Worth your time to go read as it will change the way you interact with other humans (and Alots)…
So the next time you are reading along and you see some guy ranting about how he is “alot better at swimming than Michael Phelps,” instead of getting angry, you can be like “You’re right! Alots are known for their superior swimming capabilities.”
via Hyperbole and a Half: The Alot is Better Than You at Everything.
Good piece that I hits the points that have unsettled me about bitcoin all along…
I want Bitcoin to die in a fire: this is a start, but it’s not sufficient. Let me give you a round-up below the cut.Like all currency systems, Bitcoin comes with an implicit political agenda attached. Decisions we take about how to manage money, taxation, and the economy have consequences: by its consequences you may judge a finance system. Our current global system is pretty crap, but I submit that Bitcoin is worst.
As a loyal fan of T-Mobile’s no-contract services, I can only respond with “whaaaaa????”
Please dear baby divinity no…
Sprint, the third biggest wireless carrier in the US, is preparing to buy out its rival T-Mobile, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. While the deal is a ways off, Sprint is expected to put in its bid in the first half of 2014 and could pay more than $20 billion for its rival.
via Sprint reportedly preparing to purchase T-Mobile in 2014 | The Verge.
The new WordPress 3.8 is definitely beautiful on the admin side. I’m glad to see open source software like WordPress continue to persevere (and thrive) over such a long period on the web (10 years old) given how much publishing on the web has changed and how fads have come and gone.
WordPress is, in many ways, the cornerstone of my web presence and I am excited about the update…
Today the WordPress core team announced WordPress 3.8 “Parker”, a major milestone for the web’s most popular blogging software. In its 10 years WordPress has seen many changes, one of the most significant being the “Crazyhorse” redesign that came with version 2.7 in 2008. Today’s update is the biggest visual update to WordPress since that release.
Just saw this after getting the KitKat 4.4.2 update on my Nexus 5 tonight.
Let’s make sure our citizens are literate first and capable of doing basic math before we try to sell the next “American Dream” as being a app maker to our kids.
I love coding. I loved when my students were interested in coding as a middle school teacher. However, I made it clear to them that while hard work will get you halfway there, there’s a lot of persistence, skill and luck involved in developing the next Angry Birds.
While we realize the hard work involved in something insanely complicated like electrical wiring, we tend to gloss over the difficulties involved in computer science careers because “it’s just computers” and not a physical thing that you have “to do” in order to see results.
Code is only the latest in the classic American / Horatio Alger dream that hard work and the right education will by the golden key that ensures everyone has a job. Go west, get a farm. Learn chemistry. Become a mechanic. Learn how to fix computers. So on and so on and so on. Now: Learn to code! It fits very nicely with the current disruption/app/techie focus of the economy and suggests that the companies and donors that comprise it are necessarily the country’s future. They’re not.
via No, Mr. President, Not Everyone Needs to Learn How to Code – The Wire.
Edit: Dave Winer has a great post on this as well:
Bottom-line: In all likelihood, coding will NOT make you rich. So you’d better have another reason for wanting to do it, because it’s not easy.
Like blogging, coding isn’t easy and probably won’t make you rich!
Whatever you’re doing right now, stop it.
And go look (watch) this amazing production:
Code is on GitHub.
Andy Beaumont on the plague of Pop-Ups 2.0 and the reason why publishers of all sizes are rushing to put them on their sites (hint.. doing analytics wrong):
I have tested this design pattern with real people, and a significant portion of them believe that they must do what the box is begging them for in order to close the overlay. These people remember, they’re people, not “conversions”, are signing up to a newsletter they don’t want. They’re then going to be irritated by it for several months until they work out how to unsubscribe from it. The analytics guru you brought in is walking away with a chunk of your money, in exchange for having pissed off a whole bunch of existing and potential customers.
Tom Merritt is not only an excellent sci-fi author (seriously), but an amazing talent in podcasting and tech punditry. I’ve listened to him from the days of TechTV a decade ago into CNet’s Buzz Out Loud and into his daily show on TWiT called Tech News Today.
So, this sucked…
After some soul searching, I’ve decided that we do need an in-studio anchor for Tech News Today, and a News Director who can help us build the kind of organization you can count on for authoritative tech news and information.
So it’s with a heavy heart that I’m announcing that we’re not going to renew Tom’s contract as host of TNT. His last show will be at the end of the month.
via inside.TWIT.tv | …the revolution will be streamed… – Blog – Changes at TWiT, Part 1.
Comments closed, indeed.
I’m a big fan of TWiT and Leo Laporte’s work on building his own podcasting empire, but this is not a good move.
Amazingly enough, Tom and his pal Roger recorded this podcast tonight about the nature of the new economy, working for yourself vs working for others and the uncertain road of going it alone.
It’s worth your time to go listen.
God knows this is something I’ve been going through with setting up my own business. Tom has been an inspiration for both my marketing agency, my podcasting aspirations for Thinking.FM and a plethora of other businesses I have in mind.
Godspeed, Tom. Sucks for now but things will be better than ever soon with the ability to handle the NSFW crowd like you do. Keep writing, podcasting, and inspiring the rest of us who want to follow you into the new economy.
I can’t say how much I love my Chromebook… nice thought piece on TechCrunch about the Chromebook threat to Microsoft and why it’s more than a browser…
This time, the company is targeting Chromebooks, Google’s cheap ChromeOS-based, web-centric laptops. Why is Microsoft worried about Chromebooks? Because it can see the writing on the wall.
via Microsoft Should Be Worried About Google’s Chromebooks | TechCrunch.