- 23 Tips on How to A/B Test Like a Badass – Really great article, mostly applicable to ecommerce sites but plenty of general ideas. I’d like to say I do this at work but unfortunately the culture isn’t there.
- What an RAF pilot can teach us about being safe on the road – Interesting view on how easy it is for motorists just “not to notice” cyclists. I commonly see cyclists these days with flashing lights (front and back) turned on during the day to help improve their visibility.
- The Cheapest Generation – How the consumer wants of young adults differe from those of the previous generation(s). Phones & Walkable neighbourhoods are in, Cars and big houses in the suburbs are no longer as important.
- Where IT goes to die – How large company/Enterprise IT works from an author with experience at smaller companies. He is accerate and it is not very pretty.
Category: Links
Links: PIN numbers, Military leadership, Eggs, The Web stack
- Analysis of PIN Numbers – What are the most and least common 4-digit PIN numbers?
- General Failure – Does the US military no longer punish or demote bad generals? “A culture of mediocrity has taken hold within the Army’s leadership rank—if it is not uprooted, the country’s next war is unlikely to unfold any better than the last two.”
- Why American Eggs Would Be Illegal In A British Supermarket, And Vice Versa – Different approaches to food safety in the US and Britain.
- An Overview of the Web – What happens when your browser requests a web pagewebpage. A step by step though the various layers or computers, protocols and programs. Understandable buy someone a little technical.
Links: Mars!, The cdbaby model, Robots, the rest of the world on the web
- Comparison – Mars Curiosity Descent – Ultra HD 30fps Smooth-Motion (YouTube) – Comparison of the original and a greatly improved version.
- If newspapers were run like CDBaby.com – An alternative business/operating model for online news.
- New Wave of Deft Robots Is Changing Global Industry – Robots move beyond the traditional car-assemble type jobs.
- 10 lessons for uncultured web developers – A few little things that trip up web developers, especially those who think the valley is the world.
Links: Weather Prediction, Advertising, 3rd world mobile web and Database failover
- Handling Database Failover at Craigslist – Jeremy Zawodny links to a few recent articles on automated database failover and outlines what he does at craigslist. The consensus seems to be the the added complexity of automating failover results in less reliability than improving the process of doing it manually.
- The Weatherman is not a Moron – An overview on modern weather prediction and how it is improved. In just 25 years the 3 day estimate for landfalls for Gulf of Mexico hurricane has dropped from 350 to 100 miles.
- Stop Advertising in Photo Magazines – Head West to the Web – Is magazine advertising a waste of time? In this article the results are mixed but mostly “No” .
- See your site like the rest of the world does. On the Nokia X2-01 – Fascinating survey of the mobile web browser stats in the BRIC and Next 11 countries.
Links: Density done well, schizophrenia, Olympics and Socialist networks
- Density done well (youtube 15min) – Brent Toderian former Chief Planner for the City of Vancouver talks how you can do urban density well to enhance a city.
- Edge of the abyss – A parent talks about his daughter’s child-onset schizophrenia
- “Keeping the Torch Burning” – editing an Olympics book for the Guardian – Martin Belam gives some highlights from a book he has recently edit on terror, protest and dissent at the Olympics
- What If Social Networks Just Aren’t Profitable? – A social networks such that attempts to make them profitable will eventually destroy them?
Links: 8bit T2, IQ, Baby names, Low Power computers
- How low (power) can you go? – Charlie Stross looks into the future (as Sci-Fi authors often do) and predicts what 2032 could look like with one square millimetre computers everywhere.
- American Baby Names Are Somehow Getting Even Worse – Bastian, Sincere, Copelia, Luxx
- Race, IQ, and Wealth – Is IQ just a function of GDP/Wealth ?
- Terminator 2 – 20 years ( July 3 1991 – July 3 2011) (Youtube) – You may remember “8-bit trip” by Rymdreglage a couple of years ago. Here is their stop-motion tribute to T2 ( which I’ve seen 5 times in the theatre).
Links: CGI Screwups, Being in the band, How many servers does google have?
- 10 Things Most Americans Don’t Know About America – A list of stuff that Americans don’t know about how the rest of the world perceives them or how it is compared to them
- The 7 Most Common CGI Screw-Ups (Explained) – I know cracked.com is just a content farm but it has really good articles. In this case a bit more informative and technical than usual.
- How to play in someone else’s band – The subtitle is “gain twenty years of road experience with a five minute read” and it is really good. The main point to remember is your number one job above all else is to make the leader sound good, look good and feel good.
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Fun with Energy Consumption Data – The “Fun” bit is estimating how many servers Google and Facebook have.
Links: The Ritz, Startup myths, 78 sqft apartments, screenwriting
- A Legend as Big as the Ritz – The history of the Paris Ritz Hotel
- Don’t waste your time in crappy startup jobs – Recommended reading, 7 misconceptions about startups
- Manhattan shoebox apartment: a 78-square-foot mini studio – A really tiny apartment, from a series ( 7 minute youtube video )
- I was an A-list writer on B-list production – Writer Stephen Harrigan on his career and screenplays.
Links: colocation, credentialism, Ph.d Grind, safe cracking
- Going Colo – A blog post from Maciej Cegłowski of pinboard.in about colocation
- Death by Degrees – The place of credentialism in America (N+1 magazine)
- The Ph.D. Grind – What getting a Ph.D is really like
- Illegal Engineering – An illustrated lecture about the history of Safes and Safe breaking
Links: Blade runner in watercolour, caching, Flying cars, Prometheus
- Blade Runner Aquarelle Edition (video) – 12 minutes of the classic film Blade Runner recreated with 3285 watercolour pictures. I’ve actually seen this film so many times that I can’t more or less quote the duologue as it happens.
- A Primer on Web Caching – Quick overview on different places that data is cached in web applications, the websites at my work use most of these
- Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit – Where did the 1950s/60s future go?
- Prometheus Pre-Prequel! (video) – There’s a reason the Prometheus crew is so effective at dealing with aliens: good training!