NixMashup for October 13, 2014

Fat Runners: Before and After

Runner’s World recently asked people who lost 70 pounds or more through running to share their before and after photos. Here is a collection of 15 inspiring (and thin!) runners.

#running, #fitness

Synthetic Meat On The Move

This piece reads like a marketing promotional but it’s got exciting news if you’re a synthetic meat fan, that is, we may be seeing commercially viable synthetic meat products within five years. The article includes a number of statistics showing the unsustainability of our current meat eating ways.

#future, #syntheticmeat, #food

Apple Watch GUI Mockups

I like this dribbble collection of Apple Watch screen mockups for several reasons. They’re well done and good looking, they generate excitement for future wearable capabilities, and they provide ideas for new applications regardless of your wearable platform of choice. I don’t know when I’ll make the smart watch move myself. Probably not any time soon. It struck me the other day while running that I’ll buy a smart watch when I can ask it–while running and without my phone on me–who won the Alabama-Arkansas game last night.

#watches, #ux, #applicationdesign, #smartwatches

The Two States of Every Programmer

This links to a Google+ post that really captures the day-to-day experience of computer developers, at least my own experience.

#development

A Graphic Designer’s Path To Open Source

In this blog post a Graphic Designer talks about his history with proprietary software and commercial licenses and how he transitioned completely to Open Source. This was particularly interesting since he’s a talented Graphic Designer, and unlike developers, designers are often more tied to proprietary tools. The 55 comments complete an excellent read.

#windowstolinux, #foss, #opensource

A Few Astounding IoT Stats

The title of this Business Insider article is “By 2018, The ‘Internet Of Things’ Will Be Bigger Than The Smartphone, Tablet, And PC Markets Combined” which gives you an idea of where it’s heading. 1.9 billion devices today, and 9 billion by 2018, according to BII estimates, roughly equal to the number of smartphones, smart TVs, tablets, wearable computers, and PCs combined. It will drive trillions in economic value as it permeates consumer and business life.

#future, #iot

BBC Horizon on Internet Surveillance and The Dark Web

I learned a lot from this BBC Horizon episode on the extent of government and commercial surveillance on the Internet, the Dark Web, Tor, Bitcoin and related topics. The full episode is on YouTube. Sidebar: I discovered when trying to watch this on the big screen that YouTube is now a full-fledged channel on Roku and is completely integrated with the YouTube website and your Google User activity settings.

#privacy, #youtube

New Linux System Administrator Certification Tutorials

A 10-part tutorial covering material found in the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator exam. Very extensive covering interesting topics. I wish I could say I plan on going through each one, but I’ve got a big stack of Android development books in my Safari Books Online Queue that I’m focused on.

#linux, #career

An Elementary OS Beauty Discussion

The title of this Softpedia piece on Elementary OS is pure click-bait, but still makes a point. “elementary OS: Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Beautiful.” The article describes the Elementary OS focus on aesthetics and the User Experience, on design simplicity and how the team behind Elementary OS “know what’s best for its users” making customization difficult. The pain involved with customizing basic functions was certainly something I didn’t love with Elementary, particularly after years of modifying all aspects of Linux Mint so effortlessly. The section titled “Linux users secretly want a distro that treats them like Apple treats Mac OS X users” discusses how Elementary developers knows what’s best for their users.

#elementaryos, #linux, #ux