Warren Ellis's Blog, page 17

Clatter off to sleep.

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Kieron Gillen unwittingly provides the slogan for the Tumblr years.  (via)

It’s not a bad one, as accidental slogans go.  (Though I am still sad that “It’s all about control, Luigi” never caught on.  It could have been the new “son i am disappoint.”)  Though it’s interesting to me that Tumblr’s own gif tumblr hasn’t been active in months.  The Storyboard team there got fired recently, replaced by an algorithmic solution to surfacing content that was rolled back the same day because it didn’t work.  Amusingly, it turned out today that the statement about the Storyboard group firing was actually written by one of them.

It’s a very Tumblr thing.  Kieron’s tumbling through the servers now, alive and looping as pure Tumblarity.  Tumblr loves nothing more than a GIF.

I don’t have much of a presence on Tumblr, but I like it there.  I loved the early tumblelogs that Tumblr moved so quickly to emulate, and what they’ve made out of that cheeky sticky-fingeredness is quite remarkable.  Especially given that they seem to have no visible business model beyond convincing investors to give them money.  Which, I guess, is also impressive: until such time as they have to monetise and their actions in that regard impinge on the tastes of a user base sometimes as touchy and rabid as the old LiveJournal crowd. 

I’d like to think that Tumblr will solve their obvious problems before they crash down like asteroids.  I’d also like to think that most users have copies of their most-loved Tumblr posts.  The year of All I Want To Be Is A GIF would be a very sad thing to look back on, if it turned out you’ve died when the servers were switched off.

Oh God Robert Scoble Is Wearing His Google Glasses in The Shower
A warning to a generation
(tags:tech )

I’ve got my head in a weird and fun piece of work today, so please allow me to distract you with the unusual things kept in Brooklyn by our friends at the Invisible Gallery.

The wonderfully creepy soundscapes of the unit called Eye Cross Cross because I am done with trying to get Unicode symbols to display properly.  I have been writing to these sounds today.  G’night.

 

IAO by I††

Researcher’s Serial Port Scans Find More Than 100,000 Hackable Devices, Including Traffic Lights And Fuel Pumps – Forbes
"You probably remember serial ports as the ancient nine-pin plugs you once used to hook up your mouse or joystick to your computer in the pre-USB dark ages. But tracking down devices that still use serial port connections isn’t so hard, it seems. In fact, according to H.D. Moore, any hacker can find–and tamper with–more than 100,000 of them over the Internet, including critical systems ranging from traffic lights to fuel pumps to building heating and cooling systems to retail point-of-sale devices."
(tags:tech security )
Muzzle Flash — Hidden in Plain Sight — Medium
Jan Chipchase: "On Friday I was invited into Google Labs New York and given the opportunity to try out Glass. I declined to put on a pair. Here's why."
(tags:tech )

SUB-MACHINE GUN is the simplest thing in the world.  A collection of screenshots of bad films with bad subtitles.

There’s something about the way interesting comics work, in them: the juxtaposition of image and text in discordant, dissociative ways.  Also they just make me smile.  But I love the strangeness of these little captures, and they way they make me think for a moment.  Also, it turns out your robot will live.

I like a pop song every now and then.  If I’m deciphering the tags right, then Sam Hamilton is calling this “fucked modern pop music.”

The Sovereignty Of Our Rebellious Love by SAM HAMILTON