This week: possible investment suggestions from venture capitalists at Andreessen Horowitz, how to keep yourself from wasting time on the Internet, self-lighting sidewalks, and getting a sense of how big things are.

Where the millionaires are putting their money

Andreessen Horowitz is one of the most successful venture capital firms around. The fund invested in Skype (sold to Microsoft for $8.5 billion) and Oculus VR (sold to Facebook for $2 billion), and Instagram (sold to Facebook for $1 billion). They’ve got money in Facebook and Twitter, in Buzzfeed and Soylent).

So when the team of smart people there talk about the “things we’ve been observing or thinking about” it’s a good idea to take note. In a recent blog post, they write about 16 things, including:

• virtual reality: entertainment becomes an experience
• digital health: technology anchors our diagnostic systems, and will be helpful for our health history, too
• online video: there’s much more than YouTube yet to come
• Internet of things: could planned obsolescence be changed by connected devices?
• Bitcoin: “as different from the wire transfer system as the modern Internet is from phone lines”

Stop wasting time falling down Internet rabbit holes

A new survey of 3,000 Canadians found that 63 percent admitted to being distracted from work tasks by email, browsing, and social media use; 33 percent of those people said they lost an hour a day.

More than half of those asked said that they believe checking emails and social media instead of completing work tasks “revealed a worrying lack of impulse control” according to a release about the survey.

The research was commissioned by Stop Procrastinating, software which aims to help people who may be lacking willpower. Available for Mac and Windows operating systems, it blocks your access to the Internet and other online services for as long as you want it to.

The app can also be used by parents who want to monitor their kids’ access.

Solar-powered sidewalks

A company in the United Kingdom has come up with a material they can spray onto sidewalks and pathways that absorbs light from the sun, and then emits that energy at night. The starpaths provide enough illumination that other lighting solutions – like the common overhead lights – aren’t necessary.

Which means that being outside at night is more pleasurable, and cuts down on the light pollution. And the coating that’s used is also able to prolong the life of pathways that might otherwise need replacing.

And if you think we need to light up our public outdoor spaces for safety reasons, that’s just not true.

How big is the universe?

In January, NASA released a high-definition, panoramic picture of the Andromeda galaxy, which is just next door to our own Milky Way galaxy.

The image was composited from 7,398 exposures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and to view the entire image you’d need an array of more than 600 HD television screens. You can get a sense of the fine detail Hubble was able to capture using the zoom tool.

Or watch this video created by daveachuk that does the zooming in for you.

Sam Ferris was sitting in for Drex last night. Hear our conversation about the Canadians spying on Internet traffic, how math is proving that the world is a better place, and the Spark Fwd conference in Vancouver.

This week: math is your friend, finding a job in digital effects, and are your downloads being monitored?

Canadian surveillance agency monitoring file downloads

The big story of the day is how the Communications Security Establishment (CSE, formerly CSEC) has been filtering millions of downloads looking for evidence that they say could connect people to terrorism through a program codenamed “Levitation”.

The revelation comes from Glen Greenwald from documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

One of the documents is a PowerPoint presentation in which an analyst from the agency jokes about how the analysis had to occur around downloads of Glee.

Greenwald told the CBC that this is the first time Canada has been shown to be leading a mass surveillance program.

The issue is that while CSE is mandated to collect foreign intelligence, by law it is not permitted to spy on Canadians. And yet Levitation does not discriminate. And once something suspicious has been identified, CSE is able to identify IP addresses, which can then be used to identify individuals.

As for what CSE considers to be significant, they aren’t telling.

Using math to prove the world is a better place

I’m a big believer in using science and math to guide how we live our lives. Unless you live in particular inner-city neighbourhoods, you’re living in a safer world than ever. And yet parents in the United States are being investigated by the police because they let their 10- and 6-year-old walk home from school without adult supervision.

Yet the numbers don’t lie. In Canada, the crime rate has been falling for years, and is lower than it has been for decades. Crime is down, while our perception and awareness of crime goes up.

And if you want to keep your children safe from danger and death, never put them in a motor vehicle. U.S. stats show that twice as many children die in motor vehicle accidents than due to homicide. And those that were murdered were killed by parents or acquaintances 97 percent of the time.

Max Roser is an economist at Oxford who is creating “100 charts that show how living standards around the world are changing”.

Roser is using data from OurWorldinData.org which is a repository of empirical information about how the world is changing. As Roser writes there: “Much of what we learn from the research on how our world is changing is very positive and shows a very optimistic picture of the world.”

In some of his first of 100 charts, Roser has shown that:

• the world is better educated than ever before
• today maternal mortality is rare
• life expectancy for all ages of people is climbing
• life expectancy in all countries is increasing

Spark Fwd conference and job fair this weekend

Starting with two screenings tomorrow night at the VIFF Vancity Theatre, Spark Fwd 2015 gets underway.

It’s put on by Vancouver’s Spark Computer Graphics Society, an offshoot of the Vancouver chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH.

Spark Fwd is about imaging and visual effects, and “brings the most talented artists, inventors, directors and studio executives from around the world to Vancouver to share their experience and inspire the visual effects community.”

Part of the event is a free, day-long job fair, but note that to participate you must pre-register.

The conference runs with a series of panels on Friday and Saturday. Here are some highlights:

• Ara Khanikian, visual effects supervisor on Birdman, talking about the Oscar-nominated film’s “invisible” effects
• Representatives from New Zealand’s Weta Digital talking about Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.
• CBC science journalist Bob McDonald and NASA’s Nagin Cox talking about Mars Curiosity Rover, on which Cox is the mission lead

It all wraps up with a look at Back to the Future with the film’s director of photography, Dean Cundey, the DeLorean Time Machine designer and special effects supervisor, Kevin Pike, and original storyboard and concept artist, Andrew Probert in conversation with CapU’s Michael van den Bos.

And, of course, a screening of the Michael J. Fox film. This one here.

Set in a magical, spirit-filled Arctic, Never Alone is a charming platformer about a young girl’s adventures in the wild. Inspired by the Iñupiat folktale of Kunuuksaayuka, about an endless blizzard, the game sees Nuna accompanied by an arctic fox that can summon spirits to help the pair navigate the icy wilderness.

Read more at the Straight

Anyone who’s concerned about the price of video games — blockbusters sell for $60 or $70 and special, limited editions can go for $150 — will be pleased to hear they don’t have to buy some games anymore. Instead, they can pay a subscription fee to Sony and play as much as they want through the company’s PlayStation Now streaming service.

Read more at the Straight