October 2009
119 posts
An unintentionally scary video about alternative... →
I saw this post from Fake Steve Jobs, of all people.
So here’s the thing. The Council on Competitiveness, this group in Washington, D.C., had a conference last week called the National Energy Summit, and it was full of lots of brave talk about how innovative and courageous we are, and how we’re at the tipping point on energy and now it’s time for America to embrace change and...
September 2009
96 posts
Getting Value For Your Food Dollar: Nutrition vs.... →
Organic food continues to cost on average several times more than its conventional counterparts, and no one goes to farmers’ markets for bargains. But not all costs can be measured by a price tag. Once you factor in crop subsidies, ecological damage and what we pay in health-care bills after our fatty, sugary diet makes us sick, conventionally produced food looks a lot pricier.
WatchA neat feature suggestion for the OS X dock.
‘Stand Up’ Mac Dock Mockup (via Vimeo)
The Battle For Facebook : Rolling Stone →
A very long read, but a very engaging one at that.
After Zuckerberg launched Facebook, he continued to seek Greenspan’s advice. While most of their exchanges were about the nuts and bolts of the site operation, Zuckerberg occasionally revealed ambitions that were far beyond the scale of his classmates’. His new social network, he wrote, would do more than “get people signed...
Working Hard is Overrated →
jingc:
Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on. Paying attention to what is going on in the world. Seeing patterns. Seeing things as they are rather than how you want them to be. Being able to read what people want. Putting yourself in the right place where information is flowing freely and interesting new juxtapositions can be seen. But you can...
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in...”
– George Bernard Shaw (via comment in Caterina.net)
x+=x++; →
nonowarn:
:-o
The Difference Between Art and Design →
The subject of what separates art and design is convoluted and has been debated for a long time.
Artists and designers both create visual compositions using a shared knowledge base, but their reasons for doing so are entirely different.
Some designers consider themselves artists, but few artists consider themselves designers.
So what exactly is the difference between art and design? In this...
A trip down memory lane and beyond at Vintage... →
Having lived through the period where computers went beige, and the counterrevolution that has left them just about anything but beige, it was interesting to discern a trend in the hardware on display: the older it got, the more likely it was to be blue.
What does "being an adult" mean? →
I’ve noticed that when people speak of the mindset associated with “being an adult”, they are referring to either A) the setting aside of childish ways; or B) a rebellion against the lack of freedom of childhood. Basically opposite approaches: responsible adulthood and irresponsible adulthood.
Dan Brown's 20 worst sentences →
Top one: the title. Ouch.
1. The Da Vinci Code: Title. The Da Vinci Code.
Leonardo’s surname was not Da Vinci. He was from Vinci, or of Vinci. As many critics have pointed out, calling it The Da Vinci Code is like saying Mr Of Arabia or asking What Would Of Nazareth Do?
“I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.”
– Random thoughts from people our age
You'll get so infuriated you'll throw your DS/Wiimote against the wall until it shatters.
The wall, not the nintendo product.
Those things are made of adamantium or some crap.
“We cast this message into the cosmos… Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way...”
– President Jimmy Carter, Voyager Golden Record
Physics Puzzle: A Trick with a Yo-yo →
I first saw this seven years ago as a placement exam for college, and I still don’t know the full answer (although the version I saw was with *no* slipping).
A yo-yo lies on the floor. It’s made out of an inner disc of radius r and an outer disc of radius R. Its mass is m. There’s a (massless) string wound around its inner disc. You pull the string with force F and angle θ with respect to...
Google announces Picasa 3.5 →
Picasa 3.5 now has face recognition!
New Senses →
It doesn’t work while driving because the compass doesn’t like being turned on its side, as it is when you work car pedals. Magnetic fields mess it up (of course) and I can feel it circling my foot on escalators or seeming to vacillate directions randomly as I rest my foot on the floor of the subway. But that’s interesting too — to feel the specific places where infrastructure interferes with...
The Minimalist Principle: Omit Needless Things →
What you produce: If you produce something, whether it’s writing or music or software or clothing, see if you can simplify and keep it more focused. If you create a website, can you give it one single purpose, with one call to action? Can you do that with your writing or music? Figure out what that purpose is, and edit ruthlessly so that everything that remains counts.
“The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t...”
– Neil Gaiman (via jingc)
Debating Just How Much Atrazine Is Safe in Your... →
willw2:
An investigation by The New York Times has found that in some towns, atrazine concentrations in drinking water have spiked, sometimes for longer than a month. But the reports produced by local water systems for residents often fail to reflect those higher concentrations. Atrazine, which is sold under various brand names including AAtrex, is most commonly used on corn in farming states....
How to Write a Killer Slogan →
How memorable are slogans? This article has a neat set of examples.
Cash Savings vs. Paying Down Loans →
Are home values decreasing in your area? How much home equity do you currently have? Unless it is a very high number, you may be in danger of having your HELOC frozen by your bank, which means you could be unable to borrow any more money at 3.99%. Many banks have been doing this recently.
If you were in the $0 in savings and $11k balance scenario and needed $1,000 to fix the car or more for...
Intuit Buys Mint.com →
Yesterday, Mint.com announced that they were acquired by Intuit for $170 million.
…
One of the benefits of this deal seems to be that concerns about data safety might be alleviated. Millions of people trust Intuit with their tax returns, which are probably some of the most sensitive data out there, so they might be more comfortable with sharing their financial website passwords with Intuit.
...
A thought experiment: serial vs parallel →
nonowarn:
We have two supermarkets, A and B. At supermarket A, there is one fast cashier, who can handle 10 normal customers per hour. At the other, there are two slow cashiers, who can each handle 5 normal customers per hour. Each store can therefore handle 10 normal customers per hour.
via Hacker News
Not sure how SSDs come into this, but the thought experiment is interesting. I think it...
Watchjingc:
A visualization of ten dimensions, starting from the first dimension. It’s really quite well done, but I think I still got lost somewhere around the 7th dimension. (via BoingBoing)
Quite a novel way of looking at the problem. I am curious whether there is a strong argument not to go beyond three dimensions of space, or even time.
Niniane's Blog: MIT charm school →
I couldn’t decide what part to clip, so here’s the whole post.
Recently my friend, a MIT graduate student, told me that MIT has a charm school for guys, to learn social skills and how to woo women. I am skeptical that attendance would be high. (Any MIT people want to confirm or deny?) Most guys I know who would most benefit from this service are also the ones most likely to shun it....
Slashdot Developers Story | Why Developers Get... →
As with many Slashdot articles, the comments are much more interesting than the original article. An excerpt:
His advice seems to be “If you are a great programmer, you still have to get out and market”. Jesus freaking Christ, can’t companies do employee evaluations at all?
In a word, no. The reason they can’t do it is that measuring the value of n programmers on a team...
New York Midtown Skyline at night →
Wikipedia has hidden treasures. Be sure to see it in full resolution.
WatchScuttle Snails on Vimeo (via Webdesigner Depot)
“The simplest solution is sometimes obscured by difficult thoughts.”