March 2011 – Angry Robot

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Brainy Gamer: The gamer's game

“Baseball is a turn-based tactical role-playing game… Baseball is a 9-stage boss battle, and the pitcher is the boss.”

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The Satsisfaction Paradox

looking at a future world where recommendations for what media to consume are more valuable than the media itself. I’ve been meaning to do a post on this for ages.

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Amazon Cloud Player Lets You Play Your Music From Anywhere

anywhere is the web or android phone. Essentially costs $1/GB/year, which is decent. But this sounds like what MP3tunes got sued for.

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Your New TV Ruins Movies

Prolost on the superiority of plasma TVs and the need to properly calibrate LCD TVs

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Interview With Mike Rosenthal, creator of the “Waiting for Godot” video game

‘To quote one of the several cease and desist letters I received from the French lawyers representing the Beckett estate, “Unfortunately we do not share your sense of humor.” They asked me to change the name “Waiting for Godot,” because they held the rights to it. Under American law, my game is considered parody and is protected under fair use, but I complied since I’m just a college kid who can’t really afford a lawyer. So I changed the name to “Samuel Becketttt’s Lawyers Present: Waiting for Grodoudou.”’

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An artificial leaf and a gallon of water could generate enough energy to power your house for a day

artificial photosynthesis may have happened? A little cloudy but fascinating. (via @ajayfry)

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Flying Robotic Swarms To Create Wi-Fi Clouds

yeah, nothing like a plague of ominous robot insects to make people feel better after a disaster

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The end of the office

Clive Thompson, from last year, on technological and generational changes that make a shared physical workspace far less significant

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Renewistan

“the land area dedicated to renewable energy (”Renewistan”) would occupy a space about the size of Australia to keep the carbon dioxide level at 450 ppm.” But we’d have to get it lower than that, and also cut our consumption drastically. Unless we can do this, we unfortunately need nuclear power.

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Nukes: Improve them, but don’t even think of abandoning them

Doug Saunders on why nuclear power is still vital despite the disaster in Japan. Good point: Germany’s massive wind power plans rely on nuclear.

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An Impersonator Scopes Out His Inspiration

Dan Bejar of Destroyer has an impersonator – a conceptual artist also named Dan Bejar.

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Why Japan embraced nuclear power after suffering the atomic bomb

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A Letter to Our Readers About Digital Subscriptions

NYT is rolling out their subscription in plan, first in Canada, then the world. It’s $15/mo for smartphone + website, $20/mo for tablet + website. 20 pages free a month. Suddenly I have an incentive to not read the Times.