Good news: I looked up what the trade-in value is for my iPhone 4S 32Gig. Much to my pleasant surprise, it's $195. Almost enough to pay for my new iPhone 5S!

Bad news: If I hadn't stupidly engraved it, the trade-in price would be $220.

Word to the wise: Don't engrave.

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra at BrainyQuote:

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. Yogi Berra

The Many Mysteries of Air Travel - NYTimes.com:

If you’d like the answers, I highly recommend Patrick Smith’s new book, “Cockpit Confidential.” Mr. Smith is a pilot and blogger; much of the book’s format and contents are on display at his Web site, AskThePilot.com, or in the archives of the “Ask the Pilot” column he wrote for Salon.com for years.

Harvard Business School Case Study - Gender Equity - NYTimes.com:

The administrators and the class of 2013 were parting ways, their experiment continuing. The deans vowed to carry on but could not say how aggressively: whether they were willing to revise the tenure process to attract more female contenders, or allow only firms that hired and promoted female candidates to recruit on campus. “We made progress on the first-level things, but what it’s permitting us to do is see, holy cow, how deep-seated the rest of this is,” Ms. Frei said.

You should read this book: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.  It's shocking and insightful.

Basically the book explains and teaches that when you hear, for example, that Egypt is getting a billion US$ in military aid, that's not what it sounds like. We are not sending them a check for a million bucks. We are actually sending the million bucks to US millitary corporations.

Why? Because the funds that Egypt gets can only be spent with specific US companies on specific items, either hardware or service contracts. And moreover the books explains that often the recipient country doesn't even want what they are required to purchase or the project that they are required to undertake, lets say a new highway, bridge, airport or whatever.

So read the book and also, keep that in mind when you learn for example that Senators backing war in Syria are flush with defense industry cash « Watchdog.org:

According to an analysis by MapLight, which tracks lobbying and campaign contributions in Congress, senators who voted in favor of the resolution received, on average, 83 percent more money from defense contractors and other defense interests than senators who voted against the resolution.

About a year ago I started reading Rolling Stone magazine. It's true what Taibbi says, it's definitely not People or EW magazine. Yes it does have good 'cultural' coverage about music and art and so on, but the writing is good and interesting and very often has nothing to do with music. All the uproar about the Tsarnaev cover (I haven't received the issue yet but I almost feel like I have) is so over the top.

I mean get over it people, it's just a magazine cover. Anyway, Mike Taibbi below has a far more reasoned reaction to the outrage than mine, and it's a good article.

Matt Taibbi Explains the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Cover | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone:

It's impossible to become too self-righteous in the defense of something like a magazine when the bottom line of this story is, has been, and always will be that people were cruelly murdered or mutilated through Tsarnaev's horrible act. That truth supercedes all others and always will.  So this is a defense of Rolling Stone that I'm not shouting at the top of my voice. What happens to the magazine and its reputation is really of little consequence in the grand scheme of things. But I do think this has mainly been a misunderstanding, one that hopefully will be cleared up in time.

I've been using Gmail like forever now and have converted many friends and family members to using it. It's great and it's ridiculously cheap. Coupled with a good ad-suppressor plug-in for Safari (Mac) it works well for me. I do access it, almost always, via the desktop Mail app on Mac OSX, so I don't experience it's UI all the time.

But the Gmail UI is quite bizarre, with multiple different ways to do similar things, weird drop down menus and weird functionality in places. So it's a little annoying, but, it does scale, it is cheap, and it is up almost all the time.

I only briefly considered the idea of moving from Gmail to something else when reading this article, but within seconds knew I would stay with Gmail. So all I got out of reading the article is an idea for a lousy blog post :)

Switching from Gmail to FastMail / Max Masnick:

I switched from Gmail to FastMail a few months ago and I’ve been meaning to write a post about how I did it. I saw a tweet about ads in Gmail that look like normal email this morning and thought, “Ads that look like email??? This is the last straw. I want to help people get out.”

Very clever!

An Automated GPS-Free Location System For Cars | IdeaFeed | Big Think:

It works through the use of two simple cameras, which collect video data that is then compared to an OpenStreetMap area map. Through a process of elimination that takes place within an average of 20 seconds of driving, the system is able to figure out exactly where the car is. During tests conducted in Germany, it located cars to within 3 meters of their actual positions.

You probably don't know what a social login button is so forgive this bit of geekyness. I am sure you've seen them: "login with facebook or twitter?" If an app or a site wants to "save you the trouble" of registering a username and password, they may "make your life easier" by allowing you to register using your facebook or twitter password. Conventional wisdom in the world of apps has been that this is a user requirement, and plus beneficial to the business as well. Here's an interesting article that refutes that belief, at least in certain significant scenarios.

Social Login Buttons Aren’t Worth It | MailChimp Email Marketing Blog:

I was, um, not super happy to get that email. I presented my data, and made the case for keeping the buttons, but Ben wasn’t moved. Even though the social login buttons were bound for the grave, I did a little extra analytics footwork to see just how many people were clicking the social login buttons. I was shocked to see that just 3.4% of the people that visited the login page actually used Facebook or Twitter to log in. So what caused the huge drop in login failures then?

 Yea

My favorite mustard these days is the Dijon from Trader Joes's!

The Yellow Commodity Hotter Than Gold - Yahoo! Finance:

Mustard has always been seen as the perfect, zesty accompaniment to the all-American hot dog. But now it’s proving to be hot in an altogether different sense.

I always thought that startups are over glamorized. They are not for everyone. On the other hand, some people also over stress about the 'risk' of joining a startup, which I don't by either. Check out: Alex Payne — Letter To A Young Programmer Considering A Startup:

Maybe a startup is the best way to meet a goal, and maybe it isn’t. If the goal of the young man described above is to run a business – any business! – then perhaps a startup is indeed his best path forward. For others, though, I often wonder if they’re fitting their goals into the format of a startup because it’s an approach that’s lauded, admired, and easily understood (if not easily accomplished).

This bit of advice rings very true to me. Read the whole article, but here's a tasty bit. 

@andrewchen: New essays for 06/03/2013:

1) Learn to make something. Anything. First and foremost, I think it’s important to learn to make something. Anything. It could be an app, blog, table, YouTube channel, video tutorial, or anything else. Then study the people who have become successful enough to support themselves in this craft, and study them, copy them, stalk them, and meet them.

An interesting post from my pal Peter Miller about how we all view the world through our own biases and it's hard to disentangle those from what might feel like clear eyed reasoning. (See Peter, I summarized your article in one sentence :)

Politics and the Soul | ZeitgeistSurfer:

Every thoughtful conservative believes that liberals see the world through a distorting lens whose inner structure has been formed by their desire for a better, fairer, more just, more equal, more peaceful, less polluted world.  (Or perhaps it’s not that at all, but simply envy and the lust for revenge on those who have won life’s lottery.) Most conservatives believe that liberals do not fundamentally understand human nature. “Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made” as Kant said.  As we accumulate experience we encounter a nearly infinite variety of human types. Yet they all share a common core of instinct, rough desire, nobility and/or savagery.

I love this article revealing the beautiful hidden complexity of the lowly magsafe connector.

Ken Shirriff's blog: Teardown and exploration of Apple's Magsafe connector:

Have you ever wondered what's inside a Mac's Magsafe connector? What controls the light? How does the Mac know what kind of charger it is? This article looks inside the Magsafe connector and answers those questions.

I don't agree that it's a "major problem for computer science" - by a long shot. But still it is odd that often Computer Science students are not exposed to 'modern' source control management systems or version management systems, or maybe even "any" SCM at all.

Version Control and Higher Education — What I Learned Building… — Medium:

We are not doing students any favors by ignoring software like Git at the university level. It’s a major problem for computer science, information technology and design students to not—at the very least—be exposed to some form of version control or source code management during their tenure at school.

I remember when this project was first announced and 'PR'd. It's just another good reminder about the unpredictability of these world-changing projects. Sad but interesting:

Electric car company Better Place shuts down after burning through $850M | VentureBeat:

Better Place is the electric car company that hoped to change the world with its ambitious battery-swapping stations. But today it said it’s shutting down. The closure brings to an end arguably the most audacious “clean tech” company ever attempted.

If you are, or ever were, a Billy Joel Fan you will really like this interview. Fascinating to read what seem to be the reasonably honest thoughts and feelings of a Rock Star!

Billy Joel on Not Working and Not Giving Up Drinking - NYTimes.com:

So he doesn’t write anymore, not pop songs anyway. Instead he goes about his relatively ordinary life in plain sight in a cedar shake house in the middle of Sag Harbor village. He has a few of his vintage motorcycles in the garage, and his boat slip is within walking distance. He is seemingly never alone, spending his time in the company of his two pugs or his live-in girlfriend of three years, Alexis Roderick, a former Morgan Stanley risk officer (who he probably wishes had been alongside him in the 1970s to assess his first record deal). What he lacks in output, he more than makes up for in opinions — about his legacy, his mistakes, a rock-star life lived hard and the heroes and villains he met along the way. If the new music of many of his contemporaries is any measure, prolificness is an overrated quality. Once a pop genius, always a pop genius. We ought to know by now.

Do you watch Mad Men? I know it's very good. I always watch it. But sometimes, it doesn't make sense, and I wonder, have I been sucked into a reality distortion field myself? Is it really good?

REVIEW: Mad Men - Episode 8: The Crash - Celebrity Gossip, News & Photos, Movie Reviews, Competitions - Entertainmentwise:

However, the experiment was hit and miss. With the majority of the creative team at SCDPCGC (as the agency seems to be called at the moment) under the influence of, um, well who knows really, there were moments when it was hard to tell what was real from what was imagined. Again, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing but there was a bit too much of it in this episode to make it a really enjoyable show. Was Ken really tap dancing in front of Don or was it just a product of his drug induced haze? Either way it was strange. However, where the confusion definitely worked was in the appearance of Grandma Ida.

Can Cholesterol Drugs Undo Exercise Benefits? - NYTimes.com:

An important new study suggests that statins, the cholesterol-lowering medications that are the most prescribed drugs in the world, may block some of the fitness benefits of exercise, one of the surest ways to improve health.

Starters Guide to iOS Design:

As someone who does work on both the development and design side of iOS apps I find that many designers struggle with the transition to UI work, or with the different processes involved in iPhone and iPad app design. In this guide I'll describe the deliverables you'll be expected to produce, outline the constraints of the medium and introduce fundamental iOS and UI design concepts.

Yahoo, Tumblr, and the Loyalty Factor - Ben Gomes-Casseres - Harvard Business Review: a blog post analyzing f some of the strategic issues underlying the Tumblr/Yahoo deal: 

"...Still, after the initial shock subsides, can Yahoo count on Tumblr users staying on? That is probably how the investment bankers framed it — as a question of switching costs, lock-in, network externalities, and the like. Where are these users to go? There is no equivalent forum of this type, richness, and network size (at least not yet). It would seem that the 18-24 year-old demographic that Yahoo is pining for does not have an easy exit choice...." (from:

Ben Gomes-Casseres - Harvard Business Review)

He also mentions a book - Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (Hirshman) - that seems to have anticipated some of the lock-in, churn and loyalty challenges that subscription based online services of all kinds face, way back in the 1970's. Seems like an interesting book, well worth reading: 

"Mr Hirschman’s most famous book, “Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organisations and States”, remains as suggestive today as it was when it first appeared in 1970, for managers and policymakers as well as intellectuals. Mr Hirschman argued that people have two different ways of responding to disappointment. They can vote with their feet (exit) or stay put and complain (voice). Exit has always been the default position in the United States: Americans are known as being quick to up sticks and move. It is also the default position in the economics profession. Indeed, when his book appeared, Milton Friedman and his colleagues in the Chicago School were busy extending the empire of exit to new areas. If public schools or public housing were rotten, they argued, people should be encouraged to escape them." (from: The Economist)

How to Be a ‘Woman Programmer’ - NYTimes.com:

But none of it qualified me as extraordinary in the great programmer scheme of things. What seems to have distinguished me is the fact that I was a “woman programmer.” The questions I am often asked about my career tend to concentrate not on how one learns to code but how a woman does.

Kirk McDonald: Sorry, College Grads, I Probably Won't Hire You - WSJ.com:

According to one recent report, in the next decade American colleges will mint 40,000 graduates with a bachelor's degree in computer science, though the U.S. economy is slated to create 120,000 computing jobs that require such degrees.

Now, I don't know where this gentleman, Kirk McDonald got this statistic but if you are teaching computer science then it's a pretty sobering statistic. I am going to try digging deeper to see if I can find the source.