And you are here why?

The Guardian - like Wolverine - is the best at what they do, i.e., visualize data.  In this particular case, they've done the CIA WorldFactbook data on North and South Korea proud. The bottom-line? North Korea is basically a disaster-zone (but you knew that, right?) These are just screen-grabs.  Go to the original for the fully interactive version

From Jonas Boner , Jeff Dean , and Peter Norvig , we have this awesome gist showing latency numbers for different types of data access The numbers pretty much speak for themselves, and its always good to hammer home exactly how bad a disk access is. That said, an L1 cache-miss is a 14x hit! Wild... Heres the same data visualized (from ayshen )... (click to embiggen)

GigaOm drills into the shared-data plans from AT&T / Verizon - which are, to put it mildly, entertainingly complex.  First, to cut to the chase ...in general if you’re looking to connect more smartphones, AT&T comes out on top, but if maxing out data usage or connecting a lot of non-smartphone devices is important to you, Verizon’s plans fare better Now that that is out of the way, what is it with the "used car salesman" approach to pricing?  I know, I know, snow the buyer with a ton of data, and work on the principle that if consumers overpay, its their fault because after all, they had all the data right? (Lets pretend that the logical conclusion of this - the financial crash of 2007 - never happened) Still, here is the beginning of how the AT&T plan works First, you need to select a data bucket. The following prices are for shared data between any number of devices either directly connected to the carriers network or tethered via Wi-Fi or cable. Fo...

(in Hungary, of course). Its a town in Hungary where they basically ran Fibre everywhere, as a basic infrastructure play.  It worked quite remarkably well.  The video is somewhat advert-ish, but the essential benefits do  come forth.  Broadly speaking Its keeping the young 'uns in town after they graduate, since they are 'connected' - its also stimulating startups Its also keeping older people (60+) more 'connected'.  (Makes sense, as anyone with kids knows, Facetime/Skype has *huge* uptake amongst the previous generation) Its green, and  lower cost, since it makes telecommuting actually feasible and realistic Its good for industry, helping out with supply-chain management, logistics, and ERP Communication is, of course, dramatically simpler, easier, and lower cost Its a boon to the media/advertising industry, since its trivial to move data Retail benefits, with the ease of melding the web and Brick&Mortar Its remarkably cheap - it costs ba...

Ericsson has a new report out which obsessively details the growth of Mobile Data and Traffic.  You can go read the whole thing (hey, I did!), but there are some highlights which are quite relevant 1) People use less than 5GB/month.   If you eliminate file-sharing and video, this is pretty much a guarantee.  And yes, the 5GB includes online media. 2) Hogs watch videos .  On the other hand, people that use more than 5GB/month are almost certainly going over by watching videos.  Which also makes sense - after all, its tough  to suck up data without streaming video! 3) Metro areas are growing . The largest growth in subscriber base is going to be in Metro areas.  Given the already high density in these areas, and the crappy existing quality, it pretty much guarantees that we're going to see more wi-fi/femto-cell implementations a-la Republic wireless 4) No Videos during dinner .  Mobile PCs (?laptops on the road?) are lar...