Diatribe Tic

Stop Watching Us | Stop Watching Us

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 13:50:44 -0700

stopwatchingus

thedailywhat: Fixed That For You of the day: NSA’s Ugly...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 20:06:34 -0700

Fixed That For You of the day: NSA’s Ugly Slideshow Gets a Makeover

You’d think the National Security Agency could afford a decent designer with their vast resources and classified budget, but as you may have already noticed, the recently leaked slideshow on the PRISM program suggests quite the contrary. So freelance designer Emiland De Cubber took it upon himself to help out the clandestine agency with their horrible design choices by redoing the entire presentation, which is available for public viewing on the presentation site SlideShare. After learning it the hard way that they can’t always keep their top secrets remain top-secret, perhaps the NSA won’t skimp on that part of the budget next time around.

Please Do Not Pet The Dragon (at E3)

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 13:28:04 -0700

Please Do Not Pet The Dragon (at E3)

Photo

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 13:27:48 -0700

tastefullyoffensive: Sorry, Florida. [via]

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 23:54:54 -0700

tastefullyoffensive:

Sorry, Florida. [via]

Quicksilver — LoveQuicksilver Blog: Quicksilver: An Interview with the Developers

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 23:36:12 -0700

Quicksilver — LoveQuicksilver Blog: Quicksilver: An Interview with the Developers:

lovequicksilver:

With the release of Quicksilver v1.0, I sat with Quicksilver’s lead developers (at our respective far-flung computers) to gather their thoughts on this historic occasion, and to find out a bit more about Quicksilver behind the scenes.

Patrick Robertson and Rob McBroom
Rob and Patrick…

"The desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world."

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 14:52:15 -0700

“The desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.”

- If You’re Learning, You’ll Never Need to Recharge | LinkedIn

British author John le Carré

"Google has worked hard, within the confines of the current laws, to be open about the data requests..."

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 14:45:47 -0700

“Google has worked hard, within the confines of the current laws, to be open about the data requests we receive. We post this information on our Transparency Report whenever possible. We were the first company to do this. And, of course, we understand that the U.S. and other governments need to take action to protect their citizens’ safety—including sometimes by using surveillance. But the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish.”

- Official Blog

(via Charity lets you live in the hearts of others)

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 13:16:55 -0700

(via Charity lets you live in the hearts of others)

(via Charity lets you live in the hearts of others) I pledge to...

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 14:47:00 -0700

(via Charity lets you live in the hearts of others)

I pledge to change the world with my next birthday. Join me and @charitywater http://charitywater.org/birthdays http://pic.twitter.com/MeCVyYmb5Z

"Some of these ideas were taken from other languages, but most were new. Towards the end of the..."

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 14:06:19 -0700

“Some of these ideas were taken from other languages, but most were new. Towards the end of the initial period, it became clear that this combination of ideas made an elegant mathematical system as well as a practical programming language. Then mathematical neatness became a goal and led to pruning some features from the core of the language. This was partly motivated by esthetic reasons and partly by the belief that it would be easier to devise techniques for proving programs correct if the semantics were compact and without exceptions. The results of (Cartwright 1976) and (Cartwright and McCarthy 1978), which show that LISP programs can be interpreted as sentences and schemata of first order logic, provide new confirmation of the original intuition that logical neatness would pay off.”

- Introduction

One of the most significant bands in my life. They’re...

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 12:54:17 -0700

One of the most significant bands in my life. They’re timing seems to be impeccable.

"The Internet gives us immediate access to the collected thought of greatest minds in human history...."

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 17:47:07 -0700

“The Internet gives us immediate access to the collected thought of greatest minds in human history. We can find their writings in a matter of seconds. Yet as it does so, it seems that the same technology also robs us of the attention span needed to read what we find. Not to worry. A click or two more and we can easily locate a topical index of their most famous quotations. That was all we really wanted anyway. If we have lost the capacity for focused attention necessary to read works like the Confessions of Saint Augustine, it also seems likely that we are losing the ability to engage in the kind of sustained reflection that would be needed to write anything comparable in the future. But the most terrifying implication–the truly life changing consequence of this is… Oh, I see that my time is up. You’ve already moved on.”

- The Eighty Second Rule (via azspot)

teabonics-fb: Republicans, keeping it classy.

Mon, 27 May 2013 20:01:27 -0700

teabonics-fb:

Republicans, keeping it classy.

"As a result, Texas is not the nation’s most populous state but nonetheless sports “the nation’s..."

Mon, 27 May 2013 19:56:19 -0700

“

As a result, Texas is not the nation’s most populous state but nonetheless sports “the nation’s highest number of workplace fatalities.” When it comes to industrial disasters, the Times notes that Texas has only about a quarter more “high risk” sites than the state (Illinois) with the second most number of such facilities. However, it has, according to the Times, “more than three times the number of accidents, four times the number of injuries and deaths, and 300 times the property damage costs” as that state.

If all this data was about a terrorist threat, the reaction would be swift - negligent federal agencies would be roundly criticized and the specific state’s lax attitude toward security would be lambasted. Yet, after the fertilizer plant explosion, there has been no proactive reaction at all, other than Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry boasting about his state’s “comfort with the amount of oversight” that already exists.

So, again, why the discrepancy? Simply put, because this is what now passes for acceptable in a deregulated economy whose laws are written by corporate interests.

Those interests are hostile to safety regulation and enforcement because they don’t want to spend even a tiny bit more on making worksites secure for employees. So they, and the politicians whose campaigns they fund, have made an epithet out of the word “regulation” in order to guarantee that almost nobody asks whether we have to tolerate 4,500 dead American workers each year.

”

- If West, Texas Had Been a Terrorist Attack

(via prosveshcheniye)

Google Closure: How not to write JavaScript - SitePoint

Mon, 27 May 2013 19:20:31 -0700

Google Closure: How not to write JavaScript - SitePoint

Antipodean: Python style generators in PHP

Thu, 23 May 2013 16:18:42 -0700

Antipodean: Python style generators in PHP:

dhotson:

This is a quick first attempt at Python style generators in PHP.

Wikipedia explains it best:

A generator is a special routine that can be used to control the iteration behaviour of a loop. A generator is very similar to a function that returns an array, in that a generator has parameters, can…

"WOLFSBURG, Germany – At first glance, the Volkswagen XL1 is like any other supercar. It’s long and..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:34:49 -0700

“

WOLFSBURG, Germany – At first glance, the Volkswagen XL1 is like any other supercar. It’s long and low — lower, even, than a Lamborghini Aventador — with the same alluring blend of science and art and physics. Getting in requires opening gullwing doors and oh-so-carefully climbing over a wide carbon fiber sill before sliding into a carbon fiber seat with just enough upholstery to approximate comfort.

The interior is more of the same supercar aesthetic. There’s a small, race car-inspired steering wheel (yes, also carbon fiber) framing the usual gauges. The cabin is minimalist and confined, but strangely comforting. It isn’t until you start the car that you sense it’s not what you think. Press the “Engine Start” button and… nothing. There is no engine noise. No chimes or beeps or bongs. The only indication that it’s running is a brief flash of lights on the gauges, the sat-nav blinking on, and the climate fans starting to whir. That’s it.

It’s time to redefine “supercar.” I shift into drive, hang a right out of the parking lot and get on the gas. The speedometer needle crawls past 20, then 30, then 40 mph. It takes an almost agonizing amount of time to reach these speeds. In less than a minute, as I tool along at a leisurely 60 mph, it becomes obvious that the XL1, despite its sleek, futuristic appearance, has all the sporting pretenses of an asthmatic race horse sucking air through a coffee stirrer.

”

- Driving Volkswagen’s 261-MPG Diesel-Electric Supercar Spacepod | Autopia | Wired.com

(via Amazing Career Advice For College Grads From...

Tue, 21 May 2013 13:57:37 -0700

(via Amazing Career Advice For College Grads From LinkedIn’s Billionaire Founder - Business Insider)

Audio

Wed, 08 May 2013 15:22:38 -0700