Author: jon
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Birthday wishes to …
Google’s home page is bricked up, the requisite Slashdot thread is up, and Gizmodo’s got a great timeline of “50 years of building frenzy” … which can only mean one thing: Happy birthday, Lego!
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What’s up with me, mid-January edition
After taking a couple of months fairly completely off (sleeping, doing some writing, and plenty of hanging out with Deborah), as January gets going I’m starting to re-engage, so I figured it’s about time for another “what’s up” post…. The biggest news is that I’m going to be starting a consulting gig in early February.…
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Democratic candidates’ positions on trans- and LBGTIQ issues
All the Democratic candidates have shown a willingness to discuss LBGTIQ issues, and there are some very clear litmus tests. The Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy mandating discrimination against gays in the military and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) restricting marriage to heterosexual couples are great lenses for discovering the candidates’ views on LGB…
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Kos gets one very, very, right
On the heels of posts by Matthew Yglesias and Ezra Klein yesterday, Kos has an excellent short post highlighting how Bill Clinton and Edwards both completely distorted Obama’s quote about Reagan as a transformative politician. Huh. I didn’t see the part where Obama said the GOP’s ideas were “all the good” ones. In fact, Obama…
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This just in: failure is now an option
WASHINGTON—In a stunning reversal of more than 200 years of conventional wisdom, failure—traditionally believed to be an unacceptable outcome for a wide range of tasks and goals—is now increasingly seen as a viable alternative to success, sources confirmed Tuesday. And there are likely to be significant consequences: Overturning one of America’s most cherished and oft-repeated…
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DA who sent ‘amorous’ and racially charged messages to drop arson charges against Texas Supreme Court Judge
Now that’s a story you don’t see every day! A Texas Supreme Court justice and his wife were charged on Thursday in an arson fire that destroyed their suburban Houston home last June, the judge’s lawyer said. But in a bizarre reversal, prosecutors plan on Friday to seek dismissal of the indictments against the justice……
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Is *that* why they make you wait till you’re at 10,000 feet to turn computers on?
Boeing just announced another delay for the 787, its second or third so far depending on who you believe, so I wanted to go back to a story Kim Zetter reported a few weeks ago on the Wired Threat Level blog: Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner passenger jet may have a serious security vulnerability in its…
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Happy birthday, EFF!
EFF’s 17th birthday party is tonight at 111 Minna in San Francisco. Cleverly timed to coincide with Macworld, it features Adrian and the Mysterious D of Bootie fame, and is sponsored by Louis Rosetto’s (of Wired) new chocolate company TCHO. And they’ll be beta-testing TCHO’s new dark chocolates! [Hmm … DJs, mashups, chocolate. What does…
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Why the New Hampshire recount is important
There are a couple of excellent posts up on why even though there are plausible explanations for the discrepancies in candidates’ results between hand-counted and machine-counted precincts, the recount in the New Hampshire primary is a good thing. In Off the Bus on the Huffington Post, after giving some background on the vulnerabilities of the…
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Five-year olds as national security threats
Boing Boing has stories on not one but two five-year-olds whose names are on the no-fly list and so get treated by the TSA as a security threat. Cory Doctorow comments You know, if you wanted to systematically discredit the idea of a Department of Homeland Security, if you wanted to make an utter mockery…
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DHS issues revised “Real ID” regulations
The Department of Homeland Security has released revised “Real ID” regulations — 284 pages long. While according to government jargon these are the “final” regulations, the first deadline for compliance has now been pushed back to December 31, 2009, so there’s still plenty of opportunity for Congress to act and change things. Their press release…