How Big Is Your City, Really? →

Cool comparisons from The Atlantic that give perspective. Did you know, that the unoccupied section of Detroit is actually the size of the entire city of San Francisco?

KONY2012: How Invisible Networks Helped a Campaign Capture the World's Attention →

Don't underestimate those Christian youth. I watched the original "Invisible Children" video in a youth group 10 years ago.

Nothing in Android Makes Sense Except in the Light of Its Original Vision →

When viewed in the light of Miner's original vision, a lot of the software design decisions that were made during Android's development make a lot more sense.

Such as?

Android's initial development clearly did not include this attention to detail, because issues regarding the user experience appear to have been beyond the scope of the original vision.

Sad, but so true. I have now assumed this as my default understanding of Android.

Google Reincarnates Dead Paper Mill as Data Center of Future →

A fitting microcosm of the rise of the Internet. Also, lots of neat info on how Google data centers work.

My Smartphone, the Spy: Protecting Privacy in a Mobile Age →

The last time Congress re-wrote electronic privacy law was in 1986. Obviously, communication technologies have changed dramatically in the last quarter-century. The legal categories Congress established then don't necessarily make much sense today.

What are the chances Congress ever decides these need updating? In the mean time, encrypt your data and keep it locally to avoid the third-party doctrine.

Stop Innovating, Please: Kaleidescape Loses DVD Ripping Case →

Just as iTunes allows users to rip their CDs to their hard drives for later playback on a variety of devices, so Kaleidescape's DVD products allow users to rip their DVD collections and later stream them to a variety of devices around their homes. But Kaleidescape faces a challenge Apple did not: DVDs are encrypted and the DMCA, passed in 1998, gives Hollywood the legal power to prohibit firms from "circumventing" copy protection.

So, a judge ruled that the device was illegal because it ripped an encrypted copy of a DVD to memory, even though it would not play it back without the original disk in the player. And people wonder why Hollywood is dying.

Animal Magnetism: Modeling Flocks of Birds Using Simple Attractions →

Even though only interactions between pairs of starlings were included in the model, it was sufficient to give rise to strong correlations in the flight between larger numbers of starlings. It suggests that an entire flock may move as a unit, even though birds do not "communicate" across wide distances. This effect is independent of how tightly packed the flock is, something known as a topological order: it only matters that the birds have neighbors, not how close those neighbors are.

The Go-Nowhere Generation →

The likelihood of 20-somethings moving to another state has dropped well over 40 percent since the 1980s, according to calculations based on Census Bureau data. The stuck-at-home mentality hits college-educated Americans as well as those without high school degrees. According to the Pew Research Center, the proportion of young adults living at home nearly doubled between 1980 and 2008, before the Great Recession hit. Even bicycle sales are lower now than they were in 2000. Today's generation is literally going nowhere.

Even the number of teenagers getting driver's licenses has dropped 15% since the early 1980s. This is very interesting.