Scott Rafer's Blog

motherjones: Bayer’s neonicotinoid pesticides, which now coat...

Thu, 17 May 2012 07:37:12 -0700

Bayer’s neonicotinoid pesticides, which now coat upwards of 90 percent of US corn seeds and seeds of increasing portions of other major crops like soy, have emerged as a likely trigger for colony collapse disorder.

kottke.org: Straight White Male, the game of life's lowest difficulty setting

Wed, 16 May 2012 16:36:20 -0700

kottke.org: Straight White Male, the game of life's lowest difficulty setting:

rickwebb:

jkottke:

Using a video game metaphor, John Scalzi explains straight white male privilege for those straight white males who get hung up on the word “privilege”.

Dudes. Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive role playing game, like World of…

Not to pick a fight, but I’d add healthy, educated and wealthy to the list. We could then have a nice debate about which three of the six attributes we’d rather start with. I’d choose my health and education before any of the other attributes. Not sure about the rest.

Rafer sez:
@rickwebb Healthy, Wealthy, and Educated are embarrassingly tightly correlated with Straight White Male. Your attempt to more meritocrously prioritize perfectly illustrates the horror of the current system.

bijan: just ordered this bluetooth headset for working out....

Wed, 16 May 2012 12:33:51 -0700

bijan:

just ordered this bluetooth headset for working out. high hopes - they look great.

(via Plantronics Backbeat Go)

Rafer sez:
@bijan i have a pair and very much like them. The mike is such that it needs to be draped in front of your mouth, but that doesn’t bug me. The CTO of Plantronics is an old friend of Mashery’s if you want to chat him up about it.

"In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty..."

Wed, 16 May 2012 12:23:09 -0700

“In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is. You can lose playing on the lowest difficulty setting. The lowest difficulty setting is still the easiest setting to win on. The player who plays on the “Gay Minority Female” setting? Hardcore.”

- kottke.org: Straight White Male, the game of life’s lowest difficulty setting

ftalphaville: @ThatGreekTweet

Tue, 15 May 2012 13:20:07 -0700

ftalphaville:

@ThatGreekTweet

"Pinterest Marketing Platform"

Tue, 15 May 2012 09:55:59 -0700

“Pinterest Marketing Platform”

- Look Out: Pinterest Marketing Platform Curalate Lands $750k Seed From NEA, First Round, MentorTech | TechCrunch

Rafer sez:
Three very smart words to put together.

heyitsnoah: What’s up with Generation X? Why have they seen a...

Mon, 14 May 2012 15:46:56 -0700

heyitsnoah:

What’s up with Generation X? Why have they seen a smaller change in the percent who support gay marriage than any other generation?

(via Support for Gay Marriage Rising in Every Demographic » Sociological Images )

Photo

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:04:49 -0700

"In choosing Ross Levinsohn to become Yahoo Inc.’s interim chief executive, the company is..."

Mon, 14 May 2012 11:50:58 -0700

“In choosing Ross Levinsohn to become Yahoo Inc.’s interim chief executive, the company is focusing squarely on its need to protect its greatest asset: online-ad sales, which make up the bulk of its more than $4 billion in annual net revenue.”

- Yahoo Interim CEO Ross Levinsohn Is Ad World Veteran - WSJ.com [sub req]

Rafer sez:
My nominations for the last time around were Levinson and Toni Schneider, the latter contingent on the acquisition of Automattic of course. I think few things would fix Yahoo! like putting Toni and Matt in charge.

"If Facebook can have Instagram, it will be a leading player in photo sharing both online and on..."

Sat, 12 May 2012 23:07:23 -0700

“If Facebook can have Instagram, it will be a leading player in photo sharing both online and on mobile. (See Om’s explanation here). The FTC is concerned Facebook could become a dominant advertiser on these platforms — and hurt competition.”

- Expect a 6 month freeze on Facebook’s Instagram acquisition — Tech News and Analysis

Rafer sez:
I have a different take on the importance of the deal. Facebook’s mobile traffic is growing beautifully, regardless of its affect on their ad revenue. The could become a solid #2 to Instagram on their own.

Instead, what Facebook needs is a giant pile of pictures that are accessible outside the social graph. There are an increasing number of important smartphone applications that need photos to display and/or process without privacy concerns. It’s a lot cheaper and less risky for FB to buy Instagram than it is to screw around with the privacy of their existing photo sharing.

"More interesting to me is the implication of this switch. Let’s assume that alongside this change,..."

Fri, 11 May 2012 17:01:00 -0700

“More interesting to me is the implication of this switch. Let’s assume that alongside this change, Apple will also be replacing the default hooks in the iOS SDK that currently use Google Maps. This is a big deal for third party developers. While some choose to use other maps APIs (like Bing Maps, for example), the vast majority go with Google Maps because it’s baked right in and easy to hook up.”

- iOS 6 “Sundance” And The Sunsetting Of Google Maps | TechCrunch

Rafer sez:
@parislemon what i don’t understand about Apple Maps is that the leaked version doesn’t grow the audience. It will still only serve the 1/3rd of Americans and 1/10th of humans who are map literate. Apple usually grows the audience size a la the Innovator’s Solution but doesn’t appear to be doing so this time.

And then Rafer spams:

"What else remains hanging low on the iOS new-features tree, though? I can think of a few: Clever..."

Fri, 11 May 2012 16:54:36 -0700

“What else remains hanging low on the iOS new-features tree, though? I can think of a few: Clever inter-application communication. Seems crazy that iOS, the direct descendant of NeXT, doesn’t have anything like Services, which were one of NeXT’s most touted features (and rightfully so). It’s also worth noting that Android has a pretty good Services-esque system in place, called “Intents”, and Windows 8 has an even richer concept called “Contracts”. Third-party Notification Center widgets. Like the Stocks and Weather ones from Apple — information at a glance, without launching an app. Third-party Siri APIs. Let other apps provide features you can interact with through Siri. But that’s about it. And even the Siri API idea seems more like a “nice to have” feature idea than a low-hanging “Apple really has to do this sooner or later” idea. Again, I’m not saying Apple’s iOS to-do list is empty; I’m just saying the list of obvious they-gotta-do-it stuff is getting short.”

- Daring Fireball: iOS Low-Hanging Fruit

Rafer sez:
Answer: Apple interent search: apps and web integrated.

Walt Disney's Taxi Driver

Fri, 11 May 2012 12:13:44 -0700

jkottke:

Taxi Driver reimagineered to portray Travis Bickle as obsessed with Mickey Mouse.

(via waxy)

"Apple always prefers not to be dependent on third-party technologies. It is at a place where it..."

Fri, 11 May 2012 10:32:26 -0700

“Apple always prefers not to be dependent on third-party technologies. It is at a place where it designs its own software and hardware, even down to the chips and battery and almost all of the key apps that come with iOS devices — with the exception of the Maps app and YouTube. In other words, moving from a third-party solution to an in-house one eventually would be very much in line with Apple’s philosophy and history.”

- Apple mapping a future without Google in iOS 6? — Apple News, Tips and Reviews

Rafer sez:
Two important add-ons: Apple will want in on local commerce at some point, and they have to stop sharing map data with Google before that. And, once Apple has traction on maps, Google Search is next to go.

(via rafer)

I’m just surprised apple hasn’t already kicked google out of mobile safari. Not quite sure what they are waiting for.

(via sawickipedia)

Rafer sez:
I need to finish the blog post on this, but it’s not so simple to ditch GSearch in Safari. What are they going to use, Bing? I think Chomp is the start of the same sort of measured acquisition program for Apple Search that has resulted in Apple Maps. Every serious player with a mobile app ecology is going to need to integrate web search and app (both functionality and content) search. That’s going to take serious, serious work and be a net-changer when someone gets it right.

Related articles

Report: Apple Is Dropping Google Maps from iOS 6 [Apple] (gizmodo.com)

Apple to ditch Google Maps in iOS 6, use in-house mapping solution (bgr.com)

"Apple always prefers not to be dependent on third-party technologies. It is at a place where it..."

Fri, 11 May 2012 09:18:34 -0700

(via Does Mitt Romney still have a high school bully inside? -...

Fri, 11 May 2012 09:16:17 -0700

(via Does Mitt Romney still have a high school bully inside? - latimes.com)

"Their tale ends with an odd twist: FBI agents, caught on video, returning the server only four days..."

Fri, 11 May 2012 07:09:45 -0700

“Their tale ends with an odd twist: FBI agents, caught on video, returning the server only four days after it was seized from a co-location facility in New York City. At the moment, no one knows why the FBI would take that unusual step. FBI Special Agent Bill Crowley said the agency wouldn’t comment on either the seizure or the return of the server.”

- Red Tape - The FBI took — and mysteriously returned — their server. Here’s their story

Rafer sez:
Here’s a hint — don’t turn that box back on. They mighta added a couple of things.

"…any democracy that does not transfer income from rich to poor almost always ends up attending to..."

Wed, 09 May 2012 16:35:05 -0700

“…any democracy that does not transfer income from rich to poor almost always ends up attending to the interests of the poor in other, far more costly ways.”

- Robert Frank (via azspot)

wilwheaton: think-progress: Clinton’s Labor Secretary schools...

Wed, 09 May 2012 15:09:24 -0700

wilwheaton:

think-progress:

Clinton’s Labor Secretary schools Romney on how economics work.

Romney is not just a liar, he’s a stupid liar. He’s George W. Bush with slightly better speaking capabilities.

"The Kardashian is a unit I proposed a few classes back as a measure of attention. Conceptually, the..."

Wed, 09 May 2012 14:16:58 -0700

“

The Kardashian is a unit I proposed a few classes back as a measure of attention. Conceptually, the Kardashian is the amount of global attention Kim Kardashian commands across all media over the space of a day. In an ideal, frictionless universe, we’d determine a Kardashian by measuring the percentage of all broadcast media, conversations and thoughts dedicated to Kim Kardashian. In practical terms, we can approximate a Kardashian by using a tool like Google Insights for Search – compare a given search term to Kim Kardashian and you can discover how small a fraction of a Kardashian any given issue or cause merits.

(I choose the Kardashian as a unit both because I like the mitteleuropean feel of the term – like the Ohm or the Roentgen – and because Kardashian is an exemplar of attention disconnected from merit, talent or reason. The Kardashian mentions how much attention is paid, not how much attention is deserved, so naming the unit after someone who is famous for being famous seems appropriate. Should the unit be adopted, I would hope that future scholars will calculate Kardashians using whatever public figure is appropriate at the time for being inappropriately famous.)

”

- Ethan Zuckerman in An idea worth at least 40 nanoKardashians of your attention. (via mohamed)