Daniel Tenner:

Everyone is talking about the "real-time web". That's usually a pretty strong indication of a buzzword that will soon mean very little.

Benjamin Friedman:

These talented and energetic young citizens could surely be doing something more useful.

Maggie Jackson:

Despite our wondrous technologies and scientific advances, we are nurturing a culture of diffusion, fragmentation, and detachment. In this new world, something crucial is missing -- attention.

Paul Carr:

If we all started thinking a bit more like friends, and a bit less like attention whores, the privacy problem would be solved at a stroke.

The questionable value of the real-time web

John Resig:

There are a number of techniques that the Dromaeo suite uses in order to achieve accurate results. Together they provide a solid foundation for allowing significant performance analysis to be completed.

Acidus:

The majority of widely known web performance optimization practices today focus on the application tier or the database tier. Traditional performance testings tools do no front end optimization testing. And yet the front end has the biggest impact on web application performance in modern applications. Do you see the disconnect yet?

This is an enormous opportunity.

Dromaeo: JavaScript Performance Testing

Is it plural?

Is it indicating possession?

Is it a contraction?

Are you trying to say "it is"?

Are you indicating possession?

Is it a possessive and plural name?

How To Use An Apostrophe

Anne Frank:

Whenever you're feeling lonely or sad, try going to the loft on a beautiful day and looking outside. Not at the houses and the rooftops, but at the sky. As long as you can look fearlessly at the sky, you'll know that you're pure within and will find happiness once more.

Stefany Anne Golberg:

That's Anne Frank in a nutshell. A girl at a window, looking fearlessly at the sky.

Ghost Story

Tamar Lewin:

Parent alert: the Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those "Baby Einstein" videos that did not make children into geniuses.

The company will refund $15.99 for up to four "Baby Einstein" DVDs per household, bought between June 5, 2004, and Sept. 5, 2009, and returned to the company.

Christopher J. Ferguson:

Many people like to think that any child, with the proper nurturance, can blossom into some kind of academic oak tree, tall and proud. It's just not so.

Matt Kaplan, in 2007:

Rather than helping youngsters, such products may actually hurt their vocabularies.

Frederick Zimmerman, in 2007:

It's like empty calories for the mind.

Caleb Crain, in 2007:

In August, scientists at the University of Washington revealed that babies aged between eight and sixteen months know on average six to eight fewer words for every hour of baby DVDs and videos they watch daily.

From last year's best-of:

Never has one generation spent so much of its children's wealth in such a short period of time with so little to show for it.

Andrew Lahde:

All of this behavior ... only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.

No Einstein in Your Crib? Get a Refund

Contraptor is a DIY open source construction set for experimental personal fabrication, desktop manufacturing, prototyping and bootstrapping.

Various сartesian robots can be assembled from Contraptor and used as a prototyping platform for projects such as XY plotter, mini CNC machine, 3D printer, etc.

From the archive:

Fab@Home is a website dedicated to making and using fabbers - machines that can make almost anything, right on your desktop.

Neil Gershenfeld:

Students are desperate for hands-on experience.

Recently:

The 'Bus Pirate' is a universal bus interface that talks to most chips from a PC serial terminal, eliminating a ton of early prototyping effort when working with new or unknown chips.

From earlier this year:

The Arduino open-source microcontroller platform can be programmed and equipped to perform a nearly endless list of functions.

From 2004:

This class teaches the use of several types of CAD/CAM machines, and techniques for making literally 'almost anything'. The lecture notes include valuable tips on how to make those machines work, and links to other web sites with detailed information on the world of CAD/CAM.

Contraptor

Matthew Hoh, in September:

It is with great regret and disappointment I submit my resignation from my appointment as a Political Officer in the Foreign Service and my post as the Senior Civilian Representative for the US Government in Zabul Province.

Success and victory, whatever they may be, will not be realized in years, after billions more spent, but in decades and generations.

Karen DeYoung, yesterday:

While he did not share Hoh's view that the war "wasn't worth the fight," Holbrooke said, "I agreed with much of his analysis."

George Packer:

Richard Holbrooke must know that there will be no American victory in this war; he can only try to forestall potential disaster. But if he considers success unlikely, or even questions the premise of the war, he has kept it to himself.

DeYoung continues:

Late last year, a friend told Hoh that the State Department was offering year-long renewable hires for Foreign Service officers in Afghanistan. It was a chance, he thought, to use the development skills he had learned in Tikrit under a fresh administration that promised a new strategy.

The Economist on Obama, from last November:

He has to start deciding whom to disappoint.

Ahmed Rashid, last month:

For the first time, polling shows that a majority of Americans do not approve of Obama's handling of Afghanistan. Yet if it is to have any chance of success, the Obama plan for Afghanistan needs a serious long-term commitment -- at least for the next three years. Democratic politicians are demanding results before next year's congressional elections, which is neither realistic nor possible. Moreover, the Taliban are quite aware of the Democrats' timetable. With Obama's plan the US will be taking Afghanistan seriously for the first time since 2001; if it is to be successful it will need not only time but international and US support -- both open to question.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, in 2005:

The Army will need this lieutenant 20 years from now when he could be a colonel, or 30 years from now when he could have four stars on his collar. But I doubt he will be in uniform long enough to make captain.

If you keep faith with soldiers and tell them the truth even when it threatens their beliefs, you run the risk of losing them. But if you peddle cleverly manipulated talking points to people who trust you not to lie, you won't merely lose them, you'll break their hearts.

Andrew Lahde:

Today I write not to gloat. Instead, I am writing to say goodbye.

Frank Sandoval:

My heart swells in my chest and while I laugh,
I feel fear, smell a faint stench of insanity.

Dear Ambassador ...

Chris Jordan:

These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.

From the archive:

China is choking on its own success.

Much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China.

Edward Burtynsky is internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of nature transformed by industry. Manufactured Landscapes - a stunning documentary by award winning director Jennifer Baichwal - follows Burtynsky to China, as he captures the effects of the country's massive industrial revolution. This remarkable film leads us to meditate on human endeavour and its impact on the planet.

Stewart Brand:

In some cultures you're supposed to be responsible out to the seventh generation -- that's about 200 years. But it goes right against self-interest.

Decius:

One must assume that all garbage is monitored by the state. Anything less would be a pre-911 mentality.

Midway: Message from the Gyre

Mary Meeker, on overall economic risks:

New Home Sales Off Historic Lows But Way Below 'Normal'
Consumer Credit Card Defaults Rising
Residential Mortgage Defaults at All-Time Highs & Rising
Unemployment High & Rising - USA at 10% in 9/09 vs. 6% Y/Y
Debt Levels at Historic Levels & Rising, USA Government Leading Charge

Mathew Honan, for Wired, in January:

Millions of people are now walking around with a gizmo in their pocket that not only knows where they are but also plugs into the Internet to share that info, merge it with online databases, and find out what - and who - is in the immediate vicinity ... Simply put, location changes everything.

Citysense:

At the heart of Macrosense are powerful machine learning algorithms that process time-stamped location data and metadata streams from heterogeneous sources – GPS, WiFi positioning, cell tower triangulation, RFID and other sensors – and empower companies and investors to better understand and predict human behavior on a macro scale.

Noah Shachtman, for Wired, in October:

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media.

Decius, in August 2008:

Don't worry about privacy ... privacy is dead ... there's no privacy ... just more databases ... No consequences, no whammies, money. Money for me ... Money for me, databases for you.

Meeker:

Facebook = Unified Communication + Multimedia Repository in Your Pocket

William T. Vollmann:

Across the border, the desert is the same but there are different secrets.

Mary Meeker on Economy and Internet Trends

Interfacing a new microchip can be a hassle. Breadboarding a circuit, writing code, hauling out the programmer, or maybe even prototyping a PCB. We never seem to get it right on the first try.

The 'Bus Pirate' is a universal bus interface that talks to most chips from a PC serial terminal, eliminating a ton of early prototyping effort when working with new or unknown chips.

The Bus Pirate