Archive (Page 4) • 5it • Buttondown

January 30, 2015

1. This Deadswap offline sharing game sounds fascinating. "deadSwap is a clandestine offline file sharing system where participants covertly pass a USB stick...

5IT: dentrifice

January 29, 2015

1. A mini-doc about Grace Hopper, one of the giants of early computing. "As a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, Hopper worked on the first computer, the Harvard...

January 28, 2015

1. Logistically, how does the US military pull out of Afghanistan? "Command centers packed with arena-style seating, video-conferencing systems, and giant...

5IT: dénouement

January 27, 2015

1. Somebody looped 12 hours of the ambient droning in Deckard's apartment in Blade Runner. It has received 115,000 listens. "Relax into the couch as you...

January 26, 2015

1. Autodesk is taking the idea of designing life quite literally. "Although primarily known for revolutionizing computer-aided design with the release of...

5IT: demoralize

January 22, 2015

1. Perhaps the movie Ex Machina gets artificial intelligence right? "Ava (played with alien poise by Alicia Vikander) is a beautiful robot created by a self-...

January 21, 2015

1. A historically informed deflation of the short-term potential of AI to revolutionize geopolitics. "The artificial intelligence landscape of the 1980s was...

5IT: democrat(ic)

January 16, 2015

1. This research into homelessness in SimCity is so, so interesting. "SimCity players have discussed a variety of creative strategies for their virtual...

January 15, 2015

1. Glass is really, really important in our current computing paradigm. "At CES 2015, Corning unveiled its new glass product, Iris, which focuses on the...

January 14, 2015

1. Hollywood studio courts "cybersecurity influencers" to promote new hacker movie, Blackhat. "Last week, a bunch of real-world hacker types got an advance...

January 13, 2015

1. Pier Paolo Pasolini and Jonas Mekas. "That summer, that hot Roman summer afternoon, I see you sitting on the curb, waiting for the door to open, & seeing...

January 12, 2015

1. These are the lengths humans are willing to go to understand the structure of the universe. "Two kilometers below ground in Canada, scientists deployed a...

January 9, 2015

1. A wonderfully large argument for the importance of rhythmic rituals in improving the form of human consciousness that we experience. "My claim is not so...

5IT: dead letter

January 8, 2015

1. The FBI doesn't think it needs a warrant to place a stingray cell-tower spoofer in 'public places.' "Without going into the full scope of the program, the...

January 7, 2015

1. A plan for a "cyborg coast" in Louisiana. "Cantrell, now an associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, became fascinated with the river...

January 6, 2015

1. 5IT reader Antoine Wojdyla translated a 1985 Marguerite Duras interview in Les Inrocks about what she expected in the future. It is uncanny and disturbing...

January 5, 2015

1. For a robot, the hard thing about cooking won't be learning the recipes, but grasping the tools. "We believe that the grasp type is an essential component...

December 31, 2014

Happy New Year, everyone. Relish the surge pricing! 1. The Sad Internet in Review. "Some manifestations of the Sad Internet make a mockery of the pervasive...

December 30, 2014

1. Ancel Benjamin Keys' very bad idea: the shoddy science that got fat booted from the American diet. "Despite continuing doubts, it became, and still is,...

December 29, 2014

1. Everyday phone surveillance by abusive partners is a terrible and underreported problem. "A survey by Women’s Aid, the domestic violence charity, found...

December 23, 2014

1. What people asked the New York Public Library in the time before Google. Is it possible to keep an octopus in a private home? I just saw a mouse in the...

5IT: cul-de-sac

December 22, 2014

1. Painting viruses. "Like traditional illnesses, computer viruses travel through networks of communication or trade, meaning that they can be mapped and...

December 19, 2014

1. A German steelworks was physically damaged by a digital attack. "The BSI document states that a steelworks site was directly targeted using a very...

December 18, 2014

1. Imagine being on the receiving end of these shipments. "Over the past few years, Fighters for a Free North Korea have used hydrogen balloons to pilot...

5IT: Climate causation, supercapitalism/Uber, cryptorubles, the haves, a neverending essay generator

December 17, 2014

1. How prominent historians are exploring the role of climate change in world history. "All are conversant in conventional explanations for the various rises...

5IT: Poisonous cities, translation, livestreaming and Jesus, automation, phonology of swearwords

December 16, 2014

1. Rehearsal for an inhospitable planet. "Paper face masks have been common here for a long time, but now the heavy-duty kind with purifying canister filters...

5IT: Cyberfeminism, risk, the Uber doctrine, old teeth, speculative archaeology

December 15, 2014

1. The first cyberfeminist revolution. "They coded. They built websites. They hung out in chat rooms and text-based online communities like LambdaMOO. They...

5IT: The cheetah that wasn't there, hacks, Pavlov, MacGyver, dancing

December 12, 2014

1. When computers think they see something in an image that humans don't. "Our findings shed light on current differences between human vision and [deep...

5IT: Dirtboxes, Machine Fiction, Robo-Fish, Women's Work, Peak Trade

December 11, 2014

1. Senators asking questions about how government agencies spoof cell towers to surveil people. "Recent reports reveal that multiple government agencies -...

December 10, 2014

1. This is a very interesting possibility for decentralizing the web. "'Distributed technology can and does empower users,' says BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker,...

December 9, 2014

1. Cell simulation just got $100 million from Paul Allen and a new institute in Seattle. "The institute’s plan is to engineer many different cell lines and...

December 8, 2014

1. And this is an economist's happy scenario for technology reducing inequality. "We can easily imagine medical diagnosis by online artificial intelligence,...

December 5, 2014

1. The ethics of big data in higher education. "Vialardi and colleagues note that predictive analytic models 'are based on the idea that individuals with...

December 4, 2014

1. Some artists set up a way for people to send messages to the NSA. "Berlin-based artists Christoph Wachter & Mathias Jud have installed WLAN / WiFi mesh...

December 2, 2014

1. The protests are more notable for how small the role of technology for communication (as opposed to documentation) has been. This article is nonsense....

December 1, 2014

1. The fact is: Silicon Valley is a Democratic stronghold. "Even the GOP acknowledges it has plenty of work to do to woo Silicon Valley. 'If you look...

November 25, 2014

1. The case for reparations. "Having been enslaved for 250 years, black people were not left to their own devices. They were terrorized. In the Deep South, a...

November 24, 2014

1. A shockingly detailed and lengthy oral history of the poop emoji. "It struck me as a particularly flexible and effective emoji. It provides a way to say...

November 21, 2014

Well, hello. I ran out of This invites about five minutes after I sent my last message. I got 20 more and ran out immediately again. So, if you received an...

5IT, 11/20 (This. Edition)

November 20, 2014

1. Forensic DNA tests in 90 minutes. "The RapidHIT represents a major technological leap—testing a DNA sample in a forensics lab normally takes at least two...

November 18, 2014

1. The machines can write captions now. "Automatically captioned: 'Two pizzas sitting on top of a stove top oven'" + Human captioned: "Whoa, what happened...

November 17, 2014

1. The Burners of the Afghanistan war. "What we were looking at was a data-visualization tool he had created, called Antz. The patterns on the screen...

November 14, 2014

1. It's not just U.S. Marshals flying Cessnas over cities who can intercept cell phone data. "This Article illustrates how cellular interception capabilities...

November 13, 2014

1. How cats became lovable kitties. "But the most intriguing findings came when the team sequenced the genomes of 22 domestic cats—representing a wide...

November 11, 2014

1. When work is sending email, more efficiency means more work for everybody. "Wajcman cites a study of Blackberry use among 'corporate lawyers, venture...

November 10, 2014

1. There is a massive NSA document dump coming on Wednesday, if you have access to Proquest's Digital National Security Archive. "The vast majority of the...

5 Intriguing Things

November 7, 2014

1. There should be a Burroughs Cut-Up bookmarklet that randomly screenshots a portion of any webpage you pass to it. "The Cut-Ups began in October of 1959,...

5 Intriguing Things

November 6, 2014

1. A project to make the way robots think comprehensible to humans. "In an experiment, the researchers used their [augmented reality] system to place...

5 Intriguing Things

November 5, 2014

1. Writer Rob Walker and artist Tim Belonax printed a small run of a new, arm-focused target for an essay about the design of shooting aids. "It’s a...

5 Intriguing Things

November 4, 2014

1. Technological angst and Car Talk, from the journal Studies in Popular Culture. "In the final analysis, then, Tom and Ray help reduce anxiety in the yuppie...