Linked List: January 20, 2014

Monday, 20 January 2014

‘The Floppy 2: The Zip Disk’ 

Special guest John Moltz joins me on the latest episode of my podcast, The Talk Show. Topics include A-Rod’s suspension, Google’s acquisition of Nest and the meaning of “innovation”, Tim Cook’s public speaking, larger iPads, full screen mode on Mac OS X, and Moltz’s new podcast.

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The Five Best Punctuation Marks in Literature 

Kathryn Schulz, writing for Vulture:

Some forms of punctuation seem less marked out for fame than others; if anyone knows of a noteworthy comma, I’d love to hear about it. But what follows is a — well, what follows is a colon, which sets off a list, which contains the most extraordinary examples I could find of the most humble elements of prose:

Farhad Manjoo Takes Over Pogue’s ‘State of the Art’ Column at The New York Times 

Tech journalism has been a game of musical chairs these last few months.

Adware Vendors Buy Chrome Extensions to Send Ad- and Malware-Filled Updates 

Ron Amadeo, writing for Ars Technica:

To make matters worse, ownership of a Chrome extension can be transferred to another party, and users are never informed when an ownership change happens. Malware and adware vendors have caught wind of this and have started showing up at the doors of extension authors, looking to buy their extensions. Once the deal is done and the ownership of the extension is transferred, the new owners can issue an ad-filled update over Chrome’s update service, which sends the adware out to every user of that extension.

Devious strategy.