Joel Housman

Front-end Web Developer, iOS Developer, Man About Internet

What the White House Looks Like Completely Gutted

Posted on Wednesday, 27 February, 2013

Brian Resnick, at Mashable writes:

The social events of the 1948 holiday season had to be canceled. And with good reason: Experts called the third floor of the White House “an outstanding example of a firetrap.” The result of a federally commissioned report found the mansion’s plumbing “makeshift and unsanitary,” while “the structural deterioration [was] in ‘appalling degree,’ and threatening complete collapse.” The congressional commission on the matter was considering the option of abandoning the structure altogether in favor of a built-from-scratch mansion, but President Truman lobbied for the restoration.

Please click through the link to check out the pictures. They’re worth it. I wouldn’t ever link to Mashable, otherwise.

Eric Cantor Will Propose Federal Law That Ends Overtime Pay For Hourly Workers

Posted on Tuesday, 26 February, 2013

Someone who goes by the username TeamSarah4Choice, at Daily Kos writes:

In Eric Cantor’s February 2013 speech, he said he wanted to propose Federal Law that would end overtime pay for hourly workers. Currently, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, mandates that certain workers get paid “time + 1/2″ for overtime work. Eric Cantor wants to eliminate that law. Because — ya know — workers not getting paid for overtime hours worked out so good for workers before FDR enacted that Law.

Eric Cantor is a real piece of work.

Why A One-Room West Virginia Library Runs a $20,000 Cisco Router

Posted on Tuesday, 26 February, 2013

Nate Anderson, at Ars Technica writes:

In total, $24 million was spent on the routers through a not-very-open bidding process under which non-Cisco router manufacturers such as Juniper and Alcatel-Lucent were not “given notice or any opportunity to bid.” As for Cisco, which helped put the massive package together, the legislative auditor concluded that the company “had a moral responsibility to propose a plan which reasonably complied with Cisco’s own engineering standards” but that instead “Cisco representatives showed a wanton indifference to the interests of the public in recommending using $24 million of public funds to purchase 1,164 Cisco model 3945 branch routers.”

After having dealt with Cisco personally at my current job, this doesn’t surprise me.

White House Offers Republicans Deal For 80% Of Their Demands To Avoid Sequester; Republicans Refuse It

Posted on Tuesday, 26 February, 2013

Ezra Klein, at The Washington Post writes:

As I understand it, the GOP has five basic goals in the budget talks:

1) Cut the deficit.

2) Cut entitlement spending.

3) Protect defense spending, and possibly even increase it.

4) Simplify the tax code by cleaning out deductions and loopholes.

5) Lower tax rates.

The White House is willing to cut a deal with Republicans that will accomplish 1, 2, 3 and 4. But Republicans don’t want that deal. They’d prefer the sequester to that deal. That means they will get less on 1, basically nothing 2, 4, and 5, and they will actively hurt themselves on 3. So, rather than accomplishing four of their five goals, they’re accomplishing part of one. Some trade.

Also, watch this bullshit:

App.net Launches Free Tier

Posted on Monday, 25 February, 2013

Dalton Caldwell, at the App.net Blog writes:

Although App.net has had only paid account tiers thus far, we initially conceived of App.net as a freemium service. It took some time to get to this point, but we are now ready to make this vision a reality.

Sorry folks but I’ve already sent out my existing invites. You must have an invite to create a free account, or you can just subscribe like the rest of us.

Oscar Predictions, Election-Style

Posted on Sunday, 24 February, 2013

Having been invited to an Oscar viewing party tonight with a bunch of like-minded Twitter users, I was a little perplexed because I haven’t seen any of the major films nominated this year. In my old age of thirty, I rarely go to the movies anymore, choosing to watch them on my home theater when they appear on iTunes for HD purchase.

Thankfully, Nate Silver came through for me.

Nate Silver, at FiveThirtyEight writes:

Twice before, in 2009 and 2011, I sought to predict the Academy Award winners in six major categories based on a mix of statistical factors. My track record? Nine correct picks in 12 tries, for a 75 percent success rate. Not bad, but also not good enough to suggest that there is any magic formula for this.

So this year, I have sought to simplify the method, making the link to the FiveThirtyEight election forecasts more explicit. This approach won’t be foolproof either, but it should make the philosophy behind the method more apparent. The Oscars, in which the voting franchise is limited to the 6,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, are not exactly a democratic process. But they provide for plenty of parallels to political campaigns.

In Nate Silver we trust. I will be blatantly stealing his predictions when filling out my Oscar Bingo Card tonight. You bet against Nate Silver at your peril.

The Magazine Launches Full-Article Sharing & Web Subscriptions

Posted on Sunday, 24 February, 2013

Marco Arment, at Marco.org writes:

I hastily built a basic site while I was waiting for the app to be approved. I only needed it to do two things: send people to the App Store, and show something at the sharing URLs for each article. Since The Magazine had no ads, and people could only subscribe in the app, I figured there was no reason to show full article text on the site — it could only lose money and dilute the value of subscribing.

That was the biggest mistake I’ve made with The Magazine to date.

The short of it is that if you subscribe to The Magazine on your iPad, you can now read articles via the website too. Non-subscribers can read one article per month, for free, as many times as they wish as well as share it. Any further articles read require a subscription to view. You can also save your free articles to Instapaper for reading later.

Check it out.

CBS Bans SodaStream’s Superbowl Commercial To Appease Coke & Pepsi

Posted on Friday, 1 February, 2013

Thanks to John Gruber at Daring Fireball for spreading the word on this. More good news to help bolster CBS’s new reputation for being a crummy company this week…

Will Burns, at Forbes writes:

CBS banned SodaStream’s Super Bowl spot because, apparently, it was too much of a direct hit to two of its biggest sponsors, Coke and Pepsi.

Please pause and read that sentence again.

Here’s the ad, which is quite humorous:

In Which I Review The New Podcast “Neutral”

Posted on Sunday, 20 January, 2013

The term “Car Guy” does not fit me. Until two months ago, I couldn’t care less about cars. I am not a fan of driving, and love being able to take Metro to work (the DC subway system for you non-locals). That was until Marco Arment and Dan Benjamin started talking about cars on Marco’s now concluded podcast, Build and Analyze. The episodes, in particular, are:

  1. Build and Analyze #66: Car Haters and Idea Guys
  2. Build and Analyze #71: The Lottery Mindset
  3. After Dark #155: After Build and Analyze #77

After Marco started talking about cars, and BMW vehicles in particular, John Siracusa followed up Marco’s shows on his also now-ended show Hypercritical:

  1. Hypercritical #61: I Ran Out of Bombs Long Ago
  2. Hypercritical #63: Talking to the Bear

A lot of what both Marco and John talked about really clicked with me. Despite not being a ‘Car Guy’ I was very interested in what they had to say and it clicked with the geek in me. When my wife and I decided late last November that we were going to buy a new car, we started looking at BMW. For one reason we live less than a two minute drive from the local BMW dealership. For another, Marco & John’s episodes heavily influenced me to look to BMW first – and then to Honda, Lexus, and Audi – only to come back to BMW in the end). A lot of what Marco said about Camrys and Accords being ‘boring’ cars not being fun to drive (I owned a Honda Accord) clicked with me, and when I began test driving these nicer BMWs and Audis I found that having a car I was excited to drive really made the difference for me. Two months later, my wife and I own a new 2013 BMW X3 (as of about 10 days ago).

I tell you all of this because I was very excited to be surprised a few days ago when John, Marco and Casey Liss announced their new (possibly) short-run podcast, Neutral. Marco hinted as something like this last year at the close of Build and Analyze, saying he might want to start some sort of new podcast in 2013 where he could talk about his other passions, such as coffee or cars. At the time it hadn’t even crossed my mind that John might be a host on the show as well.

The first episode of Neutral was delightful – Marco and John are always entertaining to listen to. I didn’t know of Casey prior to this show, but am pleased to say that the trio of hosts have a great dynamic, each with their own sets of differing and agreeing opinions. A range of topics from car aesthetics to dealership service are covered, including a few topics I had no interest in but nevertheless enjoyed hearing about. Having grown up with parents who only buy white or black cars, I found myself in agreement with Marco on his outspoken opinions on car color (our new X3 is ‘Deep Sea Blue’) and found his argument regarding his old Nissan Maxima familiar (my first car was a Mazda 929 that my mother gave me at the age of 16).

Overall, a solid first episode by three great hosts that was a pleasure to listen to. I am pleased that I have new episodes to look forward to each week with John & Marco on my iPhone and to be able to listen a new host as well. None of these guys profess to be car experts, just geeks who happen to like cars talking about cars. If this sounds like something that interests you, I recommend you give Neutral a shot. If you think you aren’t a ‘car guy’ or ‘car gal’, give them a shot anyway. They’ll surprise you.