French village went insane after CIA spiked its bread with LSD

For 50 years, residents of the French village of Pont-Saint-Esprit have tried to understand the “cursed bread” incident, a moment of terrifying mass insanity and hallucinations that left at least five dead and dozens in asylums. Now the mystery is solved: the CIA secretly spiked the bread from the bakery with enormous quantities of LSD as part of its cold war mind-control experiments, at least according to recently uncovered documents.

via French village went insane after CIA spiked its bread with LSD – Boing Boing.

Why Most Touchscreens Miss the Point

One reason why Apple’s touch sensor is so sensitive to light touch is that the company uses a 12-volt power source for the sensing lines in the touchscreen sensor, versus the 3- to 5-volt power source that most other component manufacturers have. That higher voltage drive takes a toll on the battery life because it uses up more power, but it also translates into more accurate sensing, which means a better touch experience, say researchers at Moto.

via Finger Fail: Why Most Touchscreens Miss the Point | Gadget Lab | Wired.com.

Ad Blocking Is Not Killing Any Sites

Claiming that ad blocking is harming sites is like the recording industry claiming that piracy (or home taping) is killing music. Or it’s like the newspaper industry claiming that aggregators are killing them. It’s passing the blame. If you run a company, it’s your responsibility to put together a business model that works. And if people are somehow figuring out ways to do what they want where you don’t get paid, then it means you’re doing something that needs to change. A good business model is one where everyone is happy with the transaction, not one where one party feels forced or coerced into accepting something they don’t want.

via Don’t Blame Your Community: Ad Blocking Is Not Killing Any Sites | Techdirt.

Ars Technica, in a somewhat unprecedented, left-field move, recently said that ad blocking was harming the sites that you love. I was this close to turning off my adblocker (or at least whitelisting Ars) for my primary browser, but you know what – this paragraph sums it up nicely.

Flash, Google, VP8, and the future of internet video

Where does x264 fit in all this? H.264 is certainly not going away, not for quite a while. In most sane parts of the world, software patents are a non-issue. But in the end, none of it matters for x264: we will continue our quest to create the best video compression software on Earth. Unlike Adobe, we don’t sit complacent when we are the best; we keep trying to become better. We add new features, improve compression, support new platforms, improve performance, and there’s far more to come. We don’t care that many H.264 encoders are so bad that they can be beaten by Theora or Xvid. We don’t care if VP8 comes out; that’s just another encoder to beat. We are here to ensure that the best choice is always free software by constantly making free software better.

via Diary Of An x264 Developer » Flash, Google, VP8, and the future of internet video.