Archive: January 31, 2015

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Saturday,  01/31/15  10:45 PM

On the eve of Super Sunday, the Ole filter makes a pass...

(That's a Ying Yang box ... my latest effort at coding with atoms.)

Liked Imitation Game.  A lot.  And if you did too, you probably loved Cryptonomicon...  (Slash, if you loved Cryptonomicon, you will like Imitation Game.)  My one criticism is that they made the invention of the Bombe* seem like a single act by a single person. 

* the actual name given to Turning's anti-Enigma machine.

Well, that sucks: AOL are shutting down TUAW.  AOL continue to be the graveyard of interesting single-interest websites, which despite hype cannot grow too far beyond their single-interest.  John Gruber notes: "Things I learned today: AOL still exists.

Paul Rahe: Party of the living dead.  "Thanks, in part, to the self-absorption of their standard-bearer [President Obama], the Democratic Party now controls fewer Congressional seats than at any point in my lifetime. Its presence in the Senate is at a near-record low, and one would have to go back nearly 90 years to find a time when it was in as bad a shape in the state assemblies and senates."  I can remember when I considered myself a Democrat.  It wasn't that long ago. 

Marissa Mayer thinks MaVeNs are the key to Yahoo.  "Mobile, Video, Native, Social."  Aside from being a terrible acronym, not worthy of the stretch effort to create it, what does that even mean?  I feel like Yahoo have to decide whether they are content creators or content publishers, and then go deep on whatever they decide.  It's been a long time since anything they did felt cool to me. 

SpaceX show how their Falcon 9 Heavy rocket will work.  A great animation in which we can see the recovery of all three boosters as a satellite is blasted into orbit.  Rooting for them! 

Tesla Model S getting even quicker via a software update.  Wheeee.  The coolest recent software update has added better energy management tools, backup camera guides, and traffic-aware cruise control.  Yes!  (Caravans are finally here!) 

Finally, have you seen the recent Newsweek cover about Women in Tech?  (Yeah, Newsweek [apparently] still exists, and yeah, they still have covers.)  What do you think?  Some suggest the cover itself is sexist, others, that it is an emotional issue which triggers an emotional reaction, regardless.  I think it's an important issue and I'm glad it's being discussed. 

I've worked in tech my whole career and have had women colleagues that whole time, and always figured tech was more of a meritocracy than other fields, and so gender discrimination was less of an issue.  But of course, being a man, I might not have seen it.  It does seem that the attention has lessened the issue.  Let's hope this pendulum doesn't swing too far into over-correctness, and just stops in the middle, at equality.

 
 

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