News Bots Fail on browser add-ons

I liked this story I saw at news.google.com this morning, which google couldn't collect properly because of a Flash-based website:

Not a Singularitarian

I've been telling my friends for years that nanotechnology is the going to cause the end of the world (any programmer who has had to reboot a computer stuck in an ill-programmed infinite loop would be scared to death of nanobot designers. See Grey Goo.)

Wikipedia reinforced my claims by stating that "Many Singularitarians consider nanotechnology to be one of the greatest dangers facing humanity." That's on their page about Technological Singularity. Does that make me a Singularitarian?

I don't think so. I think that if Ray Kurzwiel's Singularity ever comes, it will be marked by rapid discoveries in science & tehnology because of human specialization & advanced tools, not because of the construction of advanced artificial intelligence. I suppose we could create advanced AI once we can completely reverse-engineer the human nervous system (and then synthesize it at high frequencies on electronic hardware), but I tend to think this complicated work would be a result of the singularity, not a cause of it.

Est ce que tu parles francais? Entiendo une poco castellano.

My daughter has been picking up a few Spanish nouns from Dora and her friends lately. She's still young enough that she thinks her parents know everything. I'd like to keep this going for a few more years, so I started listening to the Pimsleur Spanish audio CDs while I drive to work.

They've started teaching me basics like "Good Morning", "Do you speak English", and "I am American". These are obviously useful to the novice Spanish speaker.

What's funny is that, when I previously tried the Pimsleur French package, it seemed like they were quickly teaching me things like "Can I buy you some wine" and "Would you like to come to my apartment" instead. Is there some statistic that shows that Americans learn French to pick up chicks but only learn Spanish for more traditional conversation?

UI Error: USB 2.0

So every time I plug a USB2.0 device to my WinXP computer, windows says "this device can perform faster" and provides a popup to tell me I shouldn't have hi-speed usb devices plugged into low-speed ports.

If you click it to learn more (as it instructs you to do), it says "There are no high speed ports connected to this computer."

I'm seeing an opportunity for optimization here.

...maybe check for high speed ports on the computer before you alarm the user that the device should be plugged into a high speed port. I mean, the only way the average windows user is going to get USB 2.0 ports on an older USB 1.0 motherboard is to completely replace the machine, which they aren't going to do just to move music faster to the mp3 player.

Google Subscribed Links

Google Subscribed Links looks interesting. I just can't think of a link category that would be immediately useful to me.

I've got my work cut out for me

I was looking at my cached copy of unread mp3-encoded audio books, thinking I should finish reading these before I acquire many more.

I figured I could work that out in a couple of months, but decided to do the math. I have 756 hours of audio and 90-minutes of driving time each workday to listen - but I use some of that time for phone calls.

756 hours distributed over 1 hour/day, 5 days/week, gives me over 2.9 years of audio to cover before my cache is empty! That's pretty wild. I wonder how many new books that I'll want to read will be released in the next 3 years while I'm catching up.

Little Brother & mp3 tagging

So I just bought [boingboing editor] Cory Doctorow's new book Little Brother as a DRM-free digital MP3 download. Have a look at how they ID3-tagged the file:

No ID3v1 tags, almost empty ID3v2 tags. Digital downloads save publishers money in that they don't have to print CDs & packing material, assemble it, ship it, and suffer reduced profit from the retailers markup. I'd hope they would at least make the digital package complete before selling it. (I'd also prefer the MP3 be divided by chapter).

block flash by default - flashblock

There is a firefox plugin called flashblock that "takes a pessimistic approach to dealing with Macromedia Flash content".

Basically it blocks all flash on websites, and gives you a placeholder where you can click to allow the flash manually.

This great plugin won't make myspace.com tolerable (nothing could possibly), but it at least will make navigating the web a little bit safer.

Credit card security

I had to pay a fine for a stop sign violation, and was first glad to see I could log onto the court website and pay without writing a check.

Then I considered every headline I've read of privacy bungling & data exposure committed by both corporate America and various global governments. I was sure that it would be mere months before my unencrypted credit card information was mailed somewhere random, left on an unattended laptop to be stolen, or just posted to the internet.

I think I better just write a check.

User Interface design: Google gets it right

The latest google friends newsletter draws attention to why google gets user interface design right, in a world where 99% of interfaces are wrong.

Google posted their list of user experience aspirations to the public. I think they got the order of priority right as well, since their bullets number 1, 2, and 3 are things which you'll regularly hear me lecturing my wife, children & friends about (much to their dismay).

1. Focus on people
2. Every millisecond counts
3. Simplicity is powerful

That's obvious enough - build fast, simple interfaces that work the way the user wants them to. How come only Google (and perhaps Apple) seem to be able to master this?

Flexibility is key, too, but you can provide power while maintaining simplicity through good design. I look at interface design a lot like building a Huffman Tree - you provide the smallest number of steps to accomplish this most frequently required tasks.

I could write a whole series on interface design flaws I observe every day. It's not limited to software, either. It's not even limited to electronics & mechanics. My home builder installed a perfectly smooth spherical knob on the shower exit door, guaranteeing the user no traction when twisting the knob to get out. This is terrible in a location where the users hands are always wet.