It’s well-known that Apple runs a walled garden. Apple makes its developers pay a yearly fee to get access to that garden. In fairness, though, they do provide some seriously nice-looking APIs for their iOS and OS X platforms. They’ve been doing this for years, as listed in the post iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do by Tal Bereznitskey. It argues that the new stuff in iOS 7 is compelling enough to make developers consider dropping support for all older operating systems. And this for pragmatic reasons, such... [More]

1. 11/22/63 (2011)
2. Billionaires and Bandits (2012)
3. Uniqueness and Reference Immutability for Safe Parallelism (Extended Version) (2012)
4. Talk to the Hand (2005)
5. The Half-made World (2010)
6. Die Stadt am Ende der Zeit (2008) (de)
7. The Alchemist (1992) (en/original in Portuguese in 1988)
8. The Great Gatsby (1926)
9. The Next 100 Years (2009)
10. Common Sense (1776)
11. We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)
12. Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls (2013)
13. The Rise of Ransom City (2013)
14. Flood (2008)
15. Main Street (1920)
16. Doctor... [More]

The article Netflix’s dumbed-down algorithms by Felix Salmon (Reuters) discusses a change in focus in recent years at Netflix—actually since they switched to emphasizing streaming content over DVD delivery.

Netflix has started to position itself more as a television company than a “great movies” company because of purely economic reasons. As Salmon puts it, “Netflix’s big problem, it seems to me, is that it can’t afford the content that its subscribers most want to watch.” The big blockbusters that people actual... [More]

Dara Ó Briain is London-based Irish comedian with a show on BBC2 called Dara Ó Briain’s Science Club. His act is a good deal bawdier on stage though the focus remains on promulgating a pro-science agenda. In the segment below, he discusses a show he did with physicist Brian Cox in which the topic of astrology just happened to arise.

Some choice tidbits from this segment:

“The astrologers get going on Twitter and write, ‘if you were really a scientist, then you’d be more open-minded.‘ And I... [More]”

A story of Fukushima radiation is making the rounds, reported variously as Navy sailors have radiation sickness after Japan rescue by Laura Italiano and Kerry Murtha (NY Post) and 70+ USS Ronald Reagan Crew Members, Half Suffering From Cancer, to Sue TEPCO For Fukushima Radiation Poisoning by Brandon Baker (EcoWatch) (with a re-post at AlterNet). Other source cited in the articles are the Washington Times and FOX News, paragons of journalistic integrity.

The user comments on the article are uniformly horrible and make you despair for mankind. They are a cornucopia... [More]

1. Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005) — 6/10
2. eXistenZ (1999) — 9/10
3. Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie (2004) — 6/10
4. The Wobblies (1979) — 8/10
5. The Last Mountain (2011) — 8/10
6. Kill the Irishman (2011) — 8/10
7. XIII − The Conspiracy (2008) — 3/10
8. Defamation (2009) — 9/10
9. Mark of Cain (2001) — 9/10
10. Entre les Murs (2008) — 9/10
11. Redemption (2013) — 7/10
12. William S. Burroughs – A Man Within (2010) — 5/10
13. I Am Bruce Lee (2012) — 7/10
14. A Carol for Another Christmas... [More]

I recently stumbled upon some Essays from the funniest man in Microsoft Research by Raymond (Old New Thing). He is such a funny writer that this article, against convention, will consist mostly of citations rather than an even mix of citations and paraphrasing that I naturally consider to be much more lucid and pithy. I quote at length to do the material justice, for documentation and to ensure that you all download the PDFs to see if there is more where that came from (there is). All emphases have been added.

Mobile... [More] by James Mickens (Microsoft Research)

I was recently sent this link, presumably because I enjoy short nature documentaries.

Man vs. Wild − Eating Giant Larva by Bear Grylls (YouTube)

Some thoughts:

• Do larvae really get bigger the older they get? Isn’t a larva a limited stage of development? How is it that some are so much larger than others? Isn’t it more likely to be related to food intake rather than age?[1]
• People are weird. If Bear were to eat fluffy baby animals (say chicks) rather than slimy ones (larvae in this case), he would be drummed off the air.
• Bear Grylls: Allergic to Bees... [More]

Why buses represent democracy in action by Enrique Peñalosa (TED)

The title is a way of saying that building bus lines before four-lane highways for cars is inherently more democratic because more people use the buses. It has less to do with democracy and more to do with social fairness and providing for the basic rights to which civilized peoples are entitles. We are talking about a form of socialism here. Instead of letting the elites bend the will of the market with their gravitational wells of overwhelming buying... [More]

1. Rampart (2011) — 7/10
2. World War Z (2013) — 7/10
3. Hesher (2010) — 9/10
4. Sleep Dealer (2008) — 7/10
5. Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (2001) — 8/10
6. Looper (2012) — 7/10
7. Checkpoint: Everyday Life in Palestine (2003) — 7/10
8. Human Resources (2011) — 8/10
9. Oblivion (2013) — 8/10
10. Gift – Jane’s Addiction (1993) — 4/10
11. Nothing like the Holidays (2008) — 6/10
12. Garden State (2004) — 7/10
13. Limitless (2011) — 7/10
14. Pacific Rim (2013) — 9/10
15. The Central Park Five (2013) — 8/10
16. Ghost... [More]

So there is, apparently, a redneck actor on a fake-reality show called “Duck Dynasty” who turns out to be, in real life, an anti-gay bigot with completely humdrum and bigoted ideas of everyone’s place in society.

I’ll let you gather your wits as you recover from your shock.

Also unsurprisingly, he thinks that white guys with beards, guns and inappropriate sunglasses sit at the top of the heap.

A&E, which broadcasts this paragon to culture, pulled on his leash and suspended him for a little... [More]

Encodo Systems AG started work on its metadata framework Quino in late 2007. We’ve used it successfully in many projects, from Windows desktop applications to standalone servers, Windows services and web sites. It has grown considerably since its inception and the core concept of keeping the focus of an application on its metadata has stood the test of time quite well.

The recent article Code-first O/R mapping is actually rather silly by Frans Bouma recounts how the lead developer and architect of another... [More]

I just recently came across this bit by Bill Hicks[1] again. It illuminates what for me makes a good comic. Observational humor is only the very beginning. What makes a comedian memorable for me—what puts him or her on my all-time best list—is a mixture of good storytelling and philosophy as well as a cynical awareness of the utter nonsense that is the human condition. If you mix that with an ability to deliver hope from the depths of eyes-open cynical awareness, then you’ve got gold. A pity... [More]

1. The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 the Third Tower (2008) — 6/10
2. The Name of the Rose (1986) — 7/10
3. Django Unchained (2012) — 8/10
4. The Power Principle (parts I, II and III) (2012) — 8/10
5. Bag of Bones (2012) — 7/10
6. Legend (1985) — 7/10
7. Van Helsing (2004) — 5/10
8. League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis (2013) — 7/10
9. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) — 5/10
10. 28 Weeks Later (2007) — 5/10
11. Whiteout (2009) — 5/10
12. Gary Gulman: No Can Defend (2012) — 6/10
13. Insomnia (2002) — 7/10... [More]

The article Spend, don’t Mend by George Monbiot sums up the season as follows,

“Have people become so immune to fellow feeling that they are prepared to spend £46 on a jar for dog treats or £6.50 a bang on personalised crackers, rather than give the money to a better cause?(7) Or is this the Western world’s potlatch, spending ridiculous sums on conspicuously useless gifts to enhance our social status? […]

“To service this peculiar form of mental illness, we must wear down the knap of the Earth, ream the... [More]”

On Codecademy, you can learn to program in various languages. It starts off very slowly and is targeted at non-technical users. That’s their claim anyway—the material in the courses I looked at ramps up pretty quickly.

Anyway, the interesting thing I saw was in their introductory test. It struck me as a subtle way to get you to enter your email address. I’d just recently discussed this on a project I’m working on: how can we make it fun for the user to enter personal information? The goal is... [More]

Whether there is such a thing as truly objective journalism—reporting without any explicit or implicit bias—is the subject of the article Is Glenn Greenwald the Future of News? (New York Times). It’s a conversation between Bill Keller—editor of the New York Times—and Glenn Greenwald—currently of the Guardian and, most recently, the driving force behind reporting on NSA spying and distributing Edward Snowden’s revelations.

Greenwald argues quite convincingly that there is only journalism and... [More]

The following article was originally published on the Encodo blogs and is cross-published here.

The following article outlines a solution to what may end up being a temporary problem. The conditions are very specific: no server-side logic; HTTP authentication; AppCache as it is implemented by the target platforms—Safari Mobile and Google Chrome—in late 2012/early 2013. The solution is not perfect but it’s workable. We’re sharing it here in the hope that it can help someone else or serve... [More]

In order to provide a service, a company must generate enough revenue to cover costs. Rent has to be covered, utility bills must be paid and employees must get their salaries. Let’s assume that the main goal of the business is actually not to make the owners rich, but rather to provide the service and also provide employment. This is what we are trained to think of when we think of a small business.

Another goal of our economy in general is growth. When a company grows, it can provide its... [More]

The article Ross Douthat: Conservative Who’s Scared of a Free Market in Health Care by Dean Baker (Beat the Press) states the case with pharmaceutical patents very clearly, succinctly explaining how purported libertarian and small-government conservatives sometimes argue for government regulation. This case is a perfect example of why it’s OK to ignore the opinions of people like Douthat: they have shown time and again that they are either (A) corrupt, in it for themselves and their friends or (B) ignorant and possibly... [More]

Russell Brand has been in the media of late, the first time because of an acceptance speech at an awards ceremony sponsored by Hugo Boss, during which he reminded everyone from whom their sponsor had gotten his inauspicious start (the S.S. in the 1930s).

In response to that hullabaloo, he responded with the relatively well-written essay Russell Brand and the GQ awards: ‘It’s amazing how absurd it seems’ (Guardian), in which he wrote,

“I could see the room dividing as I spoke. I could hear the laughter... [More]”

Microsoft just recently released Visual Studio 2013, which includes Entity Framework 6 and introduces a lot of new features. It reminded me of the following query that EF generated for me, way, way back when it was still version 3.5. Here’s hoping that they’ve taken care of this problem since then.

So, the other day EF (v3.5) seemed to be taking quite a while to execute a query on SQL Server. This was a pretty central query and involved a few joins and restrictions, but wasn’t anything too... [More]

The most difficult technical problems to solve are the ones that you don’t notice. The workflow and tools to which you’ve become accustomed are terrible, but they’re so ingrained that you might actually find yourself unthinkingly defending them because that’s just how it has to be.

Why is your DVR’s fast-forwarding feature stuck in the past?

Fast-forwarding and rewinding digital movies is one of those things.

Many people have DVRs now—provided, often enough, by the cable company... [More]

The article NASA’s Plutonium Problem Could End Deep-Space Exploration by Dave Mosher (Wired) discusses a resource shortage that will be hard to address: plutonium.

Plutonium was produced in much larger quantities during the nuclear-arms race of the mid to late 20th century. Though the arms race was morally reprehensible and fantastically expensive, a byproduct was that there was more plutonium available for scientific endeavor. Pound for pound, it is unparalleled as a long-lasting energy source. As of the end of... [More]

This is an article I wrote many years ago, when GTA IV had just come out and I played the game almost to completion.[1] I never got around to publishing it, though. Now, with GTA V out for the PlayStation and X-Box, I dug up this post and figured I’d clean it up and post it anyway.

From 5 Reasons GTA IV Is The Worst Great Game Ever Made (Cracked):

“…there’s simply no way to accurately tell everybody that this is the most jaw dropping game you’ve ever played, and at the same time you fucking hate it so... [More]”

1. Jewel of the Nile (1985) — 5/10
2. Snakes on a Plane (2006) — 4/10
3. Devil (2010) — 4/10
4. Veep (2012/13) — 10/10
5. Freaks and Geeks (1999) — 9/10
6. Escape from New York (1981) — 7/10
7. Under the Dome (2013) — 6/10
8. Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (2012/2013) — 8/10
9. The International (2009) — 7/10
10. Raging Bull (1980) — 7/10
11. Red (2010) — 8/10
12. The Mechanic (2011) — 8/10
13. Apocalypse Now (1979) — 9/10
14. Natural Born Killers (1994) — 9/10
15. Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) — 3/10
16. Sunshine... [More]

Argo (2012) — 6/10

Ben Affleck directs and stars alongside John Goodman, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin and Zeljko Ivanek in this movie about the CIA pretending to make a movie in order to smuggle US-embassy employees out of Iran during the hostage crisis. The cast is good and the idea isn’t bad but the execution is a bit slow, especially in the second act, where I felt that they didn’t sustain the suspense well at all. The direction and cinematography were quite good, but not exceptional for... [More]

A little while ago, I wrote about my experiences with the SBB automated ticket machines. The online experience is somewhat better but still has some mysterious bugs and omissions—it’s hard to believe that this software has been in use for years—and by millions of users.

Where’s the Zürich Hauptbahnhof?

One example comes from the list of suggestions returned when a user types in the “from” or “to” field in the route finder. One day, I entered what I thought was an easy match, one of the... [More]

This diagram of the branches of economics by Zach Weiner (SMBC) sums it up very nicely.

SMBC 2013-09-19