How a Matrix fan film helped put BitTorrent on the map:

In 2003 the ‘world wide web’ was an entirely different place than it is today.

This was especially true for streaming video. YouTube had yet to be invented, while Netflix only sent out films via the postal service.

It was at this time that a group of New Zealand friends was shooting a fan film of The Matrix, appropriately titled “The Fanimatrix.” With a limited budget of just $800, of which nearly half went into a leather jacket, they managed to complete the project in nine days.

There was a problem though. As video streaming services were still non-existent, distribution was a challenge. The makers managed to reduce the filesize down to 150MB, but even that was too expensive.

TorrentFreak spoke to the film’s ‘IT-guy’ Sebastian Kai Frost, who also had a bit part in front of the camera, in addition to being a wire-work counterweight, gopher, and light holder. According to Frost, regular centralized hosting was not an option.

Setting aside piracy an the like, it’s a very useful technology for open source and public domain. I’m a big fan of Librivox – think Project Gutenberg for audiobooks – and it’s the best way to download large numbers of stuff from their collection. I hope somebody gets it working for public domain comics, too. And Linux distros.

Everything is becoming hyperpolitical…. except politics:

Some suggest that the internet and social media have replaced the older print and electronic media, but the available research does not support that suggestion. If “hundreds of millions of people” really were doing politics on social media, I would share Hanson’s worries, but such a claim overstates the number of social media activists by several orders of magnitude. A 2013 Facebook study that tracked Bing toolbar searches found that 96 percent of the users clicked on zero or one opinion column in a three-month period. In 2017 the Pew Research Center reported that less than four percent of adults consider Twitter an important source of news. (Twitter audiences are exaggerated, but for what it’s worth, President Trump reportedly has 53 million followers; Katie Perry has about twice that many.) Studies of fake news conclude that its impact is minimal.

Researchers have studied the concept of “filter bubbles” or “ideological silos.” This is the fear that the availability of politically slanted media outlets on the internet allows people to isolate themselves and consume only news and opinion consistent with their ideological preferences. Research like the Facebook study noted above fails to find much reason for concern, mainly because most Americans don’t search out any political news, let along limit themselves to ideologically congenial news. Other research finds that internet audiences are, in fact, less politically homogeneous than people’s face-to-face networks. In my personal experience I’ve concluded that the two kinds of people most likely to exist in ideological silos are academics and journalists.

In many respects the American electorate has changed surprisingly little in more than six decades. In 2016 about 10 percent of the eligible electorate made a campaign contribution—to any campaign at any level, the same figure as in the 1950s. Despite media hype about Obamamania in 2008 and Trump rallies in 2016, less than 10 percent of the eligible electorate attended any kind of campaign meeting or rally in those years, the same figure as six decades ago. As for people who knock on doors or make phone calls for campaigns, we are talking about two to three percent of the eligible electorate, the same small proportion as in the Eisenhower era.

Blessed be the normies, for their blood pressure is closer to normal.

Nikki Haley, the United State’s Ambassador to the United Nations, has resigned. In accepting her resignation President Trump says Amb. Haley will leave her position at the end of the year.

NBC News:

In an unexpected development, President Donald Trump’s U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, plans to resign, according to multiple people with knowledge of her decision.

In an Oval Office announcement alongside the ambassador, Trump told reporters that Haley came to him six months ago and said that she wanted to take a break at the end of the year.

Haley informed her staff Tuesday morning that she plans to resign. The news of Haley’s resignation was first reported by Axios.

Some context to the rampant speculation:

JUST IN: Trump says Haley told him six months ago that at the end of a year or two-year period she wanted to take some time off https://t.co/Sf5vTILBtn pic.twitter.com/hPCYyOCWaL

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) October 9, 2018

As for all that 2020 speculation:

MORE: Haley says she will not be running in 2020, will campaign for Trump

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) October 9, 2018

We had a snake in our back yard the other day that fascinated our older dog. I had to pick her up and bring her back inside. That snake, however, was nothing compared to this one:

Brave kids ??
?? pic.twitter.com/si33C8e0CK

— César Hernando Castellanos Orozco (@castellanosce) October 4, 2018

\

What jumps out at me is how fast that snake is for something that kills so slowly. Gotta be fast to catch them in the first place, I guess.

Also, python vs crocodile… who do you even root for here?