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Video interview: NSA Whistle-blower Edward Snowdon in Hong Kong with Glen Greenwald @ggreenwald and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras.

Very powerful. A single shot. An clear outline of what is arguably the most important issue of the age. Time to stand up - or you don’t get to stand up on any other issue.

I can’t help but think of Aaron Swartz, Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, William Binney, Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou, and Barrett Brown.

NSA taps in to systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and others, secret files reveal - Microsoft was the first. Via @ggreenwald

I’ve long enjoyed applying the Orwellian principles of Newspeak to marketing. It’s both fun and revealing. In it’s simplest sense, you merely read everything in reverse. Thus, if Microsoft is advertising they protect your privacy, we should understand this means they are providing open access to the US’s most secret spy agency. Similarly, it should not be surprising Obama, who promised to create the most transparent administration in history, has created the *least* transparent administration in history.

I think the dynamic works like this. We have an idea or product which can be criticised for having the quality X, which is a serious problem. As a defensive manoeuvre, we either A. highlight the workaround to the problem as a new feature no one else has, or B. make a lie one of your key messages and state outright that you abhor quality X long before the problem becomes apparent. Then when the problem is discovered, it will seem incredible and unlikely. “But they are the privacy people!”

Other examples include The Big Society, which is a concept the UK Tories have which in practice involves *shrinking* society and dismantling social infrastructure. More famously, FOX News uses the “fair and balanced” slogan to create the ideas of journalism, fairness, balance, objectivity, and so on when it is neither fair nor balanced nor even *news!*

So you can see how much fun you can have with Orwellian reversals. The goal is predicting the actual truth based on reading the marketing against the grain. There’s always an element of comedy. It’s an entertaining and more accurate way of reading the messages entities create about themselves.

I am Bradley Manning [LEAKED TEASER]. Inspiring video.

Stunning 14bit raw footage from EOSHD using Canon 5D3 with Magic Lantern firmware. It’s an impressive proof of concept. The dynamic range is so great that shots often look like HDR images.

I’m curious whether this will filter down the line to the 550D/T2i models I use. At the time I started using them, they were the ideal cameras for Magic Lantern firmware, and the 5D was still difficult to reverse engineer. Today that relationship between models has been reversed.

I still have my eye on the Blackmagic 4k camera with a Super 35 sized sensor and global shutter. The 2.5k BMC camera I own and love rather desperately wants me to buy it a 17-55mm image-stabilised lens. I’d rather just swap to the larger sensor, which works well with my existing lenses.

This short for Chanel happened to catch my attention. It is set at the first Chanel shop in 1913. Directed by Karl Lagerfeld. Starring Keira Knightly.

It depicts a weird world where everyone is fabulously wealthy and improbably beautiful, where a hat shop literally becomes an overnight success. It is a world absent depth. It’s a film composed of moving photos. There is no dirt. The road is made of fabric. The world is a set. Rather than cinema, it is a fashion shoot with movement and talking. Main street is a catwalk. I think I would have preferred it pushed to be more fantastic as it is already so two dimensional and stagy. It needs surrealism. Or bulimia. Something to break the spell of kitsch in this dirt-less world where nothing bad can ever happen. Perhaps a customer leaves the shop to be run down by a motor car.

Granted, it’s marketing. I suppose it’s purpose is to flatter their clients, which it effectively does by presenting them as the real designers, taste-makers, and absolute power brokers. In the long tradition of the global super rich, let us continue for another 100 years.

via mentorless

The most beautiful report from NAB, on the exciting new cameras from Blackmagic Design, a design company with a philosophy, ie. a company like Apple.

Watch new footage from John Brawley: casually shot Pocket camera footage taken while going grocery shopping, Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera - Market

Stunning Holi festival promo for Madhya Pradesh Tourism. Gorgeous colours and extreme slow motion.

(Source: vimeo.com)

Bitcoin Explained. Short video looking at the decentralized digital currency. By Duncan Elms.

(Source: vimeo.com)