Digital Elf

Why I Hate Android

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:16:12 -0800

Why do I hate Android? It’s definitely one of the questions I get asked most often these days. And most of those that don’t ask probably assume it’s because I’m an iPhone guy. People see negative take after negative take about the operating system and label me as “unreasonable” or “biased” or worse.

I should probably explain.

Believe it or not, I actually don’t hate Android. That is to say, I don’t hate the concept of Android — in fact, at one point, I loved it. What I hate is what Android has become. And more specifically, what Google has done with Android.

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"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of..."

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:10:00 -0800

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.””

- Isaac Asimov

scinerds: The largest storm seen on Saturn in more than 21...

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 13:04:12 -0800

scinerds:

The largest storm seen on Saturn in more than 21 years has now been encircling the planet for a record-breaking 200 days.

First appearing as a tiny blemish on Dec. 5, 2010, the storm is still going strong today, surpassing the ringed giant’s previous longest tempest, which lasted 150 days back in 1903. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, in orbit around Saturn, has given astronomers a front-seat view of this enormous maelstrom and provided valuable data.

From its humble beginnings, the storm has grown to engulf the entire area between Saturn’s 30th and 51st north latitudes. From north to south, the tempest stretches about 9,000 miles — greater than diameter of the Earth — and covers two billion square miles, or eight times the surface area of our planet.

The storm marches through the planet’s atmosphere in the top right of this false-color mosaic from Cassini. Red and orange colors in this view indicate clouds that are deep in the atmosphere. Yellow and green colors, most noticeable along the top edge of the view, indicate intermediate clouds. White and blue indicate high clouds and haze. The rings appear as a thin horizontal line of bright blue.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

(via WIRED)

smarterplanet: It Flies! Da Vinci’s Dream Comes True This is...

Wed, 25 May 2011 18:02:18 -0700

smarterplanet:

It Flies! Da Vinci’s Dream Comes True

This is not a trick. There are no invisible strings, no post production video fixes. What we have here is a graceful, flapping, unfeathery machine that looks and flies like a seagull. It was built by a team of engineers at a company called Festo in Germany, which specializes in factory automation, and for years now they’ve been doing what Leonardo dreamed of when he sat on those hills near Florence sketching birds: they copy from nature’s designs.

Full Story: NPR

via emergentfutures:

Steven Frank - stevenf.com: When I heard that the new MacBook Air models were shipping without any...

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 10:41:11 -0700

Steven Frank - stevenf.com: When I heard that the new MacBook Air models were shipping without any...:

stevenf:

When I heard that the new MacBook Air models were shipping without any Flash plug-in installed, the first thing I did was check to see if one of my long-standing Safari annoyances was fixed. It was.

It used to be that if you completely removed the Flash and Shockwave plug-ins, by deleting or…

Clinically Awesome: Ain't No Mountain High Enough

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 12:34:09 -0800

Clinically Awesome: Ain't No Mountain High Enough:

Some of my friends know that I have clinical depression. For the most part I have it licked; I was on medication for a couple years while I learned how to deal with it. Now I occasionally go through some bad patches but they usually don’t go on for longer than a week. I’ve learned that if I just…

(via solipsism)

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:48:25 -0800

(via solipsism)

"Much of what we called ‘depression’ was really dissatisfaction, a result of setting a bar impossibly..."

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:45:23 -0800

“Much of what we called ‘depression’ was really dissatisfaction, a result of setting a bar impossibly high or expecting treasures that we weren’t willing to work for.”

- Mitch Albom (via Casey Liss) (via marco)