Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #200

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another:

• Karateka – Jordan Mechner. "So we’ve been sharing links for nearly four years, and this is our 200th installment. I figured I’d choose things that make us feel old. First up, Karateka. When I was a young boy playing on an Apple IIe, there were a few games that pushed the 64K envelope of what was possible: Black Magic, Rescue Raiders, Lode Runner, and Archon 2. But nothing came close to Karateka. The first game by Jordan Mechner — who went on to make the Prince of Persia franchise — it had the music, animation, simplicity and humor that showed what was possible. A recent Facebook thread suggested this site (hat tip to Steve Hayter), which explains some of its history, with a link to a video about the game. Mechner’s first computer had 16K. To put that into context, that’s less memory than the logo on most modern websites. Dig around for a while and feel old." (Alistair for Hugh).
• Biomarkers and ageing: The clock-watcher – Nature. "What if your body kept time? And what if we could measure it accurately? Crime scene investigations are the obvious application, but what about the lifespan of transplanted organs? Or if cancer cells are different, can we detect them? For years, Steve Horvath had tried to find the body’s clock, but when he found it, it seemed too good to be true. He was widely rejected by scientific journals. But he persevered, and it looks like he was right. You can even do it with pee. This story is as much about tenacity as it is about science. And, it reminds me that we’re only a generation or two away from some kind of immortality — whether that’s artificial intelligence, downloaded brains, or life extension. Either way, we’re probably too soon to benefit from it, which should make us feel even older than Karateka does." (Alistair for Mitch).
• A 13-year-old eagle huntress in Mongolia – BBC. "Breathtaking photos." (Hugh for Alistair).
• 6 Independent Bookstores That Are Thriving — and How They Do It – New York Magazine. "A good-news story about book stores." (Hugh for Mitch).
• Scientists Find an ‘Earth Twin,’ or Perhaps a Cousin – The New York Times. "Astronomy is just awesome, isn’t it? Here’s the deal: Kepler 186f is the first validated, Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of another star. It falls into an area known as the ‘Goldilocks zone‘ (not too hot and not too cold… but just right). You read that right. A planet that is about as close to Earth as possible. It’s only 500 lights years away (not too close). It’s also not perfect. According to this article: ‘It is closer to its star — a red dwarf that is smaller, cooler and fainter than our sun — than the Earth is to its; its year, the time to complete one orbit, is 130 days, not 365. It is also at the outer edge of the habitable zone, receiving less warmth, so perhaps more of its surface would freeze.’ Still, the thinking is that you could walk around, breathe and have gravity working for you over there. How cool is that?" (Mitch for Alistair).
• 30 Knockoff Products That Are Almost Better Than The Real Thing – Buzzfeed. "I honestly don’t know whether I should be laughing at crying at this. It’s funny, because it’s hard to believe how stupid certain unscrupulous business people are to make a quick buck… and how little thought they put into their plans. It’s sad, because it’s hard to be a brand on the receiving end of these knock-offs. You come up with an idea, you do your best to protect it, you gain market share, you get attention, you get people to care, and then the maniacal hawks (dogs) swoop in and do ridiculous things like this. Feels like something more than a simple ‘lost in translation’ kind of thing." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it’s your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.