Archiving my Twitter, Facebook and other social network activity
https://www.kqed.org/science/19415/californias-drought-is-hurting-farmers-more-than-food-consumers
“In a cruel paradox, federal climate watchers reported that overall, the contiguous U.S. just had its sixth wettest June on record, though drought persists throughout much of the southwest.” Yeah, that's been really annoying. Every time I read about heavy rains or storms or even flooding elsewhere in the country, I think, “Send some of that water over here!”
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/15/fcc-extends-deadline-user-comments-net-neutrality
Apparently all the last-minute comments crashed the website, so they're extending the deadline.
Southland’s reaction to scattered rain showers is classic
My favorite is “I like how it's trying to rain in LA. Cute.”
Southland falls short of achieving 20% voluntary cut in water use
“Local water officials attribute the meek response in part to the conservation successes of recent years, which they say make it more difficult to realize further reductions.” Well, that and people who are still watering the sidewalks in the middle of the afternoon.
Also interesting: “Daily per capita use in Los Angeles dropped from a high of 187 gallons in fiscal year 1987 to a low of 122 gallons in fiscal year 2011. It crept up to 129 gallons last year. But the city’s overall water demand remains less than in 1970, despite the addition of 1 million residents.”
Wow. Annoying as most of these are, #6 is just plain rude.
6 sure-fire ways to ensure your mobile visitors never come back – Web Performance Today
Slow pages are just one way to irritate people who visit your site via a mobile device. Here are six more.
New York Times joins Facebook fray: How a stale press release suddenly triggered media frenzy
It all started as a largely ignored paper about the number of positive and negative words people use in Facebook posts. Now it’s a major scandal. Yesterday the New York Times connected the Facebook experiment to suicides. The story was headlined, Should Facebook Manipulate Users, and it rests on…
It’s worth noting that the actual effect measured was MUCH smaller than the fallout from the fact that the experiment was conducted in the first place.
‘Pacific Rim 2’ May Be A Box Office Game-Changer
A business look at how weird it is that Pacific Rim is getting a sequel despite bombing in the US (it did a lot better internationally). There’s a mention of the passionate fan base as well. That’s one thing I noticed when it was out last year: People who actually went to see the movie overwhelmingly liked it. Even if it’s largely self-selection based on a narrow audience interested in watching giant robots vs. giant monsters, at least it speaks well to it being a *good* robot-vs-monster movie.
Always make sure your concerns about food are based on *real* factors, and not just “it has chemicals in it” or “that sounds icky.” Everything is made of chemicals, and a lot of those chemicals have intimidating names (just check out that ingredient statement on an all-natural banana). Not mentioned in the article, lots of hidden ingredients *we* might consider icky are eaten by other cultures without fear.
A new Cornell University study examines the origins of food fears, and possible remedies. It’s a survey of 1,008 mothers asking about foods they avoid and why.
Beyond a gadget: Google Glass is a boon to disabled
Uses for Google Glass you probably haven’t thought of.
Metro approves new train station to connect rail to LAX
Well, this is going to be interesting. Instead of Metro re-routing the Crenshaw Line into the airport (since they’ve already broken ground on it), LAX will run their own ultra-light train from the airport, through the offsite parking and the existing bus hub, to meet the Metro line at a transfer station. The weird thing is that the station they just approved is a very short walk from the one being planned for Century/Aviation. I’m not 100% sure, but I suspect I’ve been in train stations in other cities that are longer than the distance between these two stops.
Yep, *everything* is made of chemicals, even natural substances. And I was just saying something about vinegar/acetic acid the other day: Toxic in high concentrations, can be used as an herbicide or a cleaning agent, but you put it on salads without thinking twice.
If a “fact” is worth sharing with people, it’s worth taking a minute to (a) think about it and (b) fact-check it. If you don’t have time for that, don’t share it until you do. Otherwise, you’re wasting everyone’s time and spreading outright falsehoods.
Extraordinary claims and all that.
Good point on the connotations of “actually”: Why I Stopped Using “Actually” and “But”
Famous Sunset Paintings Reflect Key Air Pollution Events From the Past
Obviously it only works with painters going for realistic colors, and there's the matter of fading paint, but still it's pretty cool!
“I Fear the Day That Technology Will Surpass Our Human Interaction”
I fear the day that technology gives us the ability to instantly check our facts, but people blithely pass along falsehoods or made-up quotations without taking 30 seconds to verify whether they’re true or not.
Very cool animation of a MUCH closer moon. And if you’re in the mood for some scientific analysis, there’s that too!
Worth considering: Even if you protect your critical servers adequately, if you share that data with “less critical” systems, you need to protect them too.
Tough choices: Users want to watch media from the entertainment industry. The industry is only willing to provide it with DRM, which goes against Mozilla’s goals of transparency, openness, and user control. It used to be easy to let plugins deal with it, but Flash and Silverlight are slowly giving way to built-in browser functionality, and leaving it out means lots of users will just switch browsers when they can no longer watch Netflix etc. with Firefox.
Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and W3C EME
With most competing browsers and the content industry embracing the W3C EME specification, Mozilla has little choice but to implement EME as well so our …
