Today's news is all about yesterday; but really nothing was decided, was it?  McCain is closing in on the nomination, but he was before yesterday, too, and Huckabee's strong showing kind of adds a new feature.  Clinton and Obama are still neck and neck, with Clinton still ahead, and Obama still closing.  I was staggered to read that Obama lost Silicon Valley to Clinton; just about everyone I know is an Obama fan.  I must not know "everyone" :)

Glenn Reynolds links Conservatives dropped the ball, and notes: "Now over the next few years you can look for - and do the work to elect - some good governors who might make Presidents that you'll like better than McCain or Romney, and do the other bits of hard work it takes to make a difference. Or you can just complain a lot on the Internet. Your choice!"  So here in California we did this already - we even recalled a bad governor so we could elect a good one - and yet he can't run, so we just have to complain a lot on the Internet.  Way back in 2004 I predicted it would be Arnold vs Obama.  I was wrong.

I saw this picture in a Google search result, and couldn't resist posting it.  I promise, it was not me!  Must have been Joe Walsh :) 

So here we have some receiver porn; Yamaha's new RX-Z11 home entertainment system.  As much as I love the front, it is the back that really gets my heart beating.  (Click pic to enlarge.)  Look at all those HDMI inputs!  Not to mention a full iPod interface and network connectivity to Windows Media.  My technolust is overwhelming. 

Some Dutch inventors have created a robot that automatically fills your car with gas. "...the bot can apparently identify cars as they pull up, and reference them against a database to determine the type of fuel cap and the fuel type to use, which should avoid any mishaps."  Excellent.  What a great time to be alive :) 

John Gruber excellently fisks Jerry Yang's internal memo to Yahoo employees regarding the Microsoft acquisition offer.  "We very much want to say 'no' but can't figure out how without triggering a shareholder revolt."  I want them to say "no", too, but can't figure it out either.... 

P.S. When I saw this post in my RSS reader, the pseudo subject was "shitting our pants".  Upon loading the page, I saw John had changed it to "spinning our wheels".  Now it has been changed back.  Much better.

The Yahoo debate reminds me to link David Sacks' excellent post on TechCrunch: It's the Bread, not the Peanut Butter.  My ex-PayPal colleague shows how Google and Facebook have redefined portals, moving traffic away from Yahoo, AOL, and MSN.  (Can you remember when portals were the most valuable properties on the web?  I can...)  His main point is that value is shifting from Browsing to Searching to Sharing.  Google's recently unveiled Social Graph API is evidence that they see this the same way.  Yahoo made it from Browsing to Searching, sort of, but not to Sharing, although they did try to buy Facebook.  If they had been successful Microsoft would not be able to buy them today, or at least not for $30/share...