Four short links: 16 September 2014

IoT Struggle, Embedded Tools, Download Accelerator, and Comms Smog

  1. The Epic Struggle of the Internet of Things — a Bruce Sterling Kindle single, a powerfully-written challenge to the presumed-benevolent technology-pervaded universe that we label “the Internet of Things”. The Internet of Things is not about a talking refrigerator, because that is the old-fashioned consumer retail world of electrical white goods. It’s an archaic concept, like software bought in a plastic-wrapped box from a shelf. The genuine Internet of Things wants to invade that refrigerator, measure it, instrument it, monitor any interactions with it; it would cheerfully give away a fridge at cost.
  2. mbeddra set of integrated and extensible languages for embedded software engineering, plus an IDE. It supports implementation, testing, verification and process aspects. It integrates with command-line build tools and integration servers, as well as file-based version control systems. Nice to see something beyond webdev getting tools love.
  3. Replace wget With axel — download accelerator, aka a parallel wget for situations where the fetched file has multiple servers.
  4. Photos From When Cables Crowded The Skies (io9) — the communication age’s equivalent of the industrial revolution’s smog.
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