December 2010
97 posts
Texas man becomes human speed-trap warning sign →
If he’s out on the road and spots a police officer in a speed trap, Mitchell will backtrack to a spot ahead of the trap, then don a bright orange “Speed Trap Ahead” t-shirt in order to alert other motorists of the waiting radar run around the bend. While the Austin American-Statesman notes that it’s illegal to warn others of an enforcement action, it is not illegal to...
At Bagram, War's Tragedy Yields Medical Advances →
U.S. deaths in Afghanistan topped 500 this year, with thousands more wounded. Many of the injured pass through the hospital at Bagram Air Field. Treating so many war wounds brings its own grim benefits: New data are helping save lives in ways that were impossible only a few years ago.
“All I can say, looking back, is that when history takes a look at the lives of...”
– ASCII by Jason Scott • Jason Scott is someone worth following. One of the strongest critics of the whole cloud computing movement, he’s invested ungodly amounts of time in rescuing content. And with regards to the Yahoo! thing – he’s already faced them once before, and helped saved millions of pages...
Retailers likely to see strong January sales →
Industry experts expect a strong start to 2011 as consumers carry their rediscovered love of shopping into January. East Coast consumers who were stranded at home by a blizzard the day after Christmas are likely to make up for lost time and, more generally, shoppers are still in the mood to splurge. “This will be the biggest January we’ve ever seen at retail,” said Gary...
Efforts to free trapped, injured skiers under way... →
More than 200 people were trapped and several others injured Tuesday after a ski lift broke down at Sugarloaf Ski Resort in Maine, causing several skiers to fall to the ground, a resort manager said.
Ethan Austin, a spokesman for the resort, said the derailment on one tower of the Spillway East lift happened around 10:30 a.m. ET, when the cable skipped over the edge of the pulley. Five of the...
Holiday sales hit pre-recession levels →
Retail sales rose 5.5% in the 50 days before Christmas, beating many estimates and reaching levels not seen since before the recession, according to MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse. Sales were up across the board, with apparel, jewelry and luxury merchandise leading the way. “For the past year or two, when I’ve seen growth in one area, it seems to come at the expense of...
Blizzard slows after-Christmas shopping →
A severe blizzard that closed East Coast airports on Sunday also had a chilling effect on day-after-Christmas shopping. Some analysts say the snowstorm marked an earlier-than-expected end to seasonal spending. Spending in the week after Christmas typically accounts for 15% of merchants’ overall holiday sales, according to NRF figures.
(via SmartBrief)
IBM announces solid-state memory breakthrough →
IBM announced what appears to be a breakthrough in its development of “racetrack” memory, which stores data by manipulating the magnetic state of regions — magnetic domain walls — within nanowires. The “radically new” storage technology could result in storage devices with the speed and reliability of flash memory, along with the low cost and storage capacity of magnetic disk drives, the...
Stock Trading in Private Companies Draws S.E.C.... →
A red-hot trading market has developed in the shares of the world’s leading social networking companies: Facebook, Twitter, Zynga and LinkedIn. What is unusual is that none of the companies are listed on a public stock exchange. Each is privately held.
Now, the Securities and Exchange Commission wants to learn more about the business of these stock trades. The agency has sent information...
“GQ: Should a man have any other hobbies besides looking fresh and blogging about...”
– The GQ Tumblr: Seven Questions For FuckYeahMensWear
Fucking golden. (via nedhepburn)
Karl Rove Suspected In Swedish-U.S. Political... →
nedhepburn:
The cases against Assange were dropped three months ago. Then reopened against the will of the women involved. By Karl Rove. So, there’s something. azspot:
. Rove’s resignation followed the scandalous Bush mid-term political purge of nine of the nation’s 93 powerful U.S. attorneys.
(via dailybrainfood)
Does this douche have no shame?
“What are the differences between Mark Zuckerberg and me? I give private...”
– Julian Assange (via infinite—igloos)
Outsmarted by Apple: Nokia Looks to Recover the... →
parislemon:
Reading this, I came away with two things that should be looked at as a cautionary tale by companies like Microsoft:
“Our problem was that we were simply too good at what we did,” explains Sebastian Nyström, who is in charge of applications and services at Nokia. “Even when Apple hit our vital nerve, we just kept on doing what we were doing. After all, we were still making a lot of...
Wikileaks Cables Show Extended Reach of DEA →
nedhepburn:
I could enforce the shit out of some pot right now. But seriously, folks.
The Drug Enforcement Administration has been transformed into a global intelligence organization with a reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation so expansive it has to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies, according to secret diplomatic...
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A Physicist Solves the City →
[West] saw the metropolis as a sprawling organism, similarly defined by its infrastructure. (The boulevard was like a blood vessel, the back alley a capillary.) This implied that the real purpose of cities, and the reason cities keep on growing, is their ability to create massive economies of scale, just as big animals do. After analyzing the first sets of city data — the physicists began with...
“I want to sponsor her for $0.49 a day”
– Ben
“Those Christmas cards are assholes!”
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An interview with the nativity innkeeper →
But you ended up letting them go out to the animal shed.
That was an accident.
How so?
Joe comes in and asks for a room, and I tell him we’re all out of rooms and have been for months. Foot races. Theater groupies. And such. And he says, come on, please. I’ve got a pregnant lady with me. And I say, you hear that down the hall? I’m full up with pregnant ladies. And he says, this...
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The Atlantic & NPR among best digital makeovers of... →
This year several brands showed that “old media” can figure out the digital world:
…
The Atlantic
The Atlantic has proved that old magazines can be relevant. This was a breakthrough year for the 153-year-old publisher, which reached new highs in digital revenue and web traffic thanks to a digital-first strategy with properties like The Atlantic Wire. The company has also invested in mobile...
Watchnprfreshair:
A clip from Futurama, where Fry, Leela and Bender find pollution and child labor when they visit the Third World of the Antares System to deliver e-waste.
Tomorrow’s show: We talk with Jim Puckett, executive director of the Basel Action Network. He says toxic waste generated by our devices and computers is being exported from rich, industrialized countries to poorer, developing...
Congress Tells Commercials to Quiet Down →
Thanks to Eshoo’s work, Congress on Dec. 2 passed the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, replete with a fitting acronym, CALM. The CALM Act, which was sponsored by Eshoo in the House, requires broadcast and cable stations to adopt industry technology that ensures that commercials aren’t louder than regular programming. The legislation attracted overwhelming bipartisan...
Soup: The Lonely Island Proves They are Smarter... →
kellysutton:
The Lonely Island (you know, Andy Samberg and crew) have a new album coming out soon. Know how I know? They released a new music video on Saturday. The track is titled “I Just Had Sex”. It doesn’t have the sneaky naughtiness of “Jizz in My Pants” and doesn’t quite match the…
I wonder if they even thought of that when creating the video or if it was just an added bonus. They...
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Walmart to launch test store at the University of... →
Wal-Mart plans to open its first on-campus store at the University of Arkansas, a 10,000-square-foot space that may be a test of smaller-format stores. The retail giant has been experimenting with smaller stores as part of a push to move into more urban areas where it’s not possible to build typical 200,000-square-foot Wal-Mart stores.
As one commenter on the article puts it:
...
Appeals Court Holds That Email Privacy Protected... →
In a landmark decision issued today in the criminal appeal of U.S. v. Warshak, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the government must have a search warrant before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by email service providers. Closely tracking arguments made by EFF in its amicus brief, the court found that email users have the same reasonable expectation of privacy in...
Survey Shows That Fox News Makes You Less Informed →
A survey of American voters by World Public Opinion shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. One of the most interesting questions was about President Obama’s birthplace. 63 percent of Fox viewers believe Obama was not born in the US (or that it is unclear). In 2003 a similar study about the Iraq war showed that Fox...
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An Open Letter to Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz →
I suppose I wouldn’t really care about the stock price of Yahoo except for the fact that I think you’re just letting one of the best products at Yahoo, Flickr, languish. In your letter to your employees you say, it’s “no secret that we’re cutting investment in underperforming and non-core products so we can focus on our strengths (like email, the homepage, search, mobile, advertising,...
Delicious blog » What’s Next for Delicious? →
onefps:
A “Chris” responds on Delicious’s official blog to press coverage that Yahoo is canning the service. Turns out Delicious should live on, as it sounds like Yahoo is entertaining buyout offers. In fact: “there’s no reason to panic. We are maintaining Delicious and encourage you to keep using it,” Chris writes, though “we have export options if you so choose.”
Regardless, Yahoo still dealt...