Linked List: November 7, 2010

Sunday, 7 November 2010

Trailer for ‘Linotype: The Film’ 

“How does the Linotype fit in with new technology?”

“It doesn’t.”

RockMelt — Like Flock, But Junking Up Chrome Instead of Firefox 

They solved the problem of Chrome having a nice, simple, minimalist interface.

Careful With Your Recurring iPhone Alarms Tomorrow 

John D. Sutter, CNN:

A glitch in the iPhone’s operating system will cause recurring weekday alarms not to ring on time on Monday morning because of the end of Daylight Saving Time, which occurs at 2 a.m. on Sunday in the United States. The phone’s alarm app doesn’t recognize the time change and will ring an hour late if users don’t go into the program and manually reset the alarms.

Users who depend on the iPhone to wake them up should create one-time alarms specifically for Monday morning, said Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison.

Ross Rubin on the iPadification of Mac OS X 

Ross Rubin:

We’ll know something went wrong if we have to shake an iMac to undo.

Nicholas Kristof on U.S. Income Inequality 

Nicholas Kristof argues that the U.S. is at the level of plutocratic banana republics:

CEOs of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.

Step back and (for the moment) avoid passing judgment on whether this state of affairs is good or bad. What’s fascinating is that against this backdrop, last week’s election went to the Republicans, who admit that their top priority is passing large tax cuts for the richest 2 percent of Americans. I know much has been written about this, but I think it defies easy explanation how economic policies that benefit so very few enjoy the support of so many.

Microsoft vs. Software Piracy 

Long NYT feature by Ashlee Vance on Microsoft’s counter-piracy measures around the world. Seems crazy to me how much of it revolves around physical media — counterfeit CDs, DVDs, and holographic stickers.