Link roundup

1. Cory Doctorow:

I believe that Google has created an enormous internal urgency about Google Plus integration, and that this pressure is leading the company to take steps to integrate G+ at the expense of the quality of its other services. Consider the Focus on the User critique of Google's "social ranking" in search results, for example. In my own life, I've been immensely frustrated that my unpublished Gmail account (which I only use to anchor my Android Marketplace purchases for my phone and tablets, and to receive a daily schedule email while I'm travelling) has somehow become visible to G+ users, so that I get many, many G+ updates and invites to this theoretically private address, every day, despite never having opted into a directory and never having joined G+.

2. Warren Ellis on what would get him writing more comics:

Loads and loads of money would be nice. Access to trusted collaborators would be a bigger part of it. Without going into details, I’ve had some fairly bad luck with artists over the last several years, and it gets dispiriting! There are other factors that tend to discourage me from developing new comics work right now, but that’s one of the main ones — I ran out of people to work with.

3. I love Max Silvestri's bad movie reviews.

4. Million dollar jewelry heist at my local mall.

5. My thanks to current sponsor Alien Vault. The book's terrific - - I posted several photos of its contents in November.

Link roundup

1. The River is terrible. Far from being scary or stylish, it's like watching an episode of Gilligan's Island.

2. An architect was charged with involuntary manslaughter in Los Angeles after a firefighter died fighting a fire in a home the architect built.

3. RL Stine posted a pretty great short horror story at Twitter.

4. Recruiting scandal in the world of college chess. The coach's program is called the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence (Spice).

Link roundup

1. "An undercover police officer 'chased himself round the streets' for 20 minutes after a CCTV operator mistook him for suspect." Via.

2. Mark Cuban's always a great interview. Some advice:

Never follow your dreams. Follow your effort. It’s not about what you can dream of. That’s easy. It’s about whether or not it’s important enough to you to do the work to be ready to be successful in that business.

3. Gawker on news of big government resignations in Romania:

The resignations come after some very unpopular budget cuts that were made to comply with IMF demands so that Romania could secure a loan and continue to pay government workers. The IMF is, of course, the International Monetary Fund, which is a fund with international money in it.

4. New Spider-Man promotional site. Via.

Link roundup

1. Links to the personal websites of the Tron Uprising art team.

2. Astonishing data on the number of politicians in India also facing criminal charges.

3. "'Huffington Post' Employee Sucked Into Aggregation Turbine
Horrified Workers Watch As Colleague Torn Apart By Powerful Content-Gathering Engine"

4. Are we headed to a future where our wars will be entirely fought by robots and the only people at risk are contractors?

5. Oops:

An advertising agency for BMW has paid to name a cold weather front sweeping Europe "Cooper" in Germany, after the carmaker's Mini Cooper.

But the public-relations stunt by the agency went wrong after the freezing conditions led to dozens of deaths.

*Buy Tron Legacy posters at eBay.

Link roundup

1. Like the Prisoner, but with good intentions:

Its detractors may end up dubbing it "Dementiaville", but Switzerland is brushing aside a debate raging among geriatric-care experts with plans to build a mock-1950s village catering exclusively for elderly sufferers of Alzheimer's and other debilitating mental illnesses.

Via.

2. "What do Army junior officers actually recommend reading?: Their own top 10."

3. A hobbyist piloting a drone spotted a river of blood - - a meatpacking plant in Dallas was simply ejecting blood into the river. Via.

4. Sam Wolfe Connelly has a new shop featuring some illustrations I've featured.

5. Paul Pape's having a sale on his custom made stuck in carbonite sculptures.

Link roundup

1. Like the Prisoner, but with good intentions:

Its detractors may end up dubbing it "Dementiaville", but Switzerland is brushing aside a debate raging among geriatric-care experts with plans to build a mock-1950s village catering exclusively for elderly sufferers of Alzheimer's and other debilitating mental illnesses.

Via.

2. "What do Army junior officers actually recommend reading?: Their own top 10."

3. A hobbyist piloting a drone spotted a river of blood - - a meatpacking plant in Dallas was simply ejecting blood into the river. Via.

4. Sam Wolfe Connelly has a new shop featuring some illustrations I've featured.

5. Paul Pape's having a sale on his custom made stuck in carbonite sculptures.

Link roundup

1. Cory Doctorow posted links to his novels/short stories from 2012. Clockwork Fagin and Shanon's Law were both very good.

2. Long article by Will Leitch on the evolution of blogging.

3. William Gibson retweeted this:

did you know the best cd-player ever made sits in old PS1 consoles? HiFi nerds in sweden are stockpiling them.

4. "High school students who don't feel like walking to school in the cold are causing a spike in car thefts on the north side of Milwaukee." They steal cars left running, and then leave them close to school.