Thursday, November 29, 2012

Amazing Northern Lights Time-lapse


Desperately want to see them in real life some time. 2013 is solar maximum, who's up for a trip? :)

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Global Life Expectancy and Health


This site also has very detailed information on the causes of death in each country.

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Reële huizenprijzen

Huizenprijzen in Nederland, gecorrigeerd voor inflatie,

VS en Nederland,
En de prijzen aan de Herengracht, Amsterdam, in bijna drie eeuwen,

Thursday, November 22, 2012

"Broccoli" patent hearing cancelled

Taking into account the ruling of the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO that methods for the production of plants which comprise conventional breeding steps as well as technical ones are not patentable under the applicable European patent law, the patentee has proposed to limit its original patent by excluding the breeding methods. Thus, only the broccoli plants as such remain protected.
[...]
French company Limagrain and Swiss group Syngenta filed notices of opposition to the patent in 2003 and maintained their challenge in subsequent appeals. They allege, among other things, that the patent protects an essentially biological method of breeding plants excluded from patentability under the European Patent Convention (EPC) binding on the EPO. The technical board of appeal hearing the two appeals stayed the proceedings and referred questions to the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) with a view to obtaining clarification of the term "essentially biological processes for the production of plants (or animals)" and the associated exception to patentability.
'Broccoli' patent found here, same issue with the 'Tomato' patent.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Intel's roadmap to 4K displays

I guess we'll have to wait another year to get those sweet 8 megapixel screens

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Hungry Birds

Timelapse of birds in our garden. Shot with my Galaxy S3 and Lapse It Pro. Speed 20X. Watch full screen and HD. Too bad the great spotted woodpecker I saw this morning didn't show up. Also the huge wood pigeons are missing.

 

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Mind blowing animatronics

I had no idea they could do this, thought it was all really good CGI. Much better work than I've ever seen from any robotics lab trying to emulate animals and movements. This should be very applicable to future androids. My guess is it will be used for sexbots first :)

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Drone camera captures Argentina's #8N protests

Hooray they are finally doing what we were thinking about quite some time ago. Too bad they didn't have these in Egypt. From this article:

 

Friday, November 09, 2012


Thursday, November 08, 2012

Utrecht Centraal Station from the Air


Ultimate screen


We were recently talking about what the ultimate screen should be like. We concluded it had to be a paper-like display to work well outside. This screen seems to do that. While it's obviously still lacking in framerate and color it does seem to be on the right path. You'd only need to add a small backlight for viewing in dark conditions.

Monday, November 05, 2012

NASA astronauts performing gymnastics aboard Skylab



Skylab had a much wider room than the ISS has which allowed the astronauts to do all these maneuvers. First part is from the great documentary When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions

Sunday, November 04, 2012

Saturday, November 03, 2012

More than a sundog


Article