January 2012
1 post
More thoughts on iPhone Mute Switch
Just finished listening to last week’s The Talk Show on the iPhone “Mute” switch. It’s an interesting debate. I like Gruber’s point that, while people feel very strongly one way or the other, there aren’t camps of fanboys here. It really is an interesting design problem.
I think most of the confusion about the iPhone’s Mute switch behavior stems from two...
September 2011
5 posts
Monetary policy: Money delusion →
Free Exchange on The Economist:
After years of bitter experience, most rich countries put their money supplies in the hands of independent central banks, because it was determined that linking them to the supply of shiny rocks often generated dangerous and costly economic volatility. Sometimes, it turned out, the demand for money would skyrocket, and when the supply of shiny rocks didn’t...
“Perhaps opposition to Social Security has become a runaway train, a rhetorical...”
– Social Security: A monstrous truth | The Economist
Different Perspective →
A lower orbit for NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has produced some fantastic new images of several Apollo landing sites, with resolutions high enough to show moonwalkers’ footprints and some…
Boston vs. Seattle →
Sure, the weather was good, the people nice and the scenery stunning, but Rebecca Pacheco reports she was chafing under an Irene-imposed extended stay in Seattle:
I’m a native of Cape Cod and a…
The web leaders hate typography (but not for long) →
It probably started with HTML, and then Yahoo, of course. But eBay escalated the hatred and Google and Facebook have institutionalized it. To have lame typography, to avoid opportunities to speak…
August 2011
15 posts
Little League World Series Misses The Point →
The Little League World Series has lost its way, changing what should be an opportunity for kids to have fun and make friends into an exploitative money maker for ESPN. I don’t like the Little…
Rain or shine, see the weather in Google Maps →
Shared by Josh
I’ve been asking for this for years!!! Finally.
(Cross-posted on the LatLong blog)
Whether you’re organizing a trip overseas or a picnic at a local park, knowing the weather…
The inevitable outcome of marketing fear →
Years ago, the authorities decided that a key weapon in the war on terror (sic) would be to make people more afraid. Two reasons for this: if you make potential bad guys afraid, they might not…
Why software patents are not fixable →
I’m not a patent lawyer. I’m not even a lawyer. I’m just a software developer, and like every software developer, I’ve probably unknowingly infringed upon hundreds of patents while routinely doing…
24-hour star trails →
Star trails are created when the shutter of a camera is left open whilst pointed towards the sky; as the Earth rotates the stars etch out a path.
In a twenty-four hour period the Earth…
Dutch Subway Slide: An Exercise in Efficiency →
Leave it to the Dutch to make something from a playground seem like the most cutting edge innovation in the recent history of public transit. When it’s 8 am and you’re tripping down dirty…
What exactly is everyone "uncertain" about?
Sen. Scott Brown trots out the “uncertainty” meme:
Brown said Friday businesses are discouraged from expanding because they are unsure if they will face higher taxes or more regulations.
Everyone talks about “uncertainty”, but no one ever seems to talk about what questions they would like answered.
Will they face higher taxes? Clearly not, at least for the...
Chis Chistie is Tired of the Crazies →
John Cole on NJ Gov. Chris Christie’s forceful defense of his nominee for the state bench, a Muslim-American lawyer, against crazy-talk about Sharia law.
I almost cheered when Obama “lost his cool” and gave (for him) a bracing attack on the Republicans. We need more of that. Not less. MORE DAMNIT. Do what Christie did- be confident, speak your mind, and if the truth is on your side,...
The Economist on Patents →
At a time when our future affluence depends so heavily on innovation, we have drifted toward a patent regime that not only fails to fulfil its justifying function, to incentivise innovation, but actively impedes innovation. We rarely directly confront the effects of this immense waste of resources and brainpower and the attendant retardation of the pace of discovery, but it affect us all the...
Snapping off Hubble’s handrail →
When Shuttle mission STS-125 arrived at the Hubble Space Telescope to repair its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instrument, astronaut Mike Massimino encountered a problem removing a…
Archaeology of Ancient Egypt →
I think I might have found my next course to take, and this time it’s free. I’ve definitely enjoyed all the Harvard Extension School courses I’ve take the last three years, and plan to continue those in the future. But I love the idea of being able to watch and learn from great lecturers around the world.
Ground-Based GPS Mimic Is Inch Perfect →
holy_calamity writes “For several years the U.S. Air Force has used WiFi-router-sized boxes on a New Mexico missile range to create a GPS-like service to track munitions to the nearest inch. Now the…
Wake up GOP: Smashing system doesn't fix it →
David Frum, one of the very few thoughtful Republicans left:
Republicans have become so gripped by pessimism and panic that they feel they have nothing to lose by rushing into a catastrophe now. But there is a lot to lose, and in these past weeks America nearly lost it. Let’s hope that as America steps back from the brink, Republicans remember that it’s their job to protect the...
On the President's Sad Trend of Capitulating →
Marco Arment:
I’m pretty sure that Obama’s not getting re-elected. I don’t see how he’ll be able to garner enough support from the actual left that elected him in 2008, since he has repeatedly demonstrated an inability and apparent unwillingness to pursue anything but an extremely conservative agenda.
Then he nails the issue as succinct as I’ve seen it put yet.
I have no idea what the...
July 2011
19 posts
Let's Just Remember →
Not really relevant to the immediate situation. But for future reference let’s remember that the entire concept of a debt limit ceiling is ridiculous. If the Congress votes to spend more than it…
One More Important Number →
Revised government data released this morning shows the recession was significantly worse than previously thought. Instead of shrinking by 2.5 percent in 2009, the economy actually shrank by 3.5…
"There's No Way That's True"
On Monday I stood at the bus stop across from 77 Mass Ave waiting to head over to Back Bay. As I was waiting, a tour trolley stopped at the light. The guide was telling his riders over the PA system about the time when MIT hackers disassembled and reassembled on top of the dome an entire MBTA Red Line car.
As the trolley pulled away, my immediate thought was, “there’s no way...
Beautiful 1899 Bird's Eye Drawing of Boston →
So many things to love about this map, I could pour over it for hours.
Note the Miller’s River, unlabeled, extending inland between the Charles and Mystic.
Intellectual property gone mad →
Friday night, I tweeted a link
to a Guardian
article stating that app
developers were withdrawing apps from Apple’s app store and Google’s Android market (and presumably also Amazon’s app…
Speed matters: how Ethernet went from 3Mbps to... →
Ars Technica has a fascinating look at the history and technology of Ethernet.
When planes collide →
Tails get bent.
How commercial airplanes SHOULD be laid out →
Thanks for flying SkyOats
View
Despite Benefit Disparities, Middle Class Supports... →
Brian McCabe on FiveThirtyEight/NYT:
The results of the New York Times/CBS News poll point to an important disconnect in American attitudes towards homeownership policy, especially as we continue to re-evaluate the role of the federal government in supporting homeownership. While Americans prefer that federal subsidies benefit low-income and middle-class Americans, they simultaneously (and...
How “Patent Trolling” Taxes Innovation →
Applying for a patent is expensive. Fees can exceed $25,000, and most applications require at least a couple years of effort. We might expect that anyone considering applying for a patent would be…
The gathering storm →
The Economist:
Despite this, and despite the blanket coverage of debt talks, there is a remarkable nonchalance to the political negotiation over the debt ceiling. Now that could be because everyone knows there’s a contingency plan to get something passed before the deadline. I’m not confident this is the case. And I have been stunned by the willingness in Washington to play games...
The Rephotography of Mark Klett: Views Across Time →
Every Flight is a Mission to Planet Earth →
Beautiful images looking back at Earth over 30 years of shuttle flights.
No Outside Game →
Painful to read. From David Frum … Then, as Republicans discovered the power of their new tool, the president decided to assume they were bluffing, that they would never actually do anything so…
The BU Bridge(s) →
I double-took as well when I saw this picture on Old Boston. I had no idea there was a second, temporary BU bridge.
Some common sense on noncompete clauses →
Logan Benson landed a pretty sweet job in early 2009: testing video game software at Harmonix Music Systems, the Cambridge company that developed Rock Band and Dance Central. Thinking there would be…
Visualizing Early Washington →
Mark Tully writes with a link to the above video, part of the Visualizing Early Washington DC project, which I’ve seen before but (as has sometimes happened) I never seem to have gotten…
June 2011
12 posts
Mind-Blowing Features of Word Processing in 1982 →
It blows my mind thinking about how mind-blowing word processing seemed when it first appeared.
When I sit down to write a letter or start the first draft of an article, I simply type on the keyboard and the words appear on the screen. For six months, I found it awkward to compose first drafts on the computer. Now I can hardly do it any other way. It is faster to type this way than with a normal...
UNCLE SAM GETS GIGANTIC CAMERA (Dec, 1932) →
UNCLE SAM GETS GIGANTIC CAMERA
Big enough for an eight-year-old child to walk through, a camera that can use any plate from four by five inches to four by four feet, has been designed for…
The FBI stole an Instapaper server in an unrelated... →
One of Instapaper’s five leased servers was hosted at DigitalOne, a Swiss hosting company leasing blade servers from a Virginia datacenter. Early Tuesday morning, the FBI raided the datacenter to…
Ditz - Distributed Issue Tracker →
Distributed version control systems these days are fantastic, but issue trackers still suck. Most of them are stuck in the centralized paradigm. Nice to see someone taking a stab at distributed issue tracking. (via Matt Katz)
Science is not my God →
Martin Robbins:
Faith at its broadest just means trust or confidence, and in that sense I have ‘faith’ in a lot of things; I have faith that the Sun will rise tomorrow, that my parents are decent people, faith in my own abilities and the abilities of my colleagues, and faith that train companies will conspire to make my life miserable from now until the day I die. In each case my...
Nicely implemented footnotes on Grantland →
Whoever is doing the graphic design and page layout on Grantland is doing it right.
Perfect description of why blog comments are a... →
Letters of Note disables comments permanently
All complaints should be directed towards a section of society to whom the concept of even vaguely civil discussion means nothing. This collective waste of flesh, bone, and dangerously limited brain function have caused me to dread opening each and every “New Comment” notification I’ve received over the past twelve months or so,...
Cantabrigian Namesakes →
In spite of the borderline comical duplication of street names in the Boston area (often within the city of Boston itself), the streets around here are named for many people, places, and things….