[Edit — I had posted this originally on 2008–5-21, but it seems I didn’t quite do it right, and the video never showed up. I’ve reposted it today, with the video intact]
A friend passed this along, and had to make a mention of it myself:
MUTO – An ambiguous animation painted on public walls
Rent or Buy Calculator Helps You Decide Which Is Best:
The New York Times Rent or Buy Calculator compares the cost of renting versus buying your home to determine which is a better money move in the long run. Give it your monthly rent, the projected price of buying a house, mortgage rate, and property tax, and it’ll determine after how many years buying is better than renting (if at all). If you live somewhere like Los Angeles or New York and your name doesn’t end with Rockefeller, the calculator is a little depressing. With that in mind, whether or not you live in an area where the real estate is more realistic, the Rent or Buy Calculator is incredibly useful. Let’s hear which it recommends for your situation in the comments.
Is It Better to Buy or Rent [NYT via Apartment Therapy]
(Via Lifehacker.)
The article I’m quoting/linking to here is a thought exercise more than anything, but, as such an exercise should do, it is thought-provoking. Philip Greenspun asks: “How much would it cost to convert the entire U.S. fleet of passenger cars, which collectively burn 40 percent of the oil that we use, to electric cars?” He then goes on to provide us with some very nifty numbers:
- total oil consumption in the U.S.: 21 million barrels every day (CIA Factbook)
- cost per barrel: $130
- days in year: 365
- total spent per year: $1 trillion
- percentage of oil consumed by passenger cars: 40 (source)
- total spent per year on oil for passenger cars: $400 billion [refining into gasoline, distributing, and retailing add even more to this; looking at the 138 billion gallons the U.S. consumed in 2006, at $4 per gallon this is about $552 billion every year (subtract perhaps 5 percent for gasoline used by non-diesel trucks; add 1 percent for oil used by diesel-powered cars)]
- at 5 percent interest, how much we could we borrow and pay $400 billion every year in interest: $8 trillion [current 10-year T-bill yields enable government to borrow at 3.84 percent]
- number of registered cars in the U.S.: 250 million (Wikipedia)
- cost of a new electric car, if mass-produced: $20,000
- value of a used car, if exported to Latin America or China: $5,000
- cost to upgrade average existing American car to a brand-new electric car: $15,000
- number that could be converted for $8 trillion: more than 500 million cars (i.e., twice as many as we have now)
Those bits of data are very interesting, and the author goes on to examine this data in greater depth. The comments are where things really heat up though. A great discussion sprang up surrounding this article; people began trying to poke holes in the argument, which is the whole idea of a post like this. Arguments about the availability of the $8 trillion needed to pull off this conversion (interesting to note we’ve probably spent that much on the Iraq war, as the author mentions), as well as the time & effort required, where we would be expending a great deal of money on both oil and converting to electric cars.
The market for automobiles is definitely changing more drastically now than it has in the last 50 years. Companies are realizing that people are socially conscious, and being green is not only a solid investment in the Earth, but actually generates greater ROI. This sort of sea change can only be a Good Thing™ for our economy as well as the environment. Hopefully the trend continues, with new technologies eventually replacing our crippling dependence on oil.
Inside Mac Games quoted a story on Gamesindustry.biz about an encryption chip that could make it nigh impossible to pirate a video game. One of the most interesting part of the article is the fact that Nelson Bushnell, founder of Atari, is quoted as saying “There is a stealth encryption chip called a TPM that is going on the motherboards of most of the computers that are coming out now…” which is a rather startling revelation to me.
I’m all for copyright holders protecting their rights, as long as the rights of the user are not infringed (à la music & video use), but this smacks of subversion. Maybe I’m just being a bit paranoid though. It is worth noting that the article goes on to say:
Bushnell thinks that piracy of movies and music, however, is probably unstoppable because “if you can watch it and you can hear it, you can copy it.”
“Games are a different thing, because games are so integrated with the code. The TPM will, in fact, absolutely stop piracy of gameplay.
If you’d like to read up on the TPM chip, here’s a link to the Wikipedia article. Interesting that it’s been in many computers since 2006 (primarily laptops, the articles notes.)
(Via Inside Mac Games)
I meant to post this a few days ago, but here it is for your listening & viewing pleasure:
(Via Jared Moran)
So I stumbled across Jurassic 5’s 2006 album Feedback, and it is hott. Yes, that needs two t’s. I’m still in the middle of listening to it & I felt the need to blog about it. Most professional reviews of the album panned it, and while it is not as killin’ as Power in Numbers, it is an awesome album to be sure. It suffers primarily from the groups loss of DJ Cut Chemist, who left the group to pursue a solo career. But rappers Marc 7even, Chali 2na, Zaakir, and Akil, plus remaining producer DJ Nu-Mark. Added to the fold are two top-dollar producers, Scott Storch (famous for 50 Cent, T.I., Lil’ Kim, and the Roots) and Salaam Remi (Fugees, Nas, Ludacris, Joss Stone), and while they’re certainly good, they don’t quite capture the J5 feel.
That’s ok though, ’cause we still get some great tunes out of the mix. Stand out tracks include the first cut, “Back 4 U”, which is straight up J5, with Chali 2na makin’ it happen (he’s my favorite rapper of the group). “Brown Girl”, the third track, has a nice groove to it, featuring some nice vocalizings, with “Gotta Understand” following with a slight Kanye West flavor to it (complete with Curtis Mayfield sample). “In the House”, one of DJ Nu-Mark’s major contributions, is a straight homage to the Sugar Hill Gang, really bringing that old-school pocket back. Right after that, “Baby Please” hits, and while if you’re really observant you might hear some Neptunes influence, it really just feels like a hot live band backing the group. The horn– & guitar-led groove really keeps it going. The single, “Work It Out”, which features the Dave Matthews Band doesn’t quite work, but it’s a cool idea & kudos to DMB for broadening their horizons. “Get It Together” has a sort-of old blues feel to it, with the honky tonk piano & the tin can vocal hook, works well with the almost dub bass & pocket drums. “Canto de Ossanha”, an instrumental Latin flavored track, brings the album to a close without any rhymes at all, but it’s got a great pocket to it, and feels like a live group (which it may or may not be.)
All in all, a solid effort. Again, it doesn’t quite rise to the heights of Power in Numbers or Jurassic 5 LP, their debut, but definitely worth picking up.
You can snag it at iTunes or Amazon.com and help me out.
I’m on a huge Daring Fireball kick recently, it seems. Gruber’s just got me goin’! This time he quotes an article from USA Today reporting on “minimum 50″ grading policies:
Their argument: Other letter grades — A, B, C and D — are broken down in increments of 10 from 60 to 100, but there is a 59-point spread between D and F, a gap that can often make it mathematically impossible for some failing students to ever catch up.
“It’s a classic mathematical dilemma: that the students have a six times greater chance of getting an F,” says Douglas Reeves, founder of The Leadership and Learning Center, a Colorado-based educational think tank who has written on the topic. “The statistical tweak of saying the F is now 50 instead of zero is a tiny part of how we can have better grading practices to encourage student performance.”
Gruber goes on to say:
This is so profoundly stupid it’s hard to believe it isn’t from The Onion. That F covers 0–59 doesn’t make it six times more likely that a student will get an F than any other grade, unless test scores are based on random numbers rather than actual performance.
I couldn’t agree more. If that statement by Reeves were true, then many more students would be failing exams throughout all the levels of school. Instead, most students pass at some level, even if it is just barely. Some time after posting, he did edit his post to clarify:
Update: Clearly, when you’re talking about what to do with grades lower than 50, you’re dealing with students who need help. Maybe this “minimum 50″ policy is a good way to do that; I don’t know. What I’m saying is stupid is this Reeves fellow’s argument about it being a “classic mathematical dilemma”.
(Via ? Daring Fireball by way of USA Today)
Fake Steve on the NBC-Zune Deal:
“It’s the first time I’ve seen rats swimming toward a sinking ship.”
(Via ★ Daring Fireball by way of Fake Steve Jobs.)
John Gruber, one of my favorite writers, opines this in reference to this article by Saul Hansell, in a report for the NYT Bits Blog on current negotiations between Apple and the major music labels:
So let’s get this straight. The music labels think we should pay more for a song downloaded from a server that isn’t theirs, over a network that isn’t theirs, because, well, just because. One gets the feeling that, if given the chance, music executives would just hire thugs to mug anyone on the street wearing white earbuds.
Sadly, the music industry is still one of the most corrupt businesses around, seeking to do the most profitable thing in the short term, instead of investing in its customers or striving to create new business models. The looming threat of the truly independent musician to the old world order of the music label makes them grasp even tighter to hang on to what they can. I realize we’ve heard this all before, but when put so frankly like Gruber has, I cannot help but add my own two cents.
(Via ★ Daring Fireball)
