From Indexed:

Jessica should visit Colombo…

Via Bruce Schneier blog, on Entropic Memes:

What you see here is a photo that never should have been allowed to be taken, and one which provides an amazing, one-of-a-kind glimpse into the world of WWII espionage and counter-espionage.

Very interesting to see how the archive of a news magazine contains so much interesting stuff…

It must have been a great show…

From Waxy:

When you experiment with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, it feels like magic. You toss 500 questions into the ether, and the answers instantly start rolling in from anonymous workers around the world. It was great for getting work done, but who are these people? I’ve seen the demographics, but that was too abstract for me.

Last week, I started a new Turk experiment to answer two questions: what do these people look like, and how much does it cost for someone to reveal their face?

From Coding Horror:

For as long as I’ve been a software developer and used bug tracking systems, we have struggled with the same fundamental problem in every single project we’ve worked on: how do you tell bugs from feature requests?

It’s an insoluble problem. Furthermore, I think most bug tracking systems fail us because they make us ask the wrong questions. They force you to pick a side.

It’s an interesting question, being a programmer for so long I can’t help to think that users just don’t care (as Jeff points out) about the distinction, but worst, users don’t care of the trouble. Software Engineering is a relatively new field of work, and methods are not quite well established. It’s unthinkable for someone to ask a building contractor to move a wall after the plaster has been set and painted, however, that happens all the time with software development (or more exactly in my limited experience, with web development). Specifications are often forgotten by both parties, and it’s our duty as developers to try to at least have a good solid set of rules in order to start developing.

Unfortunately, it can’t be embedded. But it’s on YouTube

From Cognitive Daily:

How long does it take for the cube to reverse ?

From SciAm website:

…demonstrated that the observers attended to the naked picture but not to its scrambled counterpart. Even more interesting, straight males attended to pictures of naked women but were slightly repelled by pictures of naked men. Straight women were attracted to pictures of naked men without showing a consistent repulsion for pictures of naked women. Gay men behaved much like straight women; they unconsciously paid attention to the pictures of the naked men but not to those of women…

The article is VERY insteresting. It describes an experiment made with a technique that renders invisible images that our eye is seeing, through a series of flashes. It has nothing to do with the Romulan cloaking device, it’s only a technique to fool our brains.

The subway system was down, there were no trains to Sta. Apolónia…

Last night I was at ccb, thanks to Fly’s kind invitation, and spent a good time listening to Lisa Ekdahl. It’s been maybe ten years since my last concert, and it was a different venue at the time, listening The Tindersticks at Coliseu, standing. The Grande Auditório is a much nicer place, maybe I’ll return soon to see Maria João & Mário Laginha.

She was on stage with three other musicians in a somewhat simple arrangement, but overall it was a nice concert. I met Lisa’s music through Long Board and only have “Heaven, Earth And Beyond”, so I was expecting a more “jazzy” sound, but about half of the songs were new (simpler) arrangements from musics like “Cry Me a River”, “When Did You Leave Heaven”, “My Heart Belongs to Daddy”, that were ok, but a little different from what I was used to.

For me, that last two or three songs were the best, mainly due to the more “common” sound, and during the show Lisa presented new songs that will be on a future album.

It was a good evening.