2010 Feb 2, 2:49A small number of select scans at higher resolution
flickr photo army-man scan humor 2010 Feb 1, 8:39"Steven Pinker charts the decline of violence from Biblical times to the present, and argues that, though it may seem illogical and even obscene, given Iraq and Darfur, we are living in the most
peaceful time in our species' existence." Working up towards Forever Peace?
video history violence culture ted steven-pinker game-theory 2010 Feb 1, 7:57Interesting Q&A on TED plus Chris Anderson's list of favorite TED talks.
ted video qa chris-anderson interview reddit 2010 Jan 29, 3:54
Raymond Chen has some thought experiments useful for discovering various kinds of stupidity in software design:
Tim Berners-Lee's principles of Web design includes my favorite: Test of Independent Invention. This has a thought experiment containing the construction of the MMM (Multi-Media Mesh) with
MRIs (Media Resource Identifiers) and MMTP (Muli-Media Transport Protocol).
The Internet design principles (RFC 1958) includes the Robustness Principle: be strict when sending and tolerant when receiving. A good one, but applied too liberally can lead to interop issues. For instance, consider web browsers.
Imagine one browser becomes so popular that web devs create web pages and just test out their pages in this popular browser. They don't ensure their pages conform to standards and accidentally end
up depending on the manner in which this popular browser tolerantly accepts non-standard input. This non-standard behavior ends up as de facto standard and future updates to the standard
essentially has had decisions made for it.
technical design principles software development 2010 Jan 29, 10:28"Is your browser configuration rare or unique? If so, web sites may be able to track you, even if you limit or disable cookies." Examines HTTP headers and browser features and reports if your
configuration is unique (mine is). Good info for anyone looking at creating an anonymous browsing plugin or service
web security privacy eff education identity surveillance cookies cookie anonymity anonymous technical 2010 Jan 29, 9:18book houdini read todo 2010 Jan 28, 4:28Photos of locations in present day with aging photos of the same location overlaid. Cool idea, nice execution, and also does that lady have a pet rabbit on a leash?
art photo flickr history 2010 Jan 28, 2:36Amazon's Mechanical Turkers enact the Prisoners Dilemma.
amazon mechanical-turk psychology economics prisoners-dilemma 2010 Jan 27, 9:56Some of the new security features in Chrome: XSS filter, HTTPS only, HTML5 origin header, and HTML5 postMessage function.
html5 html script xss csrf chrome browser google security web technical 2010 Jan 25, 5:25"...file a complaint with the World Trade Organization, contesting China’s internet censorship as a breach of the international trade rules to which China, as a WTO member, is subject. The US can
argue that China’s “Great Firewall”–a system of filters and bottlenecks that effectively shutters the country within its own intranet–is an illegal restraint on international trade because it bars
foreign companies from competing, via the internet, in the vast Chinese market."
economics wto politics google china internet censorship us 2010 Jan 21, 4:25You cannot argue with his logic.
humor video garlic vampire news fail fail-blog 2010 Jan 20, 8:28GZip vs Deflate execution speeds. Deflate found to be much faster in particular cases and about the same in the rest.
gzip deflate performance technical http compression programming development blog 2010 Jan 19, 2:21"In the latest of an occasional series of demoscene-related posts on GameSetWatch before, AteBit's Paul 'EvilPaul' Grenfell presents a multi-part retrospective on 2009's best demos - starting out
with the top ten real-time PC demos of the year."
demo demoscene graphic game videogame video programming 2010 Jan 19, 1:49Fonts are back in! "In this collection, we’d like to present an overview of 50 of the best Free, New and High-quality Modern, Handwritten, grunge, Cartoon style fonts for clean and professional
designs in 2009."
font typography text download design free 2010 Jan 18, 3:24"UVB-76 is the callsign of a shortwave radio station that usually broadcasts on the frequency 4625 kHz (AM full carrier). It's known among radio listeners by the nickname The Buzzer. It features a
short, monotonous buzz tone (help·info), repeating at a rate of approximately 25 tones per minute, for 24 hours per day. The station has been observed since around 1982.[1] In rare occasions, the
buzzer signal is interrupted and a voice transmission in Russian takes place. Only four such events have been noted. There is much speculation; however, the actual purpose of this station remains
unknown." Inspiration for Lost?
radio russia mystery 2010 Jan 15, 7:05Section 4 has a summary table with all the various special use IPv4 address blocks.
reference rfc ipv4 ip internet ietf 2010 Jan 15, 3:19"The .arpa domain is the “Address and Routing Parameter Area” domain and is designated to be used exclusively for Internet-infrastructure purposes. It is administered by the IANA in cooperation with
the Internet technical community under the guidance of the Internet Architecture Board. For the management guidelines and operational requirements of the .arpa domain, see RFC 3172."
technical arpa dns domain zone internet rfc reference iana 2010 Jan 14, 2:54Wow: "If the report's findings are correct, it suggests that the government of China has been engaged for months in a massive campaign of industrial espionage against US companies."
internet google china security politics privacy 2010 Jan 12, 9:02"We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could
operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China."
google china politics privacy censorship internet web search 2010 Jan 6, 2:17Not shocking that papers freely available on the Internet are cited more than those not freely available... "Articles whose authors make them Open Access (OA) by self-archiving them online are cited
significantly more than articles accessible only to subscribers. ... not because of a quality bias from authors self-selecting what to make OA, but because of a quality advantage, from users
self-selecting what to use and cite, freed by OA from the constraints of selective accessibility to subscribers only."
via:bengoldacre science paper citation internet
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