Current Version


Democrat · ShortLinks

Waldo Jaquith · links for 2010-07-22 RSS Comment Feed Bookmark on del.icio.us

  • San Francisco Weekly: Voodoo on the Vine Every so often I've seen the word "biodynamic." The Seven Stars yogurt in our fridge, for instance, claims to be "biodynamic." What does that word mean? A cursory search revealed that it means more organic than organic, a higher level of quality and environmental friendliness. That is wrong. In fact, biodynamics is batshit insane. It involves astrology, the occult, communing with the spirit world, homeopathy, and little underground gnomes that push plants up to help them grow. Seriously. Read this article. It's a hoot. (tags: biodynamic food farming organic humor wine)
  • Needcoffee.com: ATMs in Antarctica—An Interview With Wells Fargo's David Parker There are two ATMs at the south pole. This is an interview with the guy who is in charge of them. (tags: antarctica banks)
  • Princeton University: 2010 Baccalaureate remarks Jeff Bezos' remarks to the 2010 class of Princeton are surprisingly interesting (and brief). The thesis statement is that it's better to be kind than clever. That's an important lesson, one that I must constantly relearn. (tags: amazon speech advice)
  • Wikipedia: List of common misconceptions I think I'm drooling a little. (tags: trivia science)
  • Gizmodo: How a 15-yo Kid Tricked Apple With a Disguised iPhone Tethering App If you want to use your iPhone's 3G signal to provide internet access to your laptop via its WiFi, you've got pay AT&T $20 month. Why? Because they can. Apple enforces this on their behalf by prohibiting any iPhone software that provides this tethering service. So this 15-year-old kid, Nick Lee, made what appeared to be a lousy bit of software—another flashlight program—but that is secretly a tethering app. While you're running it, your computer has internet access through your phone. Apple approved it, not having inspected in closely and people were briefly able to download it and tether their laptops. But word got out, of course, and Apple shut it down. Very impressive, Nick Lee! Not impressive, Apple. (tags: apple 3g iphone at&t)
  • MicroISV on a Shoestring: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names I read this great blog entry about a month ago that is still with me, and thus is worth sharing. It's a list of mistaken assumptions that programmers make about names. For programmers, this will be very frustrating to read, because this isn't a best practices guide, but rather a list of things that you'd be wrong to assume. Millions of people don't have last names. Millions of people have a given name as their last name and a family name as their first name. Millions of people's names change during their lives. Software—like this very blog's comment form—must allow for these and many other realities of names. (Related fun fact for website developers: Ireland has no postal codes…except in Dublin.) (tags: software usability i18n programming)
  • BBC News: "Cut down on meat to lose weight" A study of 400,000 European adults over five years found that calories from meat cause more weight gain. That is, 500 calories per day from meat causes more weight gain than 500 calories from other foods. Which doesn't bode well for high-protein diets. Note that this study only determines correlation, and people's final weights were self-reported. (tags: health food meat)
Untitled
line 40 column 1 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute

Item History

No older versions detected.

Item Comments

A database query generated an error. Please contact the site adminstrator to review the error logs.

No comments stored.

Search

Title, author, body:

Feed tag:


Active Feed Tags

Feed Comment Activity

High-Traffic Feeds

All Feeds

Other Virginia Aggregators