Top of the pageNews linksA friend recently directed me to Steve Quayle where he’d found a link about Destroying your hard drive is the only way to stop this super-advanced malware (PC World). The article about viruses is a bit hyperbolic but mostly legit. The original web site, though, has some really interesting stuff on it.

It’s actually not too poorly laid-out—Cymax Media made it and their own homepage isn’t too terrible—but the emphasis is hard to parse.

What’s more important than the news links that the site ostensibly... [More]

The main UI, with a batch process in-progressI have a reputation for complaining about software all the time. I feel justified in doing so because most software is disappointing bordering on hateful. I was a proud member and contributor to Hates Software for years.[1]

Therefore, when the opportunity presents itself to laud a piece of software, I feel that it’s my solemn duty to do so.

Introducing Adapter for OS X and Windows. It converts images, audio and video files from one format to another. That is, it puts a lovely UI on top of the... [More]

For the next time the batteries in your Bluetooth mouse die:

Press Ctrl + F2 to focus the Apple menu. From there, you can navigate using the arrow keys.

Found by luck when looking for old comments of mine in the Hates-Software archives.

Excerpt from the comedy routine “Einstein/Weinstein,” by the Yiddish comedy duo Shimon Dzigan and Yisroel Shumacher.

The very short post ”Holdouts” On Argentine Bonds, Did Not Own the Bonds at Time of Default by Dean Baker (CEPR) corrects the New York Times on their chronic mischaracterization of the Argentine default situation that drags on long after the default actually occurred (in 2001).

The NYT likes to make us think that the battle is between a noble group of American investors which generously invested in Argentina, only to be robbed a country with no work ethic and a casual willingness to declare default rather than pay... [More]

In part I, we discussed applications—which provide the model and data provider—and sessions—which encapsulate high-level data context.

In this article, we’re going to take a look at the command types & inputs

1. Applications & Sessions
2. Command types & inputs[1]
3. The Data Pipeline
4. Builders & Commands
5. Contexts and Connections
6. Sessions, resources & objects

Overview

Major Components of the Data
DriverBefore we can discuss how the pipeline processes a given command, we should discuss what kinds of commands the data driver... [More]

This article is more a compendium of notes I took while reading this book. It includes citations I found interesting or enlightening of particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation. In others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to... [More]

A fine pickle by Salman Rushdie (The Guardian)

“In an interview conducted at the Telluride film festival last autumn, Boyle, when asked why he had chosen a project so different from his usual material, answered that he had never been to India and knew nothing about it, so he thought this project was a great opportunity. Listening to him, I imagined an Indian film director making a movie about New York low-life and saying that he had done so because he knew nothing about New York and had indeed never been there. He would have... [More]”

In defense of Islam (3QuarksDaily) cites a same-named blog post by Ross Douthat (New York Times) in which he uses quite-dense prose to obfuscate the central message: he argues that the fanaticism of ISIS rises directly from Islamic scripture and shouldn’t be treated as necessarily crazy. The first step in ending a needless war is the recognition that the enemy is not crazy, but Douthat’s interpretation is more insidious, I think.

“Western analysts tend to understate not only the essential religiosity of ISIS’s worldview, but the extent to... [More]”

One part of Quino that has undergone quite a few changes in the last few versions is the data driver. The data driver is responsible for CRUD: create, read, update and delete operations. One part of this is the ORM—the object-relational mapper—that marshals data to and from relational databases like PostgreSql, SQL Server and SQLite.

We’re going to cover a few topics in this series:

1. Applications & Sessions
2. The Data Pipeline
3. Builders & Commands
4. Contexts and Connections
5. Sessions, resources... [More]

Transcribed from Clasps:

“The beach in San Francisco is not like Brian Wilson’s endless-fucking-summer beach.

“Beaches in southern California, people go to ‘em and they’re surfing and they’re having picnics.

“Or if you go to a beach in Hawaii, people are playing volleyball or – what do you call those boards that you stand on and you have a stick and you look like a douchebag? What are those? – paddleboards. Yeah. Those are awesome, right? And people are out there doing that and shit.
... [More]”

We’ve been using ReSharper at Encodo since version 4. And we regularly use a ton of other software from JetBrains[1]—so we’re big fans.

How to Upgrade R#

As long-time users of ReSharper, we’ve become accustomed to the following pattern of adoption for new major versions:

EAP

1. Read about cool new features and improvements on the JetBrains blog
2. Check out the EAP builds page
3. Wait for star ratings to get higher than 2 out of 5
4. Install EAP of next major version
5. Run into issues/problems that make... [More]

The article The Corruption of Football by Joshua Sperber (CounterPunch) offers a far better analysis of the final offensive play by the Seahawks—the one that led to an interception—than I could ever have hoped to make.

Sperber starts off by dissecting Emmitt Smith and Dave Zirin’s supposition that foul play must have somehow been involved. That is, “[t]he theory of foul play of course presupposes that Carroll made not only the wrong call but a completely nonsensical one that could only be attributable to corruption […]”.... [More]

This is a video by the always-interesting and funny Sean Carroll on physics (naturally) and on things that we know about life, death, entropy and the afterlife. It’s a really interesting talk that is very technically deep while still being more accessible than other, similar talks.

Emperor Has No Clothes Award Acceptance Speech by Sean Carroll (YouTube)

Near the beginning, he addresses heaven and the afterlife and the explanations that non-scientists have embraced.

What to make of the evidence for an afterlife?

Some ill-defined metaphysical substance, not... [More]

HRW is clearly in the pocket of the U.S. government. From a recent tweet, which linked to the article Saudi Arabia: King’s Reform Agenda Unfulfilled (HRW),

“King Abdullah’s reign brought about marginal advances for women but failed to secure the fundamental rights of Saudi citizens to free expression, association, and assembly. […]”

King Abdullah's Twipitaph from HRW

The verb employed here is not accurate. You cannot fail at something without actually trying it. In the main tweet, they do it again, characterizing a purely... [More]

I have not seen American Sniper for the same reason that I have not seen Act of Valor, Zero Dark Thirty or Lone Survivor. I did watch one season of Homeland and lasted that long only because my watchin’ buddy refused to stop mid-season. This type of entertainment is mostly just the U.S. military advertising itself through Hollywood’s mouth. I’d rather read the news and come to my own conclusions without the hagiographies.

I watched Battleship ‘cause it had aliens and The Hurt Locker ‘cause the... [More]

After a few days of coverage, the Charlie Hebdo attack had already started to resonate with the same vibrant religious fervor in France as the 9–11 attacks quickly did in America. Through the entire (mainstream and largely fringe) spectrum, though, there was an utter lack of awareness that what happened at those offices was just another normal day in the many places where the West exerts its influence.

Just how sympathetic do the French suppose an average Libyan would be to Parisian wails... [More]

1. Bill Burr: I’m Sorry You Feel That Way (2014) — 10/10
2. Killer Joe (2011) — 7/10
3. Bringing Out the Dead (1999) — 8/10
4. Transcendence (2014) — 6/10
5. They Live! (1988) — 8/10
6. I Spit on Your Grave (1978) — 4/10
7. In the Mouth of Madness (1994) — 7/10
8. The Devils (1971) — 9/10
9. The Secret Of Nikola Tesla (1980) — 7/10
10. L’Artiste (2011) — 9/10
11. An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) — 7/10
12. Fast & Furious AKA Fast and Furious 4 (2009) — 6/10

Bill Burr: I’m Sorry You Feel That Way (2014)... [More]

1. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) — 6/10
2. 50/50 (2011) — 7/10
3. The Graduate (1967) — 6/10
4. Red Dragon (2002) — 8/10
5. The Final Cut (2004) — 6/10
6. The Hundred-foot Journey (2014) — 7/10
7. Magic in the Moonlight (2014) — 7/10
8. American Graffiti (1973) — 5/10
9. Enter the Void (2009) — 6/10
10. Lucy (2014) — 6/10
11. Big Night (1996) — 8/10
12. Freeway (1996) — 4/10
13. One Hour Photo (2002) — 7/10
14. The Bank Job (2008) — 6/10
15. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) — 8/10
16. Happy People – A... [More]

A few month ago, a friend sent a link to this article, The Islamic State Panic by Michael Brenner (Huffington Post). I found this response in my inbox.

tl;dr: Michael Brenner makes the point that the West—especially America—simplifies foreign policy to the detriment of all. He argues that they should stop doing this. I heartily concur and feel that they should, in fact, stop blowing things up entirely.

HuffPo? Really? Ok, fine. Ignore stupid chain of articles littering the right-hand side. Avoid long diatribe about our... [More]

I’ve had a Garmin bike computer for years, so my data is stored “in the cloud” at Garmin Connect. This application underwent an overhaul several months ago. I gave it a chance for a while, but it appears that the redesign was only skin-deep. The look has changed, but some of the basic stuff just doesn’t work.

Upgrades are hard

Even the upgrade to the new style—”Classic” to “Modern”—is not consistent. Months after telling the site to upgrade to the modern style, I still end up on pages in... [More]

tl;dr: The login requirements for all of your linked applications and web sites should be 100% consistent. Data-entry on a Smart TV is hard enough; don’t make your users have to enter their login data 20 times.

No matter how amazing our technologies become, they still fail in so many small ways that no-one seems to want to talk about. We manage to solve all of the hard problems in software development and then let our products die on the homestretch. Tiny failures turn what would be wonderful... [More]

1. Lee Camp: We Are Nothing (2014)
2. Godzilla (2014) — 6/10
3. Game Change (2012) — 7/10
4. The Hunger Games (2012) — 8/10
5. Central do Brasil (1998) — 6/10
6. Resident Evil: Extinction (2007) — 6/10
7. Babylon A.D. (2008) — 6/10
8. Immortals (2011) — 5/10
9. Man on a Ledge (2012) — 5/10
10. Last Night (1998) — 6/10
11. 12:01 (1993) — 4/10
12. Bronson (2008) — 7/10
13. Spring Breakers (2012) — 5/10
14. Waydowntown (2000) — 5/10
15. Greg Proops: Live at Musso & Frank (2014) — 9/10
16. Die... [More]

1. Man of Steel (2013) — 5/10
2. The Birdcage (1996) — 6/10
3. Bad Words (2013) — 8/10
4. The Other Woman (2014) — 3/10
5. Life of Pi (2013) — 8/10
6. The Cold Light of Day (2012) — 4/10
7. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) — 5/10
8. The Wire (Season 5) (2008) — 10/10
9. True Detective (2014) — 10/10
10. Kingpin (1996) — 6/10
11. Interstellar (2014) — 9/10
12. X–Men: Days of Future Past (2014) — 6/10
13. Joe Dirt (2001) — 5/10
14. Barbarians at the Gate (1993) — 5/10
15. Battle of... [More]

I’d heard that the article In Conversation: Chris Rock by Frank Rich (Vulture) including some groundbreaking statements on race by Chris Rock. I like Chris Rock and I like his standup. He’s a comedian, though, so while his niggers vs. black people bit was funny at the time, in retrospect, it’s a savage attack on the poor and uneducated. Still, admittedly funny at the time.

On Bill Maher

Seeing that Frank Rich of the New York Times had interviewed him was not encouraging. So let’s see what Rock has to say. It starts... [More]

I haven’t really weighed in on this topic because I’m still digesting it. There are so many interlocking parts and so many reasons for why things are not right that an off-the-cuff article just doesn’t do the topic justice. A lot of what you read gives the impression that the fact that people are rioting in one town in the Midwest is a good excuse for trotting out more unsavory opinions in the guise of chastening those thugs and hoodlums who can’t abide by the rule of law.

If you assumed that... [More]