Noteworthy on the Web- Bits: Daily Report: Google Privacy Inquiries Get Little CooperationIn Wednesday's New York Times, David Streitfeld and Kevin J. O'Brien take a deeper look at how Google escaped a full accounting for its Street View project, in which specially equipped cars scooped up data from wireless networks as they photographed the world's streets. […]By THE NEW YORK TIMES
- Ming Thein | Photographer: May 10, Part 1: The Leica M-Monochrom reviewThe focus of Leica’s May 10 announcement landed in my hands a few days ago (not counting the X2, which was reviewed here); I suppose that Facebook post* might have done the trick. *I left a message on Andreas Kaufmann’s wall; score one for the power of social media.... […]Ming Thein
- DPReview News: Just Posted: Canon EOS 5D Mark III reviewJust Posted:Our Canon EOS 5D Mark III review. The 22.3MP 5D Mark III appears to offer similar specifications to 2008's 5D Mark II. However, sensor and processing developments, along with a host of user-interface revisions mean the Mark III is a much more capable camera. It also gains a... […]DPReview News
- Gizmodo: Better Cell Phone Towers Kill People [Cell Phones]AT&T's network sucked in 2008, glutted with iPhones and facing the menace of a 3G rollout. So like its competition, it put together a slapdash operation to build towers at any cost. Even a human cost, ProPublica reports. More » […]Sam Biddle
- Laughing Squid: Ben & Jerry’s Euphori-Lock, An Ice Cream Pint Combination LockBen & Jerry’s Euphori-Lock is a combination lock to keep other people out of your favorite pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. The Euphori-Lock is available to purchase from Ben & Jerry’s online store. I’m terribly sorry but there is no “u” in “my pint”. Here’s more information... […]Rusty Blazenhoff
- The Brooks Review: ‘The Facebook Fallacy’Michael Wolff:Facebook is not only on course to go bust, but will take the rest of the ad-supported Web with it.That’s the opening sentence, and it only gets better and harder to argue with from there. Wolff makes some great points, not only about Facebook, but about web... […]BenBrooks
- jg's Ramblings: A Milestone Reached: CoDel is in Linux!The CoDel AQM algorithm by Kathie Nichols and Van Jacobson provides us with an essential missing tool to control queues properly. Eric Dumazet wrote the codel line discipline (based on a quick prototype by Dave Täht) which landed in net-next a week or two ago; yesterday, net-next was merged into the Linux... […]gettys
- Boing Boing: All-in-one slipcased edition of SandmanHere's some lovely news: DC is bringing out an all-ten-volumes-in-one-slipcase edition of Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Gaiman writes, "I’m thrilled. You have no idea how long I’ve been asking DC to do one of these. (Er, about 16 years.)" The all-ten-volumes-in-one-slipcase-edition of SANDMAN Amazon pre-order page (via Wil Wheaton... […]Cory Doctorow
- The Register: Raspberry PiBare bones computing Review No review is ever written in isolation, absent from context. Usually, you can guess the reviewer's bias within a few paragraphs, and compensate accordingly. He hates LCD display quality, she dislikes proprietary software, they yearn for the days of full bandwidth vinyl. You get the idea.… […]The Register
- Living with IPv6: New Nmap w/ much improved IPv6Nmap has had rudimentary IPv6 support for a while, but, frankly, it's been pretty limited. A new version was just released today with much improved support.Some highlights:Raw packet supportOS detectionNeighbor Discovery pingNew IPv6 detection techniques (including some neat tricks with MLD and SLAAC).This... […]Living with IPv6
- bert hubert finally blogs: Random points of contentionI'm working on some high performance code which needs to scale to many, many CPUs. Against better judgement, I decided to use threads again, but to steer clear from anything that needs locking. I've previously found this to be very hard, and this time round proved to be no exception.... […]bert hubert (noreply@blogger.com)
- High Scalability: Pinterest Architecture Update - 18 Million Visitors, 10x Growth,12 Employees, 410 TB of DataThere has been an update on Pinterest: Pinterest growth driven by Amazon cloud scalability since our last post: A Short on the Pinterest Stack for Handling 3+ Million Users. With Pinterest we see a story very similar to that of Instagram. Huge growth, lots of users, lots of... […]Todd Hoff
- Ars Technica: Smartphone hijacking vulnerability affects AT&T, 47 other carriesCisco Systems' ASA 5500 series is one of many firewalls that drops data packets that contains invalid TCP sequence numbers. The feature leaks data that can be used to hijack connections. Cisco Systems Computer scientists have identified a vulnerability in the network of AT&T and at least 47 other cellular... […]Dan Goodin
- The Tao of Mac: Leap MotionApple, buy these guys NOW. Here’s a bit more. Looks amazing, and the price is certainly a matter of production volume.☯ […]Rui Carmo
- AnandTech: HP Z420 Workstation Review: Competition Heats UpRecently we had a chance to review Dell's Precision T3600, and we found it impressive. A company that seemed content to be an also-ran in the enterprise desktop space reinvigorated itself with smart new chassis designs to go along with the refreshed hardware from Intel and NVIDIA, and the... […]Dustin Sklavos
- Ars Technica: The future is forever: the state of IPv6 in the Apple worldPhoto illustration by Aurich Lawson With the demise of Apple's own networking protocol AppleTalk, Apple's products are suffering from the same issue as anyone else's: the Internet is running out of addresses. Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Netflix, and others will permanently turn on IPv6 in less than a month... […]Iljitsch van Beijnum
- David Lebovitz: Aux Tonneaux des HallesEveryone once in a while, it hits me: I need steak-frites. It’s an infrequent indulgence, but when I do have it, I like my steak with a crisp exterior, pan-seared until saignant (medium-rare), with a large pile of real frites. Most my French friends like their beef bleu,... […]David
- Econbrowser: Fiscal stimulusMy colleague UCSD Professor Valerie Ramey has an interesting new paper looking at the effects of higher government spending on GDP. Ramey (2012)approaches the question from a forecasting perspective. Suppose a certain event (examples of which are detailed below) causes you to revise your forecast of how high government... […]James Hamilton (jhamilton@ucsd.edu)
- The Trouble with Tribbles...: Vendor Stack vs build your ownOperating System distributions are getting ever more bloated, including more and more packages. While this reduces the need for the end user to build their own software, does it actually eliminate the need for systems administrators to manage the software on their systems?I would argue that in many cases... […]Peter Tribble (noreply@blogger.com)
- LensRentals Blog: Testing for a Decentered Lens: an Old Technique Gets a MakeoverWhat is Decentering and What Does it Do? Strictly speaking, decentering would involve one or more of the lens elements being off of the central axis of the lens. This would prevent the curved surfaces of the lens from bending the light properly. In severe cases it could result in... […]Roger Cicala
- Bits: Daily Report: Google Privacy Inquiries Get Little Cooperation
Category Archives: IT
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
Posted in IT, Stuff
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The HP-15C was reissued at long last!
It is strange no one seems to have picked up the news yet, but HP has reissued the legendary HP-15C in a special “30th anniversary limited edition”, and it became available for purchase last week. The new HP-15C is not strictly speaking a … Continue reading
A waiter for a server
I had to monitor a long-running process on a Solaris server tonight, but didn’t want to stay glued at a computer monitor. A neat trick: ssh myserver.example.com “pwait 17601″; say “batch done” You would replace 17601 with the process ID … Continue reading
Doing my bit for the Internet
My first IPv6 connectivity, courtesy of Hurricane Electric’s Tunnel Broker. It only took me three years…
Posted in IT, Mac, Network
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Will Adobe ever learn?
In a triumph of hope over experience, I recently “upgraded” from Adobe CS3 Design Standard to CS5 Design Standard. I hardly ever use Photoshop any more since I started using Aperture and Lightroom (originally a Macromedia product, no matter what … Continue reading
Posted in IT, Mac, Soapbox
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Incensed at Mozilla
One of the greatest features in the Webkit-based browsers (Apple’s Safari and Google Chrome) is WebSQLdatabase, the ability for a web site to store information in a SQLite database on your browser accessible via JavaScript. This allows web developers to … Continue reading
Posted in IT, Mac, Soapbox, Web
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RapidSSL 1 – GoDaddy 0
My new company’s website uses SSL. I ordered an “extended validation” certificate from GoDaddy, instead of my usual CA, RapidSSL/GeoTrust, because GoDaddy’s EV certificates were cheap. EV certificates are security theater more than anything else, I probably should not have … Continue reading
Posted in IT, Network, Soapbox, Web
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One month with the iPad
Since I got my iPad six weeks ago, I have only used my MacBook Air once. I am not going to repeat the extensive reviews posted elsewhere, but after over a month of extensive use, give some perspective for those … Continue reading
Posted in IT, Mac
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Clueless SaaS providers can leave you with egg on your face
While cleaning out my spam folders, I noticed a disturbing trend: a number of the spam were sent to vendor-specific email addresses I had set up to communicate with Parallels, Joyent and Shoeboxed. As a security measure, I do not … Continue reading
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