Link Dump 1

• 3D printing trends January 2015: This trend report provides a comprehensive and unmatched perspective on the current state of the 3D printing industry. Based on data from our 3D Hubs community, which includes over 10000 printers in over 120 countries, and thousands of 3D print orders every month, we are excited to show you the printers people love and what’s trending in the world of 3D Printing. 
• Long Term (vehicle) Quality Index: The Long-Term Quality Index is a collaborative project between +Steve Lang and +Nick Lariviere, designed to give the average car buyer a picture of what the long-term reliability of different makes and models are based on real-world used vehicle data.
• The Nature of Code by +Daniel Shiffman: This book focuses on the programming strategies and techniques behind computer simulations of natural systems using Processing.
• How Fractal Trees Work by +Bradley C. Kuszmaul at CRIBB, November 4 2011 (pdf): Is there a data structure that is about as good as a B-tree for lookup, but has insertion performance closer to append? Yes, Fractal Trees!
• Mission: ​Funding all those small but important open-source projects by +Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: ...the problem is that there are still many small but important programs that don't get the headlines and millions of dollars of a Docker, Linux, or OpenStack. These projects get swept under the carpet even though, as Heartbleed proved, they're absolutely vital to modern IT...the Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) has helped fund such tiny but significant programs as the Network Time Protocol (NTP), OpenSSH, and OpenSSL. It hasn't been enough.
• +Andreas Antonopoulos: “Give Bitcoin Two Years” by  +Hal M. Bundrick: Antonopoulos proclaimed. It’s a dumb network that supports smart devices, pushing all of the intelligence to the edge. “That means if you build a new application on top of bitcoin, you can operate the end devices and you can build an application, and you don’t need to ask for anyone’s permission to innovate. It’s innovation without permission. It’s innovation without central approval.”
• Answering the Call for +Werner Koch’s Everywhere by +Jim Zemlin: In addition to the world’s email encryption software being managed by one person, the Internet is being secured by two guys named Steve. The Network Time Protocol that manages clock synchronization for the world’s computer systems is largely maintained by a couple of folks. The examples go on.
• Legalese and coding? Yup, it's the open-source FOSDEM shindig by +Damon Hart-Davis: Where there's maturity and money there's lawyers; debugging the minutiae, a low-key dull-but-worthy message from FOSDEM. (I declare a bias, given that my IoT startup is founded on the principle of enabling a market by commoditisation of parts of it via FOSSH (free/open source software and hardware. Investors and bureaucrats no longer look at me as if I have two heads!)
• Are coders worth it? by +James Somers:  On Thursday night I got an unexpected email. It was a job offer, and these were the terms: $120,000 in salary, a $10,000 signing bonus, stock options, a free gym membership, excellent health and dental benefits, a new cellphone, and free lunch and dinner every weekday. My working day would start at about 11am. It would end whenever I liked, sometime in the early evening. The work would rarely strain me. I’d have a lot of autonomy and responsibility. My co-workers would be about my age, smart, and fun. I put my adventure on hold.