A few interesting articles

At least for the time being, the base-board installation upstairs is complete, so it's back to surfing the Internet...

• The Weird Stuff Warehouse is where old tech goes to retire

  Tucked neatly between Yahoo! headquarters and Lockheed Martin is a row of unmarked warehouses. To the common passersby, it's nothing more than an office park surrounded by perfectly coiffed lawns. But to those who are in on the secret, there's a place full of technology treasures waiting to be unearthed. It's called the Weird Stuff Warehouse and for more than 27 years it's been providing the Bay Area with a surplus of old and new technology.

• Making of White One

  A 4k intro is a executable file of at most 4 kilobytes (4096 bytes) that generates video and audio. That is, it puts something moving on your screen and something audible on your speakers. The finished product runs for a few minutes, has some coherent theme and design and ideally, sound and visual effects complement each other. On top of that, it's a technical challenge: It's impossible to store 3D models, textures or sound samples in 4 kilobytes, so you have to generate these things at runtime if you need them.

• Revenge, ego and the corruption of Wikipedia

  Taken all together, the edits strongly suggest a focused attempt to diminish Hannah’s legacy. But why? Who was Qworty and what axe did he have to grind with Hannah?

• With Ubiquity, Sears is Turning Shuttered Stores into Data Centers

  The first Ubiquity project will be a Sears store on the south side of Chicago, nestled alongside the Chicago Skyway. The 127,000 square foot store is closing at the end of June, and will be retrofitted as a multi-tenant data center. Farney says he already has a commitment for the first tenant at the site on East 79th Street, which has 5 megawatts of existing power capacity and the potential to expand.

• Finding peace in post-disaster Haiti

  In fact, Grand Rue melees were the exception, not the rule. Just as in New York after Sandy, responders and many journalists looking back on the postquake moment would highlight the lack of unrest in their after-action reports, often crediting their own presence, such as the UN adviser who told the Los Angeles Times: “There has been no rioting over food, and we avoided people dying of hunger or thirst. This is no small accomplishment.” As Auf der Heide has written, “Even when looting is not actually observed, that fact is often attributed to the extraordinary security measures that have been taken rather than the fact that such behavior is inherently uncommon.”

• ABC: Always Be Coding. I like:

  2. Be passionate. If you don’t care, then nobody else will. Be passionate about something. It might be programming, but what about it? Do you enjoy building compilers in your spare time? Do you build and fly RC helicopters? It doesn’t really matter because if you’re passionate about it, then you can make it interesting.

• Statistical Formulas For Programmers

  Most of these formulas can be found in Wikipedia, but others are buried in journal articles or in professors' web pages. They are all classical (not Bayesian), and to motivate them I have added concise commentary. I've also added links and references, so that even if you're unfamiliar with the underlying concepts, you can go out and learn more. Wearing a red cape is optional.