Jiaaro (on life, the universe, and everything)
They don’t respect your privacy. They’re irresponsible. And they’re dishonest. Facebook collects more information about you than they lead you to believe. Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on them You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook. Facebook Well Aware That Tracking Contacts Is Creepy: Emails Facebook shares specific personal details about you with…
The difference between Twitter and Facebook isn’t that Twitter is a better company, a better product, or that they treat their users better (they aren’t, it’s not, and they don’t). It’s that after reading twitter I feel (you know, ever-so-slightly) happier and more relaxed. And after using Facebook I miss old friends, and generally feel anxious and melancholy. If that’s how it feels to “stay…
Many people, especially liberals, are concerned about the “tyranny of the majority” and spend much time thinking and discussing how we might make things better and more fair. Specifically, how to put a check on the power of the majority. A noble goal. The problem: If you give minorities – say we aim to help transgender people – a check on the power of the majority, then what happens to that other…
Fun is number one. Gaming is entertainment. Not a lifestyle, not a subculture. Call me a filthy casual if you want. But do it quick, I heard Destiny raised their level cap again. Or can you skip the grinding with an in-app purchase now? My other values largely follow from that. Story Telling Do it well or don’t do it at all. Script, voice-acting, and themes will be evaluated against the best from…
CSS is kind of terrible. Everything affects everything. It’s impossible to refactor. Code is spaghetti from day one. And selectors are used to identify elements in scripts as well as applying styles, not to mention the semantic meaning of html tags themselves. So. Some proposals… Element ID Don’t use ID. Don’t use getElementByID() . Don’t use element IDs in your CSS selectors. Just don’t. ID has…
Learning a language is a Good Idea. It makes you smarter, more creative, and empathetic , and more likely to recover from a stroke . Thinking it’s good idea doesn’t make it easy. The payoff is too far off, too abstract. Recently though, I’ve been making some headway after giving up lots of times in the past. Some observations: Learning a language because it’ll be “useful” probably won’t work out.…
I can’t help but chuckle about all the hand-wringing over content blockers in iOS 9. Ad blockers have existed for some time. Not many people use them (as a percentage of overall web users). Plus, native advertising is mostly immune to content blocking anyway, and that’s where a lot (most?) of the money was going to end up anyway. That’s old news. My favorite part is: it’s really not that hard to…
If you’re into two or more of these (or really into one), you should check out the Apple Watch: Personal fitness Watches Apple products That’s it. Review complete. It’s an interesting product - I still need time to form a more nuanced opinion. One thing I will say though: the Sport is nice. It’s as nice and well built as the iPhone 6. Don’t feel like you need to buy the Steel version unless the…
In my post, “ Why we got 140 characters instead of flying cars ,” I made a throwaway comment about how enterprising individuals should focus on communication skills instead of delivery . My podcast cohost Mik , was disappointed that I was writing about economics and not communication. So today I’ll talk about the economics of education instead =P I’ll cut to the chase. Teaching communication…
My Biz vs Dev cohost, Mik Pozin , Yes, the problems that aren’t 140 characters are the really hard ones. But we now have to make that be the sexy thing. We have to make solving hard problems sexy. Hard problems are sexy. Solving hard problems makes you a god damn super hero. My nascent interest in writing software was kickstarted by an intense curiosity to understand, “What is this sorcery and how…
I tried Mailbox for mac recently. It’s nice. Excellent design. I was surprised to find that I had a slight, subconscious distrust of dropbox. When I found out the app was made by dropbox I briefly reconsidered whether to even try it. I’m glad I did. I owe Peter Crysdale for the beta invite (and for coming on my podcast !) I’ve been a long-time user of Gmail + Mail.app, which… aren’t the best…
For entrepreneurs aiming to solve humanity’s communication problems, here’s some free advice: give people communication skills , not another way to distribute their half-baked thoughts. We’ve got plenty of ways to send text around the internet. But communication skills – they haven’t improved much since the proliferation of the internet (if at all). The problem is that it’s not easy to monetize…
This post is a bit of a departure from my normal style, but it took me hours of searching to finally nail this down and resolve the issue. I’m using OS X 10.9.1 on a Mid-2010 MacBook Pro, Safari is version 7.0.1. Edit : I’ve also experieced this issue now on OS X 10.8.5 on a Mid-2010 iMac, in Safari 6.1 (Pretty much the same version of Safari) The Problem At some point a few days ago I noticed…
I’ve been reading Peter Harrington’s “ Machine Learning in Action ,” and it’s packed with useful stuff! However, while providing a large number of ML (machine learning) algorithms and sufficient example code to learn how they work, the book is a bit dry. So I’ve decided to make my contribution to democratizing ML by posting simple explanations of these algorithms. Why Python? Pure Python isn’t the…
I'm sitting on a train, making my 45 minute, 3 mile commute. And by train, I mean: tiny aluminum can filled to capacity with iPhones and their owners. The alarming speed and sheer mass of concrete above our heads isn't getting any attention from these nerds. Because they're too busy looking at iPhones. But wait a minute – not their own iPhones. A lot of them are looking at somebody else's.…
Have you ever tried to sit down and come up with a good idea? It's really hard. After long, painful hours you still have a blank sheet of paper. Not a single good idea written down. Sound familiar? I think we've all been there. If you've ever been a student you know exactly what I mean. The craziest part is that during those excruciatingly long minutes, you probably weren't even thinking of ideas…
Your application emails people when important things happen, right? If it doesn't it should. People like to know about important things (and it's the best marketing you could ask for ). Most people check email on their phones – among other places – and the best email is actionable . …so they log in to take care of whatever you emailed about. On their phone. You probably have…
Ctypes is great. Let's start with a simple (and trite) example: Summing a range of numbers. Here it is in python: def sumrange(arg): return sum(xrange(arg)) Very nice! But let's say we're summing a LOT of numbers, like 0 through 10**8 (that's 100,000,000). >>> %timeit sumrange(10**2) 1000000 loops, best of 3: 1.42 us per loop >>> %timeit sumrange(10**8) 1 loops, best of 3: 1.13 s per loop >>>…
Apple has grown larger than Microsoft. This is old news. Steve Jobs (RIP) never became a philanthropist like Bill Gates. So why do the technorati hold Jobs in such high regard will still harboring resentment for Gates? I think the differentiation is in the context under which we use their products. I find myself with other options in every arena in which I use Apple's products. I choose to use…
I am sick of the 960.gs webpage I have shit to get done and I don't want to be sold on 960 -- just remind me what the damn css classes are. Here is my own personal 960.gs documentation :) note : In the list below XX is used to denote a number of columns Quick reference: container_XX grid_XX prefix_XX suffix_XX push_XX pull_XX alpha omega clear container_XX All elements in the page should be inside…
I'm going to assume that since you're reading this, you're a technophile and you're already in the Google+ beta. I'm not going to talk about why Google+ is good, or how google finally "got social right", or why I love it more than life itself or any such nonsense. I'm going to talk about facebook. Please don't misunderstand the title, I think you should try google+ out. If you like it (I do) then…
In python: import base64 def signed_request_to_json ( s ): sig , encoded_json = s . split ( "." , 2 ) encoded_json += ( len ( encoded_json ) % 4 ) * "=" return { 'sig' : sig , 'json' : base64 . b64decode ( encoded_json ) }
So... I was tasked with setting up https for a website recently. I was setting up Nginx with an ssl certificate from thawte. Pretty normal. Pretty standard. Pretty aweful. Here's to helping the next guy get through the process quicker than I did. Testing Before you start. Don't use a browser or openssl to test your config. It will waste your time and make you unhappy. Use this tool to test your…
Been writing a lot of javascript and I thought this was neat: class JsObject ( dict ): def __init__ ( self , * args , ** kwargs ): super ( JsObject , self ). __init__ ( * args , ** kwargs ) self . __dict__ = self
This is going to be short; I just want to point out how bad a user experience this is on OSX. On windows (and linux) there is ONE default hotkey for cycling through tabs in any UI: Ctrl + Tab So why does OSX have so many? Here are just a few: Adium: Cmd + left/right arrows Firefox, Chrome: Cmd + Option + left/right arrows Safari, Skype, Terminal: Cmd + Shift + left/right arrows The worst part…