Whoops, a bit late today - I'm up to my elbows in parsers at the moment:
Happy invoicing!
- Comma quirk irks Rogers - One for the grammar Nazis: "A grammatical blunder may force Rogers Communications Inc. to pay an extra $2.13-million to use utility poles in the Maritimes after the placement of a comma in a contract permitted the deal's cancellation."
- Master-Keyed Lock Vulnerability - "In a recent research paper, we describe weaknesses in most master-keyed lock systems, such as those used by offices, schools, and businesses as well as by some residential facilities (particularly apartment complexes, dormitories, and condominiums). These weaknesses allow anyone with access to the key to a single lock to create easily the "master" key that opens every lock in the entire system. Creating such a key requires little skill, leaves behind no evidence, and does not entail engaging in recognizably suspicious behavior." This page is just the summary - the PDF paper it links to gives you all the details you need.
- How facts backfire - "Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger." I thought of General when I read this article.
- Infinite Space: An Argument for Single-Sharded Architecture in MMOs - Kjartan Emilsson goes into exhaustive detail about the architecture of the game universe EVE Online. "The single-sharded nature of the game enables the formation of a single coherent society and makes it much more likely that the elected players will form a representative cross-section of the interests of the electorate. Because everyone is sharing a single server, and thus a single social context, the community has a common baseline for discussion and debate, and famous figures are more likely to be known to the entire player base rather than just fragments thereof."
- Vintage Technology: Calculators - "1970s Vintage desktop and pocket calculators listed by company (129 identified brands, 585 calculators)." Zeity probably has most of these.
- Never-Seen: Hells Angels, 1965 - "In early 1965, LIFE photographer Bill Ray and writer Joe Bride spent several weeks with a gang that, to this day, serves as a living, brawling embodiment of our schizoid relationship with the rebel: the Hells Angels. Here, in a gallery of never-published photographs, Ray and Bride recall their days and nights with Buzzard, Hambone, Big D, and other Angels (and their "old ladies") at a time when the roar of Harleys and the sight of long-haired bikers was still new, alien, and for the average, law-abiding citizen, simply terrifying."
- A user’s guide to websites, part 1: If it wasn’t broken why fix it? - Dan Catt, formerly of flickr and now at The Grauniad, discusses the problems of scaling a web application as the number of users increases.
- Hellhole - "The United States holds tens of thousands of inmates in long-term solitary confinement. Is this torture? Atul Gawande talked to several people who had spent prolonged periods in solitary confinement, including convicts and Beirut hostages, for this in-depth article.
- Space exploration: The computers that power man's conquest of the stars - "To this day, Nasa still uses elements of technology that powered the moon landings of the 1960s and 1970s, while the International Space Station (ISS) - the manned station circling the Earth 250 miles above our heads - relies on processors dating back more than two decades." Don't throw that 286 motherboard out just yet, they might need it.
- Beautiful Origami Art Made Of Dollars by Won Park - These are brilliant:
Happy invoicing!
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