tech@vedella

Prompted by his being quoted in Michael Arrington's article on how you should view your work at a startup, Jamie Zawinski opines that the reason that venture capitalists tell you that startups should involve health-destroying, life-destroying, brutal work is because doing this will make them rich, not you. He calls this a con. JWZ, who [...]

The Humble Introversion Bundle -- a pay-what-you-want compilation of the games Uplink, Darwinia, Defcon and Multiwinia -- gets a huge upgrade today: the source code for every title and a bonus game, Dungeons of Dredmor. Every buyer gets the source, but Dungeons of Dredmor is unlocked only if you beat the average donation, which is [...]

Gareth from MAKE: sez, "To celebrate the release of our special Make: Ultimate Kit Guide, we're running a Kit-A-Day Giveaway between now and Dec 23. We're giving away nearly $9,000 worth of merch from the Maker Shed, including FIVE MakerBots! To be eligible, all you have to do is leave a comment on that day's [...]

A man leans against the wall of City Hall at the Occupy LA encampment after the 12.01am eviction deadline in Los Angeles (Reuters) I joined The Madeleine Brand Show today to talk about independent live-streaming backpack journalists covering Occupy Wall Street. What gear are they using, how and why are they doing what they do, [...]

When all my friends were talking about George "Rail Road" Martin's 'Game of Thrones' -- I was lost. The show confused me, the books were just not an option; yet a small circle of my friends were completely obsessed. Then I found the Boars, Gore and Swords podcast. Released quasi-weekly, Ivan and Red were just [...]

Charlie Stross unloads both barrels on the big six publishers and their insistence on using DRM in connection with their ebooks, arguing that their demands for DRM lock their customers into Amazon's Kindle platform, "handing Amazon a stick with which to beat them harder." DRM on ebooks gives Amazon a great tool for locking ebook [...]

Link to larger size, from @punkboyinsf.

The Kimberley Academy in Montclair, New Jersey hosted a fascinating, one-hour chat between Neil DeGrasse Tyson -- Hayden Planetarium director, TV science host, and all-round good guy -- with Stephen Colbert in a rare, out-of-character appearance. Stephen Colbert Interview - Montclair Kimberley Academy (via Kottke)

Tor.com has a gallery of pages from the Star Trek Book of Opposites, a board-book for little happy mutants featuring illustrations from the original Star Trek series. Star Trek Book of Opposites

A civil charge brought by a man who was arrested on his way to church during the Toronto G20 has revealed that senior officers ordered Toronto's police to make illegal arrests during the event. The man was held for 28 hours, 20 of them in handcuffs. He was arrested by as many as 20 officers, [...]

"Blogging is not about opinion but it is about viewing the world in a certain way and sharing it with others how you look at things."

In my podcast this week, I read my story "Another Time, Another Place," recently published in The Chronicles of Harris Burdick, a companion volume to Chris Van Allsburg's classic Mysteries of Harris Burdick, a collection of illustrations and titles from a lost (imaginary) short story collection. I was commissioned to produce a story for the [...]

Traffic in Yorkshire is snarled this morning after an overturned lorry dumped 23.5 tonnes of yeast extract on the motorway.

Avi sez, "Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library has put complete high resolution scans of the enigmatic, undeciphered Voynich Manuscript online." Written in Central Europe at the end of the 15th or during the 16th century, the origin, language, and date of the Voynich Manuscript—named after the Polish-American antiquarian bookseller, Wilfrid M. Voynich, who [...]

Over at deviantART, SoDespair shares a small gallery of excellent Daria cosplay! Above, Daria Morgendorffer and Jane Lane. SoDespair's deviantART Gallery (via Neatorama)

[video link] This porcupine, named Teddy Bear, enjoys corn on the cob. A LOT. (Thanks, UPSO!)

In Print online, Steven Heller reviews Zippy Goes to School: Born in Africa, the real Zippy lived the better part of his life with Bonnie and Lee Ecuyer. Adopted when he was just three months old, he was trained to eat at the dining room table with a spoon and fork (no knives, thank you). [...]

Quartzsite is a town of 3,000 people in western Arizona. It calls itself the Rock Capital of the World and is also known for its spirited police/citizen relations (example 2). But I didn't come to this fine town to meet the police or look for interesting rocks. I came to visit Reader's Oasis, an excellent [...]

Bloomberg has won a lengthy Freedom of Inforn battle to get the details of a secretive, no-strings-attached multi-trillion-dollar payout from the Bush administration (continued by the Obama administration) to banks, the details of which were not available to Congress. The documents make it clear that the banks' posture that they were only borrowing the money [...]