Once again, the Information Superhighway proves to have quite a few dirt tracks branching off it:
Happy invoicing!
- The Pizza Lab: Bringing Neapolitan Pizza Home - "Perfect Neapolitan pizza at home is a myth. It's a golden ring that can be strived for but never quite achieved... Lucky for us, really-really-good-but-not-quite-authentic-Neapolitan-pizza is not an unattainable goal." J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, who previously brought us perfect french fries and burgers, turns his attention to the science of pizza.
- The Museum of Soviet Arcade Games - A visit to a basement full of treasures at Moscow State Technical University: "The museum seemed amazing, but the small print was a little strange: It was only open 2 or 3 days a week, and not until 7:30 at night. The articles I’d read never mentioned anyone else being in the museum, so we wondered if the reporters had arranged private tours or we were about to visit a guy sitting by himself in a basement. Regardless, we figured that whatever happened it would be an amusing adventure."
- Titan Calling - "How a Swedish engineer saved a once-in-a-lifetime mission to Saturn's mysterious moon."
- I Am Detained By The Feds For Not Answering Questions - "'Why were you in China?' asked the passport control officer, a woman with the appearance and disposition of a prison matron. 'None of your business,' I said. Her eyes widened in disbelief..." Paul Karl Lukacs doesn't like being messed around by officialdom, it seems.
- Politics-Oriented Software Development - "Most textbooks and methodology guides start with statistics proving that software projects are disastrously prone to failure. I'll take that for granted... Occasionally it may be in someone's interest to build a successful project. Usually it's more useful to sabotage it." Classic Kuro5hin post by TheophileEscargot.
- The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist - "The vault was thought to be impenetrable. It was protected by 10 layers of security, including infrared heat detectors, Doppler radar, a magnetic field, a seismic sensor, and a lock with 100 million possible combinations. The robbery was called the heist of the century, and even now the police can't explain exactly how it was done." Interview with diamond thief Leonardo Notarbartolo, who got ten years inside for his trouble.
- The Moon Hoax - Darryl Cunningham presents a comic that thoroughly debunks the conspiracy theories surrounding the Apollo landings on the Moon.
- Strike that out, Sam - "I happened to be browsing aimlessly through case studies and other publications released by Microsoft... At one point, I stumbled upon a Word file I wanted to read - and as soon as I ran it through wvWare, I noticed there is a good deal of amusing change tracking information still recorded within the document. Naturally, publishing documents with 'collaboration' data is not unheard of in the corporate world, but the fact Microsoft had became a victim of their own technology, and had failed to run their own tools against these publications makes it more entertaining." Surely it can't be true that Microsoft's marketing department can record quotes before they even know the name of the person who's going to say them?
- What Do Real Thugs Think of The Wire? - Following on from last weeks' look at Yakuza 3 by actual Yakuza, here's an article in which Sudhir Venkatesh asked a bunch of New York gang members to watch The Wire with him. "The greatest uproar occurred when the upstart Marlo challenged the veteran Prop Joe in the co-op meeting. 'If Prop Joe had balls, he’d be dead in 24 hours!' Orlando shouted."
- Offensive T-Shirts Are The American Way - "Few things are more American than t-shirts and pissing people off for no reason... I decided to have some fun testing the limits of every American’s inalienable right to conceptualize offensive ideas and pay someone to print them on t-shirts." Warning: some of these are most definitely NSFW.
Happy invoicing!
