Pinboard (flashboy)

"Wilson pointed out that clubs with an omnipotent manager lose much of the accumulated knowledge in the organisation when the man leaves. At City, the knowledge is spread across more people, and therefore always stays within the club."

flashboy — 2012-08-18T11:15:24+00:00

That single-point-of-failure thing keeps cropping up in unexpected places.

"But as has become clear, WikiLeaks was not like the Internet it lives on: It also had a single, internal point of failure."

flashboy — 2012-08-17T19:06:23+00:00

Oh network architect, network architect thyself, basically.

The Google decides to take on human trafficking and drug cartels

flashboy — 2012-07-18T09:26:41+00:00

Please please please let drug cartels be Googling "gaps border security location" and "us drug price by city"

Environmental Modification Convention

flashboy — 2012-06-21T22:44:01+00:00

"The Convention bans weather warfare, which is the use of weather modification techniques for the purposes of inducing damage or destruction."

When Twitter Stumbles, Sites Across the Web Go Down With It

flashboy — 2012-06-21T22:22:59+00:00

"At what point is a for profit-service so interconnected and critical that it should be thought of as something more akin to a public utility?"

"So the titanic showdown between Facebook and Google might not be the News Feed vs. Google+ after all... It might, in fact, be pictures vs. vision."

flashboy — 2012-05-30T23:21:44+00:00

"Google is getting good, really good, at building things that see the world around them and actually understand what they’re seeing."

The posh-ing of English football - FT.com

flashboy — 2012-05-27T18:40:10+00:00

"I never thought it would happen, but England’s football team is becoming middle-class."

Internal Time: The Science of Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You're So Tired

flashboy — 2012-05-27T18:38:21+00:00

"Debunking the social stigma around late risers"

Fear the zombie drone

flashboy — 2012-05-10T00:53:41+00:00

Good overview of the practical problems of opening the skies up to drones. File the term "lost-link event" away for future news panics.

Harvet Ismuth's 42 Essential 3rd Act Twists

flashboy — 2012-05-10T00:38:02+00:00

"Double Shyamalan"

Hari Kunzru on Damien Hirst and the economics of the art market

flashboy — 2012-03-18T23:48:28+00:00

"Sooner or later, his advisers will surely find a way for him to dispense with the actual objects altogether and he will package concepts in tranches, like mortgage securities, some good stuff with some trash, to be traded on the bourse in Miami-Basel."

"A helium party balloon should cost £75, to reflect the true value of the gas used"

flashboy — 2012-03-18T15:58:40+00:00

"We use it to make our voices go squeaky for a laugh. It is very, very stupid. It makes me really angry."

Oh, God: Klout Is Right

flashboy — 2012-03-16T23:28:30+00:00

"The current de facto scoreboard of the internet has done its baleful calculations and announced that a spambot is more influential on Twitter than the very creator of Twitter itself. Clearly this is outlandish! ... In case I didn't foreshadow this enough, here comes the smug contrarian argument: Klout, at least in this instance, is right."

Alexis Madrigal gets enjoyably angry about Harper's publisher John MacArthur's anti-internet screed

flashboy — 2012-03-13T16:30:38+00:00

"It is precisely because I value my writing that I want it to be online and free. I don't write merely to rub two pennies together; I write because I want to have an impact in the world. I want to work with my community to break stories and tell jokes, to highlight injustice and find better ways of solving problems... The Internet is where the action is: it's where all the elegant, dirty, pretty, lowbrow, brilliant ideas come together to commingle and evolve."

And probably the most comprehensive consideration of the Kony issue, the Invisible Children campaign, and the complexities of campaigning

flashboy — 2012-03-09T07:04:48+00:00

"If we need simple narratives so people can amplify and spread them, are we forced to engage only with the simplest of problems? Or to propose only the simplest of solutions?"

The most entertainingly withering of the Kony 2012 campaign takedowns

flashboy — 2012-03-08T17:27:16+00:00

"...a study of a bunch of vain and ignorant young people who can think and feel only in cliches and appear to be laboring under the notion that Mark Zuckerberg invented both compassion and democracy for them sometime around 2004."

How to Say I Love You - The Morning News

flashboy — 2012-03-05T18:33:17+00:00

"(59) Tell her how you feel while you stand at the foot of the huge bed and look upon her sleeping body, while cursing yourself for being a ghost whose words cannot be heard by the living."

"Here’s the thing: Twitter is part of the 'real world.' The Internet is part of the world."

flashboy — 2012-02-22T02:20:23+00:00

Yep.

Extinction Looms for Rare Frog Species, Now Down to One Individual

flashboy — 2012-02-22T01:15:05+00:00

"The last known Rabb’s fringe-limbed tree frog now lives by himself at Zoo Atlanta in Georgia after the zoo euthanized the only other member of its species." :-(

Quality vs. Quantity Online : CJR

flashboy — 2012-02-22T01:09:51+00:00

"Cats-make-you-crazy stories are hard to scale, while commodity content is much easier to replicate." (I'm not convinced you can't do both of these things simultaneously.)

How 'Radiolab' Is Changing the Sound of the Radio

flashboy — 2012-01-17T20:35:16+00:00

"The genre conventions of blogging are changing. Few old-style linkblogs exist and a whole culture has developed around the longread... This is the Radiolab effect extended: expect less pretension to authority, greater understanding of one's nodeness, but greater respect for the production culture of the pre-web era."

Video: Catvertising will redefine internet ads (Wired UK)

flashboy — 2011-11-14T19:07:36+00:00

"Use a video of a cat. Doesn't matter what type, just use a cat."

Everyone's favourite mind-controlling parasite Toxoplasma gondii gets even weirder

flashboy — 2011-11-03T02:34:40+00:00

Not only does it turn rats into risk-addicted death-cult sex robots, it turns them into HOT risk-addicted death-cult sex robots.

Sport must take a stand against the menace of banter

flashboy — 2011-10-22T23:26:44+00:00

"As a sporting chorus, banter has something close to a built-in obsolescence. The native tone of the football fan is in reality something closer to boredom, frustration and quiet loathing. Banter is still an intrusion into these closely guarded places. It is a forced marriage, the sound of people who don't really like sport talking about sport. This is the secret sadness of banter."

Smart cities get their own operating system

flashboy — 2011-10-01T01:31:39+00:00

Can't wait for the first time a city gets the Blue Street of Death.

The Downfall of Horse_ebooks

flashboy — 2011-09-26T19:24:12+00:00

"Nothing Horse_ebooks had been or even remotely intended to create could have matched this response: smart people debating, condemning and mourning the loss of a vaguely defined artificial voice and sincerely declaring that they preferred the early work of a spam bot better than its compromised new stuff."

BBC News - Are viruses the way to green manufacturing?

flashboy — 2011-09-25T23:58:48+00:00

Logging out of Facebook is not enough - Nik Cubrilovic Blog

flashboy — 2011-09-25T23:29:41+00:00

Well that's not good.

Google News Blog: Recognizing publishers’ standout content in Google News

flashboy — 2011-09-24T16:16:03+00:00

Interesting RT @google: At @ONAConf, Google News announces new tag for standout content, scoops, story of the day, etc:

yfrog Photo : http://yfrog.com/nvzsssfj Shared by PolpoSoho

flashboy — 2011-09-24T14:41:55+00:00

RT @PolpoSoho: You learn SO much from the blue plaques of Soho:

"no ring no bring" - Google Search

flashboy — 2011-09-23T20:15:14+00:00

What it means:

iphone 5 release date - Google Search

flashboy — 2011-09-23T10:41:15+00:00

Good get RT @rhjames164: Apparently I have turned into Steve Jobs (only been in the job a few weeks...) -

Bitches Gotta Take They Cunt Pills

flashboy — 2011-09-23T10:22:29+00:00

@TomChivers @indiaknight @sarahditum I've always loved for the off-the-charts wrongness.

Faster than light particles found, claim scientists | Science | The Guardian

flashboy — 2011-09-22T23:28:29+00:00

"If we do not have causality, we are buggered." That will have been easy for you to going to be saying.

"If we do not have causality, we are buggered."

flashboy — 2011-09-22T23:22:16+00:00

It remains to have been seen whether he will be regretting going to have said that previously.

Bill Goodykoontz's Profile at Metacritic.com

flashboy — 2011-09-22T21:44:28+00:00

Oh my. I only just discovered that the Arizona Republic have a film critic called Bill Goodykoontz:

yfrog Photo : http://yfrog.com/hshoecbj Shared by flashboy

flashboy — 2011-09-22T07:42:36+00:00

Oh hai, Julian Assange book:

The sky is the limit for print-your-own drones

flashboy — 2011-09-22T00:33:38+00:00

3D printed aerial drones for £1,200, targeting the "civil market", courtesy of Southampton Uni.

2010 Term Court Orders

flashboy — 2011-09-21T23:09:35+00:00

RT @RyanLizza: RT @amaeryllis: Here's where SCOTUS Orders are posted, usually immediately. There's nothing [yet]

Good, balanced (ish) article on Italy's WTF prosecution of seismologists over the L'Aquila earthquake

flashboy — 2011-09-21T22:20:59+00:00

Emphasises that the case is about risk communication, not earthquake prediction. Scientists come out of it looking fine; government official, much less so.

Richard Tyrone Jones Has a Big Heart - Edinburgh & tour 2012 - Crowdfunder

flashboy — 2011-09-21T13:49:00+00:00

So my friend @rtjpoet is raising funding for his (brilliant) new show He's 94% of the way there. Go and give him money.

Gang Used 3D Printers for ATM Skimmers

flashboy — 2011-09-21T13:26:55+00:00

So the Occupy Wall Street protest was basically a complete failure, even by it's own most minimal standards

flashboy — 2011-09-21T00:57:30+00:00

The question is, I guess, why, when it could have been so potent a target. (Obvious answers: no clear goals; high barrier to participation; bad timing; twats.)

Twitter

flashboy — 2011-09-21T00:20:47+00:00

RT @davepell: Great Tweet exchange ever? Possibly.

Freedom of panorama - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

flashboy — 2011-09-20T16:25:47+00:00

@RadioKate Not just that building - really weird failure to sync copyright laws across Europe:

I'm running a half marathon for St Mungo's: please sponsor me – Telegraph Blogs

flashboy — 2011-09-20T14:16:01+00:00

Although, upon review, the irredeemable jizznozzles attacking @TomChivers for doing a sponsored run are up there too:

Untitled (http://twitter.com/flashboy/status/116152166233812992/photo/1)

flashboy — 2011-09-20T14:10:10+00:00

I think this might be the type specimen of batshit insane Telegraph comments...

Calling children 'gay' is just playground bullying - Telegraph

flashboy — 2011-09-20T11:39:37+00:00

RT @TomChivers: A guest writer, Paul Flynn, responds to yesterday's Brendan O'Neill piece about gay culture

Italian scientists on trial for failing to predict earthquake | Science | The Guardian

flashboy — 2011-09-20T09:50:48+00:00

WT actual F, Italy? RT @newsmary: Italian scientists on trial for failing to predict earthquake

Gove faces probe over private e-mails - FT.com

flashboy — 2011-09-19T23:38:08+00:00

Must say, @xtophercook's inverse-FOI in - aiming *not* to recover information - is a rather excellent wheeze.

Icann massively expands top level domain names | Metro.co.uk

flashboy — 2011-09-19T19:20:34+00:00

@benhammersley Waaaaay ahead of you ;-)

Sperm bank turns down redheads - Telegraph

flashboy — 2011-09-19T19:05:29+00:00

Reckon this sperm bank "turning away gingers" is just a 'Beautiful People' style PR-stunt: (via @MarkBorkowski)

Twitter

flashboy — 2011-09-19T15:57:27+00:00

@malcolmcoles @MartinSFP Glad somebody actually got round to making that...

Massive vegetables - World in Pictures: 16 September 2011

flashboy — 2011-09-19T15:39:11+00:00

@SimonNRicketts These men all love their massive vegetables:

One Direction Get A Mii™ Makeover Courtesy Of Nintendo 3DS

flashboy — 2011-09-19T11:59:45+00:00

@charlesarthur But look at the huge sales success the One Direction's endorsement bestowed on the 3DS! Oh, wait.

BBC SPORT | Rugby Union

flashboy — 2011-09-19T10:20:58+00:00

I see the BBC still hasn't managed to take that link to a spam site off the tweet feed on its Rugby home page:

(500) http://bbc.in/1O3fL9

flashboy — 2011-09-18T23:47:56+00:00

As far as I can see, BBC don't even nofollow links on their tweetfeeds. 3 hours now they've been promoting a spam site:

Untitled (http://twitter.com/flashboy/status/115567165691797504/photo/1)

flashboy — 2011-09-18T23:25:34+00:00

Dear BBC: if you want to have your correspondents' tweets displayed on your pages, maybe spam-filter them first?

The First Thousand Numbers Classified In Alphabetical Order - WFMU's Beware of the Blog

flashboy — 2011-09-18T23:08:04+00:00

Amazing RT @rhodri: I love this level of nerdiness. The first 1000 numbers in alphabetical order, from 8 to 202.

Untitled (http://cf.drafthouse.com/_uploads/galleries/2761/the_texas_chainsaw_massacre_image.jpeg)

flashboy — 2011-09-18T23:05:39+00:00

@duncangeere Very

Grey fox print jumper - Jumpers - Jumpers & cardigans - Women -

flashboy — 2011-09-18T23:02:49+00:00

@charlesarthur @qwghlm All I'll say is that it involved this jumper:

News from The Associated Press

flashboy — 2011-09-15T13:39:00+00:00

Thanks AP! RT @AP From feminine hygiene products to "vajazzling," the vagina is big business, as AP's @Maetron explains

Oldschool Gamer Tea Towel by StudioVim on Etsy

flashboy — 2011-09-15T12:54:09+00:00

@katbrown82 Or

MARIO-Nintendo Character-White Embroidered Tea Towels | eBay

flashboy — 2011-09-15T12:52:55+00:00

@katbrown82 Ahem

Sarah Palin: Claims Tea Party Politician Took Cocaine And Cheated On Husband In Joe McGinniss Book | World News | Sky News

flashboy — 2011-09-15T12:44:30+00:00

"...claims [Sarah] Palin snorted cocaine off the top of an overturned oil drum while snowmobiling..."

(500) http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3430&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

flashboy — 2011-09-15T12:01:51+00:00

Yay, @LanguageLog v @bengoldacre fight! #nerdwars #passiveaggression

Untitled (http://www.internettrafficreport.com/namerica.htm)

flashboy — 2011-09-14T22:44:45+00:00

RT @nickbilton: Having trouble w/ Twitter, or other sites, it's cos the whole Internets tubes are suffering outages:

Oh Good Grep! Web Grepper: A New Web Intelligence Feature From Blekko

flashboy — 2011-09-14T22:42:51+00:00

Web Grepper looks… interesting: Deep web search, of code not just content.

Tuvan fashion - World in Pictures: 14 September 2011

flashboy — 2011-09-14T15:13:13+00:00

This Tuvan shaman's hair is a bird. Your argument is invalid.

Extreme Tidying Up : Krulwich Wonders... : NPR

flashboy — 2011-09-14T13:14:21+00:00

The extreme tidying thing also reminds me of my approach to Bananagrams: