links for 2009-04-01

"The report says the nuclear industry, under current policies and financing, won't be able to build enough new reactors to make a difference in climate in the next 20 years." I'm not surprised.

"National Security Letters, a controversial tool that lets investigators obtain records without a court order, has come under fire from civil libertarians, courts, and the government's own watchdogs. Now lawmakers have revived a proposal to rein in NSLs, the use of which has exploded under the PATRIOT Act." The sad part of NSls is that even the Justice Department admits it's been overused.

A content slider that is actually valid.

Ahh xkcd once again makes my day.

Umm no morons.

An argument for Mother to Mature Nature account rules.

HTML5, an ever moving target.

"Based on the 1967 Katz v. United States Supreme Court decision, this test actually has two parts. First, the government's action can't contravene an individual's subjective expectation of privacy; and second, that expectation of privacy must be one that society in general recognizes as reasonable. That second part isn't based on anything like polling data; it is more of a normative idea of what level of privacy people should be allowed to expect, given the competing importance of personal privacy on one hand and the government's interest in public safety on the other. The problem is, in today's information society, that definition test will rapidly leave us with no privacy at all." Interesting read.

How did eBay solve their scalability issues?

"Jacek Utko is an extraordinary Polish newspaper designer whose redesigns for papers in Eastern Europe not only win awards, but increase circulation by up to 100%. He asks, Can good design save the newspaper? It just might." Really good TED talk.

Create your own personal lifestream. Pretty cool app.

Not only is the Authors Guild in the wrong, but so is Amazon.

"The US Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by cigarette maker Philip Morris over a $79.5m (£56m) award to the widow of a long-time Oregon smoker." Final award amount is $145 million.

Design those backgrounds people.

"The debate on global warming and energy policy accelerated on Tuesday as two senior House Democrats unveiled a far-reaching bill to cap heat-trapping gases and quicken the country’s move away from dependence on coal and oil."

Now we have advertising on our roads.

"The right lesson to learn from open source software, I think, is that it may be darned hard to achieve modularity in software development, but it can be worth it to reap the benefits of large-scale collaboration."

"The World Bank says the world economy will contract by 1.7% this year, the first decline since World War II."

Just adding more servers doesn't make your website more reliable.

Dojo is pretty freaking fast JS library.

Good to read for anyone with misconceptions about what atheism means.

Good news from EA on their most recent run in with DRM.

I was so missing my spam.

"President Obama plans to begin negotiations on Wednesday to draft a new arms control treaty that could slash the American and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals by about a third and possibly lead to even deeper reductions, according to administration officials." Good, how many nukes do we really need, that and it would save us money.

"On green philosophy, there is literally no place on earth for mankind." Ah yes, libertarians have no concept of balance, it's either all or nothing.

Your job is to register domains not regulate morality.

"Unsurprisingly, Google says it eliminated the video ads because of poor performance. It is difficult to figure out a sustainable ad model for video, which is why pre-rolls remain more common."

"In fact, adults are exposed to screens — TVs, cellphones, even G.P.S. devices — for about 8.5 hours on any given day, according to a study released by the Council for Research Excellence on Thursday." I'm not surprised.

Sometimes it's right, sometimes it's not.

"The bill will expand the number of volunteer slots to 250,000 from 75,000, increasing the ranks of the existing AmeriCorps program, and establishing new cadres of volunteers focused on health care, education, renewable energy and veterans."

"Wyoming [NJ] County District Attorney George Skumanick Jr. cannot charge three teenage girls who appeared in photographs seminude traded by classmates last year, a judge ruled Monday. US District Judge James M. Munley granted a request by the American Civil Liberties Union to temporarily stop Mr. Skumanick from filing felony charges against the Tunkhannock Area School District students." Good news on a follow from an earlier story I posted here.

When creating a design remember to design the system you want people to interact with, the comments for a blog.

To make it in social media you need people there ready to interact with the customer or the customer them self for other customers to see/interact with.

Way to go Pittsburgh.

"Summary: Fox News' William La Jeunesse asserted that "our corporate tax rate is second highest in the world," ignoring the effective tax rate, which is lower for corporations in the U.S. than for corporations in several other countries." The effective tax rate and the tax rate are two very different things.

"The Free Flow of Information Act mandates federal court oversight of subpoenas that would force journalists to reveal information gleaned from confidential sources. However, in order to gain the protection of the bill, a reporter must engage in journalism “regularly” and must do so “for a substantial portion of [his or her] livelihood or for substantial financial gain.” The American Civil Liberties Union supported the bill’s passage but noted that it would have preferred stronger protections for those reporters who aren’t engaged in journalism regularly or those who do so without compensation." Not bad.

"Summary: Numerous media outlets and personalities have claimed or suggested that given the size of the current and projected U.S. federal debt, the Obama administration's health-care reform proposal is untenable, but did not address the administration's argument that health-care reform is essential to the long-term economic health of the country." It's so hard responding to other side, more fun to just make stuff up.

Please who wants to write a social app in ActionScript?

"The International Space Station, once a place where astronauts would share food and facilities, is said to be embroiled in a Cold War-like stand-off." Seriously?

One of the first meetings between the current administration and Iran, also it was apparently unplanned.

I would do it too if I had a cruddy car and could get more than it was worth.

"What the Obama team is proposing is disconcertingly similar to the actions of Japanese Prime Ministers Hashimoti, Obuchi, and Mori in 1995 and 1998: Rather than ask the legislature for straightforward recapitalization money, you have the political leadership preferring to risk overpaying current owners of toxic assets rather than forcing sales. For all of Japan’s supposed intervention in markets, its government still lacked the stomach for taking over banks, let alone closing them." Interesting.

It seems silly this is even a question, "nope don't need a chaplain".

"Kim Kardashian posted a pre-photoshopped picture of herself from her Complex Magazine photoshoot to her blog saying she is aware she has cellulite and 'which curvy girl doesn't?'" Good to read.

"A US marine has gone on trial accused of killing an unarmed captive in Iraq, in a case sparked by his own alleged confession during a lie-detector test. The court-martial in California heard that when Sgt Ryan Weemer applied for a Secret Service job, he said he had killed someone in Iraq in 2004." Tough case but considering he essentially confessed, well you know.

Stack Overflow had an outage, due to raid controllers.

Smashing Magazine gets in on the fun of April Fool's.

"US house prices fell by a record 19% in January compared with a year earlier, according to a closely-watched index." Wow.

Bye, Wkia search.

"Facebook CFO Gideon Yu (pictured here) is leaving Facebook, as the company announced internally today that it was replacing him and searching for a new CFO on the path to an eventual IPO." Interesting.

"Microsoft last week lost European browser market leadership for the first time in years, when Mozilla's Firefox 3 took the top spot from Internet Explorer 7, Web analytics firm StatCounter said on Tuesday." Roughly a third for each Firefox and IE7.

"The Obama administration has reversed another policy from the Bush era by seeking a seat for the US on the UN's Human Rights Council."

Just in case you want on I guess?

Random but the same.