Noteworthy on the Web- Big Think: Overweight People Live Longer: Making Sense of a Health ParadoxWhat's the Latest Development? Since January of this year, when the National Center for Health Statistics published a meta-analysis of 97 health studies, including 2.9 million people, suggesting that overweight individuals are 6% less likely to die than are those of "normal" weight, public ...Read More […]Orion Jones
- Planet PostgreSQL: Andrew Dunstan: Redis talk slidesHere are the slides from my talk on PostgreSQL and Redis. […]Planet PostgreSQL
- Mac Performance Guide: FirmTek U3 Trayless Enclosure for 2.5-Inch SSD or Hard DRiveFirmTek’s U3 trayless USB3 enclosure is a high performance well-engineed solution for those looking to swap 2.5-inch (laptop size) SSD or hard drives. Read more […]diglloyd, Inc.
- Planet PostgreSQL: Greg Smith: Seeking Revisited: Intel 320 Series and NCQRunning accurate database benchmark tests is hard. I’ve managed to publish a good number of them without being embarrassed by errors in procedure or results, but today I have a retraction to make. Last year I did a conference talk called “Seeking PostgreSQL” that focused on worst case situations for... […]Planet PostgreSQL
- The Register: Joyent cuts prices on cloudy infrastructureAligns with AWS instances, and offers the same or lower prices Joyent, one of the upstart cloudy infrastructure providers that is taking a custom software stack to market to peddle virty server and storage, has done a major revamp of the way it carves up slices on its Joyent Compute... […]The Register
- DVICE: Welcome to the age of the smartbikeThe humble bicycle: a means of conveyance that has hardly changed — except for a few tweaks here and there — since its invention. Some might argue that a bike needs no altering. They might even cite the unchanging nature of bicycles as evidence for their opinion. But with half... […]Colin Druce-McFadden
- Laughing Squid: Wooden Floor Pattern Based On M. C. Escher’s ‘Reptiles’photo via Arbore Historic Floors Spanish flooring company Arbore Historic Floors created this fantastic wooden floor inspired by the famous lithograph “Reptiles” by M. C. Escher. The custom floor was created at the request of a client in Madrid back in 2011. photo via Arbore Historic Floors image via ... […]EDW Lynch
- The Register: Samsung flogs slim, flashy new model: Protection includedServer-level SSD gets endurance, capacity upgrade Samsung has upgraded its SM843 server-level SSD, doubling its capacity and tripling its endurance.… […]The Register
- myNoSQL: Adding a new command to RedisAdding a new command to Redis: Kenny Hoxworth shows how to add a new command to Redis: A strength of Redis from a programmer’s perspective is the simplicity of the codebase. One of Sal’s goals with the project is to minimize external dependencies, and thus Redis performs minimal linking... […]myNoSQL
- Fraser Speirs: iPad Disaster Recovery in Institutional Model DeploymentsI've been working intensely on the deployment models for our iPad refresh in August. Our current deployment model dates back to 2010 and a time before Apple Configurator, Volume Purchase and MDM. Back then, we had to make do with iTunes and iPhone Configuration Utility and we liked it! One... […]Fraser Speirs
- PhotographyBLOG: Rollei Car DVR-100Rollei has launched its second Full HD car camera, the Car DVR-100. Read more and comment » […]Zoltan Arva-Toth
- Computer Audiophile: Luxman DA-06 DAC ReviewSooner or later audiophiles come to the realizations that every component flavors the sound and that there isn't a single best flavor. Accepting these two facts eases us into the world of endless enjoyment provided by this wonderful hobby. Researching, selecting, and auditioning new components can be pleasurable when our... […]Computer Audiophile
- Boing Boing: Iain Banks doesn't write sf for the moneySF/thriller writer Iain Banks has weighed in to quash a rumor that he only wrote his amazing SF novels to pay the bills because the (also amazing) high-brow literary thrillers didn't bring in enough: I wish I did have the time to reply to everybody individually but I... […]Cory Doctorow
- Japan Camera Hunter: How to look after your lenses (aka summer is coming)How to look after your lenses (aka summer is coming) Heat and humidity are the biggest enemy of any precision instruments, and even your lastest and greatest cameras are not immune from the problems that moisture brings. This guide can help you prepare for the heat.The summer is coming... […]Bellamy
- etherfarm: etherblog: Henry at HandworksThis Saturday morning, I will be speaking along with Don Williams and Christopher Schwarz in Amana, Iowa at Handworks, a formidable gathering of people interested in woodworking tools and traditions. I’m a late addition to the speaker lineup, which is perhaps appropriate because actually–I won’t be speaking that much.... […]Narayan
- CNET News.com: GIF creator: It's a soft 'g', Mr. PresidentSteve Wilhite, the man who created the GIF, is miffed that anyone -- be it the Oxford English Dictionary or the White House -- should imagine it's not pronounced like "jiffy." [Read more] […]Chris Matyszczyk
- Armin Ronacher: Porting to Python 3 ReduxAfter a very painful porting experience with Jinja2 to Python 3 I basically left the project idling around for a while because I was too afraid of breaking Python 3 support. The approach I used was one codebase that was written in Python 2 and translated with 2to3 to Python... […]Armin Ronacher
- Ars Technica: Think your Skype messages get end-to-end encryption? Think againIf you think the private messages you send over Skype are protected by end-to-end encryption, think again. The Microsoft-owned service regularly scans message contents for signs of fraud, and company managers may log the results indefinitely, Ars has confirmed. And this can only happen if Microsoft can convert the messages... […]Dan Goodin
- Thom Hogan SansMirror: Will the Floodgates Open?Samsung this week released the source code that powers their recent NX-300 camera. That makes it probably the most high-level camera completely open to hackers (in the good, original sense of the word "hacker"). … […]Thom Hogan SansMirror
- Eater SF: Expansion Wire: Speaking of West Portal, it's one...Speaking of West Portal, it's one of the few places where there isn't a La Boulange outlet yet. But that's about to change: undaunted by that whole enormous Starbucks rollout, Pascal Rigojust signed a lease to open La Boulange #14 (#15 if you count the still-pending Inner Sunset... […]Allie Pape
- Big Think: Overweight People Live Longer: Making Sense of a Health Paradox
Author Archives: majid
How the iPad Mini killed my iPhone
The single greatest feature of the iPad is the fact it cannot receive phone calls. Despite being a telecoms engineer by training, I despise phones, and it seems the millennial generation shares my disdain, as it favors less intrusive means … Continue reading
Posted in IT, Soapbox
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The ultimate irrelevance of image quality
Months ago I showed my father how to take screen shots on his iPad and iMac, and he routinely takes them while using FaceTime video conferencing with my 1 year-old daughter. Due to poor bandwidth at home (we live in … Continue reading
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Sony RX1 first impressions
Despite my hatred of all things Sony, I purchased two of their cameras in the last few months: a RX100 for my wife, and a RX1 for myself. the bragging rights of a full-frame sensor with a Zeiss 35mm f/2 … Continue reading
Posted in Photo
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Cheeky
This is a popup the iOS6 App Store shows me when I try searching for a Google Maps app.
If WordPress updates hang on a 64-bit OS
The WordPress instance running this site was no longer able to automatically update plugins (and presumably not the core either) after I upgraded from a 32-bit to a sparkling fresh 64-bit PHP install at Joyent. It would start the update, … Continue reading
Scanning your iTunes library for DRM-infested books
Tor, the leading publisher for Science Fiction and Fantasy books, announced they would be doing away with DRM in their eBooks. The product pages for their books on iBooks now mention “At the publisher’s request, this title is being sold … Continue reading
Posted in IT, Mac, Python
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The Gresham’s law of Amazon Web Services
In the bad (good?) old days when currency’s worth was established by the amount of gold or silver in coinage, kings would cut corners by debasing currency with lead, which is almost as dense as gold or silver. In the … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, IT
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Withings smart baby monitor review
One of the joys challenges of being a first-time parent is being exposed to a bewildering array of gadgets and equipment required to care for the baby, from baby car seats, strollers and diaper pails to 2-axis rocking robots (thanks Rohit!). … Continue reading
Welcome, baby Afsheen!
My first child, Afsheen Zahra Majid, formerly code-named “Lolo”, was born Tuesday 2012-01-03 at 10:47 AM Pacific Time in San Francisco. She weighed 4,148 grams (9.2lbs) and was 56.5cm long (20.25″) at birth. She has a full head of hair, … Continue reading
Posted in About Me
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Prints not-so charming
Ansel Adams wrote a celebrated series of photo instructional books. It is organized as a trilogy: , and . Of these, the camera business is still going strong, buoyed by sales of digital cameras and upgraders to DSLRs (although market … Continue reading
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