I don't see where Apple would find the room to overhaul the design significantly. All laptops converge on the size and shape of the screen, and the MBA has converged pretty closely. Maybe it will converge a little more. Maybe the edges will be bevelled like on the MBA. The only way I see to significantly alter the design is by adding superfluities, which ain't going to happen, or by changing the materials, which might.

For a cyclist, jwz makes a great programmer. Out of 17 points, 8 are either dubious but essentially harmless, or are actively harmful.

In Austin TX, near as I can tell, these do work in the sense that when the light changes, you will get a walk signal. But they do nothing to force the light to change, and if you don't push the button, you won't get a walk signal.

Some intersections around here cycle the lights on a timer, and some on an induction-coil sensor. If you're trying to cross a busy street from an untrafficked street (where sensors are especially likely to be used instead of timers), you could wait an arbitrary amount of time to cross legally.

It's just as bad with bikes, since most bikes don't have enough metal in them to trip those sensors.

I wonder how long it would take to generate ¥14,800 worth of electricity with that thing.

Where retro-futurism is the attempt by people of the past to imagine the future by extrapolating it from the technology of the day, steampunk should be the attempt to recreate — at least in spirit — our own contemporary technology using the science and mechanics of the Victorian era.

I think you're onto something. That sense of steampunk is certainly the sense it was first used in, to describe The Difference Engine. Most of the steampunk creations we see now, wonderful as they may be, are new wine in old bottles. I'm OK with that. I wouldn't want a 80x40 flipboard as my monitor. Making something like that would be an interesting exercise, but extremely impractical and expensive.

Perhaps we can say that the steampunk of the imagination is essentially different from the steampunk of the workshop.

The browser I was and am using is the current version of Safari.

And Takuan clearly has me dead to rights.

Stratosfyr: When the USA wrote the HDTV spec, they went with the best codec that was available at the time—1993. Back then, it was a bit of a leap of faith that real-time MPEG-2 decoders would be cheap enough to build into consumer electronics.

Certainly in hindsight it would have made sense to think of the TVs more like computers, with upgradeable codecs, but for the time, it was a fairly ambitious spec.

Even a modern codec like H.264 would not be enough to bring Comcast's video quality up to the level of Verizon's, and even if it were, they'd probably over-compress *that* to stuff more channels in anyhow.

There is a great irony in that this winder has a digital clock on it.

How's this working with Bell Canada dropping torrent packets?

Using Google Earth, I found a spot in Chicago where adjacent tiles had clearly been photographed from different angles, causing the buildings to lean into each other.

So if I were to write that Complaint Remover wants to destroy public discourse (oh wait, I just did), are they going to sic themselves on Boingboing?

I think you're right. A linear motor (that is, like a regular electric motor that's been unspooled). Same principle that drives maglev trains and has been used on at least one testbed for an otherwise conventional train.

I think it's fair to say that toasting has never been accompanied by such drama.

The more conventional-looking equivalent to this is called a "monk's ladder." My wife had one in her apartment when we met. Takes a little getting used to, but not a problem after that. Here's an example of a prefab unit.

Buckminster Fuller came up with something very much like this (as you might expect). He called it the Autonomous Package.

Am I the only person to note the irony of the fact that this video is hosted at Youtube, a Google property?

I've been using the web since '94. And while I don't like the barrage of advertising, it's hardly new—I've been seeing banner ads at least since '95.

In terms of balkanization, the Web is probably healthier than it was, say, 10 years ago. There's a general agreement that browsers should support standards rather than invent their own, which was considerable cause for concern before. Net Neutrality is the issue today, but Google stands to be a victim of that. It's hardly a perpetrator.

People, people. How was the MPAA supposed to know that Xubuntu's licensing terms would be enforced? It's not like it had DRM on it or anything.

If Xubuntu doesn't have a fence around it, how is anyone supposed to know when they've trespassed? Honest mistake, I'm sure.

"Facebook should explain why they chose at the last minute to put the wish lists of corporate advertisers ahead of the privacy interests of their users"

Let me try to rephrase this in a more meaningful way:

"Facebook should explain why they chose at the last minue to put the wish lists of its customers ahead of the privacy interests of their product"

If you're a facebook user, you are the product. You are what facebook is selling. The advertisers are facebook's customers. Is it any wonder facebook treats its users with contempt?

Wow. Right off the bat we hear "Gary Kildall is off today."

There's so much couldabeen history in that name. But instead he was doing a show for San Mateo TV.

The underlying information is interesting, but Edward Tufte would tear the designer behind that infographic a new bar-chart.

Your "direct video link" points to yesterday's installment.

The conspiracy goes deeper. Apparently his sacramental wafers have been laced with LSD.

Boston, eh? This is my surprised face.

Nice job on the redesign. But you should do something to style links differently. If you have link-underlining turned off in your browser (I do), they look no different from the rest of the text.