I’ve never actually used a recipe manager. Ok, truthfully I have rarely ever used a recipe to begin with, but Paprika is pretty sweet. I just bought the apps so that I force myself to cook a wider variety of things, so be sure to read Steven Owens’ nice review of recipe managers over at The Sweet Setup.
Category: Links
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‘Here Comes Boreas: The Weather Channel Brands Winter Storms’
Ian Crouch:
> What you call the looming storm threatening the East Coast this Thanksgiving week depends on where you get your weather news. If it comes from the several platforms of the Weather Channel, then you know that the storm has a name, Boreas (the Greek god of the cold north wind), and so are most likely referring to it accordingly. If you get your forecasts elsewhere, then you are probably using some variant of “that shitty storm” as you nervously eye your holiday travel plans. -
‘End the N.S.A. Dragnet, Now’
Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon, Mark Udall of Colorado and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico:
> Our first priority is to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorism. If government agencies identify a suspected terrorist, they should absolutely go to the relevant phone companies to get that person’s phone records. But this can be done without collecting the records of millions of law-abiding Americans. We recall Benjamin Franklin’s famous admonition that those who would give up essential liberty in the pursuit of temporary safety will lose both and deserve neither.
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Bitcoin Survival Guide
Sounds cool, I hadn’t really kept track of it until now. I think I need to add it as a payment method here though…
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‘How Hacker News Ranking Really Works: Scoring, Controversy, and Penalties’
Ken Shirriff:
> Some submissions get automatically penalized based on the title, and others get penalized based on the domain. It appears that any article with NSA in the title gets an automatic penalty of .4. I looked for other words causing automatic penalties, such as awesome, bitcoin, and bubble but they do not seem to get penalized.
> I observed that many websites appear to automatically get a penalty of .25 to .8: arstechnica.com, businessinsider.com, easypost.com, github.com, imgur.com, medium.com, quora.com, qz.com, reddit.com, rt.com, stackexchange.com, theguardian.com, theregister.com, theverge.com, torrentfreak.com, youtube.com. I’m sure the actual list is longer. (This is separate from “banned” sites, which were listed at one point.The problems that HN is trying to avoid by doing this is understandable, but I do think it has been gone about in the wrong way. ((Not that it matters, as HN is largely an Android-VC-HackerNews circle-jerk anyways.))
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Avoid QuizUp
In addition to sending private data to *other* users phones, Joseph Keller reports:
> Also of note is how QuizUp handles access to your contacts. The game allows you to invite your friends to the game via text message, which you need to grant QuizUp access to your contacts to allow. Once this is done, QuizUp sends your contact’s emails, in plain text, to their servers, in violation of federal privacy laws. This is the same thing that got social network Path in trouble last year.
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The New Glif
Looks fantastic. I ordered one, but was tempted to order three.
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‘Okay, Google, you officially beat Siri’
Marcio Cyrillo:
> Whatever the future of digital assistants may be, it’s clear that the service must be fully context-aware, super responsive, and most importantly, learn about you. If Apple doesn’t empower Siri with a true digital brain, the service will soon become a joke when compared to the significant improvements Google Now is achieving.
It’s hard to compete with Google on this level when Apple *seems* to be wanting to give users *some* privacy.
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What our privacy is worth
Bruce Schneier:
> Google’s 2013 third quarter profits were nearly $15 billion; that profit is the difference between how much our privacy is worth and the cost of the services we receive in exchange for it. -
Bruce Schneier AMA
For your weekend reading list.
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Network Plus Sit/Stand Desk
Looks like a not-ugly version of the Geek Desk. Nice.
(via Moltz) -
‘That 60W-equivalent LED: What you don’t know’
Ed Rodriguez:
> In other words, totally unlike incandescent and substantially unlike a CFL, reliability and life expectancy go down hill sharply as soon as you install it anywhere that air is restricted. Guess what? A large percentage of places for LED best value is in those place where access is difficult and air is restricted. LEDs do not target a “table-lamp-only” marketplace.
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‘Microsoft Bringing Message Encryption To Office 365’
Alex Wilhelm:
> The system is neat: Once administrators turn it on, emails that are sent are encrypted before they are fired out, meaning that they only leave the house after they put a jacket on. The recipient receives an email that has an encrypted attachment. That’s the message.
> The attachment opens in a browser window, and the recipient authenticates themselves with either their Microsoft or Office 365 account.
It’s a hack, but far easier than PGP/GPG systems, and at the end of the day any encryption is better than none. Coming early 2014 Microsoft says.
The big question: how do we know the NSA hasn’t forced Microsoft to add a back door into this, or otherwise compromise the system? Without assurances on that, why bother?
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‘Things You’re Not Supposed to Do With Google Glass’
A.J. Jacobs:
> The night did make clear that Glass could have a profound impact on dating. Imagine when hackers start releasing facial-recognition software against Google’s will: We might scan the room and figure out who is married, whose company just had an IPO, who got busted for shoplifting when they were nineteen. Imagine being able to come up with retorts worthy of Oscar Wilde because they were written by Oscar Wilde.
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‘No. This is a trap.’
Jason Feifer:
> No. This is a trap. This is saying, “Open-office layouts are great, and if you don’t like them, you must have some problem.” Oh, I have a problem: It’s with open-office layouts. And I have a solution, too: Every workspace should contain nothing but offices. Offices for everyone.Agreed on all accounts.
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Poster Bookmarklets
Speaking of Viticci, I had completely missed this great bookmarklet from him.
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You Can’t Leave, Yet [video]
Thanks to the TSA you can no longer just leave the Syracuse airport, you have to go through a scanner first. Yay freedom.
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‘New technology: a koan’
Sid O’Neill, posting before the Things debacle:
> What you have right now — why isn’t that sufficient? The existence of something better doesn’t negate the usefulness of what you already own. I don’t have a philosophical objection to these things, and far be it from me to moralize. I’m no luddite, nor am I even particularly ascetic. The thing that concerns me — especially when I detect it in myself — is the false belief that these things will really revolutionize our lives.
It’s a quick read, but a very worthwhile read.
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Begin 1.5
When Kyle and I decided to make Begin free, the app wasn’t really designed to be free. So Kyle spent a lot of time re-working Begin so that it was better suited as a free+IAP app.
Instead of the IAP just being themes, we added a ton of stuff and reworded the IAP to “Extend”. I don’t like “pro” labeling, especially for Begin as it is not, and never will be, *by design* a “pro” app. So if you want to pay us $0.99 you get to extend the feature set of Begin.
Either way, the app is still damned useful. I use it everyday.
Really though, the app is free and the icon is fantastic — no reason not to download it and check it out.
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Apple Store for iPad
Matthew Panzarino on the new Apple Store for iPad app:
> Though Apple has had an Apple Store app for the iPhone for some time, it has long neglected the bigger devices in its iOS arsenal. The iPad version of the store has been heavily customized for the iPad and features several flourishes that I think will be replicated heavily by other shopping apps in the future. More importantly, it’s incredibly well designed, and exhibits a balanced tension between the clean lines of iOS 7 and just being ‘sparse’.
It’s fantastic to look at and use, truly.