January 2010

"Because while we're all ranting about how closed the iPad will be, the jailbreak community is planning competitions to see who can crack it first. The sun isn't setting on tinkerers; their desire to crack things open intensifies when faced with something that's closed by design. The challenge is part of the appeal."

"Here’s the key thing to remember about the galactic conflict known as the Clone Wars: they are a complete and utter farce. Palpatine is literally controlling both sides: he commands the Republic’s clone army as Supreme Chancellor, and he leads the Separatist’s droid army as Darth Sidious. ... Imagine if Gargamel was secretly working for Papa Smurf. ... The Jedi lose the Clone Wars, bigtime. They not only don’t defeat the robot army, they are all killed. By their OWN TROOPS."

"The Ubuntu and Debian EC2 images published on http://alestic.com allow you to send in a startup script using the EC2 user-data parameter when you run a new instance. This functionality is useful for automating the installation and configuration of software on EC2 instances."

"Apple’s subtle mention that the iPad features a CPU of their own making, the A4, was actually the most exciting part of the whole announcement. It’s pretty important."

"These pants will eventually be made in collaboration with my friend Lena. The project has been put on hold for a while since I left Sweden. The idea is to make pants that the parents wear and the kids can use. A pocket for the child to put things in, a tugging handle maybe. More updates to come..."

"The product is, simply put, a magical screen that can do anything you ever want it to, no matter what that is. Here you go. It’s five hundred dollars. If you pay me that, I will give you this magical thing that can do anything. You don’t have to read a manual. It will do anything, and it will do it right now, out of the box. Other companies are selling computers. Apple’s selling magic. Which one would you rather have?"

Meta news on newsmaking

"Start the app and throw your phone into the air, it will show how long was the "flight" and a naive estimative of its height. (Yes, I got the idea from the much "acclaimed" iPhone Hangtime)"

Wow. Now we're *really* living in the future when this runs on a phone. "The Ur-Quan Masters is the public release of the legendary Star Control 2 from 1992. Starcon2 was a revolutionary adventure game which featured role-playing elements and 2D arcade-style space combat in the grand tradition of Space War. The Ur-Quan Masters brings together the best features of the PC and 3DO versions and adds a fast-paced Super Melee mode."

"The film Passengers is set in the future, on board a spacecraft where the crew is making 100-year trip to a new planet via cryogenic sleep. Unfortunately for Keanu, his character is woken up a mere 10 years into the journey. Which means he can spend the rest of his life alone aboard the journeying ship, for 90 years. Or wake up another crew member, so they too can spend the last 90 years of their life in agony, trapped on board with an emotionless Keanu. So what does he do? Wake up the hottest chick, thus dooming her to an entire life with Keanu. Men."

"We’re excited to bring you the third release candidate of Firefox for Maemo. Since RC2, we fixed several usability bugs that were found, as well as addressed a number of performance issues. Based on feedback we’ve received so far, we were able to find and fix several crash bugs. To improve page load times and responsiveness, we tuned a number of preferences and improved several algorithms. We’ve sped up zooming and made our panning even better."

"This project allows you to host a "private instance of S3" on top of Google's infrastructure (big table, etc), leveraging existing client S3 libraries and applications - no need to reinvent the wheel."

"Google Wave was built to show younger people how older people feel when they try to use the internet."

"Shown below is a (single query) SQL-generated pie chart. I will walk through the steps towards making this happen, and conclude with what, I hope you’ll agree, are real-world, useful usage samples."

"You use the same Google Merchant account that App Engine debits as the one that accepts donations. This way no bank account is involved. Then you track the money that goes into the account (using the Google Merchant IPN equivalent). Then you look at your usage stats from the App Engine panel and predicate future usage trends. Then calculate the cost per month. Then divide the cash in the account by that and you have how long the service will run. You make this visible on all pages (at the bottom, say) that this service will run for X months, "Pay now to keep it running." You accept any amount, but you are completely clear about what the costs are. And this is all automated."

"In October 2009 I started a project called Notify.io and a month later announced it. I talked about how it will bring notifications to the web. Now that it’s basically alpha complete, I’ll give you a quick walkthrough of what makes it so great."

"So I’ve decided to start a new batch of Apfelwein based around EdWort’s Apfelwein Recipe. Instead of following the recipe I’ll be using four gallons of apple juice and a gallon of black cherry juice. I’d also like to keep it on the “less boozey” side so I can consume a fair amount of my craft instead of just a couple of the 8.5% ABV Rocket Fuel, so I’ll only be using a pound of dextrose instead of two! However the biggest departure from the original recipe will probably be the use of Safale S-04 Ale Yeast in place of the Red Star Montrachet."

"M3U2iTunes is a helper application which overcomes the problems iTunes has with m3u playlists. iTunes, when downloading an m3u playlist, places all songs scattered throughout the main library (rather than, say, creating a playlist and organizing the stream tracks in it). M3U2iTunes simply creates a single playlist named "M3U Internet Stream" and places all songs from the downloaded m3u playlist into the M3U Internet Stream playlist."

"So what is the index good for?"

"Localizability (or l12y for short) is a characteristic found in an application or content that enables localization. The following list contains links to pages that highlight steps that can be taken to make web content localizable."

"No amount of statistical evidence, however, will make any difference to those who give themselves over to almost completely irrational fears. Such people, and there are apparently a lot of them in America right now, are in fact real victims of terrorism. They also make possible the current ascendancy of the politics of cowardice—the cynical exploitation of fear for political gain. ... It's a remarkable fact that a nation founded, fought for, built by, and transformed through the extraordinary courage of figures such as George Washington, Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. now often seems reduced to a pitiful whimpering giant by a handful of mostly incompetent criminals, whose main weapons consist of scary-sounding Web sites and shoe- and underwear-concealed bombs that fail to detonate."

I think I need this, among others. "Coffee Drinking Merit Badge. Mint condition. "

"SERIOUS cold, Justen Ladda said, is when the sponge in the kitchen sink feels like wood or the toothpaste freezes or the refrigerator turns itself off, as it did one particularly frigid day last winter. Not that Mr. Ladda, a 56-year-old sculptor who has lived heat-free in his Lower East Side loft for three decades, is bothered by such extremes. “Winter comes and goes,” he’ll tell you blithely, adjusting his black wool scarf and watch cap. (Along with fingerless gloves, long underwear and felt slippers, they are part of Mr. Ladda’s at-home uniform when the mercury dips.) "

"Patchwork is a web-based patch tracking system designed to facilitate the contribution and management of contributions to an open-source project. Patches that have been sent to a mailing list are 'caught' by the system, and appear on a web page. Any comments posted that reference the patch are appended to the patch page too. "

"Award Winning Apfelwein Recipe (German Hard Cider) Apple Wine Recipe Placed 1st in the Cider & Apple Wine category at the BJCP sanctioned Alamo Cerveza fest (out of 11 entries) and took 2nd place for Best of Show for the main category of Meads & Ciders (out of 50 entries)."

"The final freedom, one that was probably inherent in what both President and Mrs. Roosevelt thought about and wrote about all those years ago, is one that flows from the four I’ve already mentioned: the freedom to connect – the idea that governments should not prevent people from connecting to the internet, to websites, or to each other. The freedom to connect is like the freedom of assembly, only in cyberspace. It allows individuals to get online, come together, and hopefully cooperate. Once you’re on the internet, you don’t need to be a tycoon or a rock star to have a huge impact on society."

"But first: frankly, I can’t fathom why the Pre and the Pixi haven’t proved to be more popular. The polish and panache of both phones are phenomenal. Both phones feature Palm’s Web OS software, a fine, fluid operating system that, in many aspects, out-iPhones the iPhone. Among other pluses, the software multitasks, so you can put on Pandora radio as you process your e-mail. These are multitouch phones, too, meaning that two-finger gestures (like pinching to shrink a photo or Web page) work perfectly."

"In this post I present the development model that I’ve introduced for all of my projects (both at work and private) about a year ago, and which has turned out to be very successful. I’ve been meaning to write about it for a while now, but I’ve never really found the time to do so thoroughly, until now. I won’t talk about any of the projects’ details, merely about the branching strategy and release management."

"Just like higher-level programming languages compile to assembler, so Sass compiles to CSS. And just as higher-level programming languages eventually replaced the regular usage of assembler, so Sass (or a language like it) will eventually replace CSS. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am sure CSS has many more years ahead of it, but Sass and languages like it are the future. Yes, you can complain about the syntax. You can complain about the generated code. But ultimately, the productivity and simplicity that languages like Sass offer will win over the masses. Of that you can be sure."

"The Russian surgeon Leonid Rogozov’s self operation, undertaken without any other medical professional around, was a testament to determination and the will to life"

"Gource is a software version control visualization tool."

"So the next time you’re using a hash function on anything, ask yourself: is any of the stuff I’m hashing supposed to stay secret? If so, don’t hash. Instead, use HMAC."

"The device is, in essence, a very small cellular tower for the home. The size of a deck of cards, it plugs into a PC, which needs a broadband Internet connection. The device then detects when a compatible cell phone comes within 8 feet, and places a call to it. The user enters a short code on the phone. The phone is then linked to the magicJack, and as long as it's within range (YMax said it will cover a 3,000-square-foot home) magicJack routes the call itself, over the Internet, rather than going through the carrier's cellular tower. No minutes are subtracted from the user's account with the carrier. Any extra fees for international calls are subtracted from the user's account with magicJack, not the carrier."

There is broadband internet, though. "It has no running water or working toilet, but this Mongolian-style tent, called a yurt, in the remote town of Seldovia, Alaska, is home to Erin McKittrick and Bretwood Higman, and their son, 11-month-old Katmai."

"Okay, I am just working through game links here, so apologies for the volley of random Flash game links. This one is extra-plus awesome however, and discovered via the ultra-fertile sediment that is the TIGSource forums. Realm Of The Mad God is a “massively co-op fantasy adventure”, and that means acutely lo-fi multiplayer killing of ghosts and stuff, helping random people as you progress. You put in a name, choose a class, and off you go. It’s as basic as it could possibly be, and completely superb."

"James Cameron's completely immersive spectacle "Avatar" may have been a little too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora."

"The producer invited some of the mavericks of '80s electronic music, including Howard Jones, Thomas Dolby and Erasure's Vince Clarke, to give his tunes a spin of their own. Listen to their revamps below. After all of those years, these three still have a fine knack for adding an eclectic flair to contemporary pop tunes. I'm especially digging Vince Clarke's bouncy remix of "Falling Down," and I must say that Howard Jones remix of "Devastated" is very reminiscent of a Lady GaGa hit. You can tell it comes from the same production house."

"We don't assume you are stupid."

"Our technical goals are to never lose data, be very fast, and favor boring and faded technologies where possible. A rule of thumb that has worked well for me is that if I'm excited to play around with something, it probably doesn't belong in production."

"The quick fix is to disable backups with --backup=off."

"iPhone Pilot is motion reactive, responding with realistic sounds as you dive, climb and pitch your iPhone from side to side. Not only is it armed with canons and bombs, you can add free wings too."

Cue the Tina Turner... o/` We don't need another hero o/` "Managers: stop rewarding people for pulling long hours. Don’t punish them, of course, but rephrase the conversation within your company. If someone is working at four in the morning, something is deeply wrong. Figure out what’s broken and delegate the work out evenly across your team such that it doesn’t happen again. Don’t pat your hero on the back for “pulling another late-nighter”. You’re clearly managing someone highly motivated, but you need to shape that motivation into something more constructive. That energy needs to go into design, architecture, planning, and testing, not late night patch sessions."

"Palm provides a public listing of all third-party applications and related metadata. This includes apps distributed via Web Distribution, the Palm App Catalog, and Beta Applications. These feeds are intended to facilitate the emergence of community directories of Palm webOS applications, such as the ones available at PreCentral and FreshMeat. This article outlines the feeds and provides details on how to effectively consume them. "

"I propose a simple set of rules and requirements that dictate how version numbers are assigned and incremented. For this system to work, you first need to declare a public API. This may consist of documentation or be enforced by the code itself. Regardless, it is important that this API be clear and precise. Once you identify your public API, you communicate changes to it with specific increments to your version number. Consider a version format of X.Y.Z (Major.Minor.Patch). Bug fixes not affecting the API increment the patch version, backwards compatible API additions/changes increment the minor version, and backwards incompatible API changes increment the major version."

"The end of human civilisation is millions of World of Warcraft servers with only one human player on each of them. Dragon Age: Origins seems to bring that day one step closer."

"Crop selection will depend on the soil conditions of the plots that Hantz acquires. Experts insist that most of the land is not irretrievably toxic. The majority of the lots now vacant in Detroit were residential, not industrial; the biggest problem is how compacted the soil is. For the most part the farms will focus on high-margin edibles: peaches, berries, plums, nectarines, and exotic greens. Score says that the first crops are likely to be lettuce and heirloom tomatoes."

"Expressing his growing frustration, IT support technician Chris Brennan, 28, told reporters Monday that he is incapable of wearing a button-up shirt and khaki pants without every person he knows asking him why."

I guess this guy doesn't know anyone who plays Farmville. ""There is no reason an adult should have this game," he said, going on to state that adults who play games like Animal Crossing are likely doing it for "the wrong reasons." "

Wow. I totally missed this. "About 485 employees of BBDO Detroit have been given notice the office will close Jan. 26 because Chrysler Group LLC has not negotiated continued contracts with the longtime advertising agency."

"When I'm developing, I try to continuously deploy to a realistic environment as often as possible. This means a Debian server running a stack as close to production as I can get. Of course, I don't deploy to the actual production servers (a lesson I've learnt many times over), so I virtualise a Debian box and clone package set from the production server. Combined with bridged networking and a quick hosts file change, and I've got a production-equivalent server always available at server.local."

"So, here's the story... ...Ever have one of those days where nothing is going right? I mean by the BUCKET load! I fire up the ol' computer to do some more work on the latest kit design for FlisKits and what do I find? The file has gotten corrupted, the computer is acting up and my mouse is skipping and jerking. But I have a job to do, get this design in the bag and into production. Well it was a long night and it wasn't until I woke the next day that I realized what had happened to the design. Then it was too late and we HAD to make it work! "

"This now familiar ritual distracts us from the real lesson, which is that we are not helpless. And since regular people will always be first on the scene of terrorist attacks, we should perhaps prioritize the public's antiterrorism capability — above and beyond the fancy technology that will never be foolproof. By definition, terrorism succeeds by making us feel powerless. It is more often a psychological threat than an existential one"

"If you are following your GPS and all of a sudden you find yourself in the middle of nowhere with snow all around, don't go there. Turn around."

"Again, my friends and colleagues in the media have two choices in covering this. You can just copy down what the Republicans and Vice President Cheney are saying, and click "send," call it journalism, or you can actually fact-check those comments and put them into context. Your choice. It’s your country."