Recommended Links of the Week (No. 347)

And here we are, more or less at the same time, with a new edition of the recommended links of the week. A quick overview of what you can find: a guy who introduces adware to Android terminals answering questions, when you think your life is a reality show, what happens when you don't sleep, after the dress comes... what color is this other garment? and a train on tires. That, and much more, only if you keep reading.

I earn a living by introducing adware on Android terminals and I'll answer you: "I create applications with Adware (it's NOT malware, nor a virus). You can ask, except personal questions that identify me. It's very profitable, I devote full days to it. To protect yourself, use common sense and don't download weird things. Removing adware (it's NOT MALWARE) is very simple, you just have to go to your apps list. I'm talking about legal apps that the only thing is they create lots of advertising, but you can easily delete it. The Android system in that sense is very secure, not like Windows." Excellent "ask me" on Meneame.

The psychological disorder that makes you think your life is a reality show: "In 1998, the film The Truman Show premiered in the United States. Starring comedian Jim Carrey, it tells the story of Truman Burbank, an insurance salesman who discovers that his whole life has actually been a television program. The science fiction film that became a cult favorite among its followers was inspired by an episode of The Twilight Zone that has the same premise: a man who learns that everything in his life has been a lie, his existence is there to entertain a television audience." Who hasn't done the astronaut thing when the bathroom mirror fogs up?

What happens in your life when you stop sleeping completely: "Days 3 and 4: Bad mood and lack of cooperation - The third day was unbearable. Mood swings, difficulty coordinating movements and saying tongue twisters. And nausea, lots of nausea. The bad mood got worse on the fourth day. He became irritable and uncooperative. This was a problem. McAllister and Marciano were with him and helped him stay awake. Since stimulants (caffeine, tea or the like) were forbidden so as not to alter the experiment, they kept him entertained with other things: they played board games with him, took him for walks, or accompanied him to the bathroom to keep him talking so he wouldn't fall asleep sitting on the toilet. As he became less cooperative, everything became much more complicated." With sleep, I'm a completely different person, I become Mr. Hyde.

Skiing in first person

11 adult animation films you must see: "Coinciding with the release of Anomalisa [Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson, 2015], it's a good time to look back and see which adult animation films deserve to be watched. There's a small boom now, we see works in that vein more often than before, but already in 1986 there were great films. Greats like Linklater have also made their mark, although in this list Don Hertzfeldt or Hayao Miyazaki couldn't be missing. Here are 11 adult animation films." Anomalisa seemed super pretentious to me, but the rest of the recommendations are good.

My film was crap: "In the seventh art, directors have always had that advantage to dodge embarrassment: if they were not happy with their work, they just had to sign the guest book with a false name. Actors have had it harder in those cases because, no matter how much they tried to hide, their face on the screen was an unmistakable fingerprint of their time in the production. They would have to settle for disowning their own film following the classic protocol: badmouthing it." Poor Bob Hoskins.

This is why 'Dragon Ball' remains the most important anime in history 30 years later: "Toei chose to keep the same animation studios and it was Toriyama himself who proposed adding a Z at the end. The reason for the choice was that it was the last letter of the alphabet and thus conveyed the feeling that it would be the definitive end of his most popular creation. He didn't know how wrong he was. The big problem they faced was that they couldn't advance the manga's story, so they had to resort to filler more often than desirable - there was also filler in 'Dragon Ball', but in much smaller doses - that is, lengthening scenes, introducing new ones, or directly inventing plots to buy time without leaving anime followers without their weekly ration." Who would win in a fight between Goku and One Punch Man, huh?

https://www.youtube.com/embed/oerSsjmUcf4

Chinese acrobats on bicycles

BuzzFeed has done it again: "What color is this garment?": Today, February 26, 2016, marks one year since one of the biggest viral hits on the Internet: "What color is this dress? Blue and black or white and gold? And BuzzFeed blew up. In a week it reached 73 million page views. Insane. Now BuzzFeed repeats with an Adidas garment: white and blue, brown and black, or green and gold? Genius." I see it green and gold.

A train on tires: "The sound of wheels rattling on the tracks seemed to keep André Michelin awake, brother of Édouard Michelin, inventors and creators of the tire industry that bears their surname. André, besides thinking about new tires and the Michelin guides and maps that he brought to life, dreamed of creating the perfect railway: silent, comfortable and fast... ah, and a new market for tires. Thus, in 1929, the rubber-tired railcar was born." And don't miss the Soviet jet-powered train.

What would happen if we eliminated all mosquitoes?: "This is the question on the minds of hundreds of specialists following the latest outbreak of the Zika virus transmitted by these insects, one of the many diseases they give us. NPR tries to answer this question and it seems that a majority of scientists believe that the consequences of eliminating all mosquitoes would not be especially devastating for the environment. Although many species feed on mosquitoes - especially Arctic birds, which consume tons of these insects in spring - none is known to depend exclusively on them for its diet." The consequences wouldn't be apocalyptic, but...

https://www.youtube.com/embed/edgv7UH_LxY

African children see a drone for the first time

The lamentable 1904 Olympics, the year a man won the marathon in a car: "The men's marathon was possibly the 'highlight' of these Olympics, the third in history under the IOC, where the word shoddy falls short. Looking back in time, some of the situations that occurred there might now make us laugh or smile. Others certainly confirm the climate and racism of that era. So before talking about the marathon that was closer to a Benny Hill episode than to professional sport, we should contextualize the beginnings of the Games." Corruption taken to the extreme.

Gesture and voice recognition system from 1979: "The voice recognition system was very advanced for its time, with interpretation capabilities that greatly limited possible errors, and with semantic and syntactic analysis capacity that went beyond mere recognition of isolated words. Although it obviously had many limits, it left the public of the time amazed, unaccustomed to such displays." Amazing, and one thinks they're so futuristic.

Barbie and her 'Pretty Woman' origin: the doll is based on a comic about a luxury escort: "However, the most famous blonde in the world may not be so proud of some details of her past. Specifically, of her very origin. The doll coveted by millions of girls, the one that has starred in films and has even rivaled Buzz Lightyear and Woody in 'Toy Story', started out as a companion girl in Germany. It all began in 1952, in Hamburg. There the newspaper 'Bild-Zeitung' was born, which included in its pages a caricature created by cartoonist Reinhard Beuthien. It was Lilli, a young woman who navigated the postwar period looking for rich men to finance her lifestyle." <<Insert here that Simpsons episode quote where Lisa designs her own doll>>