You cannot possibly become any more awesome than this. EVER. Don’t even try.

Via Shawn Blanc, who also stars in this epic production.

This is not a quick read, so it’s a good opportunity to try a read-later method such as Safari’s Reading List, which Apple invented completely on their own.

Simply amazing. Kudos to Marco, this just made my week.

[And here we… go](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSLlZh9yelk).

Great news for Mac geeks all around: today is Upgrade Day. OS X Mountain Lion, the next major version of Apple’s desktop operating system (previously known as Mac OS X), is due out today.

If you’re planning to do a clean install, Matt Gemmell has rescued this fantastic article that will help you get your Mac ready for the upgrade:

This checklist is for situations where you want to start fresh with a clean installation of OS X and just your essential apps and files, which can provide a general speed boost and may also be a useful preparation for a major new version of OS X.

This may be a good way to kill some time while we wait for John Siracusa’s traditionally epic review of the new OS, which should also be out later today.

Enjoy, my friends, this day comes by just once a year.

This is genius. Now excuse me, I’m going to get me a new pair of sneakers for yesterday.

Via Marco Arment.

Epic piece by John Timmer for Ars:

Follow these tips, and you could potentially have a long and obscure career in science without having to deal with the messy and frustrating process of science. Long and illustrious, of course, isn’t really an option, since you’ll be trying to attract as little attention as possible.

With the massive R&D; budget cuts in Spain, it’s useful advice to ensure our nation’s scientific reputation is not jeopardized by the lack of any actual Science going on. Problem solved.

Thanks, Ars!

Fantastic essay by David Auerbach on the current state and technical challenges of the human search for artificial intelligence:

Computers are near-omnipotent cauldrons of processing power, but they’re also stupid. They are the undisputed chess champions of the world, but they can’t understand a simple English conversation. IBM’s Watson supercomputer defeated two top Jeopardy! players last year, but for the clue “What grasshoppers eat,” Watson answered: “Kosher.” For all the data he could access within a fraction of a second—one of the greatest corpuses ever assembled—Watson looked awfully dumb.

Quite long, but this is a must-read piece, perfect for your Instapaper queue.

Mild Spoiler: The conclusion may seem depressing to some, but personally I’m quite relieved. It looks like we won’t have to worry about Skynet becoming self-aware anytime soon.

Yesterday, Ben Brooks announced a change to the business model of his site, The Brooks Review. Essentially, Ben is switching to a membership-based model, which means he is leaving ads behind and from now on his site will rely solely on reader support to sustain itself.

This is great for everybody. It means readers won’t see any annoying ads, and it also means that his freedom to write whatever he wants will no longer be influenced (if only ever so slightly) by whoever’s paying for the RSS feed sponsorship that week. It’s a win-win. As a bonus, he now has a great opportunity to build a deeper, more personal relationship with his readers.

But there’s a catch. As great as the membership model may be for one individual author or one individual site, it scales poorly. The Brooks Review is a great site, but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It has to share the vast realms of the Internet with many other sites that are very closely related, and that’s when things start getting ugly.

Don’t get me wrong, I love The Brooks Review, and every day I read every single post, link, or quote that Ben publishes. I would love to become a member and support his writing.

But here’s the thing: I also love Shawn Blanc’s site. As I do Minimal Mac, Daring Fireball, Marco Arment’s blog, MG Siegler’s blog, Andy Ihnatko’s blog, Matt Gemmel’s site, Rands in Repose, and many other wonderful sites that every day address very similar issues and topics. Do you see where the problem is? No matter how much I love these sites, if all of them decided to switch to the membership model, there’s just no way I could afford to support each and every one of them. And that sucks.

In the interest of full transparency, I am currently a supporting member of Shawn’s site, as well as a patron of Patrick Rhone’s work. I also own every single T-shirt that Michael Lopp has offered (and his two books), and several Daring Fireball T-Shirts. Clearly I have no problem paying for good content. But good content needs to be reasonably priced, and while it is certainly fair to argue that $4 per month is a good deal for one site (and indeed I agree), the numbers grow pretty quickly as you read more. Just for reference, a yearly subscription to the digital edition of The New Yorker works out at about $5/month, less than the aggregate membership price of just Shawn and Ben’s sites, which is $7.

Then there’s another, potentially even more damaging issue: up until very recently, these sites have enjoyed a virtuous circle in which they link and drive traffic and readers to each other. They often chime in on the latest news, comment on each other’s posts and so on. Many of them are actually friends and even business partners (as is the case with Shawn and Ben). This has been overwhelmingly positive for all of these sites, and also for their readers, because the conversation has been wonderful to follow. They are, essentially, partners working towards the same goal: the bigger their collective audience, the more interested potential sponsors will be, which will drive sponsorship prices substantially up. Everyone wins.

However, this can only work if the vast majority of these sites rely on ads to support themselves. If one or two are member-based then there’s some tension but the whole thing still works. But if enough of them turn to a membership model, then the picture changes: suddenly they’re no longer partners, they’re competitors. My $4 (or whatever amount I’m willing to spend) can only go to so many places. For example, from now on Shawn and Ben will be in direct competition for their readers’ money. How will this affect them? I don’t know. You may say that it will motivate them and drive quality up, which is certainly possible. But most readers will still be punished (in Shawn’s case by missing the wonderful Shawn Today, and in Ben’s case by having to wait seven days to read the latest articles), unless they go all out and become members of all sites. Again, not ideal because the aggregate price is not so affordable.

The key thing here is that a significant percentage of their readership is shared across sites: their collective audience is big, but their individual audiences may not be so big (admittedly, I don’t know this but it seems a logical assumption). By forcing their readers to choose, they’re playing a dangerous game. A game in which the first player to move may seem the smartest one, but if everyone follows then the game is ruined for all of them. Maybe Ben’s worked out the numbers and in his case the risk is worth it, but it’s still a risk, and that’s worth mentioning.

What I suggest is simple: Introduce an additional membership option, collectively shared across all membership-based sites. Kind of like Fusion Ads, but for readers instead of sponsors. Charge something like $10 for full access to all sites, and then split the money across participating sites evenly, or however they think it’s fair. Like I said, some of these guys are already friends and even business partners. They should be able to make it work. As for the readers that only want to support one site, they can continue to do so via the current membership options. This way everyone wins, and the virtuous circle continues. Nobody gets punished and everyone gets exactly what they want.

I think this could be a good opportunity for them, and I really hope they eventually come up with something like this. Even with Shawn and Ben’s sites only, it could work. If you add Patrick, Marco and the rest to the mix, things would only get better. Think about what a great experience that would be. I’m sure many readers would be happy to contribute. I know I would, in a heartbeat.

UPDATE: As mentioned by Patrick Rhone in an email, what I suggest here is not too different from the current Read and Trust network, of which I’m also an active supporter. The only difference is that the network provides access to additional content that is not available anywhere else, including the authors’ websites. For this reason I tend to think of the network as an independent entity that works well on its own. It is a nice place for those readers, like myself, who are interested in the authors’ work and want to go beyond what’s available on their sites.

Would it be a good idea to include full access to the authors’ sites as part of the Read and Trust membership? Maybe, if the numbers allow it. From a reader’s perspective, the more integration there is, the better. But a completely integrated model may not work out well for the authors financially. The key thing and the challenge is, I think, to find the balance that allows for a great reader experience while at the same time generating enough income to support their hard work.

UPDATE 2: You can listen to Shawn and Ben’s take on this article in this week’s episode of The B&B; Podcast. The whole episode is great, and they answer a lot of questions about this issue, not just mine. They start talking about this article around the 0:55’ mark.

Thanks guys for taking the time to discuss this article!

I love that in this day and age, things like these are possible. We do live in interesting times.

It’s that time of the year again. I like how Shawn put it a couple days ago:

Today’s the day all those forums I joined and abandoned so many years ago send me birthday email.

Every year, this day brings something special (besides ancient forum email). It’s an opportunity to say Hi to old friends and spend some time with the people you love. To review everything that’s happened to you in the last 365 days and appreciate how far you’ve come, and the challenges that lie ahead.

Today it’s my turn. Tomorrow it may be yours. Make the most of it, because these days are numbered, and they’re meant to be savored.

Best, Álvaro.