Edouard Chazal

Blue Period: Analyzing the Color of Paintings with R

The image above shows the color spectrum of almost 100,000 paintings created since 1800.

In an article for Significance magazine, Martin suggests a few possible reasons why paintings are getting bluer with time:

The colour blue is a relatively new colour word.
An increase in dark colours or black might drive the effect if these contain more blue or if the camera register them as blue to a larger extent.
The colours in paintings tend to change over time, e.g. due to the aging of resins.
Blue has historically been a very expensive colour, and the decreasing price and increased supply might explain the increased use.

→ R-Bloggers

The Man Who Broke The Music Business

The dawn of online piracy :

Glover enjoyed both albums, but he was in an unusual position: he had the power to influence the outcome of this feud. If he leaked “Graduation” and held on to “Curtis,” Kanye might sell fewer records. But if he leaked “Curtis” and held on to “Graduation”—well, he might make 50 Cent retire.

→ The New Yorker

How a Mystery Trader With an Algorithm May Have Caused the Flash Crash

That same day, Sarao and his firm, Nav Sarao Futures Limited Plc, used “layering” and “spoofing” algorithms to trade thousands of futures S&P 500 E-mini contracts. The orders amounted to about $200 million worth of bets that the market would fall, a trade that represented between 20 percent and 29 percent of all sell orders at the time. The orders were then replaced or modified 19,000 times before being canceled in the afternoon.

About three weeks later, Sarao told his broker that he had just called the CME and told them to “kiss my ass,” the affidavit said.

→ Bloomberg

Take a Deep Breath if You Want to Try Competitive Vaping

They begin tuning up their devices like drag racers tuning hot rods before a race. They twist resistant wire into coils to carry electricity from their vaporizer’s battery, and weave dry cotton through the coils. The cotton acts like a wick, soaking up e-cigarette juice so the coils can heat it as electricity loops through them.

→ The Wall Street Journal

Robots Can’t Dance

A great interview with Ken Goldberg :

There are so many aspects of human unpredictability that we don’t have a model for. When you watch a ballet or a dance or see a great athlete and realize the amazing abilities, you start to appreciate those things that are uniquely human. The ability to have an emotional response, to be compelling, to be able to pick up on subtle emotional signals from others, those are all things that we haven’t made any progress on with robots.

→ Nautilus