RANDOM INTERNATIONAL came up with a really great artwork for the Zayed Centre for Research into Rare Disease in Children in London. The idea is good. The red sphere makes sense.
But sadly the implementation ruins the work. The thing jerks around. A second grade science project with this kind of performance would get a ‘well meaning nod’ but hardly a good grade. I would not be surprised if the work makes odd noises and causes troubles when it runs day in day out. It likely will not run for a long time without interruptions. I wonder if the makers would have thought about the fact that you need to clean the sphere once a week, otherwise it will look rather dusty.
Having to look at the un smooth motion and oddly tensioning wires makes me sad. It is a great work. It is just implemented in a way that ruins it.
Wires that are less or more part of the work as well as a freaking smooth control of the motors could have made this really nice. I would play with speeds, but usually have it manoeuvre very slowly on a 3 dimensional spline. Just to randomly go into a swift motion. Brownian motions.
There are endless possibilities: At specific times of the days it could perform a ‘ball drop’. Every July 25th it could engage in mostly helical patterns. Eventually somebody would figure out that it is the birthday of Rosalind Franklin.
But of course all that fancy stuff would only make sense if the freaking wires would run smooth. Which they clearly don’t.
To complete the reversed Tolstoj: and war. While Trumpies son in law finally managed to get the Emirates to say that they eventually will sign something (When you ask? In 3 weeks the man said. Those 3 weeks he always mentions when he actually means: “you are so stupid in 3 weeks nobody cares what I said today, because by then I stoked another outraged, and the media will jump all over it like a rioting prison population over a busload of catholic schoolgirls). So while 45 hammers on a peace pr event Greece and Turkey send ships into the same disputed area.
We all live in the world of Idiocracy. Since Mike Judge finished his movie the institution of the Presidency has moved already 20% in the direction of his work. Now it appears that his plot point of under age users from Silicon Valley finds a real life equivalent.
If you have to do a mundane task to do that leaves 90% of your brain un occupied ( like sorting receipts or something ) then maybe watch this video. If you click away after a minute then you miss 15 very interesting ones that you had not expected after the first minute.
China is testing a digital currency. In the US credit cards are big. They let you pay without physical money and they give people a line of credit. Charging them 15% interest rates. Yes, this is an actual business model. The other form a revenue is a 3% cut the card company gets from the transaction. There is a convoluted network of institutions involved in a credit card purchase. Enter ‘credit card payment flow diagram’ in image search and you will see. It is not that complicated. But it is also not that easy that you just use ‘visa’ or ‘master card’. Tandem Computers ran for a long time these transactions. So payments are being processed by computers. But they behave as if you still use Knuckle buster to initiate a paper trail.
The system kinda works. It is inherently unsafe and slow. Lots of people are involved. Their jobs are of the kind of a switch board operator in the early days of the telephone: A tech system that requires glue by people since it has not full matured. Those are always horrible jobs. Just ask an assembly line worker.
Since everybody carries a connected computer around you can replace physical money with digital one. You “just” need a system to do so securely and reliable. Technically entirely possible. And China is heading that way.
I bought a geiger counter board the other day. Arrived in less than a week in Europe. It was packaged really well. Documentation? A WeChat QR code. So I might as well get an account with them.
Alipay – not digital money but a replacement for credit cards – gets accepted in more and more places outside of China.
Much like we have Paypal accounts and credit cards we will have Digital Renminbi accounts. First to just get better service, a better price on a little trinket. But since it will work and will be easier than other things we will use it more and more. Out of the sudden the world will use 3 currencies, not 2. Right now people use their local currency, and they use US dollars. If they know or not. The US dollar is being used to buy lots of stuff. Like Oil etc. It is the currency that steps in when local currencies have flaws. Digital Renminbi will be a 3rd currency. Driven by ease of use and Security. Many people don’t like the dominance of Amazon. But they end up using them anyway since the experience is just better than those with other services. Same with Google. People don’t like China and how it ignores our beloved Democracy. But when you need a geiger counter board you get it from China. A working digital currency can be so much cheaper than other means of transactions. I pay 3% for credit cards and 1.3% for international wires. I’d rather keep that money. I would gladly use Chinese Money if my loss would be 0.5%. Technically charges as low as 0.01% are possible. The amount of data you need to transfer is really really tiny. Think oil tankers full of condensed water mist. One of these drops that are so so small that they can float is your transaction. The oil tanker is the Internet pipelines that people have to watch 4K TV. The software you only need to create once. Cost is in the backbone systems. Here we think water mist drops and Water bottles. A little bit of work, but not much.
Other countries will not be able to get a digital currency going. Facebook tried with Libra, and failed.
Christopher Schulz makes Sharks. Chrome Sharks. Sometimes he adjuncts the animals alongside weapons parts.
It is nice to look at. Art for men. Older men. Or other men that engage in inner monologues about their fading vigor.
Good for the market is that some of these men have money. And offices where they can place these objects. They do not know that with the purchase of a piece like this they communicate their insecurities. All they see the novelty of the combination of Chrome and Shark. That must be Art. Art they can understand. So it is good. And then it is expensive. They can afford it. And they have taste. Are modern. Their Grandma would not like it. She would see a shark in chrome. They like that about the work. She likes dolphins in porcelain more than sharks in chrome. Actually they are the same.
Sorry, yes, there is no way 5G could have anything to do with ‘the China virus’.
An example: All items in your kitchen, like knifes, forks, pans, etc. If you sort them by color or by length does that influence how fast your car can drive? Yes, if your car keys were in the kitchen and you no longer can find them after the ridiculous enterprise to resort all items in your kitchen. Smart you are. But that is not the point: The ability of your car to reach a certain top speed has no relationship to what you do with with stuff in your kitchen.
5G is a specific protocol. Magnetic waves mean something different in 5G than in other ways. A virus has no way of being influenced by magnetic waves as 5G shapes them.
Seems that that were was one contact. Somewhere. At some time. The app does not know where it is. It solely relies on the exchange of anonymized tokens via low energy bluetooth.
Strange that people would not give the German government their data, but happily shovel (knowingly or mostly not) all their live into the silo of evil tech conglomerates.
With the Germany government the biggest danger would be that they loose your data. It is no evil. While those corporations are. One had the motto: “Don’t be evil”. It no longer has it.
Nonsense. 24/7 nonsense. Which is bad but tolerable in times when everything is humming along. In times when Government can make a difference it shows.
