You may not have heard of Toonz animation software, but you’ve no doubt seen work it was used in: Studio Ghibli films like Spirited Away and Tale of the Princess Kaguya (above), or the animated series Futurama. Now, the Toonz Ghibli Edition used by legendary Japanese filmmakers like Hayao Miyazaki is going open-source, making it free to use by studios and novice animators alike.
Source: Animation software used by Studio Ghibli will soon be free | engadget
[Gowers] has debuted a new online mathematics journal called Discrete Analysis. The nonprofit venture is owned and published by a team of scholars. With no publisher middlemen, access will be completely free for all. Can academic publishing actually cost nothing? READ MORE: This renowned mathematician is bent on proving academic journals can cost nothing | Vox
Architecture has long had an accessibility problem: You want a bespoke house? You’re gonna have to pony up a lot of money. In the process, good design has become a luxury; a snooty, out-of-reach idea that only the rich have access to, which is actually the exact opposite of what good design should be. But what if architecture behaved more like technology? Can you expand the reach of quality design by applying the same principles behind open source code to architecture? Ask Joana Pacheco, and the answer will be a resounding yes. “We’re trying to bring quality to open source,” Pacheco says. Pacheco, who heads up architecture firm UMA…launched Paperhouses, a platform [bringing] high-quality open source architecture to the masses. READ MORE: Experimental Website Lets You Download Amazing House Blueprints for Free | WIRED
Direct Link: paperhouses.co
A lot of schools across the globe, especially in developing nations, don’t have computers with access to the internet. Project Empathy aims to address that issue by having classrooms with internet access participate in sharing knowledge with classrooms that don’t. Schools or classes willing to help can buy one of its kits, which are small devices equipped with a 64 GB microSD card, a Raspberry Pi, USB drives and other components. They then have to load the kit with content from the web, like Wikipedia articles or pages from NASA’s websites, that their recipients can tap into for their studies. The program was created by a startup called Outernet, which aims to provide developing nations free, one-way access to web pages via geostationary and Low Earth Orbit satellites. READ MORE: Project Empathy shares knowledge with unconnected schools | Engadget
There are no lawyers or courtrooms in John Grisham’s new thriller. There is not even a single bad guy. The protagonist is Paul, a 35-year-old suburbanite with a pretty wife, three beautiful children, and a tumor quietly swelling in his brain. One day his wife hears a loud thump in the bathroom. “She finds him on the floor,” Grisham writes, “shaking in a full-blown grand mal seizure.” And so begins “The Tumor,” one of the stranger literary digressions in recent memory.
Against the wishes of his agent, editor and publisher, the author famous for (and rich from) legal thrillers, from “The Firm” to “The Rogue Lawyer,” just published a free book whose hero is a medical device called focused ultrasound. Grisham says it’s the most important book of his career. READ MORE: John Grisham thinks his new book is so important he’s giving it away for free | The Washington Post
It’s hard to find good, legal reads online – unless you know where to look. There are several sites that offer classic out-of-copyright writing, or publishes new e-books online as promotions… READ: 4 Sites with LOTS Of Completely Free Ebooks That Don’t Suck | makeuseof
They call the project The Paramount Vault, a digital cinematic storehouse sorted into playlists of Classics, Comedy, Action/Adventure, Drama, Horror, Westerns, Science Fiction, and Thrillers, containing such pictures as Ironweed, Hamlet, Paris When It Sizzles, King Creole, Dark City, Funny About Love, and Margot at the Wedding — all of which, unfortunately, you can only watch in the United States. (BTW, we have a big list of unrestricted films here.) The geographical constraint still holds, at least for now, but the Paramount Vault people have kept at work filling it with movies. READ MORE: Paramount Now Streaming 175 Free Movies Online, Including Westerns, Thrillers & Crime Pictures | Open Culture
It seems that every time the denizens of the Internet have started to get accustomed to the vast sea of options for streaming online video, another huge wave of movies floods the pool of content. Paramount [has] made dozens of titles in their library available to stream in full on the studio’s YouTube channel Paramount Vault.
Admittedly, the entries contained within the vault aren’t the studio’s most high-profile earners; in fact, most of the films that aren’t forgotten gems from decades gone by were released quietly in a small number of theaters or direct to home video. And yet, the cleverness of the Paramount Vault move lies in just how little the studio has to lose. The properties that have been transferred to the YouTube channel were sitting, collecting dust in the studio’s portfolio of acquisitions. This way, the people receive a slew of new movies at no cost whatsoever, and the studio wrings a little advertising revenue out of properties that were once thought dead and done with. READ MORE: 10 Must-Watch Movies From Paramount’s Free Internet Vault | Forbes
In the French city of Grenoble, there are unusual vending machines that don’t dispense soda or snacks — they print out short stories that look like paper receipts instead. These machines were built by a publishing company called Short Édition, which placed eight of them in public locations (such as the city hall and libraries) as part of a pilot project. Each dispenser has 1-minute, 3-minute and 5-minute buttons, so readers can choose how long their stories are, all of which were written by members of the Short Édition community. SOURCE: Short story vending machine promises old-school distractions | Engadget
More LFL in trouble…
Who would want to hurt a Little Free Library? Officials from the Department of Code Compliance in Dallas, that’s who. READ MORE: Officials threaten to destroy a Little Free Library in Texas | LA Times
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