Archiving my Twitter, Facebook and other social network activity
KQED: Drought-Stressed Crops May Be Better For You
Well, maybe. Some kinds of stresses cause plants to produce more antioxidants. Meanwhile, it's an interesting look at experiments to find out just how much water various crops actually *need* to be practical…and how much they need in order to be commercial.
Not content with systematically harassing critics and female game developers and making them fear for their own lives, the “Gamergate” … I hesitate to call it a movement, or a discussion … has reached a new low: Threatening *mass murder* in order to intimidate someone into silence.
https://comicsalliance.com/archie-comics-dark-horse-archie-meets-predator/
And I thought Archie Meets the Punisher was a bizarre crossover idea.
https://www.latimes.com/science/la-me-megadrought-20141006-story.html
Interesting: a computer simulation shows how California might survive a decades-long mega-drought without collapsing or emptying out. More importantly, it suggests that the state *could* adapt. We just have to actually do it.
I’ve always thought that Progressive JPEGs should be used more often than they are. In my experience they usually end up being a tiny bit smaller than standard (though not enough to matter on today’s Internet), plus it really does seem like showing a low-res image that resolves into a sharper one would be more useful than slowly watching the image fill in from one edge. Well, it turns out that people really dislike those initially-blurry images. First impressions are important, and even when the sharpening is fast, it makes the viewer’s brain work harder to process the image because it has to do it twice.
Progressive image rendering: Good or evil? – Web Performance Today
Which offers a better user experience: baseline or progressive images? New neuroscientific research from Radware has the answer.
How the drought has changed water use in Southern California
I can't say I see a lot of this change in my area, though I do see the occasional lawn replaced by native (or at least less thirsty) plants, or allowed to get a bit more scraggly than usual.
https://www.latimes.com/science/la-me-water-year-20141001-story.html
It's New Year's Day for California's water planning. The past year hasn't been great.
The Ultimate Retaliation: Pranking My Roommate With Targeted Facebook Ads
On the surface, it's a brilliant prank: he found a way to create a custom targeted audience of just one person, about whom he knew more than Facebook's ad system did. But it shows the potential for online harassment, especially since it ties in with our fears about online privacy.
Fake Cell Phone Towers Across the US
“We can’t choose a world where the US gets to spy and the Chinese don’t. We get to choose a world where everyone can spy, or a world where no one can spy.”
(Also, the “towers” referred to in the title are apparently not physical towers so much as interception devices that mimic a cell tower on the network. It’s imprecise language that has propagated through just about every article on the topic.)
Great photo: It’s rare to see a circular rainbow because usually we see them from the ground, and there aren’t enough raindrops below the horizon to produce a lower arc. But from a high enough vantage point (say, in an airplane or helicopter), with the right rain and sun conditions, you can see a full circle.
California Aquaculture Companies Explore Sustainable Fish Farming
An interesting look at attempts to make fish farming sustainable.
Why More Trees in the Sierra Mean Less Water for California
Unintended consequences: Decades of suppressing fire in the Sierra Nevada mountains have led to overgrown forests, which reduces runoff into the rivers and reservoirs used by the rest of the state because the extra trees are using more water.
Interesting: One of the ongoing questions about the rise in autism spectrum cases is how much is an increase in diagnosis (not to mention expanding definitions, but that’s easier to adjust for) and how much is an increase in actual prevalence. A new study looks at data worldwide from 1990 to 2010 and finds that the rate has actually remained constant across that time. That suggests that the rise in documented cases is almost entirely due to better diagnostics.
Comcast Wi-Fi serving self-promotional ads via JavaScript injection
The practice raises security, net neutrality issues as FCC mulls Internet reforms.
Comcast is modifying websites that you access through their hotspots.
10 Uses for Baking Soda: Guidelines for Cleaning Your Bathroom
And yet no one ever says, “You can clean your toilet with baking soda? Eeew! Imagine what it does to your stomach!”
It turns out that El Niño years don’t correlate very strongly with wet winters, unless you only look at the strongest El Niños.
Los Angeles Isn’t London, and Other Things that are Wrong with California
It’s a bit late for the zillions of suburban houses already in existence here, but yeah, there are definitely other home designs than solid-box-with-a-lawn that would be more suitable to the California climate.
Boston Globe: The Internet’s fake news problem
Always check the source before you share that news story, even if it sounds politically believable.
Ring Around the Rainbow