LKM's stuff

Penny Arcade Reality Show

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:34:10 -0500

Funny and interesting. The only reality show I will ever watch willingly.

"So, if I go directly to butterflyphoto.com, I pay $699 with 0% cashback. If I use Bing Cashback, I..."

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:24:49 -0500

“

So, if I go directly to butterflyphoto.com, I pay $699 with 0% cashback. If I use Bing Cashback, I pay $758 with 2% cashback, or $742.84. Using Bing cashback has actually cost me $43.84, giving an effective cashback rate of -6.27%. Yes, negative cashback! Is this legal? False advertising? I don’t know, but it’s pretty sketchy.

The problem doesn’t end there. Using Bing has tainted my web browser. Butterfly Photo set a three month cookie on my computer to indicate that I came from Bing. Any product I look at for the next three months may show a different price than I’d get by going there directly.

”

- Blog » Negative Cashback from Bing Cashback - Bountii, via waffle → Binge

"I was particularly excited to hear Obama announce an annual science fair to be held at the White..."

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:15:17 -0500

“I was particularly excited to hear Obama announce an annual science fair to be held at the White House! As he said, it’s time that people who have made extraordinary achievements in science stand beside athletes and others honored at the White House.”

- Obama kicks off massive science education effort! | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

"Welcome, Mythbusters, from Discovery Channel. Where are they? There they are. (Applause.) I hope you..."

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:14:00 -0500

“Welcome, Mythbusters, from Discovery Channel. Where are they? There they are. (Applause.) I hope you guys left the explosives at home.”

- Barack Obama giving a shout-out to (presumably) Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman during a speech on education. Epic win. Remarks by the President on the “Education To Innovate” Campaign | The White House

Penny Arcade! - Delicioso

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:06:01 -0500

Penny Arcade! - Delicioso

The 50 most interesting articles on Wikipedia

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:59:12 -0500

The 50 most interesting articles on Wikipedia:

mrgan:

I just Instapapered many, many of these.

marco: Cynical-C Blog: (via Paul Scheer) On November 20,...

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:41:12 -0500

marco:

Cynical-C Blog: (via Paul Scheer)

On November 20, 2009, at a Borders bookstore in Columbus, Ohio, Sarah Palin held a book signing event in support of “Going Rogue”. Palin’s supporters wanted her to run for the presidency, but they weren’t exactly sure what she’d do as president. Short on specifics, most of them were uncertain what her policy positions are. They just felt that they liked her. She’s “real”. And that the solution to all of our country’s problems—health care, energy, the deficit, unemployment, and the economy—was to cut taxes and lower spending, and Palin, they said, would solve them by doing just that.

This is one of the scariest movies I’ve seen in a long time.

"The real trick to Getting Things Done is cocaine."

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:40:00 -0500

“The real trick to Getting Things Done is cocaine.”

- Fake Jason Fried (via friedisms)

"Top code-breakers at the Government Communications Headquarters in the United Kingdom have succeeded..."

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:29:00 -0500

“Top code-breakers at the Government Communications Headquarters in the United Kingdom have succeeded in breaking the secret language that has allowed imprisoned leaders of al-Qaida to keep in touch with other extremists in U.K. jails as well as 10,000 “sleeper agents” across the islands.”

- Fishy. Not sure why they would announce this, though. Seems like something you’d want to keep secret and use for your own advantage. Schneier on Security: Al Qaeda Secret Code Broken

"As far as you know while you’re working there, Scientology is dominating the world, and you want it..."

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:27:23 -0500

“

As far as you know while you’re working there, Scientology is dominating the world, and you want it to dominate the world. The goal of the Sea Org is not to have Scientology worldwide, the goal of the Sea Org is to control all activities on the planet and to eliminate all people to who are hostile to their stated goals, whatever they may be.

(…)

We had a Cadet Org set up at Flag Land Base that had more than 50 children. These kids weren’t allowed to mix with other children, they weren’t allowed to go to a school because they would learn the wrong information about life. These kids, by the age of 7, are telling you that they know that they’ve lived for 75 trillion years, that they know they’re supposed to be superhuman beings, and the reason why they’re not is because they were bad people in a past life, and this is why they lost their abilities. They know that if anybody doesn’t join the Sea Org, that they’re helping to destroy the planet, and they’re an enemy and they are not to be spoken to.

”

- Friendly Atheist by @hemantmehta » A Former Scientologist Speaks Out Against the Cult

Experts

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:22:00 -0500

Somebody just wrote a blog post referring to me as an “expert” in a non-ironic context. Not sure how I feel about that. It’s a term used for people who don’t have a real job and have to create the impression of authority using something other than their actual achievements and credentials. Additionally, most “experts” I see on TV seem to be mentally retarded.

"The initial claims were clearly false, as the project only aims to simulate cortical columns, a type..."

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:05:35 -0500

“The initial claims were clearly false, as the project only aims to simulate cortical columns, a type of highly organised brain tissue that is common in the cortex, and the most recent simulation to make the headlines is even more simple.”

- Mind Hacks: Media cat and mouse game with brain simulations

"Today the LHC circulated two beams simultaneously for the first time, allowing the operators to test..."

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:56:01 -0500

“Today the LHC circulated two beams simultaneously for the first time, allowing the operators to test the synchronization of the beams and giving the experiments their first chance to look for proton-proton collisions.”

- Everything seems to be working perfectly now. Most complex machine ever built in the history of mankind. Incredible. Yay for the human intellect! CERN Press Release

LHC Press Conference

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:50:44 -0500

LHC Press Conference

Is there a name for the mental disorder that makes you think brokencyde is kind of okay? Because I...

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:13:54 -0500

Is there a name for the mental disorder that makes you think brokencyde is kind of okay? Because I think i have it. Except for the auto-tune. That’s lame.

Crunkcore has been heavily criticised by music magazines such as Kerrang!, who called it “possibly the worst genre of music ever created.”

Wikipedia.

"In today’s isolate then cut-and-paste world, it can be tempting to go around trying to single out..."

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:08:42 -0500

“In today’s isolate then cut-and-paste world, it can be tempting to go around trying to single out just the best parts of things. Think of the “show three comps” method of delivering designs to a client. Inevitably the same thing happens: The client picks a few elements from design #1, a couple from #2, and a few others from #3. Then the designer(s) try to frankenstein these pieces together into a “perfect” hybrid — which turns out to be quite imperfect. All that cherry picking destroys any sense of cohesiveness. The end product looks like a collage instead of something unified.”

- Cherry picking is the enemy of soul - (37signals)

"The remarkable thing that happens is that, even though people are simply trying to give us back..."

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:06:22 -0500

“The remarkable thing that happens is that, even though people are simply trying to give us back exactly the language we trained them on, the language evolves. Over a few “generations” of participants in our experiment, the language gets easier and easier to learn.”

- The “alien language” experiment

Default iPhone wallpaper replacement (via mediamolecule, Twitter...

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:05:03 -0500

Default iPhone wallpaper replacement (via mediamolecule, Twitter / Sebastiaan de With)

"Following our post detailing the ordeal we had getting Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0.1 through the..."

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:58:37 -0500

“Following our post detailing the ordeal we had getting Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0.1 through the store, we were contacted by Apple. They indicated that, due in part to our post, they were changing their internal policies and would allow the desired behavior and artwork to be displayed.”

- Good. Under The Microscope » Blog Archive » Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0.2 Is Now Available

"For 23 years Rom Houben was trapped in his own body, unable to communicate with his doctors or..."

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:55:00 -0500

“

For 23 years Rom Houben was trapped in his own body, unable to communicate with his doctors or family. They presumed he was in a vegetative state following a near-fatal car crash in 1983.

But then doctors used a state-of-the-art scanning system on the brain of the martial arts enthusiast, which showed it was functioning almost normally.

“I had dreamed myself away,” said Houben, now 46, whose real “state” was discovered three years ago and has just been made public by the doctor who rescued him.

”

- Can you imagine? I get dizzy just thinking about this. Car crash victim trapped in ‘coma’ for 23 years was conscious | guardian.co.uk