Category: Remainder

Remain­dered links are stuff that I thought was inter­est­ing, but not post-wor­thy. Yes I stole it from Kot­tke, just like every­one else.

Liberals Who Pine for Conservatives

As a lib­er­al who grew up with, works with, and lives with great peo­ple who are con­ser­v­a­tives, this piece by the Wash­ing­ton Post’s E.J. Dionne, Jr. speaks vol­umes about how I feel about them. Which is that con­ser­v­a­tive voic­es are an impor­tant par­ty of a pro­gres­sive soci­ety. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, as Dionne points out, we haven’t seen… Con­tin­ue read­ing Lib­er­als Who Pine for Conservatives

Top Level Domains for Companies

Yes­ter­day, Canon announced they were acquir­ing the gener­ic top lev­el domain .canon. I pre­dict as this prac­tice becomes more com­mon­place, it is going to result in a web-brows­er secu­ri­ty night­mare. There are already plen­ty of peo­ple who don’t under­stand how to read a web address to com­pre­hend if they are actu­al­ly at the site they… Con­tin­ue read­ing Top Lev­el Domains for Companies

Ad Blocking Software

I don’t have a real­ly good solu­tion to what Ars Tech­ni­ca’s Ken Fish­er describes as dev­as­tat­ing to web­sites (ad fund­ed sites, any­way). How­ev­er, I don’t use ad block­ers myself. I’m a big fan of ad-sup­­port­ed, freemi­um ver­sions of soft­ware and sites, and it’s my way of sup­port­ing those which I am not will­ing to out-right… Con­tin­ue read­ing Ad Block­ing Software

TiVo Releases Biggest Update in a Decade

In some­thing of a sur­prise to me, Cole­­man-Dyer house­hold favorite TiVo released a updates pret­ty much every­thing today. Pri­mar­i­ly, they showed off their upcom­ing DVR hard­ware, called TiVo Pre­miere. I have to say, it looks very slick: The new hard­ware is a small­er form fac­tor and has a very stream­lined look. What’s more, the new remote… Con­tin­ue read­ing TiVo Releas­es Biggest Update in a Decade

Portal Gets a Mysterious Update

Also in the sur­prise-to-me-release cat­e­go­ry, Valve released a rather strange update to their 2007 hit Por­tal today. Though not much in terms of game­play was added, the ever-present radios placed through­out the game now seem to have some sort of sig­nif­i­cance. Car­ry­ing the radios to var­i­ous points with­in the lev­el unlock a new game achieve­ment.… Con­tin­ue read­ing Por­tal Gets a Mys­te­ri­ous Update

Ruining it for the Rest of Us

The Pew Research Cen­ter has put up a nice, inter­ac­tive graph­ic show­ing some mar­riage sta­tis­tics by state. So, based on what we’ve always been told, you might expect lib­er­al states — espe­cial­ly those which have allowed same sex mar­riages — to have some of the worst num­bers.  It does­n’t real­ly pan out that way, though.… Con­tin­ue read­ing Ruin­ing it for the Rest of Us

Clarity Trumps Brevity

Dan Sil­ver­man does­n’t like his Avaya desk­top phone1 very much. He explains how its cryp­tic but­tons don’t real­ly pro­vide enough infor­ma­tion to make sense of their func­tion. He also includes this gem on what hap­pens when indus­tri­al design fails (which is almost always, to some extent): Yes, in the case of elec­tron­ic devices, the design… Con­tin­ue read­ing Clar­i­ty Trumps Brevity

One Hundred Year FUD

Nate Ander­son at Ars Tech­ni­ca takes a trip down mem­o­ry lane for the con­tent indus­try’s cen­­tu­ry-long fight against tech­nol­o­gy. Every step is a fight against the con­ve­niences we enjoy every­day (and these fools lat­er learned to mon­e­tize): The anx­ious rhetoric around new tech­nol­o­gy is real­ly quite shock­ing in its vehe­mence, from claims that the play­er… Con­tin­ue read­ing One Hun­dred Year FUD

I Think You Know Why I’m Calling You

John Gra­ham-Cum­ming recounts his suc­cess­ful efforts to have the British gov­ern­ment for­mal­ly apol­o­gize for its treat­ment of Alan Tur­ing: On the bus home I heard direct­ly that Alan Tur­ing’s nieces had many mem­o­ries of their Uncle Alan. They even still had his ted­dy bear. I hung up and sat at the back of the bus… Con­tin­ue read­ing I Think You Know Why I’m Call­ing You

So What Does Health Care Look Like in Other Countries?

So, what does health care and insur­ance look like in oth­er coun­tries? T.R. Reid answers five com­mon mis­un­der­stand­ings about oth­er coun­tries’ health care and insur­ance sys­tems: In many ways, for­eign health-care mod­els are not real­ly “for­eign” to Amer­i­ca, because our crazy-quilt health-care sys­tem uses ele­ments of all of them. For Native Amer­i­cans or vet­er­ans, we’re… Con­tin­ue read­ing So What Does Health Care Look Like in Oth­er Countries?