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Monday Links from the Sheriff's Lair vol. CCLXXXVIII

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    Monday Links from the Sheriff's Lair vol. CCLXXXVIII

    Sitting in ClientCorp, wondering if it was actually preferable a week ago when I was at home preparing to go to the dentist's
    • Pages From Ceefax - This site uses the BBC’s current news feed, but presents it the way nature intended - in 24 lines of 40 characters, changing story every minute or so

    • The Man Who Jumped Out Of The Window - "My Great Uncle Abe was a liberal icon and a target of vicious McCarthyites in the 1950s. But is that what drove him to suicide?" Peter Birkenhead on the life and death of Abe Feller, “coauthor of the United Nations charter, and its first General Counsel.”

    • The U.S. computer industry is dying and I’ll tell you exactly who is killing it and why - Robert X. Cringeley on the problems faced by modern business generally, and how they apply specifically to the computer industry: ”The truth is that much (but not all) of the American technology industry is being led by what my late mother would have called “assholes.” And those assholes are needlessly destroying the very industry that made them rich. It started in the 1970s when a couple of obscure academics created a creaky logical structure for turning corporate executives from managers to rock stars, all in the name of ‘maximizing shareholder value.’”

    • 20 Fun Grid Facts (Hex Grids) - Herman Tulleken: ”We thought it might be a good idea to share some of the interesting (and obscure) facts we have uncovered in our quest to know everything we can about grids and their use in games. We have been sharing a short fact each day over Twitter; here we expand on those facts and add a few more. These are all about hexagonal grids, one of our favorite types of grids.”

    • Even Early Focus Groups Hated Clippy - Robinson Meyer looks back at the late and not-at-all-lamented Office Assistant: ”Clippy is famous for being one of the worst user interfaces ever deployed to the mass public. He stopped users to ask them if they needed help with basic tasks, like writing a letter or making a spreadsheet… He was a puppet who only knew one script and kept repeating it, at you, throughout the workday.”

    • Lordfenix: 20-year-old Brazilian Makes Profit Off Banking Malware - Interesting report from Trend Micro on a malware creator: ”Lordfenix developed his underground reputation by creating more than a hundred online banking Trojans, each valued at over US$300. Lordfenix is the latest in a string of young and notorious solo cybercriminals we’re seeing today.”

    • The Sonic Assassins - "Searching through discs for scans of Jim Cawthorn art turned up this comic strip curio from a November 29th, 1971 issue of UK underground magazine Frendz. Cawthorn and writer Michael Moorcock present rock band Hawkwind as musical superheroes and although this is done largely as a promotional piece for that year’s new album, In Search of Space, the Sonic Assassins tag was one which stuck, becoming almost a secondary name for the band in later years."

    • I used to lead tours at a plantation. You won’t believe the questions I got about slavery. - Margaret Biser: ”Up until a few weeks ago, I worked at a historic site in the South that included an old house and a nearby plantation. My job was to lead tours and tell guests about the people who made plantations possible: the slaves… Yet many guests who visited the house and took the tour reacted with hostility to hearing a presentation that focused more on the slaves than on the owners.”

    • Skyjacker of the Day - "A hundred days, a hundred skyjackers from the Sixties & Seventies." If you've got a book about skyjackers to promote, this is a pretty good way of doing it

    • Chimps and the Zen of Falling Water - "There is a waterfall in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park. Maybe 12 feet high, it’s fairly modestly sized, though even a modest waterfall is quite a magical thing. And it’s here that chimpanzees come to dance." Here’s the Jane Goodall video referenced in the article:



    Happy invoicing!

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