David Lidsky's Blog, page 3303
March 25, 2014
How Ray-Ban and Oakley Could Bring Google Glass To The Masses
Google has signed a landmark partnership with Luxottica, makers of Ray-Ban and Oakley, to bring more style choices to Glass.
Google has announced a partnership with Luxottica, makers of Ray-Ban and Oakley eyewear among others, for the future of its Google Glass platform. The partnership will milk Luxottica's "design and manufacturing expertise," and it will eventually bring more style choices to Glass.
March 24, 2014
Watch This Video of Dudes Illegally Jumping Off One World Trade Center
The three men turned themselves in to the police for jumping off the 1,776-foot building. They also filmed it. Here's what it looks like to fall a third of a mile into Manhattan.
A video has surfaced on YouTube that apparently shows three parachutists jumping off the top of the One World Trade Center building.
Shigeru Ban Wins Architecture's Top Award
Co.Design sat down with the 2014 Pritzker Prize Laureate, a Japanese architect renown for his humanitarian work and inventive use of recycled materials.
Shigeru Ban has earned international acclaim for repurposing inexpensive materials to build cheap housing in communities struck by catastrophe. His pioneering technique of building with tubes of paper has been instrumental in sheltering refugees from natural as well as man-made disasters in places like Rwanda, India, Japan. Today, Ban becomes the latest recipient of the most prestigious award in architecture, the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
The Disconnect Tool Protects You From Spying Search Engines
Disconnect, designed by former NSA and Google engineers, unveiled a new version of its private search tool for Android devices.
Most people might not give a second thought to what they type into Google, but those queries can reveal a lot. Take, for example, searches for STDs, data for which can be leaked to third parties. Furthermore, such queries can be linked to existing profiles, giving companies, like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, a more comprehensive view of their users.
This Instagrandma Single-Handedly Justifies The Existence Of Social Media
After she was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, 80-year-old "Grandma Betty" started an Instagram account with the help of her 18-year-old great grandson. Now she has almost half a million followers and her own logo.
Move over, Marilyn Hagerty, there's a new Internet's Best Grandma: Grandma Betty, who started a life-affirming Instagram account after she was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer early this year. Oh, who are we kidding, you're both amazing.
An iPhone Case That Takes Your Vitals
Introducing Wello, a stealthy smartphone accessory that also tracks your health.
The future of basic medicine is starting to sound like science fiction: the tricorder from Star Trek has been brought to life by Scanadu, a startup at NASA's Ames Research Center. Meanwhile, biotech companies are developing pills embedded with sensors to track how patients respond to medication--once they've swallowed them.
Wello is the latest in the line of health-gadget innovations. The handheld device is made from microelectronics and nanosensors and can measure vitals like temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen, and lung functions. The best thing about Wello: It lives in your iPhone's case.
At 80, Gloria Steinem Proves Once Again That Ageism Is Really Stupid
Ageists in Silicon Valley could learn a thing or two from the feminist icon. Namely: Your career doesn't (and shouldn't) peak at 28.
There's an ageism problem in Silicon Valley, such that 40-year-old geezers attempting to get hired by fresh-faced twentysomething startup founders have resorted to botox, according to this New Republic cover story. Of course, the entire thing is absurd and sad, and the practice of only hiring "People Who Have Their Best Work Ahead of Them, Not Behind Them," as the IT company ServiceNow proclaims, is misguided. Yes, young people have boundless energy and may offer a certain valuable perspective to a business. But many people improve with age, and have decades of experience and wisdom that can't be matched by someone two months out of college. Case in point? Feminist icon Gloria Steinem.
Basecamp Networks Brought Down By DDoS Attack
The company's founder and CTO says the attack is a blackmail attempt, but "we will never negotiate by criminals."
Basecamp, a widely-used project management tool formerly known as 37Signals, suffered a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) Monday morning that rendered its services (Basecamp, Highrise, Campfire, and Backpack) temporarily unavailable. "The goal is to make Basecamp, and the rest of our services, unavailable by flooding the network with bogus requests, so nothing legitimate can come through," Basecamp founder and CTO David H. Hansson wrote in a post on Github Gist. He reassured users that their data is safe, and the attackers only want to blackmail the company into paying to avoid future attacks.
A Kaleidoscopic Supercut Of Wes Anderson Movies
SO MANY FANTASTIC MR. FOXES.
Remember "Centered," that cool video from last week that showed how much Wes Anderson loves perfectly symmetrical subjects in the foreground? Well, Luis Enrique Rayas took that video and ran with it, creating "Kaleidoscoped."
Japanese Designers Put A Friendly Face On The Humble Screw
Because hey, who doesn't like a joyful and exuberant screw?
In the gadget world, proprietary screws are anathema, el diablo. Used by the likes of Apple specifically to prevent customers from fixing their own devices (and thus, forcing them to pay much higher in-store repair fees), screws with nonstandard heads (i.e., not Phillips or flathead) are much reviled.
David Lidsky's Blog
- David Lidsky's profile
- 3 followers
