Noteworthy on the Web- The Register: AWS CISO needs permission to visit his data centresHe doesn't mind and you shouldn't either because they're not that interesting Amazon Web Services' General Manager and Chief Information Security Officer Stephen E. Schmidt is not allowed to make unannounced visits to the company's data centres.… […]The Register
- Boing Boing: Global subway systems converge on common topologiesA paywalled paper in the Royal Society's journal Interfaceargues that the world's underground rail systems are all converging on an "ideal" form. The paper, "A long-time limit for world subway networks," shows that subway systems grow "organically," in response to the needs expressed by the cities above them over... […]Cory Doctorow
- Discardia: Small shifts to make a big difference in your relationship to your email inboxOne of my coaching clients faced a problem a lot of us deal with: I keep struggling to pull the important emails out of a pile and follow up in a reasonable amount of time with the people I have not heard back from yet. At the moment, I'm able... […]Dinah
- Eater SF: Fartine Bakery: Fartine is not the latest offshoot...Fartine is not the latest offshoot of the Mission's iconic Tartine Bakery. It is actually the subject of a fake ad made by someone who had the genius idea to merge the word "fart" with the word "Tartine," and it's shockingly flown right under the high security radar on... […]Carolyn Alburger
- StorageReview.com: Hitachi G-RAID With Thunderbolt Review (8TB)Hitachi's G-Technology line of external hard drives has long been a favorite for creative professionals and others who generally need some combination of reliability, performance, capacity and redundancy. While Hitachi has several products in the G-Tech line that specialize in one or more of those qualities, their latest effort is... […]Kevin OBrien
- Bruce Momjian: Postgres Blog: Template1 Me!You might have heard of the template1 database before, or seen it in the output of pg_dumpall: REVOKE ALL ON DATABASE template1 FROM PUBLIC; … Continue Reading » […]bruce@momjian.us (Bruce Momjian)
- Felix Salmon: Facebook: The smart money exitsThe Facebook IPO is now set to raise an absolutely astonishing amount of money — as much as $18 billion, if the greenshoe is exercised and the offering prices at the top of the indicated range. As a result, it’s certain to be the single largest technology IPO of... […]Felix Salmon
- Ars Technica: Android fragmentation: one developer encounters 3,997 devicesA map of all the thousands of separate device models that downloaded OpenSignalMaps in a six month period. OpenSignalMaps One developer can do business with nearly 4,000 distinct Android ROMs, according to data postedby the creators of OpenSignalMaps on Tuesday. While the Android platform provides a lot of flexibility... […]Casey Johnston
- Gizmodo: Steak Specialists Discover a New Cut of Beef [Food]Turns out that what happens in Vegas no longer stays in Vegas—and that's a good thing. A self-proclaimed Meat Geek has teamed up with Oklahoma State University to devise the first new style of steak in years. More » […]Andrew Tarantola
- The Brooks Review: ∞ The Best Diaper BagBack when my wife was registering for all of our “baby stuff” for showers she asked me which diaper bag we should get. I am pretty sure I said pick “whatever” because I was confident Target wouldn’t have what I wanted, and knew my wife wouldn’t put up with me... […]BenBrooks
- Marginal Revolution: The Myth of Chinese MeritocracyNo doubt you have heard how the leadership of China is meritocratic and composed of technocrats with PhDs. Minxin Pei suggests that there is less than meets the eye. …Contrary to the prevailing perception in the West (especially among business leaders), the current Chinese government is riddled with... […]Alex Tabarrok
- The Daily Viz: How Common Is Your Birthday?A friend posted an interesting data tableon my Facebook wall yesterday, which was my birthday. The data listed each day of the year with a ranking for how many babies were born on each date from 1973 to 1999. Some interesting trends are evident in the data. Apparently, people... […]Matt Stiles
- Boing Boing: Verizon refused to help police locate unconscious man unless they paid his phone billNancy Schaar at the Times Reporter: A 62-year-old Carrollton area man was found unconscious and unresponsive Thursday morning during an intense search overnight by Carroll County sheriff deputies, an Ohio State Highway Patrol trooper and the patrol’s airplane. [Sheriff] Williams said he attempted to use the man’s cell phone... […]Rob Beschizza
- CNET News.com: Facebook said responsible for killing text messagingSmartphone users are spending more time hanging out on Facebook and thus left with less time to shoot texts to each other. [Read more] […]Charles Cooper
- TechOpsGuys.com: More 10GbaseT Coming..I wrote a couple of times about the return of 10GbaseT, a standard that tried to come out a few years ago but for various reasons didn't quite make it. I just noticed that two new 10GbaseT switching products were officially announced a few days ago at Interop Las Vegas... […]Nate
- Gizmodo: You Won't Believe This Colorful Glass Gem Corn Is Freaking Real Corn [Food]This is corn. No, it's not photoshopped. Yes, it's real. It's a corn variety called Glass Gem Corn and though it may look like jelly beans or beads, it's real, actual, edible corn. What in the world? More » […]Casey Chan
- Cool Tools: FreesoundThere are sound effects libraries that cost more than a small car, and they're probably worth it to certain kinds of users — like movie studios or audio production houses — but not to me. In search of interesting, appropriately licensed sounds for personal amusement, some google searching led me... […]Cool Tools
- David Lebovitz: Restaurant Alain DucasseUncharacteristically, I’ll spare you the specifics, but I need to catch up on about 147 hours of sleep. And while we’re at it, I could use a hug. And since the former isn’t necessarily easy to come by here, as is the latter, I was embrassé by dinner at Alain... […]David
- Ars Technica: USPS won't ship tablets and smartphones internationallyThe United Sates Postal Service is banning the international shipment of all devices that contain lithium ion batteries starting May 16, it announced in a press release. This includes even small-order batteries in devices like smartphones and tablets, meaning that if you wanted to pick up an iPad or ... […]Casey Johnston
- Mac Performance Guide: Unhide Your Library FolderMac OS X 10.7 Lion hides the Library folder which is found in your home directory. this can be a headache, here’s how to unhide your Library folder on Mac OS X. Read more […]diglloyd, Inc.
- The Register: AWS CISO needs permission to visit his data centres
Category Archives: Soapbox
Crime does not pay
Two years after the Staceycide, the spot is still vacant. At a reported rent of $65,000 a month, that adds up to a cool $1.8M loss for the greedy landlords who pushed them out of business.
Deep packet inspection rears it ugly head
Last Friday I started noticing error messages in my production environment. URLs were being mangled, two consecutive characters being replaced by 0×80 and 0×01 or 0×80 and 0×04, causing UTF-8 decode exceptions to be logged, as well as failures for … Continue reading
Posted in Network, Soapbox
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Hey Apple…
Some improvements you should consider: Sync iPods, iPhones and iPads over WiFi. Cables are so twentieth century. Palm had bluetooth sync working ten years ago, and 802.11n has the same real-world speed as USB. You could then simply extend this to … Continue reading
Posted in Mac, Soapbox
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I love my ISP
Not only do Webpass give me fast 45Mbps symmetrical access for $45/month, with no capricious restrictions or anticompetitive shenanigans, but they are also real mensches.
Posted in San Francisco, Soapbox
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Putting customers first
When you visit the Dell website, the first thing they force you to decide is whether you are a Home, Small Business or “Enterprise” business customer. At one point, the thin and light laptops were only available in the Enterprise … Continue reading
Dear Parallels
Since you keep hitting me with these spammy popups no matter how many times I click on “Do not show again”, you leave me no choice but to switch to VirtualBox (much better software in any case, and less Windows … Continue reading
Posted in Mac, Soapbox
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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
2 Comments
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
4 Comments
Forbidden functions
When I first read Asimov’s Foundation as a child in 1980 or so, I was blown away by the idea that a mathematical operation could be forbidden. “Before you are done with me, young man, you will learn to apply … Continue reading
Posted in Soapbox
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