Footnotes: Hemophilic Weaponry and 1,001 Nights of Not Being Murdered

This week on Footnotes, I get my hair cut too short, thus exposing my funny-shaped head.

Now that that's out of the way, we can get into the search for the holy grail, which inspired countless knights to beat the hell out of peasants and other such inconsequential persons.

Also, a different kind of night: the 1,001 variety. For centuries, the 1,001 Nights tales have inspired Easterners and Westerners to not marry a new wife each day and kill her.

Come across something on Wired that you want me to talk about? Ping me on Twitter at @mrMattSimon or by email at matthew_simon at wired.com.

Articles under discussion this week:
Pulp Fiction 2.0: Cheap Thrills for Your Kindle Are Publishing's Latest Cliffhanger
World's Most Wired: Luke Fischbeck

Matt is the host of Wired's Footnotes show and editor of the This Day in Tech blog, where he writes about all manner of milestones while respectfully declining requests from friends and family to write about their birthdays.

Read more by Matt Simon

Follow @mrMattSimon on Twitter.

Sarah Mitroff 20 Sep, 2012

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9 Awkward Hollywood Cameos by Tech Founders

If you want to know why technology executives aren't video stars, look no further than these eight founders – plus one founder's dog – trying to look natural in movies, TV shows, and commercials. Their performances are glitchier than Facebook's privacy page.

It's easy for Silicon Valley's top nerds to feel like gods among men as they long as they remain within the high-tech bubble, where big codebases and escalating revenues are more important than good looks or interpersonal finesse. And some, like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, can cross over into mainstream celebrity when there's a real star to do the heavy lifting, like Zuck's Social Network doppelganger Jesse Eisenberg.

But stick a tech bigwig in front of an actual camera and their inclination to commune, Borg-like, with computing machines becomes a liability. For evidence, look no further than the gallery above.

Tech founders' stiffness as entertainers is unfortunate; as analog art converges with digital networks, a great many Silicon Valley companies – Apple, Google, Netflix, Pandora, etc. – need to get cozier with Hollywood. Maybe shareholders should start looking for more natural ambassadors. If Ashton Kutcher and Justin Bieber ever get tired of their showbiz careers, they may be able to find new gigs in tech. At the top.

He might have looked goofy on Family Feud, but Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley considers his 2009 appearance on the game show to be a greater accomplishment than selling his first startup to Google. "My brother's been wanting to do this for 20 years," Crowley told branding guru Dan Schawbel. His brood emerged victorious, as did Crowley: The CEO brags on his homepage about winning the Feud's "Fast Money" round. Survey says, not bad. Not bad at all.

Sarah Mitroff 20 Sep, 2012

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Review: The Master Elegantly Dissects Cult Psychosis

The Master follows a pseudo-religious movement and its leader, Lancaster Dodd, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman (center).
Images courtesy The Weinstein Company

Beautiful to look at, strangely hypnotic and utterly original, The Master examines cult dynamics through the '50s-era misadventures of a violent ex-sailor with horrible posture and zero impulse control.

Filmmaking artistry aside, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson's picture hits home as a period-perfect examination of a perpetually recurring truth: When people hanker for a know-it-all authority figure who will tell them what to think, self-appointed "masters" will be more than happy to oblige.

Anderson brings cult behavior into fascinating focus by examining the bond between two characters portrayed by extraordinary actors: the accidental, alcoholic seeker Freddie Quill, played by Joaquin Phoenix, and the suave, all-American swami Lancaster Dodd, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

(Spoiler alert: Minor plot points follow.)

The 2-hour, 30-minute story centers on nervous wreck Freddie, whose primary talent involves concocting cocktails with photo lab fluids, paint thinner and anything else that promises to obliterate consciousness. Drunk and on the run from ill-fated gigs as a department store photographer and farm laborer, Freddie stumbles onto a yacht commandeered by Dodd, his paranoid wife Peggy (Amy Adams) and their entourage.

Dodd, a speechifying, cigarette-smoking, book-writing, dancing, singing, deep-thinking charmer, bonds with Freddie — his "naughty boy" — through an interrogation "process" akin to Scientology's auditing routine that supposedly cleanses the soul of past impurities. Cycling through mood shifts in a stunning star turn, Hoffman coos to his charges in plummy tones redolent of Orson Welles during his Citizen Kane period, sours the entire room when he's in a crappy mood, engages loose-cannon Freddie with twinkle-eyed compassion, and hefts his chunky body through the scenery with self-assured grace that neither his groupies, nor the audience, stand much chance of resisting.

Freddie quickly falls under Dodd's spell. And God help anyone who criticizes the master's grandiose self-improvement philosophy. When one skeptic questions his methods at a party, Dodd turns red and calls his critic a "pig fuck." Later, Freddie beats the naysayer to a pulp.

The Master casts its own weird, R-rated spell not because it yields shocking revelations or clever plot twists. We never learn why Freddie's such a high-strung mess, though his World War II combat experience would seem a likely source of trauma. Nor do we find out where Dodd — a character inspired by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard — comes from or how he acquired his gift for wrapping people around his stubby fingers. There's not much in the way of catharsis, either, since everybody's pretty much the same at the end of the tale as they were at the beginning.

Instead, The Master resonates because its peculiar particulars illustrate why people like Dodd continue to proliferate with near-tragic frequency. Consider such characters as the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who picked spouses for his followers; California Coptic priest Zakaria Botros Henein, whose devotees made the Innocence of Muslims video; and positive-thinking guru James Arthur Ray, whose eager-to-please acolytes sat in a sweat lodge until they died.

Factor in Vanity Fair magazine's recent report about Church of Scientology matchmaking practices for Tom Cruise (denied by the organization), and it seems clear that the top-down command structure depicted in The Master remains in full force six decades on.

Freddie Quill (Joaquin Phoenix, left) and Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) scream at each other from adjoining jail cells in The Master.

Anderson, who's earned five Oscar nominations for previous obsession-themed films including There Will Be Blood, Boogie Nights and Magnolia, situates The Master at a comfortable remove from contemporary cult dysfunction. He shot using the near-obsolete 65-mm format to summon the sumptuous visual vibe found in Alfred Hitchcock films like Vertigo and North By Northwest. (The film for this review was screened at the optimum 65-mm format; most theaters will show The Master on standard 35-mm film stock.)

Another weapon in Anderson's powerful filmmaking arsenal: composer Jonny Greenwood. The Radiohead guitarist's lush score for The Master references spooky '50s jazz motifs and magnetic tape experiments pioneered by midcentury electronic music wizard Otto Leuning to orchestrate a queasy sense of unease.

Adrenalized by Phoenix's freakishly intense performance, The Master broke art-house box office records with last weekend's limited release and prompted a standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival. Prior to its nationwide opening Friday, it's already generating Oscar buzz for its stars.

For all its genteel period touches, The Master strikes a chord with contemporary audiences by probing the feral impulses that fuel groupthink then and now. Anderson strips the cult dynamic down to its rude essence when Dodd goes to jail for embezzling money from a wealthy patron. Freddie joins him in a nearby cell after pummeling the arresting officers. The men turn on each other.

"Nobody likes you Freddie," Dodd says calmly. "I'm the only one who likes you."

Freddie, who's just finished pounding his head against a bunkbed in a fit of inarticulate rage, finally screams the forbidden notion that everyone in the audience has surely already considered: "You're making this shit up!"

In The Master's portrait of cult dysfunction, the misfit and the mumbo-jumbo man share a toxic alchemy more dangerous than any mad cocktail that Freddie could dream up.

WIRED Seething performances from Joaquin Phoenix, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams; sumptuous cinematography and queasy score.

TIRED Thrilling setup gives way to languor.

Rating:

Read Underwire's movie ratings guide.

Sarah Mitroff 20 Sep, 2012

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How Windmills Are Making More Fuel-Efficient Mazdas

Image: Mazda

What do windmills and Mazdas have in common? More than you'd think. In an effort to boost fuel economy, the Japanese automaker is looking to pilfer the windmill parts bin for the resilient capacitors capable of standing up to fluctuating temperatures and the occasional avian impact.

Mazda is borrowing the windmill capacitor technology for its new "Intelligent Energy Loop" system. Mazda touts i-ELOOP as "the world's first passenger vehicle regenerative braking system that uses a capacitor." The i-ELOOP system will debut on the 2014 Mazda 6, and be branded as part of the company's suite of SKYACTIV technologies which focus on improving the efficiency of its conventionally powered cars.

However, describing i-ELOOP as a regenerative braking system is a bit misleading. As Mazda Vehicle Development Engineer and amateur racer Dave Coleman explains, there's no weird hybrid-esque brake pedal feel with i-ELOOP because there's really no regenerative braking going on. Instead, i-ELOOP is designed to capture energy from the inertia of the car, drawing power from the alternator the moment the throttle is closed.

"It's hard to figure out what to call it," Coleman admits. "i-ELOOP is our best compromise."

Specifically, i-ELOOP features a 12-25V variable voltage alternator, a low-resistance electric double layer capacitor and a DC/DC converter. The system starts to recover kinetic energy the moment the driver lifts off the accelerator and the vehicle begins to decelerate. The variable voltage alternator generates electricity at up to 25V for maximum efficiency before sending it to an Electric Double Layer Capacitor (ELDC) for storage.

The ELDC borrows technology developed for windmill and hybrid heavy equipment applications which brought down the cost of robust, temperature tolerant, vibration and crash resistant capacitors.

The DC/DC converter steps down the electricity from 25V to 12V before it's distributed directly to the vehicle's electrical components. The system also charges the vehicle's battery as necessary, and i-ELOOP reduces the need for the engine to burn extra fuel to generate electricity. The result, Mazda claims, is up to a 10 percent fuel economy improvement.

"That's in a best-case scenario," Coleman allows, "like at night, in winter, when it's raining with the wipers, heater, lights, and radio running and in traffic. On the EPA cycle we get about one MPG with it."

A singular MPG might not seem like much, but taking the accessory load off the engine is a strategy other manufacturers are following to hit ever-higher fuel economy standards. The next steps, according to Coleman, will be moving the air conditioning compressor and water pump from belt drive to electric power, making even the most mundane bits under-hood even more efficient, and reducing fuel consumption in the process.

"So many of the fuel economy technologies out there just make the car dull to drive," laments Coleman, but the i-ELOOP technology should maintain the high level of driver involvement that's crucial to Mazda's brand values, while simultaneously boosting fuel economy and reducing emissions in the process.

Sarah Mitroff 20 Sep, 2012

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Ultimate Silicon Valley Perk: Custom Chips From Intel and AMD

Google and Facebook design their own servers and all sorts of other hardware for their massive data centers. Evidence suggests they're also getting customized processors. Illustration: Ross Patton

Asked if Intel customizes microprocessors for its biggest customers, Diane Bryant said: "Yes."

Bryant heads the Intel group that builds server chips and other hardware bound for large data centers. Last week, during a dinner with reporters in downtown San Francisco, she was explaining just how much the server business has changed in recent years. In 2008, three server giants — HP, Dell, and IBM — accounted for 75 percent of the revenues Intel pulled in from the sale of server chips. But today, Bryant said, that 75 percent is spread across eight server makers, and one of them is Google, a company that only makes servers for itself.

Then a reporter asked if Intel customizes parts for its largest customers. "Yes," Bryant said. "We want to give them a way of differentiating their machines."

Bryant didn't say much more, but those few words shine a light on another part of the big-time chip business that's rarely discussed. There are cases where a large chipmaker such as Intel and AMD will provide certain customers with chips that others may not have access to. Sometimes, this merely means that when the chipmaker cranks out a big batch of processors, one customer gets the chips that happen to have the best speed or power ratings. But in other cases, the chipmaker will actually modify processors at the request of a particular customer.

This practice may show how determined the Dells and the HPs are to offer machines that stand out in what has become a commodity market. But it may also show how far Google and other web giants will go as they work to customize the servers that underpin their online services, pushing to reduce power and cost in the data center.

Intel declined to provide additional information about its efforts in this area, and Google declined to comment as well. But rumors have long held that Google pushes for more than just ordinary chips from Intel. Intel rival AMD says it has customized chips in certain cases. And Facebook — which also designs its own servers — acknowledges that it requests specific silicon from the big chip makers.

According to John Williams, vice president of server marketing and business development at AMD, there are situations where his company has turned off certain parts of a processor at the request of customers — or even added "instructions," the fundamental operations that define how a processor works.

Asked if Facebook makes such requests, Facebook spokesman Michael Kirkland said: "We do work with Intel and other vendors in these ways." But he stopped short of providing details, saying the company had not yet asked chip makers for approval to discuss the matter with the press.

As the big web companies step up their efforts to remake the hardware driving their massive data centers, chip customization could become a key battleground in the ongoing microprocessor wars. In recent months, Intel has acquired several technologies that would allow it to heavily customize server chips, but its rivals question whether it has the freedom to do so.

Intel operates massive chip fabrication plants, or fabs, that have traditionally been geared towards the production of millions upon millions of largely identical chips. According to Andrew Feldman — co-founder of a new-age server maker called SeaMicro, which was recently acquired by Intel rival AMD — there are other companies better suited to the creation of customized server chips for the big web players. Yes, one is AMD, which no longer runs its own fabs. The other is ARM.

ARM is the company behind so many of the chips that drive today's smartphones, but it's slowly moving into server chips as well. Though its new server chip designs are still a long way from live data centers, they've piqued the interest of many tech outfits because they consume relatively little power, a major concern for the big web players. But there may be an added attraction: ARM doesn't build its own chips. It licenses chip designs to others so that they can then be, well, customized.

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Sarah Mitroff 20 Sep, 2012

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Bonfire of the Van-ities: Burning Question Fuels Photog's Social Media Rise

Name: Fernanda Ávila

Age: 21

Location: Santiago, Chile

Occupation: Engineering student

What would you take with you if your house caught fire? That's the burning question Foster Huntington came up with to filter potential dates, a provocative query that eventually turned into a wildly successful blog and book.

"If they said 'a Chanel purse' I would have been like, 'Screw that,'" says Huntington, 24, in an interview with Wired.

Within days of coming up with the concept at a dinner party, he had started The Burning House blog and posted photos of his and a couple friends' prized possessions. The blog went semi-viral over the next two weeks, with readers from around the world submitting photos of their favorite things.

"It just kind of snowballed," he says.

At the time, Huntington was living in New York City and working as a concept designer for Ralph Lauren, a job he initially liked but had quickly become disenchanted with.

"I was having to sit through these meetings where grown men were screaming at each other about small differences in cashmere sweater colors and I was like, 'There is no fucking way I can do this for the rest of my life,'" he says.

Luckily, the blog became so successful that he was able to line up a publisher for the Burning House book and received enough cash from the advance to leave the city. He bought a four-wheel-drive Volkswagen van and has traveled more than 45,000 miles around the country over the past 13 months, taking photos and expanding his digital footprint.

"It's been wild," he says.

Interestingly, The Burning House wasn't the first time Huntington had used a blog to break out of a stale situation.

Back in 2008, he was a struggling, dyslexic college student facing an economy that was circling the toilet bowl. He didn't particularly like what he was studying and knew his job prospects were dim.

He bought a DSLR on a whim and started making photos that he posted on his first blog, A Restless Transplant. The photos didn't have a clear theme, but Huntington quickly developed a unique kind of Americana/retro aesthetic, often focusing on landscapes, cars, clothes or other objects he liked.

"Up until that point everything had always been this huge battle for me," he says. "I was a mediocre student at best but when I started taking photos and doing visual stuff, everything started clicking."

At the time, Huntington was living in Waterville, Maine, and somehow a Ralph Lauren employee who grew up in the area happened upon his blog. That employee liked Huntington's eye and his style choices enough to offer him the internship that eventually led to his job.

It was the first step in what Huntington now refers to as the "Field of Dreams, build it and they will come" kind of social-media-infused life he would build on with The Burning House.

"I quickly realized that I had to make my own opportunities," he says.

In addition to surfing a lot, Huntington has been trying to diversify the coverage on The Burning House during his time on the road. When he first started the blog, it was particularly popular with the younger urban crowd. Well-known hipster items, like old toy cameras and antique clothing, became recurring themes.

Huntington says the occasional surprise also found its way into the photos, including a pet parrot, a slice of pizza and a photo of a girl standing over her stillborn sister in the hospital.

"I was like, 'Holy shit, that is incredibly personal and emotional,'" he says.

Huntington says that since leaving New York he's tried to photograph the objects of people who lead a more normal and less "hip" lifestyle.

"I didn't want people who drive a Subaru or an Audi and have a Moleskine to dominate the site," he says. "I wanted to broaden the perspective."

Out on the road he's started a third blog called Van Life, which features his and other photographers' photos of vans that serve as mobile homes. He also started using the #vanlife Instagram hashtag, which has helped him reach more than 225,000 followers on the photo-sharing site.

"I'm totally a product of social media," says Huntington, who estimates that he communicates with about half a million people each day online.

His creativity has continued to pay off: In addition to the book deal, he's hooked a couple of corporate clients who've paid him enough to keep his adventure alive. He just came back from a two-week surf trip to northern Russia (sponsored by Patagonia), where he was in charge of documenting the excitement on Tumblr and Instagram; he's about to head out on another Patagonia-backed adventure with a bunch of surfers as they bicycle and surf their way through Big Sur in Northern California.

At the moment, Huntington says he has no plans to rejoin the static world anytime soon.

"After seeing what kind of online and mobile opportunities are out there, I figure that I'll never really have a desk job again," he says. "Now more than ever, people can live free lives but still be connected."

All photos: Courtesy Foster Huntington

Sarah Mitroff 20 Sep, 2012

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7 Scholastic DIY Projects to Customize Your Study Space

Make a lamp out of an old globe. Photo: Frida Ramstedt for Trendenser.se

Nine months of algebra homework doesn't feel so bad when you're studying in style. And now that school is back in swing, it's time for one of our favorite activities: personalizing our stationery and supplies. These seven DIYs give classic study gear a new twist, from making a glass globe desk lamp to creating a map-shaped cork board.

Above:

1. Old Globe Lamp

Frida of Trendenser spotted this unique globe lamp, created by her friend Marie. Follow the brilliantly easy conversion (Google translation for you non-Swedes) to make your own: Peel off the pasted-on paper map from an antique, internally illuminated globe, then polish and clean the glass for a charming lighting solution.

Map Pinboard. Photo by Kim & Scott Vargo.

2. Map Pinboard

If you're learning about maps or planning a trip, this clever bulletin board idea will suit you well. Print the outline of the map you wish to use, trace it onto a regular corkboard, and carefully cut with an X-acto knife. Mounts nicely in the home office or on your fridge. Get the how-to at Yellow Brick Home (inspired by Life Blessons).

A faux vintage pull-down map is made using wrapping paper. Photo: jessicaNdesigns

3. Faux Vintage Pull-Down Map

Loving vintage pull-down maps but not their high prices? Jessica of jessicaNdesigns felt the same, so she made her own, using map-printed wrapping paper and a few dowel rods. It's a tad smaller and less rugged than the classic classroom version but every bit as educational. Get the how-to and material list on her blog.

Cut geometric shapes out of leftover felt for some modern bookmarks. Photo by Jessica Jones.

4. Geometric Felt Bookmarks

Keep your nose in the books with a DIY modern design bookmark. Jessica of How About Orange crafted this bright geometric set using leftover felt scraps and a hobby knife,  mimicking that laser-cut look. Her blog details how she put it together.

Update an old tape dispenser with this fun makeover idea. Photo: Smashed Peas and Carrots

5. Tape Dispenser Makeover

Instead of spending gobs of money on cutesy, imported stationery supplies, you can beautify an ordinary, black, dollar-store tape dispenser for a similar effect. A few coats of primer and colored spray paint and your washi tape collection will be cradled in unique, personalized holders. Get the how-to at Smashed Peas and Carrots.

Make a modern-day writing slate. Photo: Smashed Peas and Carrots

6. Rustic Chalkboard

Another how-to from Smashed Peas and Carrots: using a wooden board slice (available at craft stores) and some colored chalkboard paint, make a modern-day writing slate with this simple DIY.

Customize a desk. Photo: Livet Hemma (Ikea)

 7. Customize a Desk

Update a desk or customize a new one with this easy DIY idea from the folks at IKEA's Livet Hemma. Pencil in your favorite saying or quote, fill in with paint, and add a coat of protective finish.

Jan is the co-founder of Poppytalk, a blog about the beautiful, the decayed and the handmade, and Poppytalk Handmade, an online curated marketplace. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest!

Sarah Mitroff 20 Sep, 2012

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Post-Interception 'Momentum' Is a Myth, Researchers Say

The Carolina Panthers' Charles Godfrey (30) is congratulated by Haruki Nakamura after his interception return for a touchdown against the New Orleans Saints on Sunday. Many said the play changed the momentum of the game. They're wrong. Photo: Rainier Ehrhardt/AP

Charles Godfrey of the Charlotte Panthers anticipated the play perfectly.

As New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees rolled to his right and threw the ball to tight end David Thomas, Godfrey sliced in front of Thomas, snatched the ball out of the air and strolled nine yards for a touchdown. The Panthers bench erupted. The crowd went nuts. And sportswriters breathlessly proclaimed the first-quarter play in Sunday's game a turning point where the momentum shifted decisively in favor of the Panthers, who won 35-27.

Except it didn't.

The widely held and devoutly believed idea that a big play can change the momentum of a game is, in a word, bunk. So say a trio of MIT stats geeks with a decade of data to back them up.

Aaron Johnson, Alex Stimpson, and Torin Clark analyzed 473,621 plays run during the 2,931 NFL games played between 2000 and 2010 simply to determine whether big plays change the momentum of a game, motivating teams to perform better in subsequent drives. The results, presented in Turning the Tide: Big Plays and Psychological Momentum in the NFL (.pdf), found no evidence that a big defensive play has any effect on offensive performance later in the game.

That flies in the face of all that sports writers and armchair quarterbacks will tell you. Like many football fans, Johnson and his friends believed the conventional wisdom, but being engineers, they're skeptical of everything until they've seen the data. So they decided to test it.

They gleaned stats from ArmchairAnalysis.com to examine 69,330 drives, which they divided into two categories: those that started after a big defensive play — an interception, fumble recovery, fourth-down stop, safety, or blocked kick — and those that did not. Then they analyzed three variables: the result of the first play after the change of possession, the success of the first set of downs, and the points scored on that drive. They discovered that a big defensive play doesn't improve the performance of the offense on the subsequent drive.

In other words, the momentum doesn't shift.

The key reason lies in something called the momentum chain, defined by scholars Jim Taylor and Andrew Demick in 1994. For a precipitating event to have an effect on performance, they found, a number of factors and internal attitudes must align perfectly. In Sunday's game, for example, the Panthers' offense would have had to gain positive momentum after Godfrey's interception and the Saints defense would have to see negative momentum. That's not what happened: Godfrey's pick-six tied the game at 7-7, but New Orleans bounced back with a pair of field goals to take a 13-7 lead before Carolina came back to take the lead for good.

So if the momentum doesn't actually change, why do we think it does?

"People do this with a lot of psychological phenomena that don't actually exist," Johnson said. "Fans watch the games, and we associate the positive outcomes with a particular perceived phenomena and we fail to associate the negative ones with our phenomena. So if a team scores a touchdown right after they intercept the ball, we say that the touchdown happened because of the interception. We take that causal leap. And these are the situations we all remember instead of all the 3-and-outs that happen after interceptions."

Dr. Robert Corb, a sports psychologist on the UCLA athletics medical staff, said it's the sports version of the placebo effect: If you believe something will work, it often does.

"We know from social learning theory that people learn from watching others," Corb said. "If the offense sitting on the sidelines watches their defense get pumped up after making a big play, those offensive players are likely to get pumped up as well, and perhaps go out and make a big play themselves. If that happens a few times, and coaches and announcers start talking about a change in momentum, perception becomes reality."

After their paper was published for the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference earlier this year, the students expanded their research to examine whether coaches are significantly riskier after big defensive plays or turnovers. Do they "go for the kill" after the defense turns in a big play? Again, the answer was no. There was no evidence to suggest their plays grew more aggressive to take advantage of the big play.

For their next move, Johnson, Stimpson, and Clark hope to expand their research into college football to see whether younger players are more influenced by psychological factors. For now, though, they have plenty of opportunities each week to add to their NFL data.

"Now we pay more attention to when the commentators talk about momentum, which seems to be all the time," Stimpson said. "We also tend to point it out to our friends, which has probably become annoying by this point."

Sarah Mitroff 20 Sep, 2012

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Payment Processor Stripe Goes Loonie

Payment processing company Stripe has a growing base of U.S. fans, and it's about to get some love in the Great White North. The company is launching its beloved online credit card processing service in Canada. If you don't accept credit cards online, that may not sound revolutionary, but the move is one small step in Stripe's plan to take easy payment processing global.

Before Stripe, if you wanted to accept credit cards for your online venture you had essentially two options: Get a merchant account or use a payment gateway. To get a merchant account, you have to convince a bank that your business is valid and that your credit risk is low. Once you get approved, you have fees for each transaction, as well as monthly dues to keep your merchant account current. Payment gateways, like those offered by PayPal, Intuit, or Authorize.net, though easier to deploy, aren't dramatically cheaper. Rather than having your own merchant account, payment gateways accept credit cards on your behalf, but also slap you with monthly and transactional fees.

Backed by PayPal founders Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Max Levchin, Stripe launched in 2011 to offer a third option. The company sets up merchant accounts with banks so you don't have to. All you do is drop a few lines of code into your website and you have a payment form that you can brand anyway you like. There are no monthly or set-up fees, but for Stripe's trouble it keeps 2.9% of the purchase and a $0.30 transaction fee. According to co-founder Patrick Collison, the same merchant account woes that American merchants face exist all over the world. So, naturally, that is where he is headed next, outside the United States.

Stripe's first stop is Canada, a logical choice and the first international foray for many U.S. companies because of the geographic and cultural comfort level it offers. Canada also offers Stripe a population of would-be online merchants who suffer long waits, onerous requirements, and antiquated technology, says Stripe beta-tester Colin Percival, who runs Tarsnap, a Vancouver, BC-based UNIX backup service. "For a long time, accepting credit cards in Canada meant dealing with banks — not a problem if you have millions of dollars of revenue, but far from a friendly process for a small business just starting up," says Percival. "Stripe makes all the problems of credit card processing go away."

With $38 million in its own bank account, Stripe is intent on taking its business – and hearing that sentiment – all over the world.

Sarah Mitroff 20 Sep, 2012

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How Do You Make Home Heating and Cooling More Exciting? Add a Touchscreen

Image courtesy of Venstar

Who'd a-thunk thermostats could be sexy? No one, that's who. And yet when the Nest thermostat started hitting walls earlier this year, homeowners went ga-ga over its Jetsonian design, web-savvy features, and almost sentient learning capabilities.

Hoping to cash in on our newfound love of climate control, Venstar endowed its already impressive ColorTouch T5800 thermostat with Wi-Fi connectivity and app-powered controls. The result is a home HVAC controller that's not quite as smart or streamlined as the Nest, but still very cool and capable.

For starters, it's buttonless. A 4.3-inch color touchscreen handles everything from setting your preferred temperature to creating a schedule to viewing a custom slideshow. Yep, say hello to the world's first thermostat that doubles as a photo frame.

There's nothing quite like nudging the AC down a couple degrees without getting out of bed, or making a cold house nice and toasty just before you return home from vacation.

Before you can start packing it with pictures of Fido, however, you'll have to install it. That's theoretically a 10-minute job, provided you're handy with a screwdriver and can manage some basic wiring. However, if there's no power lead running from your furnace, you may need to call in a pro.

You may also need a firmware update to get the T5800 to recognize the Skyport Wi-Fi Key, which plugs into a side SD slot and sticks out like a sore thumb. Not that the rectangular ColorTouch was all that sexy to begin with, but the key totally kills any aesthetic it had going.

Ironically, you need to transfer some files via SD card to install that first firmware update, though once you get the ColorTouch connected to your Wi-Fi network, future updates can be downloaded directly. Photos, however, cannot: You have to copy them over via SD card.

That's not only a hassle, it's a disappointment: Why couldn't Venstar add a "Send Photos" option to its web-based control panel or Skyport app? They're otherwise quite capable, letting you adjust temperature settings from afar, monitor heating and cooling runtimes, turn various modes on or off, and even send a text message to the thermostat.

All these functions work quickly, easily, and awesomely: There's nothing quite like nudging the AC down a couple degrees without getting out of bed, or making a cold house nice and toasty just before you return home from vacation.

Image courtesy of Venstar

More cleverness: The app, web panel, and thermostat will show you the outside temperature and forecast so you can plan your indoor settings accordingly. You can set up a passcode to lock out kids or visitors, schedule temp adjustments for morning, daytime, bedtime, and no-one's-home time, and pore over runtime graphs to see just how much heating and cooling is happening.

Those are some admirably smart features, and yet if you're looking for serious thermostat intelligence, the Nest wins the day. The ColorTouch can't do things like sense your presence in a room, monitor your habits, or learn how quickly your furnace heats or cools the house. Nor can it determine when you're away and adjust the climate accordingly.

What's more, although Venstar doesn't specify a list price for the T5800 and optional Skyport Wi-Fi Key, they sell for around $225 online — just $25 less than the Nest. As much as there is to like about the ColorTouch, it feels less like a wildly advanced climate-control system and more like a kludge that's straining to keep up with the times.

WIRED Replaces your boring analog thermostat with a big, colorful touchscreen. Companion app lets you tweak the temperature from anywhere — and send text messages. Doubles as a small but attention-getting photo frame.

TIRED Wi-Fi dongle costs extra and protrudes awkwardly from the side. Can't receive photos from your phone or the web. Not nearly as smart as the Nest, but nearly as expensive.

Sarah Mitroff 20 Sep, 2012

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Hotels for the Dead: Mausoleums Reveal Spectral Light and Kitsch Decor

America in the '50s was a time of consumer optimism. The post-war economy was booming and in addition to brand-new tract houses and shiny state-of-the-art appliances the popularity of a more opulent burial style was also on the rise.

Instead of being buried in the ground, American consumers where choosing to have their remains eternally enshrined in polished beds of marble at public mausoleums.

"In life and death a new type of luxury could be afforded," says Chicago-based photographer John Faier, whose series Queen Of Heaven trains a cinematic lens on these lavish resting places. "The average American could afford these things and could now play in a world where design and status were important."

Mausoleums, or tombs above ground, have been around for millennia. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. Mausoleums in the United States were around before the war but were normally private and reserved for the rich.

Like the mausoleums built for kings, queens, and heads of state, the tombs of the 1950s were often extravagant. But they were also uniquely contemporary, Faier says, and borrowed from the kind of design that dominated the times.

"Bright colors, matching upholstery, matching lamp shades — the architecture reminds us more of a cocktail lounger or hotel, not of a mausoleum," says Faier, who scoped out seven mausoleums in Chicago and others in suburban New York and Los Angeles. "The peculiar mix of modernism and death reflects the things most kitsch, troubling, and beautiful about our modern culture."

Faier says he stumbled into the story in 2006 when he was touring the polychromatic corridors of Chicago's community mausoleum, Queen of Heaven, hours before hopping continents for an assignment in Japan.

"The only thing I could think about on the 16-hour flight to Osaka was Queen of Heaven and its eerie beauty. When I returned I began to research and scout other candidates built during the same time period," he says.

Gripped not only by the architecture, interior order, and soft furnishings but also by the unique color and light within a certain batch of mid-1950s mausoleums, which he describes as simultaneously saccharin and somber, Faier launched a 5-year photo odyssey of the ostentatious corpse vaults.

Mausoleum complexes can be huge and have provided Faier with a lot of material. For example, the Queen of Heaven mausoleum — adorned with stained glass, mosaics, wood, marble and bronze statues — has a capacity for 33,000 bodies. Currently it's only three-quarters full.

Day-to-day, Faier is a commercial and architectural photographer and he's known for paying close attention to color and composition, both of which became an important part of the mausoleums project.

"Color is such an important affective component that it drives mood and an experiential response to a photo," he says. "Even if you have never been to this place [the color helps] you get it immediately."

But even the most creative use of color and composition can't describe the sweet smell that "lingers on the palette after you leave," Faier says.

"Mausoleums do not smell like hospitals. Hospitals smell of antiseptics, sickness, and bodily fluids. This is different," he says. "I guess it is a smell of death. I was recently in someone's new car and it was the closest smell to that of these mausoleums — it might have something to do with the compounds used in the plastics like styrene and benzene or the use of formaldehyde in the manufacturing of cars."

In addition to the smell, Faier says mausoleums are abuzz with fruit flies.

"They are everywhere. They're not particularly bothersome; they are just there," he says.

Death is understandably a difficult and sometimes squeamish subject for many people but Faier has not encountered any negative response to Queen Of Heaven.

"Most often, people tell me the images are haunting and beautiful," he says.

Some visitors to Faier's recent exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center even told him that due to his photographs, they were considering a mausoleum for their final resting place.

The only problem with that decision, he says, is that choosing to be buried in a mausoleum might foretell a lonely afterlife. During his six years of shooting he never once encountered a person mourning a loved one.

"Isn't that odd?" he says. "So much effort was placed into creating these opulent spaces yet, at the end of the day, the loved ones stay away and those buried in these spaces are forgotten."

All Photos: John Faier

Geek's Guide to the Galaxy 19 Sep, 2012

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Why Dirty Streets of Heaven Writer Tad Williams Isn't Going to Hell ... Probably

Photo: Deborah Beale

These days, Tad Williams is a best-selling writer, but once he was a struggling author waiting to hear back from a publisher on his first novel. That's when he hatched a devilish scheme to force the editors to take a look at his book — he asked them to send back a copy of his manuscript, explaining that his copies had been destroyed in a flood.

[dewplayer:http://downloads.wired.com/podcasts/assets/underwire/geeksguide69.mp3"]

"I was also hoping like hell that they didn't know that basically California was in the middle of an eight-year drought, and that there's almost no such thing as basements in California," says Williams in this week's episode of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast.

The publisher ended up buying the book, and is still Williams' publisher 30 years later. He became good friends with editor Betsy Wollheim and her husband, Peter, who'd been the one to laboriously photocopy the 500-page manuscript. It was years before Williams finally fessed up.

"To Peter's great credit, and probably the thing that will keep me out of hell for this one, he immediately forgave me and laughed and thought it was a really good idea," says Williams.

Read our complete interview with Tad Williams below, in which he discusses his new novel, The Dirty Streets of Heaven, a noir mystery about an earth-bound angel who gets caught up in a plot involving missing souls. Or listen to the interview in Episode 69 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast (above), which also features a panel discussion between hosts John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley and guest geek Genevieve Valentine about angels and heaven in fantasy and science fiction.

Wired: Tell us about your new book The Dirty Streets of Heaven. What's it about?

Tad Williams: The initial idea was about the similar nature between the standard version of heaven versus hell — the classic, Western, Judeo-Christian idea that has developed — and the way that the Cold War was actually run, where the whole thing was sort of happening under the surface and all of the struggle was to an extent not noticed by most people most of the time.

The main character, Bobby Dollar, is an earth-bound angel who's part of the process of earthly souls being judged after the people die. But then things begin to get stranger, and other odd things happen in the Cold War between heaven and hell, and he winds up in a lot deeper than he had expected. So on one level it's a fantasy — it's about angels, it's about demons, it's about all that stuff. On another level, it's also very much, I think, similar to a crime novel in its characters and approach.

Wired: When you're writing a book where the protagonist works for God, if God is all-powerful, is it a challenge then to create problems for your protagonist?

Williams: Well, one of the interesting things about the book, I think, is that how the universe really works is not necessarily apparent to the minions down at the bottom end, of which our main character is one. Nobody he knows has ever met God, just as an example. The heavenly bureaucracy is huge and complicated, and the people at the bottom have only the dimmest idea of where their orders are coming from.

Wired: I've always wondered why the forces of hell would show up at Armageddon if they know they're going to lose. But in your book, you suggest that they think they're going to win.

Williams: Yeah. I think Bobby actually says something to the effect of that they think that's all just PR and that they have a perfectly good chance to win, and since they sort of represent the chaos side of things — I don't know how well you know Michael Moorcock's cosmology of law and chaos. It wasn't intentional — though I'm a big Moorcock fan — but the way it worked out as I was thinking these things through is that heaven winds up being sort of like Ultimate Law in Moorcock's version of things, which is something that doesn't change. It's very static. It's all about the same frequency of reward and existence, and it just keeps going on and on and on and on.

Hell is much more dynamic, because the — and this is the main character's presumption, I tend not to step in as the narrator in this, because it's being told by the main character — but the main character's presumption is that hell has to be varied, otherwise punishment is no longer effective, because it becomes familiar. So hell has to be something where your punishment surprises you, and part of your punishment is that there is no getting used to things because you never know what will happen next. That's a very simplified version, but that's one of the main differences. So hell is quite dynamic and changing. It's very feudal. It's very much about "whoever has the power makes the rules." In heaven that's true also, but you don't know who made the rules. The rules have all been made and they're not changing.

Wired: I really enjoyed the angel and demon names in the book. To what extent are those drawn from folklore and to what extent did you just make them up?

Williams: A lot of them come from traditional folklore — as I'm sure you know, a lot of angel names are in fact the names of religious figures or deities and things like that that were supplanted by Christianity, in most cases. Both the demons and the angels. And then some of them I have in fact made up.

Wired: What about the demon names like "Grasswax" and "Howlingfell"?

Williams: In a lot of cases I am taking things like that — the names of the common order of demons — I'm sort of inventing a pseudo-medieval sort of name, like the kinds of things that used to come up in witch trials. You know, where the women would admit the devil had sent them a familiar named such and such, and they always had these kind of odd, little, strangely domestic names that didn't really sound very dramatically devilish, but clearly this had become the common currency at the time for what demon servants would be called.

An example just off the top my head would be, say, Lovecraft's "Brown Jenkin." That was probably also based on these medieval stories where they were named things like "Creeper" or "Black Pat," or just these very prosaic names. So that's where I got that, but as I said a lot of the names are actually invented, and I have to do that in part just because I tend to have so many names in even a very short book like this that I work very carefully to keep them from being too similar-sounding.

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Geek's Guide to the Galaxy 19 Sep, 2012

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Saucy or Stale? Alton Brown Defies Twitter With Weird Post-it Notes

Alton Brown of Food Network had strong feelings against Twitter, but an even greater aversion to Facebook. When his agent demanded he choose one, he picked what he felt was the lesser of two evils and began tweeting.

Right off the bat, it felt like a bad fit. He hated the Twitter app on his smartphone. And he was frustrated by the 140 character limit. So he went rogue.

And analog.

To spice up his twittering, he began hand-writing notes, then posting pictures of them. Sometimes he'd doodle a message in Morse code. Or draw a sketch. Or set half of a paper message on fire, then tweet a photo of the remnants.

"I didn't set out to be difficult," he says. "I just wanted to have more fun."

He still sent out some text-based tweets, but one day, he made a fatal mistake. He used the wrong form of your/you're, and a grammar fiend in the Twittersphere called him out on it.

A boycott of sorts resulted. "I said, for the next 30 days, I'll only tweet what I can [hand] write," Alton describes. "And people really seemed to go gaga for it."

His 30-day paper-only project started with a self portrait and ran for a month, but the hand-drawn and written tweets were so popular that he kept it up. And now his feed is almost exclusively photos of Post-it note sketches and scribbles. Tweet him a question, and you'll see a hand-written response posted next to your tweet on his monitor. Request a drawing, and you might get a sketched image of Food Network star Giada De Laurentiis crying beside a dead unicorn, or Brown grilling a dead Barney the purple dinosaur. Ask him what Dr. Who's Daleks would need to make a soufflé, and you'll get a doodle with a punch line.

Brown isn't an artist by training, but he has a lot of experience drawing from his days as a director. Before he attended culinary school and became a member of the Food Network empire, he spent most of his career as a commercial director, storyboarding dialog-heavy spots for products from tires to insurance to baby food.

Now, more than a year after joining Twitter (minus a small hiatus when he got angry because an imposter was tweeting as his wife) he gets about 1,000 messages and requests a day from his over 400,000 followers. And the popularity of his responses is leading to a surprising activity: People have started bidding on them, even though he hasn't offered them for sale.

One fan tweeted an offer to pay $300 for a single sketch on a post-it. "I haven't accepted so far, but people are actively bidding on some of them," he says. "Trust me, I've been tempted. If things get tight around here…"

Brown keeps the doodles in a Ziploc bag, but in the last few days, he's also started moving some of the nearly 600 messages to Tumblr. You can check out his gallery-style collection at Analog Tweets. Some fans have suggested a book, while another suggested he illustrate a children's book on food. Only problem?

"I can't draw."

We disagree.

All photos courtesy Alton Brown.

Geek's Guide to the Galaxy 19 Sep, 2012

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To See in the Arctic, Darpa Might Stick Sensors on Icebergs

Floating ice in the Arctic, which the Pentagon's researchers could now use as a platform for submarine-tracking sensors. Photo: Darpa

Hyped-up fears of a coming Arctic war have, appropriately, cooled down recently. But Arctic ice is melting faster than ever, which could mean more activity — military and commercial — in an environment notoriously unforgiving to sensors and other location tools. Leave it to the Pentagon's far-out researchers at Darpa to work on a solution: an all-seeing network of sensors to track what's going on in the Arctic all year round — including, it seems, sensors placed on icebergs.

According to a Darpa briefing, the agency wants to leverage "mobile floating-ice" for electromagnetic and acoustic sensors, and to help track ships and submarines. In the briefing, floating icebergs are illustrated with networked sensors stuck on them (.pdf). The electromagnetic sensors are seen stuck on top, with acoustic sensors attached to the icebergs' undersides, which could help with mapping the Arctic seafloor. The reason why is the icebergs drift up to six kilometers per day — which has been speeding up with global warming — which can allow the military to "leverage ice movement."

It's all part of an umbrella program Darpa calls "Assured Arctic Awareness," or AAA. Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) won a $2 million contract late last month to develop it. And while much of the program is vague, interviews with its architects and agency documents provide a glimpse of how the Pentagon plans to see through the Arctic fog.

"Most of the specific technologies planned for investigation under the first phase of AAA cannot be discussed until contracts are in place with the performers," Darpa program manager Andrew Coon tells Danger Room. "However, the program will emphasize remote distributed sensing as a way to provide standoff situational awareness in the Arctic."

We've heard the background to this story before. As the planet heats up due to global warming, the Arctic ice cap could melt to the point where the summer season becomes nearly without ice coverage. (By the way, this summer's loss of Arctic ice hit a new record.) Putting aside the staggering environmental consequences, that's good for companies that want to use new Arctic shipping routes, and it gives an opening for energy companies zeroing in on the Arctic's deposits of oil and natural gas.

Then there's the "Arctic War" theory. Per that much-hyped — but far-fetched — theory, the scramble for energy and the messy overlapping claims to Arctic waters could one day provoke a largely submarine-fought naval conflict between Russia and the U.S., Canada and Norway.

"Detection of submarines is an obvious application" for the agency's network, Coon says. But so is observing the increase in shipping brought on by the melting ice, which means tracking "both ships and potential hazards like drifting ice, along with other remotely occurring activity that may hazard the stability of the region." SAIC wouldn't comment on the program, but the company has worked on underwater acoustic networks for the Arctic since at least 1990. The Darpa contract mentions one in specific, called FLOATS, which the agency wants SAIC to keep developing.

Assured Arctic Awareness. Illustration: Darpa

But how Darpa wants its sensors to work is a bit more radical. According to the solicitation, the agency wants to use electromagnetic and acoustic sensors to track both submarines and surface ships across "the entire summer ice extent." Although decreasing, that's currently more than three million square kilometers. The solicitation also wants FLOATS to turn the hostile but unique features of the Arctic — normally disadvantages to sensors — into advantages. Even though the ice is melting, and the unbroken ice fields are disappearing, there's still more than enough scattered ice floating around for now to be hazardous to ships, and also plenty of potential spots to stick the sensor network.

Darpa even wants its sensors to use the ice movement for "mechanical energy harvesting." Ships navigating the Arctic also give off a unique "signature" by using their radars at low angles to detect hazardous ice, which the sensors could then pick up to spot the vessels. Arctic ice also has the bad habit of scattering acoustic signals, which makes tracking submarines a challenge. Darpa wants to use "ice dynamics" and "opportunistic active acoustics" as leverage, but doesn't explain how that would work.

Still, tracking what's going on the Arctic is really, really hard. On the surface of Arctic waters, air surveillance is hampered by cloud cover, especially during the summer, and weird ionospheric effects around the North Pole can disrupt satellite signals. The winter months feature an extended dark period when the sun doesn't come above the horizon. And the temperatures in the Arctic are, well, really cold — which is why Darpa needs the sensors to withstand an extreme temperature of -65 degrees Celsius.

And the extreme latitude makes even reaching the satellites problematic. Friendly submarines can get cut off from geostationary orbiters, which means limited access to GPS systems. There's also — during the winter months — a lot of ice that can block access to satellite signals.

"A key challenge of operating under the ice is the ice itself," says Coon. For example, "the ice blocks access to satellites," he continues. "Even undersea systems operating in the mid-latitudes rely on GPS and satellite communications when operating in the open ocean by surfacing periodically."

Those submarines would be the decisive force in any Arctic war, which the U.S. already wins handily. That makes the whole concept of a potential conflict over the Arctic seem exceedingly remote. And if an all-seeing sensor network that actually works is in the mix, and it's even harder to see why an adversary would pick a frigid fight with the United States.

Geek's Guide to the Galaxy 19 Sep, 2012

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Kabbage Raises Some Serious Cabbage for Small-Business Loans

You have a prototype for the world's greatest dog collar, skateboard ramp, tea cozy, iPhone 5 case/hand warmer — you name it. With Amazon, eBay and Etsy you have almost instant distribution. What you don't have is money to manufacture your gizmo and build up inventory for the sales rush that you are positive will come. That's where Atlanta-based Kabbage comes in.

The 2-year-old company offers working capital, or small loans, to people who sell products online, whether it's handmade jewelry on Etsy or wholesale SD cards and iPhone cases on eBay. Kabbage got a financial boost itself this week, raising $30 million from Thomvest Ventures and existing investors to expand its business.

Very simply, Kabbage arbitrages the rate it pays for its own debt financing and the rate it lends out anywhere from $500 to $40,000 to entrepreneurs to buy inventory or the supplies they need to make handmade products to sell online. Kabbage customers get six months to pay back the money with interest that ranges from 2 to 7 percent depending on credit score and store revenue. Which gets to another Kabbage requirement: You have to prove that you're already making money selling your must-have product or products. It's not Kickstarter, and new sellers need not apply.

And it can't be just some homegrown storefront. You have to sell your inventory via eBay, Amazon, Yahoo Shopping, Etsy, or use storefront tools like Shopify, Magento and PayPal. That's because Kabbage uses your seller history and reviews to help figure out how much money it should give you.

Seller reviews are just one metric the company uses to make its lending decisions. "We probably know more about any given business than any other company has known about a small business, ever," brags Kabbage co-founder Kathryn Petralia. "We look at transactional data, QuickBooks entries, UPS shipping history, payment processing, and bank account activity to get a much better picture than banks get from just financial statements."

Petralia says Kabbage found a gap in the financing universe because it's not cost-effective for many banks to make loans less than $100,000, given all the expensive human labor each loan requires. But since Kabbage uses an automated system to assess a business' investment risk, it can lend very small amounts and still make money, Petralia says. Kabbage says it currently bankrolls $800 million in annual small business sales with its loans, and that most Kabbage customers take 10 advances per year.

It's using a portion of its own $30 million advance to go international. Expect a lending service in the United Kingdom later this year. Also look for Kabbage loans to start aiding merchants with physical storefronts. "We're trying to get away from the terms 'e-commerce' and 'offline business,' and just focus on commerce," says Petralia. "We feel that anywhere a merchant interacts with the internet, whether that's selling inventory online or using the internet to bring customers to a physical storefront, we can help."

Geek's Guide to the Galaxy 19 Sep, 2012

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The Era of the 'Smart' Transmission Is Upon Us

Image: BMW AG

How can your navigation system improve your fuel economy? By linking up with the transmission, it can predict the terrain ahead and shift into the appropriate gear before you make it 'round the bend and up the next hill.

That's what BMW's new navigation-based transmission control and Foresight Assistant aims to do, taking into account everything from ascents and descents to speed limits and even the radius of a corner to maximize fuel economy depending on the drivetrain's setting.

BMW has a handful of highfalutin names for its new suite of systems, including Predictive Power Management and Driving Experience Control, the latter of which gives the driver a choice of three transmission modes – Sport, Comfort or Eco Pro – all standard on the most recent BMW models.

Predictive Power Management for BMW's automatic gearbox takes in information from the navigation system along with sensors embedded throughout the vehicle to prioritize either fuel economy or spirited driving, choosing the right gear for the right corner at the right moment. If it knows there's a roundabout ahead, it can downshift automatically before the driver enters the corner and ready the next gear just as he exits and accelerates. Conversely, if the system is set to Sport, the shifts will not only be quicker, but utilizing data about the road ahead, it can select the appropriate gear for the corner, use a minute amount of engine braking to slow the vehicle down, then hold the gear through the bend, making unnecessary shifts and perpetual gear-hunting a thing of the past.

When set to Eco Pro mode, BMW claims that fuel efficiency can be boosted by as much as 25 percent, and if the driver selects the Foresight Assistant feature, their Bimmer will choose the most efficient driving route and provide tips on maximizing fuel economy through the center-mounted display. Additionally, the system can recognize when coasting would max out the MPGs, decoupling the transmission from the engine at the most opportune times.

It all sounds great in theory, and it's sure to play into BMW's i line of hybrid and electric vehicles when the initial model – the i3 – goes on sale late next year. In the nearer term, don't be surprised to find some of these new systems making it to refreshed BMW models later this year or in early 2013. And if BMW decides to fit it to the next dual-clutch gearbox-equipped M3, here's hoping they've added a few race tracks into the navigation data.

Geek's Guide to the Galaxy 19 Sep, 2012

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Google Spans Entire Planet With GPS-Powered Database

Three years ago, a top Google engineer named Vijay Gill was asked what he would do if someone gave him a magic wand.

At the time, Gill helped run the massive network of data centers that underpins Google's online empire, and he was sitting on stage at a conference in downtown San Francisco, discussing the unique challenges facing this globe-spanning operation. Jonathan Heilger — the man who oversaw Facebook's data centers — sat a few seats away, and it was Heiliger who asked Gill what he would add to Google's data centers if he had a magic wand.

Gill hesitated before answering. And when he did answer, he was coy. But he seemed to say he would use that magic wand to build a single system that could automatically and instantly juggle information across all of Google's data centers. Then he indicated that Google had already built one. "How do you manage the system and optimize it on a global level?" he said. "That is the interesting part."

'The conventional wisdom is that time synchronization like that, on a global scale, that is accurate enough for such a big distributed database … just isn't practical.'

— Andy Gross

It was little more than a teaser. But about four months later, Google dropped another hint. At a symposium in the mountains of Montana, Jeff Dean — one of Google's most important engineers — revealed that the web giant was working on something called Spanner, describing it as a "storage and computation system that spans all our data centers." He said the plan was to eventually juggle data across as many as 10 million servers sitting in "hundreds to thousands" of data centers across the globe.

The scope of the project was mind-boggling. But Dean provided few details, and it wasn't clear whether Google was actually using the platform in its live data centers. Then, on Tuesday, the paper hit the web.

This week, as reported by GigaOm and ZDnet, Google published a research paper detailing the ins and outs of Spanner. According to Google, it's the first database that can quickly store and retrieve information across a worldwide network of data centers while keeping that information "consistent" — meaning all users see the same collection of information at all times — and it's been driving the company's ad system and various other web services for years.

Spanner borrows techniques from some of the other massive software platforms Google built for its data centers, but at its heart is something completely new. Spanner plugs into a network of servers equipped with super-precise atomic clocks or GPS antennas akin to the one in your smartphone, using these time keepers to more accurately synchronize the distribution of data across such a vast network. That's right, Google attaches GPS antennas and honest-to-goodness atomic clocks to its servers.

"It's a big deal — and it's really novel," says Andy Gross, the principal architect of Basho, an outfit that builds an open source database called Riak that runs across thousands of servers — though not nearly as many as Spanner. "The conventional wisdom — at least among people with modest resources — is that time synchronization like that, on a global scale, that is accurate enough for such a big distributed database … just isn't practical."

Spanner may seem like an extreme undertaking, and certainly, it tackles an usual problem. Few other companies on Earth are forced to deal with so much data so quickly. But Google's massive data center creations have a way of trickling down to the rest of the tech world. The prime example is Hadoop, a widely used number-crunching platform that mimics technologies originally built at Google, and this trend will likely continue.

"If you want to know what the large-scale, high-performance data processing infrastructure of the future looks like, my advice would be to read the Google research papers that are coming out right now," Mike Olson, the CEO of Hadoop specialist Cloudera, said at recent event in Silicon Valley. According to Charles Zedlewski, vice president of products at Cloudera, the company was already aware of Spanner — after recruiting some ex-Google engineers — and it may eventually incorporate ideas from the paper into its software.

Facebook is already building a system that's somewhat similar to Spanner, in that it aims to juggle information across multiple data centers. Judging from our discussions with Facebook about this system — known as Prism — it's quite different from Google's creation. But it shows that other outfits are now staring down many of the same data problems Google first faced in years past.

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Geek's Guide to the Galaxy 19 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/9WauAepy69k/
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10 Things You Didn't Know About the Original Muhammad Controversy

Kurt Westergaard shows off some work in his heavily secured home.
Photo: Peter McGraw

With thousands taking to the streets in protest after a YouTube video mocked Muhammad, many pundits are comparing the situation to the mother of all Muslim controversies: the so-called Muhammad Cartoon Crisis of 2005 and 2006, which exploded after Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a dozen cartoons under the headline "The Face of Muhammad."

Hundreds of thousands of people protested the cartoons, leaving nearly 250 dead and 800 or so wounded. The new uproar over the Innocence of Muslims video — in which protests have left scores dead and relations shaky between the West and the Islamic world — is occurring almost exactly seven years after the old one.

In fact, Wednesday is the anniversary of the precipitating event: On Sept. 19, 2005, Jyllands-Posten invited Danish cartoonists and illustrators to draw Muhammad "as they see him," promising to publish all submissions. The newspaper printed the now-notorious cartoons on Sept. 30, 2005.

Although the Muhammad Cartoon Crisis made headlines around the world, there are many intriguing details that most people still don't know. Earlier this year, as part of our global exploration into what makes things funny, we traveled to Denmark to investigate the only cartoons ever to be called a human rights violation by the United Nations. We discovered a tale far more complex and surreal than we'd ever imagined. Here are a few of the odd elements behind what scholars have labeled "the first transnational humor scandal":

1) Not Necessarily 'The Face of Muhammad'

Since the cartoons were published under the headline "The Face of Muhammad," it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume they all satirized the Muslim prophet. But in fact, of the 12 cartoons, two don't portray Muhammad at all; in three others, the depictions are ambiguous at best. One cartoon is completely unintelligible; in a Harper's Magazine critique, cartoonist Art Spiegelman said as best he could tell, it's of five Pac-Men eating stars and crescents.

2) A Subversive Message Got Lost

One cartoon, by liberal illustrator Lars Refn, made fun of Jyllands-Posten and its notoriously far-right politics. As requested, Refn drew Muhammad as he saw him, but not Muhammad the Prophet. Instead he drew Muhammad, a seventh-grade boy from a local school district, dressed in the jersey of a nearby soccer club known for its diversity and socialist leanings. In the picture, "Muhammad" has written on a blackboard, "The board of direction of Jyllands-Posten are a bunch of right-wing extremists."

The subtitles in Refn's cartoon were lost in the ensuing controversy, however, and like several of his colleagues, he briefly had to take his family into hiding. As Refn told us when we met him earlier this year, "If I had known a billion people would see this, I would have made a better drawing."

3) Still Waiting for 'Muhammad the Profit'

"First there was Muhammad the Prophet. Now there is Muhammad the profit."

The most controversial and iconic of the 12 cartoons was penned by Jyllands-Posten staff cartoonist Kurt Westergaard. He depicted Muhammad wearing a sizzling bomb for a turban. Since then, Westergaard has been the target of multiple attacks. He's lived under 24-hour-a-day armed security ever since an intruder smashed through his back door with an ax in 2010.

The cartoon that got him into the mess sits in a vault somewhere, waiting for the right buyer. When we visited him, Westergaard told us a $5,000 offer came from Martin J. McNally, a former American sailor who spent several decades in prison after hijacking a Boeing 727 in 1972, only to be nabbed once he parachuted out over rural Indiana. Westergaard's still waiting on a better bid. "As my very practical wife puts it," he told us, "'first there was Muhammad the Prophet. Now there is Muhammad the profit.'"

4) Prior (Offensive) Art

Jyllands-Posten editors decided on the cartoon project as a demonstration of free speech after hearing that Danish writer Kåre Bluitgen hadn't been able to find an illustrator for his children's book about Muhammad. The assumption was that illustrators feared they'd face reprisals if they drew the Prophet. But Bluitgen's inability to find a collaborator might have been due to his less-than-stellar reputation: A few years earlier, Bluitgen had suggested people should hold a demonstration in which they splashed the Koran with menstrual blood.

5) Denmark's Previous Controversy: A Porn Flap

Before the cartoon controversy broke, the biggest news in Denmark was how saboteurs had posted around Copenhagen explicit pictures of mayoral candidate Louise Frevert made up like a porn star. The thing is, the photos weren't doctored. As Brandeis University political science professor Jytte Klausen noted in her thorough and compelling book on the matter, The Cartoons That Shook the World, Frevert made no secret of the fact that she'd formerly starred in hard-core films using the name "Miss Lulu."

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Joel Warner and Peter McGraw 19 Sep, 2012

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Source: http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/qd0EhaycMhA/
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