Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Category: Crazy

  • Settled

    Via xkcd.

  • This Has Already Happened

    Today’s Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic (below) reminds me of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy line:

    There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory, which states that this has already happened.

    Enjoy…

  • Jay Z Magna Carta

    So Jay-Z did a deal with Samsung to make his new album available for free for Samsung Galaxy owners. The app became available today, so as an S3 owner I installed it.

    The first thing it asks is to login with Twitter or Facebook. You cannot continue until you do so.

    I tried Twitter first. Twitter does a good job of telling you the access the app is asking for. Among other things, it is asking for access to:

    • Follow new people (presumably Jay-Z)
    • Update your profile (what?)
    • Post tweets for you (double what?)

    Needless to say, I did not click accept.

    I tried the Facebook login. Facebook gives zero warnings about what saying Accept means. Do I think that means I’m giving up less if I use Facebook? Uh, no. I think it means that Twitter is honest and Facebook is not.

    But I frankly don’t care a ton about my Facebook account and I think people on Facebook are used to random Facebook updates from apps that aren’t real. So I’m going to try the Facebook login as an experiment.

    It’s not like I’m a big Jay-Z fan. My tastes go to Jazz in the 50’s. But my girls do like Jay-Z (and I appreciate him as a Brooklyn guy) so I’ll give it a whirl.

    If you follow me on Facebook and get random Jay-Z stuff, you know why…

    UPDATE:

    After you login to Facebook, it does warn you that you are giving them access to your timeline, friend list and birthday. It did not say it could post for me or update my profile. Creepy enough, but I’m giving it a shot.

    Free stuff = give up your privacy.

  • Attacked By Clowns

    No comment needed. Courtesy of SMBC.

  • Wow

    Not much else to say. Video of a storm super cell. Watch it full screen.

  • Early Access

    It takes money to make money. Imagine paying extra to get knowledge two seconds earlier than everyone else. Today, it’s worth a lot.

  • I Have a Regular Cat

    I’m not even a cat person (they make me sneeze) but this still cracks me up (courtesy Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal):

  • More Sharing

    The NY Times expands on the theme of my previous post:

    It’s Not Just Nice to Share, It’s the Future

    Krugman must have loved writing this headline:

    Nazi Islamic Bikes From Hell

    And New York Magazine has a Venn Diagram explaining why conservatives hate CitiBike so much:

    It is a very slippery slope from sharing bikes to sharing everything. You blink and all of a sudden we’re a socialist dystopia, and everyone’s eating Bloomberg Vitamin Mush for every meal.

    Meanwhile, in the first ten days CitiBikes were ridden over 100,000 times for over 300,000 miles.

  • Slow Morning

    I installed a new hard drive yesterday so I had to reinstall Windows. Overnight the updates arrived.

    image

    Getting off to a slow start today…

  • Top of the World

    Or the top of the new World Trade Center anyway. This is a video of the top spire of the WTC being raised slowly by crane (it’s a slow video, you may want to skip ahead). A camera was mounted to it so you can see (tiny) Manhattan below.

    If this doesn’t give you vertigo, nothing will…