Recommended Links of the Week (No. 507)

This week's selection features everything from the many shapes of rear ends to the lightning-fast reflexes of flies, terrifying short films, and Batman's 80 years, among many, MANY other things. All that, plus viral videos, galleries, and dozens of curiosities, in this week's Recommended Links.

This is what happens when you try to measure a programmer's productivity by the lines of code they write per day: "It's not advisable to base decisions on such a metric, as we tend to reward quantity over quality. A developer who has been building a good architecture to scale in the medium term or solving an important bug that affected a large number of users doesn't have the same impact as someone who spends their time firing off Pull Requests with small insignificant tasks. The team will start playing the metrics game without producing any meaningful code."

Why do flies have such good reflexes?: "The authors of the study I mentioned wanted to discover whether smaller animals with a faster metabolic rate perceive their surroundings with a higher number of "frames per second" than larger animals with a slow metabolism. To do this, they compiled other studies in which the flicker fusion threshold of different animals was measured by placing them in front of a flickering bulb and checking at what frequency they stopped seeing individual flashes and began to perceive a continuous light emission."

10 chilling horror short films to watch right now: "Horror shorts, or short films, are not only excellent quick bursts of horror that don't take up much time in your schedule, but they have also become an important platform for aspiring feature film directors. While Hulu and Netflix presented horror shorts in their overwhelming Halloween programming, any time is a good time to enjoy them. Here are 10 great horror short films that send chills and emotions, and some that even make you laugh."

The best werewolf transformation scene

What is the best film adaptation of Stephen King?: "If adapting a novel gives us some measure of its popularity... What can we say about those that are brought to the screen twice? In the coming days, Pet Sematary arrives in our theaters, whose first version in 1989 did not go unnoticed precisely at the box office and, for those who haven't had enough, in a few months It: Chapter Two will be released, of which there was already a miniseries in 1990 of formidable success. In the eyes of Hollywood executives, Stephen King is the goose that lays the eggs that hatch the geese that lay golden eggs: only in the United States has the film adaptation of his work grossed more than two billion six hundred million dollars."

80 years of Batman: The Dark Knight on film and TV: "He did it with Bob Kane's drawings and Bill Finger's script in a story titled 'The Case of the Chemical Syndicate'. His first adventure, 'The Bat-Man' premiered in May but 'Batman #1' was not published until 1940, a first issue that introduced Joker and Catwoman to readers for the first time. Since then, the masked vigilante alter ego of billionaire Bruce Wayne has become the most successful comic book character on the big and small screen with multiple appearances..."

How Humphrey Bogart paid tribute to chess in Casablanca and gave a move its name: "Many readers probably like chess and maybe even are good at it. What is not so likely is that they have ever heard of the Humphrey Bogart gambit. The gambit is a move in which a piece - usually a simple pawn - is sacrificed at the beginning of the game for strategic purposes. But the reason the famous actor's name was given to a type of gambit (although it also has other names like Bronstein, Tim Krabbé, or Gibbins-Weidenhagen) is not because of the nature of that move but because of something that will surprise more than one: its creator was Bogart himself, who was a consummate chess player."

UE4 realism

The 6 types of rear ends that exist in the world and the shape of each one: "When your partner leaves you, there's always that great friend who tells you 'don't worry, there are plenty of fish in the sea,' while you keep thinking your life is hell. But the truth is they're right: there are billions of people in the world, each with their flaws and virtues, and surely you'll find the right one for you. As a result of the large number of people on the planet, we can find all kinds of bodies. In fact, in another article we already talked about the different body types that exist, hence so many rear ends with different shapes."

Futurama and mathematics: "When creating Futurama, one of the first rules Groening established for the creative team was that in each episode 'science should never outweigh comedy.' Cohen and the rest of the writers obeyed what the boss ordered, but at the same time they began to consider how to include as many scientific hints as possible without overshadowing the main plot of each episode. The most obvious solution was to go for references so obscure and convoluted that they wouldn't distract the casual audience, a task that was easy for Cohen because he had already done it before, on more than one occasion, within a yellow family."

Svalbard, Arctic dystopia: "It is one of the most hostile places on the European continent, with rugged terrain, covered 60% by glaciers, a polar climate, and more polar bears than people. The archipelago is part of the Kingdom of Norway; however, it has Russian cities and, despite what the name Norway may evoke, Svalbard is outside the democratic regime of the rest of the country, as a region with an authoritarian government within the country. An authoritarian regime willing to do whatever it takes to ensure that one law is followed: it is forbidden to die."

The center of the galaxy in 360°

12 wonders of the ancient and modern world: "There are a great many places to visit around the world. Below, we talk about 12 incredible places in the world that people love to visit. Each and every one of these places conveys something exciting when visited, becoming etched in our memories in a special way."

Time could have the structure of a crystal: "A team of physicists has detected that the minimum measurable time scale is several orders of magnitude larger than Planck time, the minimum established to date. This, applied to the basic equations of quantum mechanics, would indicate that the structure of time could be like that of a crystal, consisting of discrete segments that repeat periodically."

Smiling in photographs: how did this trend come about?: "Paul Ekman, a psychologist who has been a pioneer in the study of emotions and their relationships with facial expression, identified 18 different types of smiles based on different combinations of the 15 facial muscles involved. To smile we use 17 muscles, but to frown we use 43, which is perhaps why a smile seems more pleasant to the eye and is our calling card in social interactions. And in photographs. However, we haven't always smiled in photographs. In fact, smiling in photographs is a relatively recent custom."