I’ve been rather disappointed by Tumblr for quite some time and I have finally channelled this disappointment into migration.
My new Blog + Tumblr combination now lives at http://blog.iphoting.com/. RSS feed available at http://blog.iphoting.com/atom.xml.
Reasons for moving are plentiful. The greatest motivation is the unreliability of the service. Downtimes are frequent and sometimes long. Search never works. The API is flakey. The Amazon S3-backed image store has issues with posts over 2 years of age.
Simply put, I don’t trust Tumblr.
I’ll continue posting interesting links at my new location, so update your bookmarks and RSS feeds.
Coding Horror:
Passphrases are clearly more usable than traditional “secure” passwords. They are also highly likely to be more secure. Even naive worst-case passphrases like “this is my password” aren’t all that hackable, at least when compared to their single word equivalents, eg, “password”.
Yes, I’ve been advocating for pass-phrases ever since I’ve started using 1Password to manage all my credentials.
NYTimes.com:
ARMS carve the air. A hand closes as if to pull taffy. An index finger shoots out. The torso leans in, leans back. And somehow, music pours forth — precisely coordinated and emotionally expressive — in response to this mysterious podium dance.
An interesting read.
Titanic at 100 years (via The Big Picture - Boston.com).
Facebook gave me an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the process it uses to deploy new functionality. I watched first-hand as the company’s release engineers rolled out the new “timeline” feature for brand pages.
It’s fascinating!
A nice collection this. The thing to note is that this year, Google has a lot more jokes than previous years.
TorrentFreak:
The Pirate Bay is not only the most visited BitTorrent site on the Internet, but arguably the most censored too. Many ISPs have been ordered to block their customers’ access to the website, and recently Microsoft joined in on the action by stopping people sharing its location with others. Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger (MSN) now refuses to pass on links to The Pirate Bay website, claiming they are unsafe.
I no longer use MSN.
The Guardian:
His name is now Shin Dong-hyuk. His overall physical health is excellent. His body, though, is a roadmap of the hardships of growing up in a labour camp that the North Korean government insists does not exist. Stunted by malnutrition, he is short and slight – 5ft 6in and about 120lb (8.5 stone). His arms are bowed from childhood labour. His lower back and buttocks are covered with scars. His ankles are disfigured by shackles. His right middle finger is missing. His shins are mutilated by burns from the fence that failed to keep him inside Camp 14.
ZDnet:
Remember the Nexus S? It was the Google flagship phone prior to the Galaxy Nexus. It’s not that old, it was the official Google phone until late last year and is still available for purchase. As a Google flagship phone, it was promised to get the Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) update shortly after it rolled out late last year. Nexus S owners are still waiting for it.
Such horrible after-sales service.
It took iOS just 15 days to get the same percentage of users on the latest OS version as are currently on any single version of Android.
Needs no further elaboration.
Three weeks ago, I got a paid internship as a ruby hacker. I mentioned the Stanford classes during the interview and my interviewer had heard of them. I am no longer adrift without a career, in contrast to thousands of underemployed lawyers nationwide, banging their head against the wall, hoping for a miracle. At my internship, I have already committed code that is in production (despite never having written any ruby when I was hired). In the past 15 months I have learned enough that I was able to pick up ruby/padrino and start contributing quickly
Inspiring!
But with Apple things are different. They don’t just use an ugly cardboard box with their logo and a few stickers slapped on it. They actually give a great deal of thought to the design of the box itself. They think about what it looks like on the shelf, how it presents the contents to the purchaser, and what the experience will be like when you open it.
This is how a company can prove that it’s meticulous.
The Economist:
It’s easy to see why developing countries might be seduced by Singapore’s recent success—but it’s also perfectly delusional of them. What many poorer countries seem to like about Singapore is that it seems to sell the quickest path—a short-cut, almost—to development. After all, wasn’t Singapore, now probably the world’s richest nation measured by wealth per capita, just a malarial swamp only a generation or two back? That’s what many people seem to believe.
Singapore’s ruling party of course does nothing to discourage the myth. The People’s Action Party (PAP) is anxious to take as much credit as it can for Singapore’s undoubted success. The title of one volume of founding-father Harry Lee Kuan Yew’s autobiography says it all—“From Third World to First: The Singapore Story”.
Yet this is far from the whole story.
Asymco:
Today Apple announced both a dividend and a share re-purchase plan which, when combined, will consume 45% of Apple’s current US cash reserves.
The dividend will be $2.65/share/quarter and the buyback will cost $10 billion over three years. The dividend will therefore cost about $2.5 billion per quarter (starting next quarter) and the re-purchase will cost about $833 million per quarter (starting next fiscal year).
However, note that Apple’s cash has been growing far more quickly. It increased by $16 billion last quarter or $37 billion over the last year. This rate of increase is itself increasing.
…
This means Apple’s total cash should still grow by more than $35 billion this year.
TL;DR—Apple’s cash inflow grows at an increasing rate, that even this cash dispersion strategy will not dampen.
So, it has come to this. They’re earning so much money that they can’t spend it anywhere else, and fast enough. While I’d think that Steve Jobs might disapprove of this measure, but after some thought, I think this move might actually take some pressure of managing such a huge cash-pile off the CFO’s back.
In fact, it is said that Apple’s CFO can probably be considered as a large hedge-fund manager.
Hopefully with this move, we would finally see the market value Apple’s stock appropriately, after so many years of undervaluing AAPL.
