onfocus

This is Andy Baio's annual round-up of online movie piracy. This year: HD video makes leaked screeners irrelevant. "Already, with a month to go before the ceremony, 89% of this year’s nominated films have already leaked in high quality online, more than last year."

I had no idea that Oregon tried to keep minorities out in its early years. It's a depressing article but it's important to understand our history.

"...half of the nation's deadliest shootings occurred after the [federal assault weapons] ban expired [in 2004]."

What does it take for a society to be sickened by its own behavior and to change its attitudes? Where is our threshold for self-awareness? [via kottke]

News filter by Mule. Their description: "It's a summary of the day's news, written by an actual journalist, with links to the best reporting in the world, published once a day."

A good infographic about media consolidation. This is why it's important to find, consume, and support independent everything.

"So maybe, instead of waiting for the MPAA’s next law and changing our Twitter avatars for a few days in protest, it would be more productive to significantly reduce or eliminate our support of the MPAA member companies starting today, and start supporting campaign finance reform."

Russ Cox explains how the retired Google Code Search used to work. It includes links to a similar project you can install locally to search code using the same method.

Great talk from Clay Shirky that tells some of the history behind SOPA and why it's dangerous. "They [media companies] want us all back on the couch: just consume."

"Once the market matures, the pirates go away. They always do. Legitimate markets work better than pirate markets."

Good description of a handy tool that helps test mail server settings.

The annual state of the world.

More thoughts on the UC Davis pepper spray incident and police militarization in general from a Davis faculty member. [via megnut]

"If the students turned away, they pounded their ribs. If they turned further away to escape, they hit them on their spines." Hard to believe this happened in Berkeley of all places. By Robert Hass, former US Poet Laureate. [via sacca]

"I hope publishers will see that conscious sharing is better than passive sharing, and that content delivery is better than app delivery." Me too. Quantity of traffic beats quality in many people's minds so I'm not optimistic.

Nice demo. I'm not sure I buy it yet. You still have to download the entire font to use a single icon. If you're using a large number of icons it might make sense.

Hello Brightness shortcut icon! This is great.

"Your actions directly threaten the safety of our students." A UC Davis professor is asking the chancellor to resign after the OWS pepper spraying incident.