Category: Link Log

Trivial Posts #23: A Jukebox, A Fridge, And An Immortal Dragon

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Hello subscribers to Trivial Posts, it’s been a while…. lets see if I can get back into the swing of things with links out to curious stories, items that make me think, and stuff that’s just interesting. The Boys Are Always Back In Town Really the title says it all, but keep reading. Not only an exercise in humanity, but a wonderfully written story as well: Over the course of these past few months, I have come upon two bits of forbidden knowledge: One, this bar does not have a working “kill switch” (which allows the bartender to change a song in case

‘Mind – The – Hashtag’ as Tube typography changes

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London Underground has updated the Johnston typeface. The world is ending. Still, they’re there if you know where to look: the diamond dotting the lowercase ‘i’ and ‘j’ isn’t nearly as high in Johnston and Johnston100 as it is in New Johnston, while the top half of the lowercase ‘g’ has been stretched out to be less perfectly geometric, like it was back in the early 20th Century. The end result, Monotype hopes, is a typeface that is closer to Johnston’s original intent, feeling more personal and less utilitarian than it did before. John Brownlee reports for Co.Design.

No returning to ‘Classic Microsoft’ under Nadella

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Fortune’s Andrew Nusca takes a look at Microsoft’s Enterprise approach in 2016, with a focus on the changes in the Enterprise department, and the importance of cloud-based services. It’s a piece that Microsoft’s PR team will love, but many people who have been burned by Microsoft in the past will need a bit more convincing. But change is under way: Still, the cloud represents a chance for Microsoft to make up for a lot of missed opportunities. “For the first time in probably 10 years, there’s a key secular trend on which Microsoft is at the very forefront,” Weiss says.

Building A Better Burger In Scotland

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It’s a delightfully over the top headline on the site, but Buzzfeed’s look at the best burgers in Scotland is worth remembering. Bread Meats Bread are a Scottish chain famed for their decadent burgers, and it doesn’t get much more decadent than this double cheeseburger served on a candied bacon doughnut. They also serve a mean poutine, and offer halal and gluten free options. Hilary Mitchell at Buzzfeed.

The Killer ‘5 Day’ for Virtual Reality

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Because what VR really needs is Fruit Ninja: “After the latest VR technology was released, we felt that there was no better game suited to VR than Fruit Ninja,” Halfbrick’s Adam Wood, product manager for Fruit Ninja VR, told IGN earlier today. “The simplicity of Fruit Ninja with the total immersion of VR creates an experience like no other.” Simplicity and VR get along very, very well. That’s because with something like the Vive’s hyper-accurate motion tracking, your hands and arms quickly transform into whatever weapon or other implement is in the game world. Nailing targets with a bow &

When Silicon Meets Valley

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New Yorker’s Andrew Marantz goes behind the scenes at the TV show ‘Silicon Valley’ and finds out that yet another TV sitcom is based heavily on the real work. It’s just that Silicon Valley is surprised when it gets an accurate portrayal in the media world. Dotan called his compression expert, Tsachy Weissman, an engineering professor at Stanford. “He spent hours walking me through the very dense history of lossless compression,” Dotan said. “The way I understood it, basically, was that Claude Shannon, in 1948, worked on compressing files from the top down, using coding trees, whereas David Huffman, a