apple juice

“If a company has significant intellectual property that the Chinese and Russians are interested in, and you go over there with mobile devices, your devices will get penetrated,” said Joel F. Brenner, formerly the top counterintelligence official in the office of the director of national intelligence.

Traveling Light in a Time of Digital Thievery – NY Times

“whoa, daddy, you’re dressed fancy! what’cha doin?”

“I have to go to school tonight to chaperone a dance.”

“what’s that?

“what, chaperone?”

“yeah sha-per-rown!”

“I have to make sure the kids don’t dance too close!”

“Too close to what?”

my annual best of post!

Due to a lack of time in general for contemplating and reflecting on artistically relevant music, I’m blowing the doors off my annual best of post and including a whole slate of new categories. I hope you don’t mind.

8 great albums (in alphabetical order):

Bj̦rk РBiophilia

Bon Iver – Bon Iver

Mason Jennings – Minnesota

M83 – Hurry Up We’re Dreaming

Radiohead – King of Limbs

Ryan Adams – Ashes & Fire

Washed Out – Within and Without

Wilco – The Whole Love

Zola Jesus – Conatus

The best hamburger I’ve ever eaten:

Village Whiskey – Philadelphia

Favorite New Restaurant:

Bachelor Farmer – Minneapolis

Favorite Pet Grooming Shop:

Royal Pet Beauty Shop – Minneapolis

Best Train Ride of the Year:

Shanghai Maglev

2nd Best Train Ride of the Year:

Acela Express from NYC to Philadelphia

The Only Movie I Saw In The Theater All Year (And it was good – though I realize it was released in December 2010)

True Grit

Favorite Travel (Wasn’t exactly a vacation)

China – big thanks to Breck for having me as a chaperone for the school trip. Amazing time.

 

Congress Actually Ends Taxpayer Funding Of Ethanol Subsidies

Yay!

I would support subsidies for actual “green” energy sources, however, ethanol is not one of those sources. Not only is it a net-energy loss (takes more energy to produce than what you get out) but…

“Using corn is the least productive way to make ethanol, at roughly 300 gallons per acre of feedstock. The Brazilian ethanol industry gets twice as many gallons per acre using sugar cane, and other feedstocks like switchgrass have been projected to produce up to 1,200 gallons per acre.”

So now, where is the investment in switchgrass ethanol?

Or perhaps we put a 50 cents / gallon tax on petroleum based road fuels?

(Via Green Car Reports.)

1. the hobbit
2. prometheus
3. the dark knight rises

I used to loathe going to the apple store. I feel as though I know one or two things about technology, and I felt the apple store employees were unwilling to acknowledge that and treat me like an advanced user.

Recently I’ve noticed a change, the last few experiences were very pleasant. I’m not sure if new training occurred for the employees, but the employees I have worked with are quick to assess my skill level and respond appropriately.

Over the past month, my iPhone’s home button stopped responding consistently. This morning, I made a genius bar appointment (via the Apple Store app), came in, was promptly helped, she quickly verified the problem, and I walked out with a new / (refurbished?) iPhone within 10 minutes.

To make the whole process even smoother, after syncing my phone, it’s as if nothing ever changed. It’s set up exactly as it was before. (I did have to enter numerous passwords for all of the cloud-synced services)

This article on TechDirt gives the best overview I’ve found yet about the problems with the language in SOPA and PIPA.

Advertising giant GroupM recently asked its entertainment industry customers to compile a list of “sites dedicated to infringement,” not unlike what’s found under PROTECT IP. Universal Music, Warner Bros. and Paramount were three key providers to that list, which ended up covering a large number of perfectly legitimate sites including the famed Internet Archive (widely recognized as the library for the internet). It also included numerous innovative startups that are frequently used by content creators to get their works out, such as SoundCloud and Vimeo. Even more worrisome, it included a variety of publications and blogs, including Vibe Magazine, the quintessential hip hop and R&B magazine founded by Quincy Jones, as well as Complex, a popular lifestyle magazine recently recognized as one of the most valuable startups in New York.

This is my favorite example in the article:

Even worse, it appears that Universal Music also included the personal website of one of its own top artists, 50Cent. The hiphop star has a personal website as well as a website owned by Universal Music. The personal website is much more popular… and it appeared on the infringement list.

I really hope that there is a side effect of this bill: creative people will realize that they don’t need their publishers to get their work out there. (Or if they already realize it, they will act!) What Louis C.K. recently did on his own site serves as a model for any person looking to sell their work – you don’t need the middle man! I think you’ll increasingly see artists of all types reject the existing structure and go directly to the people via the internet. Radiohead, in 2007 did this as well with the album In Rainbows:

In Rainbows is the seventh studio album by the English rock band Radiohead. It was first released on 10 October 2007 as a digital download self-released, that customers could order for whatever price they saw fit, followed by a standard CD release in most countries during the last week of 2007