End of the World

2011.08.31

This is where the end of the world begins.

Chinese want to capture an asteroid into Earth’s orbit:

At first glance, nudging an asteroid closer to Earth seems like one of those “what could possible go wrong” scenarios that we generally try and avoid, and for good reason: large asteroid impacts are bad times. The Chinese, though, seem fairly optimistic that they could tweak the orbit of a near-Earth asteroid by just enough (a change in velocity of only about 1,300 feet-per-second or so) to get it to temporarily enter Earth orbit at about twice the distance as the Moon. The orbit would be unstable, and eventually (after a few years) the asteroid would head back out into space from whence it came, but it would stick there long enough for us to poke around on it.

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Cities of the Future

2011.08.27
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Halflife-Shortfilm: Escape from City 17

2011.08.24

Nicely used effects and a well budgeted short.

Filmed guerilla style. No crew. First two episodes made on a $500 budget, not including previous capital. Valve flew the brothers out to Seattle before it the release, and mentioned they were ‘blown away’ by the project on Steam.

A story about the connection that grows between two people during the battle for city 17. Made in the same gritty guerrilla style as the original, it was made on a $250 budget, previously owned/donated software, time, and an HVX200 camera.

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When algorithms control the world

2011.08.24

When was the last time you tried to remember something before going to Google?

BBC News – When algorithms control the world:

There will be no soothing HAL 9000-type voice informing us that our human services are now surplus to requirements.

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