Read through this amazing horror story constructed of actual sentences (with links) from reviews of the Apple Watch. (Hat tip: Laughing Squid.) As for me? I tried on the Watch yesterday and was very impressed, I’ll be getting one as soon as I can once they’re available. I would have picked up one of the new Macbooks as well if it was available, but the stores had them on display but none in stock.
Category Archives: Asides
Ambiguity. It’s the defining characteristic of this age. Yesterday offered many certainties. A secure job, stable income, lasting community…a predictable economy, culture, society. But that’s not the case anymore. Something surrounds us, permeating our worlds, defining our lives; though we call it by different names. Economic uncertainty; social instability; political unpredictability. All simply different kinds of ambiguity.
Umair Haque writes on Ambiguity and the Art of Meaning.
Jane Doze & CURTAINS
One of my favorite DJ groups the Jane Doze, they have a new original song called Lights Go Down:
https://soundcloud.com/thejanedoze/the-jane-doze-ft-curtains-lights-go-down
It’s cool to hear and also on iTunes and Spotify. I great test song for the headphones I talked about yesterday. 🙂
Getting out of our ocean to explore the islands of open source is one of the best ways that we can expand our horizons, strengthen our skill sets, and build better relationships.
Pippin on why giving back to open source has made his company better.
But one day, the company could “open source” the code that underpins the OS—giving it away for free. So says Mark Russinovich, one of the company’s top engineers.
“It’s definitely possible,” Russinovich says. “It’s a new Microsoft.”
From Wired’s An Open Source Windows Is ‘Definitely Possible’. In 2007 I predicted Windows will be Open Source by 2017, we’ll see if I end up being right on that one.
Have you heard of being meat drunk?
It would be nice to imagine your children won’t abuse any substances, but also unrealistic. The question is what to warn them against most strongly.
Aaron Carroll asks Alcohol or Marijuana? A Pediatrician Faces the Question.
As a counterpoint to yesterday’s link to the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, here’s a Washington Post story, Meet the man whose utopian vision for the Internet conquered, and then warped, Silicon Valley.
The CEO of Automattic worked with the co-founder of WordPress directly, mediated by the head of the WordPress Foundation. Matt Mullenweg said the meetings were very productive.
As inside-baseball WordPress-focused April Fools go, this one is pretty funny: WordPress to be bundled in Jetpack with mission to power 50% of the web.
Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
John Perry Barlow’s classic A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.
Fun read by J.D. Andre: What Calvin and Hobbes taught me about mindfulness. I’ve been practicing daily with the Calm app.
Cool distributed work article: Why I decided to go on a cowork vacation in Bali for a month .
To attain the rank of grand master of memory, you must be able to perform three seemingly superhuman feats. You have to memorize 1,000 digits in under an hour, the precise order of 10 shuffled decks of playing cards in the same amount of time, and one shuffled deck in less than two minutes.
Ever wondered how to win the U.S. memory championship?
The New Yorker has a great overview as Richard Stallman’s GNU Manifesto Turns Thirty.
Are you in or near Tokyo? I’m going to be in town and doing a meetup this Sunday, and I’m looking forward to hanging out with the local community. I’m told you can read about it on this link: WordBench東京 3月スペシャル『春のマット祭り』 – WordBench東京.
DNSPerf is a cool service that measures the speed of different DNS providers, Cloudflare and WordPress.com rank very well.
Why Remote Work Thrives in Some Companies and Fails in Others, by Sean Graber in the Harvard Business Review.
Why are some organizations reaping benefits but others not? Conditions are seemingly ideal: More and more people are choosing to work remotely. By one estimate, the number of remote workers in the U.S. grew by nearly 80% between 2005 and 2012. Advances in technology are keeping pace. About 94% of U.S. households have access to broadband Internet — one of the most important enablers of remote work. Workers also have access to an array of tools that allow them to videoconference, collaborate on shared documents, and manage complex workflows with colleagues around the world. So what’s the problem?
One of my favorite essays of all time is by David Ramsey in Oxford American on Lil Wayne, called I Will Forever Remain Faithful. I’m used to movies, books, even songs making me tear up occasionally, but not essays, but this one does every time. It’s worth Googling the songs mentioned and quoted in the headings, it gives an interesting soundtrack to the writing and after listening the essay is worth re-reading. I miss that old Lil Wayne, too.
I don’t think I’ve said it publicly before, but Ramsey’s essay was actually the inspiration for my 1.0 Is the Loneliest Number which is one of the most popular pieces of writing I’ve published.
So This Climate Walks Into a Bar
Great talk introducing Grist.org and the state of the environment, including a number of things to be excited about.