at BlackHat Europe. ‘If, for example, an attacker drives a route and collects the data packets sent to Google, the hacker can replay them later with a modified cookie, platform key and time stamps, Jeske explained in his research paper (PDF). The attack can be intensified by sending several delayed transmissions with different cookies and platform keys, simulating multiple cars, Jeske added. An attacker does not have to drive a route to manipulate data, because Google also accepts data from phones without information from surrounding access points, thus enabling an attacker to influence traffic data worldwide, he added.’ ‘You don’t need special equipment for this and you can manipulate traffic data worldwide,’ Jeske said.”
—Researcher: Hackers Can Jam Traffic By Manipulating Real-Time Traffic Data - Slashdot, via @julian0liver (via new-aesthetic)
Safe Amplification Site Society: Safe Amp Has A Venue (sort of) →
safeamp.tumblr.com
We’ve been hesitating to make A BIG ANNOUNCEMENT because we haven’t signed the lease yet, and we only just got our permit approved this morning. BUT… it looks like after nearly 4 years of trying, Safe Amp is finally opening a venue!! At the hall formerly known as Astorino’s. Much more…
It’s really heartening to see this come to fruition. I’m sure there will be further challenges and complications to overcome in the future, but I can’t express enough how proud I am of all those involved for their hard work fundraising, organizing and advocating and their ability to work with the city and find suitable community partners to actually make this happen.
Bravo Safe Amp.
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February 2013
19 posts
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“Paul Chodas of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office stated that “we would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years on average,” which means we’re probably in the clear for a little while. That’s good, since NASA’s new meteor-detecting ATLAS telescopes won’t be fully operational until 2015.”
—
Russian meteor was the biggest in over 100 years, says NASA | The Verge
which means we’re probably in the clear for a little while.
That’s not how statistics works guys.
Re: What's A Label →
cameronr.tumblr.com
A retort:
- There are tons of bands that are able to sell well more than 200 records without any promotional infrastructure at all. I wouldn’t worry about that.
- But if you see sales potential and making money as barriers, I think this is more of discussion about the intent of the funder. If the funder is investing to make money, and not simply get and album and get reimbursed, then you are absolutely correct: Paying $40 for 1% publishing rights of an indie musician’s album is probably not a greatest way to make a boatload of money. However, if you are looking to simply fund a project you like in exchange for a copy of the album and the possibility of reimbursement (and more), then this idea is flawless*.
*May not be entirely flawless;
retort to your retort:
- There are also countless numbers of unsold physical copies of really great self-released and small-local-label released records rotting away in basements unsold because nobody was around to do a good job of promoting or distributing them.
- I more or less agree.
To me, crowd-sourcing-for-publishing-rights sounds like an interesting way to bootstrap a label or series of recording projects like a singles club (though today, it need not just be singles if cost can be kept low enough), moreso than a good way to fund one record.
cameron reed: Re: Using Kickstarter To Fund Music. Why Not Offer Funders A % Of Publishing? →
cameronr.tumblr.com
[If you just want to read my great idea skip the intro.]
So I was thinking yesterday that if, god forbid, Warp (who previously released my music as Babe Rainbow) or no other label wants to put out my new music, would it be a good idea to use Kickstarter to pay for the recording. All my…
Cam has some interesting ideas about crowd-sourced funding for music as something other than a simple request for a handout, but a few dozen fans with a business stake in a record are unlike a label in a couple of ways:
- They don’t have a label’s reputation or connection to media outlets, brick and mortar distribution and promotion etc. and there’s nothing in that that $2000 recording budget about hiring a publicist. That’s all on the artist and the funders.
- As far as the investment aspect goes, a self-released record’s biggest commercial potential is likely to be licensing for film, television, video games, advertising, artisanal social media campaigns and maybe just maybe larger scale release, be it in other markets or just with larger scale distribution, and labels, or at least experts, are a lot better at making that sort of thing happen.
Asking for this sort of investment on a record-by-record basis also puts some more serious pressure on the commercial aspect. Who cares about buying the publishing rights to something that is not intended to be sold?
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“
What the Starrs did next was surprising. Instead of consulting relatives or friends, they looked to David’s workplace. They turned to a cutting-edge program called agile development that has rapidly spread from manufacturers in Japan to startups in Silicon Valley. It’s a system of group dynamics in which workers are organized into small teams, hold daily progress sessions and weekly reviews.
As David explained, “Having weekly family meetings increased communication, improved productivity, lowered stress and made everyone much happier to be part of the family team.”
When my wife and I adopted the agile blueprint in our own home, weekly family meetings with our then-5-year-old twin daughters quickly became the centerpiece around which we organized our family. The meetings transformed our relationships with our kids—and each other. And they took up less than 20 minutes a week.
” —Run Your Family Like a Business - WSJ.com (via iamdanw)
The prospect of Scrum in the home is terrifying.
(via buzz)
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January 2013
15 posts
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