Neat: A Roadmap to Our [Bay Area] Highways in the Sky

Too good for words: Stephen Colbert Endorses Barack Obama

So that’s what happened to Geekcorps:

[Geekcorps] is largely dormant since my successor [OLPC News' Wayan Vota] moved on to another job. Even before Geekcorps went dormant, it wasn’t working the way I wanted it to.

The World Toilet Organization, “the other WTO”

iPhone+Twitter=Blog death: Twitter ate my blog! (and only 5 years ago blogs were killing newspapers, times how they do change)

Too cool! This is more creative than creative: The Unfinished Swan

Andre is having a baby, on Twitter

Update: it is done! We don’t have a name for this little kid– we were told he was going to be a girl.

Thing I did not know: Al Franken is running for US Senate!

Ouch:

Until Microsoft comes up with a way to greatly shorten the time it takes to load Windows, PC makers are speeding up boot times using programs that bypass Windows. The systems vary technically, but they all rely on a version of an operating system called Linux that gives users quick access to Web browsing and other basic functions of their computer. In some cases, Windows never boots, while in others, Windows starts in the background.

Hardy-har-har: political professionals are putting their bets on McCain going back to Phoenix, not rising like one.

I LOVE this: Dry Hump the Vote

Joel Johnson on the G1:

Those of us who review products for a living — gigolos of gadgetry, who seduce an endless succession of products in one-week stands for your titillation by proxy — have learned to open our hearts quickly to something new, take a quick reading of our quickening pulse, and then move nearly effortlessly to the next victim. It’s useful to a shopper, certainly, but not the same as the knowledge gained over the slow arc of fidelity.

Dude has a way with words: “Poor Linux, always a bridesmaid…”

Ha, HAHAHAHA! Gay Scientists Isolate Christian Gene Finally!

Wow, these are nice: Comparative Perspectives – Heights of Mountains, Lengths of Rivers

Umm, has anyone else out there heard of RapidShare? (two co-workers mentioned it to me offhand last week)

Something I did not expect to stumble upon while reading a Wikipedia article about 4chan:

Around midnight on September 11, 2007, a student posted photographs of mock-pipe bombs and another photograph of him holding them while saying he would blow up his high school—Pflugerville High School in Pflugerville, Texas—at 9:11 a.m. on September 11.

That’s where I went to high school.

Go, check this out! Idée Multicolr Search Lab Flickr Set

My mind is blown: Sticky tape generates X-rays (watch the video)

This is pretty fucking disgusting: The End of Bailout Transparency

Instant classic xkcd: Scrabble

Oh, I guess you’re right, we’re both socialists, yay socialism!

McCain calls Obama a Socialist, but McCain voted for the bailout and wants to spend government money on the mortgage crisis

Wow, Narwhals (and lots of other good pics)

Hot shit: EFF Challenges Constitutionality of Telecom Immunity in Federal Court (must donate to EFF)

TSA fail:

Later, Schnei­er would carry two bottles labeled saline solution—24 ounces in total—through security. An officer asked him why he needed two bottles. “Two eyes,” he said. He was allowed to keep the bottles.

This looks fun: Carl Zeiss PhotoScope

Re: Iceland, check out: Surreal Reykjavik

OMG, this is incredible, did anyone hear about this? Iceland’s financial system collapsed Thursday (I mean really, this has been like one big global financial soap opera)

Stranger than fiction: Vladimir Putin releases judo instruction DVD

I feel safer: TSA screener ripped off hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of electronics from passengers (I blame Kip)

Holy cow! Angel Island on fire (this might explain the ash on my scooter this morning)

PSA: The last day to register to vote is October 20, 2008. If you have moved, changed your name, or would like to change your party affiliation, you must re-register to vote.

I felt that! 3.1 near Berkeley (just kind of rose out of my chair)

I learned how to speak to an octopus! Tarvusim (omg this has changed my life)

I wonder what Andrea Dworkin would think of Peter Acworth?

Whoa: Rock slide prompts evacuation of Curry Village at Yosemite

I’m totally thinking about going to this on Saturday, anyone want to join? Free Culture Conference 2008 (it’s at Berkeley)

Photo of the day: big giant heaping steaming pile of seafood

This is a headline I can get behind: Google Patent Could Kill Off Cellphone Contracts

NEAT! (Then again, these are neatlinks)

I shot these photos at a denim factory in Kentucky that specializes in distressing high-end jeans for a few top designers. I used to scoff at paying a premium for jeans that come with holes in them already. Then I saw just how much work goes into distressing jeans, and I realized that these people are artists.

I’m looking forward to the movie: As Credit Crisis Spiraled, Alarm Led to Action

Awesome or awful? John Lydon’s butter commercial (I just like listening to his voice)

Stephanie posted a neat “infographic” of our hike down into the Grand Canyon, along with scads of photos: DOWN Down down…

Crappy headline, great article: Agency’s ’04 Rule Let Banks Pile Up New Debt, and Risk

Many events in Washington, on Wall Street and elsewhere around the country have led to what has been called the most serious financial crisis since the 1930s. But decisions made at a brief meeting on April 28, 2004, explain why the problems could spin out of control.

Just when you think you’ve seen everything, Andre sends you a link to a Dan Deacon video.

Death by txtmsg:

The engineer of a commuter train that collided last month with a freight train here, killing 25 people and injuring more than 130, was sending text messages on his cellphone seconds before the crash, federal investigators said Wednesday.

Jimmy Wales is my hero! Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales meets China’s censors

It’s me! Justin Watt in Google, circa 2001 (Justinsomnia was still half of a year off—I started blogging in June 2002)

I’d really like to know more about what they mean by this:

The system also makes it easy for us to write backfills that automatically parallelize, detect errors, retry, and backoff from overloaded servers. As an essential part of the move-data-to-another-cluster pattern and the omg-we’ve-been-writing-the-wrong-value-there bug fix, this is quickly becoming the most common use of our queue.