Cory Doctorow's novel little brother

Ive been a reader of Cory Doctorow's website boingboing.net for over six years now, but never gave much thought to reading any of his novels. Last night, I read his most recent novel Little Brother. In one sitting -- all 525 pages -- It was that good.

Although a work of fiction, it has some very compelling ideas for the time we live in, or rather, may live in, as the story seems to be set in the San Francisco bay area around 5-10 years in the future. The events in the book, thankfully, will probably never happen, but its still worth thinking about. Although it comes off as paranoid, it still effectively explores the reason why technological security and anonymity is a good idea for everyone, not just people with 'things to hide'. Strip out the fiction and plot from this book, and it reads like a textbook. Explaining in such depth to give the reader a good understanding of such real-world concepts as encryption, public key cryptography, TOR networks and the 'web of trust'. Although the social aspects explored in the book are extreme, that doesn't make it any less probable. The technological aspects of this book are already a part of daily internet life.

I don’t want to make this a review of Cory's book, so much as a recommendation you read it, both with an open mind and as a work of fiction. Fortunately, Cory has released it under a Creative Commons, Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license, and has made it freely available for download in several formats from his publishers website. Note that although marketed as a book for older teens, the language and concepts are more adult in nature, so be prepared for that.

Real HD video of an earthrise from the moon

Here is a stunning real HD video of an earthrise captured by a satellite from the moon. This was captured by a Japanese satellite, it is not a computer animation or model, unlike every other time you've likely seen this on tv. The video links are on the bottom of the page, and about 15 MB each.

DYI hypermiling Video

Systm,(http://revision3.com/systm) Just released a great video on how to cut your fuel consumption now that gas is hovering around the $4 mark in California. See my previous post on Gasbuddy.com. Its funny that I was then complaining about gas being $2.97. Its now at $4.49 a gallon for regular at my local self-serve.