Drewbot

"LP: HBO’ll fuck you. Even when everything seems to be going right, like with Luck? The Dustin..."

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:46:28 -0400

“

LP: HBO’ll fuck you. Even when everything seems to be going right, like with Luck? The Dustin Hoffman shit? And then they cancelled it because they kept killing horses! When they canceled Luck, two horses of my heart died. They’re lucky Nick Nolte didn’t die. Once Nick Nolte breaks his leg, you have to shoot him.

KM: When a show is canceled, they should be required to give you a one-hour last episode.

LP: Here’s my thing: if a show is done—if it’s canceled, or if it ends ambiguously—why do people never just tell you, “this is what we figured would happen?” That’s what fucking kills me.

KM: Let me tell you a show I made a mistake of getting too invested in. It was not a good show; but I got too invested. How To Make It In America. And then it ended, and I thanked God quietly.

LP: IF you have nothing left to lose—if Deadwood’s over, if Carnivale’s over—why not show your cards? Even if you don’t know, make it up! You could at least make some more money! If I had to Paypal $5 to the show’s creators to let me know “what happened,” I’d do it in a second.

Actually, Mike and I had this idea that we were going to pitch with me and him as detectives. We just wanted to be detectives who fuck people up but never solve anything and have no idea what’s going on at any time. We’d have a congratulatory drink at the end of every episode, pat each other on the back, when all we really did was just beat up the first person we found.

”

- Jayson Greene profiled El-P and Killer Mike

"Because of this population distribution, the half of the U.S. living in the largest nine states is..."

Tue, 15 May 2012 16:15:36 -0400

“Because of this population distribution, the half of the U.S. living in the largest nine states is represented by 18 Senators. The other half of the country living in the other 41 states has 82 Senators, more than four times as many.”

- Another reason to reform the Senate, says Leslie Ogden of Tufts Daily (Via SimonWDC)

"As opposed to Obama’s years of public tiptoeing around the idea that gay people are deserving..."

Tue, 15 May 2012 12:14:35 -0400

“As opposed to Obama’s years of public tiptoeing around the idea that gay people are deserving of marriage equality, Jigga comes from a world where “faggot” is still said as if it’s any other word. Jay’s no stranger to it, either. In 1999’s “Nigga What, Nigga Who (Originator 99),” he says, “Faggots wanna talk to Po-Po’s, smoke em like cocoa.” Meanwhile, in a response to Nas’ implication that Jay himself is gay, Jay shot back in “Takeover” with, “You’s the fag model for Karl Kani Esco ads.” He’s referenced Buju Banton’s murder music and has repeatedly used the “no homo” stand-in “pause.””

- Rich Juzwiak explains why Jay-Z’s support for gay marriage is so important.

Here’s what Jay-Z said:

It’s no different than discriminating against blacks. It’s discrimination plain and simple…I think [announcing support of gay marriage is] the right thing to do, so whether it costs [Obama] votes or not — again, it’s not about votes. It’s about people. It’s the right thing to do as a human being.

Huge. (Via Gawker)

"To those who argue programming is an essential skill we should be teaching our children, right up..."

Tue, 15 May 2012 12:03:00 -0400

“To those who argue programming is an essential skill we should be teaching our children, right up there with reading, writing, and arithmetic: can you explain to me how Michael Bloomberg would be better at his day to day job of leading the largest city in the USA if he woke up one morning as a crack Java coder?”

- Jeff Atwood

I think Bloomberg is a straw man: few people are mayors or CEOs, and such upper management types perform people-centric jobs. Bloomberg and his peers probably wouldn’t benefit from learning to code, beyond understanding the basics of how software works. (Which, yes, wouldn’t make him a much better mayor.)

But can you imagine if everyone under middle management learned Ruby or Python? In Excel heavy positions, the power to build your own tools is invaluable. I agree with Jeff that most people should not become developers. But I disagree with Jeff’s position that some semblance of coding literacy (a better word: “scripting”) is not valuable to most.

The potential of more people learning to code (I mean: script) is not that they change their careers and become developers. It’s about amplifying your current work with tools you build just for you. Less rote work, done more quickly, with more time spent solving creative problems and inventing new things. It pains me to see junior staff spending days building predefined reports by hand in Excel, only to start the process anew on completion.

For a practical example of this tactic I strongly recommend this book by Brian Marick.

With a $4.61 battery and a 64GB compact flash card, one can turn...

Mon, 14 May 2012 17:33:35 -0400

With a $4.61 battery and a 64GB compact flash card, one can turn a dead iPod Mini into a cheap music box for throwing in a gym bag or backpack.

iFixit’s instructions worked perfectly.

Photo

Sun, 13 May 2012 16:04:39 -0400

"In other words, JPMorgan Chase, entirely without any help from the government has lost, in this one..."

Fri, 11 May 2012 17:31:48 -0400

“In other words, JPMorgan Chase, entirely without any help from the government has lost, in this one set of transactions, five times the amount they claim financial regulation is costing them”

- Barney Frank, national treasure.

"A theoretical physicist friend likes to say, only partly in jest, that there should be books titled..."

Fri, 11 May 2012 14:44:09 -0400

“A theoretical physicist friend likes to say, only partly in jest, that there should be books titled “______ for Mathematicians”, where _____ is something generally believed to be difficult (quantum chemistry, general relativity, securities pricing, formal epistemology). Those books would be short and pithy, because many key concepts in those subjects are ones that mathematicians are well equipped to understand. Often, those parts can be explained more briefly and elegantly than they usually are if the explanation can assume a knowledge of maths and a facility with abstraction.”

- What is it like to have an understanding of very advanced mathematics? - Quora (via felixsalmon)

Wouldn’t this hold true for any true field of knowledge? X for anthropologists/computer scientists/chefs/chemists? Perhaps math’s abstraction is more suited to this tact, but a presumed metaphoric foundation will speed any instruction.

Pre-approved clothing: “C&A, a Brazilian clothing...

Fri, 11 May 2012 12:20:00 -0400

Pre-approved clothing: “C&A, a Brazilian clothing retailer has put small digital displays on the hangers in its stores and shows actually Facebook Likes for a piece of clothing.”

Questions and thoughts:

I’m no fashion-expert, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t how trends work. Isn’t the ideal goal to buy something with 0 Likes only to have it skyrocket after your purchase, proving your influence and/or prescience? I guess it comes down to whether people want to generate approval or simply associate with it.
How would this be tied to pricing? Likes indicate demand, but they also indicate the eventual conformity of an item. And would a low liked completely undercut any price tag?
My inner teenager is avoiding this like the plague.

(Via GigaOm)

If I were the beef industry’s PR lead, my pink slime...

Fri, 11 May 2012 10:53:00 -0400

If I were the beef industry’s PR lead, my pink slime tactic would be avoiding the words ‘pink slime’ at all costs. Also I wouldn’t pick URLs that spur questions like, “Why would they have to make a whole website dedicated to that?”

Plus, that URL is probably only a typo away from some rather NSFW sites. I’m surprised it was still available in 2012.

"Those who are saying the game is changing for the worse, well, they don’t have a father who..."

Thu, 10 May 2012 15:06:02 -0400

“Those who are saying the game is changing for the worse, well, they don’t have a father who can’t remember his name because of the game. I’m pretty sure if everybody had to wake with their dad not knowing his name, not knowing his kids’ name, not being able to function at a normal rate after football, they would understand that the game needs to change. If it doesn’t there are going to be more players, more great players, being affected by the things that we know of and aren’t changing. That’s not right.”

- Junior Seau on whether football is becoming too soft.

About that Logic...

Wed, 09 May 2012 17:15:00 -0400

About that Logic...:

You’ll go far with leaders like this, North Carolina:

Tami Fitzgerald, who heads the pro-amendment group Vote FOR Marriage NC, said she believes the initiative awoke a silent majority of more active voters in the future.

“I think it sends a message to the rest of the country that marriage is between one man and one woman,” Fitzgerald said at a celebration Tuesday night. “The whole point is simply that you don’t rewrite the nature of God’s design based on the demands of a group of adults.”

Just so we’re clear: the head of a group called “Vote for Marriage” is against making decisions based on “the demands of a group of adults”.

Sina Weibo updates its "Community Conventions"

Wed, 09 May 2012 16:12:00 -0400

Sina Weibo updates its "Community Conventions":

Of special note is article 13:

Article 13: Users have the right to publish information, but may not publish any information that:

Opposes the basic principles established by the constitution

Harms the unity, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of the nation

Reveals national secrets, endangers national security, or threatens the the honor or interests of the nation

Incites ethnic hatred or ethnic discrimination, undermines ethnic unity, or harms ethnic traditions and customs

Promotes evil teachings and superstitions

Spreads rumors, disrupts social order, and destroys societal stability

Promotes illicit activity, gambling, violence, or calls for the committing of crimes

Calls for disruption of social order through illegal gatherings, formation of organizations, protests, demonstrations, mass gatherings and assemblies

Has other content which is forbidden by laws, administrative regulations and national regulations.

(Via Caijing English, via China Digital Times)

Shell Apps and Silver Bullets

Wed, 09 May 2012 12:38:00 -0400

Shell Apps and Silver Bullets:

90wpm:

Web technology is great for many things. Replicating a native app experience is not one of them.

If you’re thinking of going with HTML5 for your company’s app, read this and think again. Great arguments from someone who seems to know their ass from a hole in the ground.

AKA: don’t judge a framework/language/technique by its demo app.

This not only applies to HTML5, but also to bridge efforts like Ruby Motion. Sure, it’s crazy simple to write an example app, but once your app grows to a practical size, and you start spelunking in the API, the benefits of the bridge becomes moot.

However: the writer’s Facebook example is poorly chosen. FB’s app is largely HTML5, and for their specific situation this makes a lot of sense.

Update: Pete Warden (who is much better qualified to address this than I) responds much more vigorously (and convincingly) against this article’s claims, especially with regard to HTML5 performance claims.

"Born in Los Angeles, he was raised in the Mojave Desert, and was inspired at an early age by the..."

Wed, 09 May 2012 11:02:10 -0400

“Born in Los Angeles, he was raised in the Mojave Desert, and was inspired at an early age by the humming tone caused by wind blown across telephone wires.”

- Ambient composer Harold Budd has a fantastic Wikipedia lede.

The Sun, as shot by Alan Friedman

Wed, 09 May 2012 10:28:48 -0400

The Sun, as shot by Alan Friedman

Abraham Lincoln Filed a Patent for Facebook in 1845

Tue, 08 May 2012 14:11:00 -0400

Abraham Lincoln Filed a Patent for Facebook in 1845:

Nate St. Pierre writes:

Lincoln was requesting a patent for “The Gazette,” a system to “keep People aware of Others in the Town.” He laid out a plan where every town would have its own Gazette, named after the town itself. He listed the Springfield Gazette as his Visual Appendix, an example of the system he was talking about. Lincoln was proposing that each town build a centrally located collection of documents where “every Man may have his own page, where he might discuss his Family, his Work, and his Various Endeavors.”

He went on to propose that “each Man may decide if he shall make his page Available to the entire Town, or only to those with whom he has established Family or Friendship.” Evidently there was to be someone overseeing this collection of documents, and he would somehow know which pages anyone could look at, and which ones only certain people could see (it wasn’t quite clear in the application). Lincoln stated that these documents could be updated “at any time deemed Fit or Necessary,” so that anyone in town could know what was going on in their friends’ lives “without being Present in Body.”

A patent request for Facebook, filed by Abraham Lincoln in 1845.

I’ve long argued Facebook is working towards natural or timeless (for lack of better words) human interaction. That their central idea is relevant in any age should not be surprising.

(Though it is astounding Lincoln was imagining a nearly identical privacy system.)

(Via The Next Web)

Update: And it looks like a hoax! And we all fell for it… Patents, Facebook, and the Lincoln-twist. Gets ‘em every time.

Update, Part 2: The Atlantic explains it all.

When will legal writing become a programming language?

Tue, 08 May 2012 11:12:36 -0400

New York Magazine reports on an interesting development in computer/human relations:

The Southern District of New York recently became the nation’s first federal court to explicitly approve the use of predictive coding, a computer-assisted document review that turns much of the legal grunt work currently done by underemployed attorneys over to the machines.

Last month, U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew J. Peck endorsed a plan by the parties in Da Silva Moore v. Publicis Groupe — a sex discrimination case filed against the global communications agency by five former employees — to use predictive coding to review more than 3 million electronic documents in order to determine whether they should be produced in discovery, the process through which parties exchange relevant information before trial.

Analysts expect decisions like this to open the door for an eruption of computer analyzed legal work.

A few questions:

How long will it be before lawyers are explicitly trained to write in a way which will be favorably interpreted by software?
After this happens, how long will it be before legal writing evolves into a scripting language, more code to be compiled than words to be understood by humans? When will the first O’Reilly book be published for this language?
Will computer/human standards emerge for other fields or discourses? SEO copywriting is already on its way. What other fields might follow suit? Sports journalism?

"How do you write for children? I really have never figured that out. So I decided to just ignore it."

Tue, 08 May 2012 08:37:03 -0400

“How do you write for children? I really have never figured that out. So I decided to just ignore it.”

- Maurice Sendak, who died today at 83, discusses creativity and his latest work, ‘Bumble-Ardy,’ in an interview with The Atlantic. Read more.

"In something called the Orion Molecular Cloud, truly vast amounts of water are being produced. How..."

Mon, 07 May 2012 20:46:42 -0400

“In something called the Orion Molecular Cloud, truly vast amounts of water are being produced. How much? Incredibly, Fishman explains, “the cloud is making sixty Earth waters every twenty-four hours”—or, in simpler terms, “there is enough water being formed sufficient to fill all of Earth’s oceans every twenty-four minutes.” This is occurring, however, in an area “420 times the size of our solar system.””

- BLDGBLOG