As the slavish recreation of the first Star Wars aesthetic made clear, Rogue One was intentionally rooted in fan service and an overwhelming nostalgia for the original trilogy. Worse yet, the downbeat tone of the movie speaks to the same “grim and gritty” attitude that saw multiple comic book heroes placed in “realistic,” depressing storylines in the wake of the success of Watchmen and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns in the mid-1980s.

It was a time when audiences and creators alike attempted to justify their nostalgia by trying to inject the genre with weight and complex morality it was never intended to withstand. It was, very clearly, a movie made by and for fans who’d grown up with the first three films.

The average American household accesses eight streaming and video-on-demand services in a given week

Software libre para sincronización de datos cuando varios usuarios trabajan simultáneamente.

Hecho en NodeJS.

Libro web sobre economía.

Buenísimo artículo sobre la irrupción en el mainstream de Nirvana.

I was born in the 80's and grew in a world where having access to the information was limited (bookstore, library, Tv). Then, when Internet appeared in my life, I thought it would start a golden age because information could be replicated on millions of device for very cheap. I made a portfolio, met other artist, did open movies, worked for big companies and I still − right now − run a webcomic series, Pepper&Carrot, shared by millions. I embraced the Creative Commons license so other could reuse my artworks without asking for license and without having to pay.

La pena aquí es la adopción de CC como licencia libre, porque al atomizar los permisos no va contra la restricción de copia, sino que al contrario eleva lo eleva al altar de lo personal, de lo inalienable. Tengo un post en mi blog acerca de cómo este mundo de restricción de copia gestionada de forma atomizada, uno a uno, terminaría con más leyes de copyright en más aspectos de nuestra vida, y no con menos.

Science and religion have often been at odds. But if we remove the theology—views about the nature of God, the creation of the universe, and the like—from the day-to-day practice of religious faith, the animosity in the debate evaporates. What we’re left with is a series of rituals, customs, and sentiments that are themselves the results of experiments of sorts.

...

The surprise my colleagues and I felt when we saw evidence of religion’s benefits was a sign of our hubris, born of a common notion among scientists: All of religion is superstition and, therefore, could have little practical benefit. I’ll admit that we’re unlikely to learn much about the nature of the universe or the biology of disease from religion. But when it comes to finding ways to help people deal with issues surrounding birth and death, morality and meaning, grief and loss, it would be strange if thousands of years of religious thought didn’t have something to offer.

Un tolomato, pero lo guardo para leer luego.

Buenísimo artículo de contexto sobre Afganistán.

Effectively, all cryptocurrency exchanges avoid transferring cryptocurrencies between customers. Instead, they simply record entries in a central database. This makes sense because actual “on chain” transactions can be particularly expensive for cryptocurrencies like bitcoin or Ethereum. If all speculators needed to actually receive their bitcoins, it would make clear that its value proposition as a currency simply doesn’t exist, as the already strained system would grind to a halt.

...

There is no single silver bullet to disrupt either cryptocurrencies or ransomware. But enough little disruptions, a “death of a thousand cuts” through new and existing regulation, should make bitcoin no longer usable for ransomware. And if there’s no safe way for a criminal to collect the ransom, their business model becomes no longer viable.