February 2012
25 posts
“Note that removing your Web History also pauses it. Web History will remain off...”
– How to Remove Your Google Search History Before Google’s New Privacy Policy Takes Effect | Electronic Frontier Foundation. I wouldn’t be so sure. I’ve turned off Web History in the past, and never explicitly re-enabled it, and yet while following these instructions today I saw that...
“They had a theory of the disease that made sense, fit the evidence, but was...”
– Scott and Scurvy. An excellent essay that explores how progress in one field can lead to regression in another.
“it’s just another swipe to the left,”
– “and then a pinch to the right!” (Apple OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion preview)
“Women make up 50% of the global population, 40% of the global workforce, yet...”
– Robert B. Zoellick, President of the World Bank, in the Women of the World app, a World Bank and Fotopedia collaboration.
“If you have MS and are mobility restricted, like me, and if you have the means,...”
– MS And Mixel | LIFE IS BUT A DREAM…. Wow. (via subtraction)
How Carrots Became The New Junk Food | Fast... →
Doe this mark the beginning of a dark new age of marketing, or of a bright new age of nutrition?
“It all started, her mother said, when Janice was 6 and picked up a book at the...”
– Janice Voss, Shuttle Astronaut and Scientist, Dies at 55 - NYTimes.com.
“If two threads have opposite ideas of what a and b are, this carries the...”
– mikeash.com: Deadlocks and Lock Ordering: a Vignette. Wow! I can’t believe I’ve never seen this before, it’s so simple and elegant.
“Travis Kurowski, who covers lit mags on his blog, Luna Park Review, estimates...”
– Literary Heirs - NYTimes.com. My bro mentioned on NYTimes.com (and in this Sunday’s printed paper).
If these properties are so well implemented and so useful to the mobile Web, they became de facto standards ; let’s turn them as soon as possible into de jure standards through W3C standardization.
Hear hear!
I am also calling Apple and Google to remove support for the “experimental” versions of a property when the final one is implemented and shipped.
Good luck with that....
“So here’s a thought: maybe traditional social values are eroding in the white...”
– A Strange Form of Social Collapse - NYTimes.com
White House May Look to Compromise on... →
FIrst SCOTUS grants religious organizations exemption from employment discrimination laws, and now the President is going to grant them an exemption to universal health care laws? If our government is going to keep allowing people of faith to break more and more laws, I too might find Jesus one of these days…
“we can adjust every font-size on the page by using media-queries to change the...”
– Responsive News: Fluid grids, orientation & resolution independence. Seems like a bad technical solution to what is actually a design problem. If I rotate my 16:9 tablet from portrait to landscape orientation, the font size shouldn’t double—that’s the opposite of responsive design....
“The error rate for hand-counted ballots is about two percent.
All voting...”
– Schneier on Security: Error Rates of Hand-Counted Voting Systems
“Wasserman says the Justice Department is saving its legal firepower to challenge...”
– How the GOP Is Resegregating the South | The Nation. Sounds like the Justice Department is fighting the wrong battle: does it really matter whether minorities can vote if they’ve already been packed into a few majority-minority districts? Also, since most people see gerrymandering as...
“The author mentions the rise of for-profit businesses increasingly running...”
– Schneier on Security: Prisons in the U.S.
“The style system matches rules by starting with the key selector, then moving to...”
– Writing efficient CSS for use in the Mozilla UI - MDN. Ho-ly shit. I did not know this, and knowing it now makes me want to revisit every bit of CSS I’ve written in the last 10 years. It embarrasses me to post this, but I feel obliged to share for the sake of any other web devs who may not yet...
Turning the ‘Buffett Rule’ Into Law - NYTimes.com →
The “Buffett Rule” bill is good marketing but bad legislation. Let’s focus on actual fixes to the tax code, such as restoring capital gains taxes and removing special interest deductions, rather than being distracted by a band-aid bill with a cute name.
Rhode Island City Enraged Over School Prayer... →
Kudos to Ms Ahlquist for standing up for what’s right. The Times also has a follow-up editorial.
January 2012
20 posts
“When I start reading, the form of the book quickly disappears. Just as I don’t...”
– Do you have the paperback or the hardcover? – Marco.org. I agree only insofar as the interface is rendered well enough for it to disappear and let you focus on the content. I cannot read ebooks comfortably on my Kindle Fire or Kindle for Mac, whereas reading on an e-Ink Kindle or Kindle on iOS I can...
“In descending order, the most popular fonts from the Typekit library, based on...”
– Favorite fonts at Typekit. I was going to post this with a snarky remark about how it’s sure to be a great list of crappy fonts to avoid, but it turns out they’re mostly excellent. I guess Typekit users have discerning taste!
WatchKathleen Sebelius - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - 01/23/12
“According to a press release from the VSP, Trooper Paul Dean was assisting a...”
– Police respond to multiple crashes Monday - Brattleboro Reformer. Wait, let me get this straight: the Subaru and tractor trailer were both driving too fast for the conditions, but the Volkswagen is the one who will be ticketed. WTF?!?
“Google has just announced its earnings for Q4 2011, reporting $10.58...”
– “Google Q4 revenue breaks $10 billion”. That sure sounds like Groupon-style accounting there.
“As contentious as it is to quote Obama these days, he got one thing right:...”
– Congress Should Use the Internet - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com. Brilliant: “a policy designed to lose the future” sums it up nicely.
The Content Industry Should Focus on Innovation... →
Sanchez explains the crux of the PIPA/SOPA matter more lucidly and succinctly than any other summary I’ve seen.
In Piracy Bill Fight, New Economy Rises Against... →
We could’ve used a truth vigilante in this article: I see a lot of apology for the entertainment industry, and no coverage of the legitimate concerns of the technology sector.
4moms Origami is the highest tech stroller yet... →
How telling is it that this stroller is the only interesting thing to come out of CES this year?
Should Vanity Fair Be a Spelling Vigilante? →
I love this so much it hurts.
The Clutter Didn’t Kill the Love →
Well, the clutter actually did kill the love. But the irrelevance threatens to kill the whole damn relationship. God forbid we flee into the open arms of Bing, though.
“The administration had told the justices that their analysis of Ms. Perich’s...”
– Justices Recognize ‘Ministerial Exception’ to Job Bias Laws - NYTimes.com. What version of the First Amendment is Justice Roberts reading? Mine says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. It denies the very notion of special rights for religious...
“At some time in Apple’s history it was decided to put the...”
– Apple Keyboard Home Keys: Position of “Bumps”. Having learned typing on an Apple IIe, this one still gets me all the time. When I place my hands on the keyboard without looking, my right hand is almost always off by one key. And if I happen to be in vim in command mode, the results can...
“You can turn off the personalization, but in doing so you’ll also remove...”
– Google’s ‘Search, plus Your World’ personalizes search results using Google. Finally an easy way to turn off search personalization!
IBM Snags Patent On Half-Day Off of Work... →
WJW
“That membership will be important, as the company looks to make revenue and...”
– Instagram photo app for Android is under way. And this is why I never started using Instagram: it was free, so obviously ads were going to be added at some point. Count me out, I’ll stick with flickr pro.
“An actress acquaintance of mine—let’s call her Esmerelda—once said,...”
– Rob Pike
“Coates writes primarily on social and political issues, and utilizes a...”
– On conversation and moderation. Amen. Just as my right to swing my fist ends at your nose, your right to be a jackass on the Internet ends at my web page (or Facebook page, as it were).
December 2011
15 posts
“Every time you use an infographic from creditloan dot com, you’re helping...”
– Ending the Infographic Plague - The Atlantic
“Nowadays, a candidate must believe not just some but all of the following...”
– The right Republican - The Economist. LOL.
Proposed headline for The Onion: Resetting SMC on...
[UPDATED Jan 1 2012: Nevermind. After two problem-free weeks, the issue is back, and this time resetting the SMC doesn’t fix it.]
I know, it sounds like a joke, right? Whenever you have a problem with a Mac the first thing anyone suggests (including Apple) is resetting the SMC, and of course it never fixes anything. Well I’m here to reveal that an SMC reset finally fixed...
Free!
Comcast: Great news! We can offer you cable TV and Internet for the same price you're paying now just for Internet.
Me: No thanks, I don't have a TV in my house.
Comcast: But… but… the service will be free!
Me: I. Don't. Own. A. Television.
Comcast: Oh. Um, well, maybe you'll get one for Christmas!
*click*