June 2014 Archives

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Office space in Manhattan is pricey, to say the least. And for over a century, companies have been looking for ways to find more offices, even if it means building new buildings.


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The phrase “read them the riot act” is an idiom, meaning to speak angrily toward someone and threaten punishment if the anger-causing behavior does not quickly cease.  Like most idioms, the expression’s etymology is not immediately apparent from the words themselves.


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In 1992 or 1993, my brother-in-law hired me to help him with some maintenance on a software system he had written for a customer. It ran on SCO Xenix. “Um, there’s no EDIT command on Xenix. Let me introduce you to vi. You use hjkl to move around, plus a few other keystrokes.


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The Earth’s oceans have five major gyres — systems of rotating ocean currents which spiral, creating (to a large degree) a self-contained ecosystem.  The largest of these five — and the largest ecosystem in the world — is the North Pacific Ocean Gyre.


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Webster’s Dictionary defines “sprint” as “to run or go at top speed especially over a short distance.  As an example, the dictionary states “[t]he bicycle racers sprinted for the finish line.”  When we think of sprints, we think of races like the 100 meter dash — where speed rules.


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It is a generic, common hypothetical ethics question. You and four others are stranded on a desert island, in charge of rationing out the food. There is only enough food for four people. One of you, therefore, is destined to die. And you have to make the call.


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Water boils at 212° Fahrenheit (100° Celsius) at standard pressure. If you take a few drops of water and toss them into a frying pan at 212° Fahrenheit or above, therefore, the water will start to boil. The water makes a sizzling sound as it rapidly evaporates and steam shoots out of the pan.


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It's the first day of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, so it's a perfect time to note that sitting in front of a glowing blue light for hours on end isn't particularly natural for us humans. f.lux is a Mac app which automatically adjusts the brightness and color of your computer display.


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Except — it isn’t universal at all. In the United States and many other nations, yes, it’s positive, ranging in meaning to a denotative “OK” all the way to the more colloquial “awesome.


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Imagine being able to see only the good in people.  To be blind to differences, including lacking any hint of racial bias whatsoever.  Everyone, to you, is a friend, and you have an honest interest in their interests, their desires, their hopes, their dreams.


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CIO — You've probably heard about Evernote, the online note-taking service that just reached 100 million users.


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Kelly Sortino had a tough time recalling what she'd accomplished at the end of each hectic workday.


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I have long felt that Appleʼs official iOS sample code lacked examples of good, scalable app architecture. I do not mean this as a general criticism of the existing sample code projects.


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A recent survey found that the number one complaint among desk workers was lack of physical activity. Over half of the workers noted this disadvantage. The primary complaint among non-desk workers was exhaustion from being on their feet all day. Ironic, right?


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Newsletters for people with something to say.


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"Slowly but surely, getting bogged down in the wrong tasks will bring down even the strongest executives," says Jim Alampi, CEO of Alampi & Associates, a Detroit-based leadership firm that has worked with Deloitte, Exxon Mobile, and IBM.


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As I continue to clear out my queue after my end-of-semester blogging hiatus, there’s another article to mention that recently caught my attention. The fantasy author George R. R.


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Montreal-based designer Étienne Garbugli has struggled with all of that. But as he's gotten older, he's learned how to manage his time and workload more effectively. Today, he's a consultant and entrepreneur, and recently published his first book, "Lean B2B: Build Products Businesses Want."


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The new hot trend in Silicon Valley office culture is a Buddh-ish encouragement of workplace mindfulness. Guided meditation is the new free cafeteria meals.


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The Cycle of Behavior Learning Tool describes processes that the body/mind undergoes creating a deeper understanding of how you think, make decisions, absorb information and manipulate yourself towards a set goal. Important Notes: All of this (C.o.B.) happens in nano-seconds.


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In a previous tutorial, I showed you how to get started with Markdown on OS X. In the tutorial I highlighted a few applications, such as Byword, that let you use Markdown on a Mac.


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At Akamai, one of our goals is to provide the technology that allows our customers and partners to deliver the most innovative web experiences while removing all the inherent impediments of the building applications on the raw Internet.


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CIO — Most of us are trying get ahead in this world, but occasionally we find ourselves in the unenviable career rut. Maybe you realize your current position doesn't align with your long-term goals.


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Peptic ulcers, which form in the stomach or opening to the small intestine called the duodenum, are most often caused by the bacteria Helicobacter pylori. H. pylori thrives in areas of high acidity, such as the stomach and duodenum.


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Imagine the following: a man is charged with the brutal rape of an elderly woman. After rounds of interrogation, he finally cracks and confesses.


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The Eastern Emerald Elysia is a green sea slug.  Pictured above, one may mistake it for a leaf.   In doing so, one would, perhaps, be half correct.


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Say you’re a single, unattached person at a bar or social event. You meet someone new and start talking. There seems to be some sort of mutual attraction, and turns out that the two of you have a lot in common. Given the hint of a spark, the other person may be a good person to ask out on a date.


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In 2008, Kevin Costner produced and starred in a movie titled Swing Vote. In the movie, Costner plays a New Mexico guy who, improbably and implausibly, ends up having the opportunity to cast the deciding ballot in the U.S. Presidential election.


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On Monday, we published an article on Picturefill 2.0, a perfect polyfill for responsive images. Today’s article complements Tim Wright’s article and explains exactly how we can use the upcoming element and srcset, with simple fallbacks for legacy browsers.


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The Phoenix Gorilla, pictured above, is probably the National Basketball Association’s most easily recognized mascot, and not just because he has a habit of slam dunking a basketball (with the aid of a trampoline) after passing through a flaming ring.


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Mao Zedong controlled China with an iron fist for more than three decades, and is widely believed to have caused the death of roughly 50 million people during his reign.


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If your house has a standard door knob lock (a “pin tumbler lock”), the way it works is described graphically above (image via Wikipedia).  The red and blue parts, combined, are called a “pin stack.


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Japanese men in loincloths are, amazingly, not all that much of a curiosity; after all, sumo wrestlers have been around for centuries. But those who take part in the Hadaka Matsuri take this practice to another level, as seen above.


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Norfolk Island, flagged on the map above, is a tiny island 877 miles (1,412 kilometers) east of mainland Australia and north of New Zealand. It is self-governing but part of the Commonwealth of Australia and its citizens — about 2,300 large — use the Australian dollar as currency.


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The Lollipop Guild and the rest of Munchkin Land. Snow White’s seven caretakers. Willy Wonka’s Oompa-Loompas. All have two things in common: little people (colloquially, “dwarves”) and utter fiction. But dwarfism exists, and people with dwarfism need jobs.


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Every Christmas Eve, children around the world wait for a visitor to arrive through the chimney via reindeer-led sleigh, or whatever other means of entry and travel local custom dictates.


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Western Europe, the Eastern Front, and the Pacific Rim are probably the most notable World War II battlegrounds.  But as most of us know, the war expanded well beyond those area.


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With the events in the Middle East — the nightmare of dictators — unfolding before our eyes, one may wonder how despots like Libya’s Moammar Qaddafi manage to stay alive, let alone in power.  Dedicated security details are the norm, but for Qaddafi’s contingent, there’s nothing normal.


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Chocolate chip cookies are beloved. Reports vary as to how popular they are, but it is safe to say that billions of these concoctions are consumed each year.


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When I switched to Android a few years ago, I promised myself this: I’d switch back the minute Apple added smart notifications, app data sharing, widgets, and a better keyboard to iOS. Apple’s WWDC keynote yesterday was exciting. Craig Federighi is super awesome (I wanna hang out with him).


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The rule of thumb, in the United States at least, is that one does not wear white after Labor Day. That tradition dates back to the 1800s but, as mental_floss explains, the origins of it are definitively known. But it is not the only odd fashion tradition in the United States.


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If you’re working a desk job with typical hours, work comes to a halt around noon each day as everyone rushes to get lunch. It’s a horribly inefficient custom, if you think about it, resulting in longer lines at local eateries.


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The phrase “XOXO” is a not-uncommon way to close a letter, email, text message, or, in the case of TV’s Gossip Girl, an episode. It means “hugs and kisses,” although that’s reversed — the Xs are kisses and the Os hugs.


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TO MY FELLOW MONTANANS and other westerners, few boundaries are so sacred and inviolable, few walls between church and state so absolute, as those that divide the great outdoors—the mountains and rivers and forests—from the electronic communications networks that, some say, have infiltrated the


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Maybe a little more than 10The other day, while I was navigating Reddit I found an interesting post that was called The 10 Algorithms That Dominate Our World by the author George Dvorsky which was trying to explain the importance that algorithms have in our world today and which ones are the most im


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If you have seen the classic Eddie Murphy/Dan Aykroyd/Jamie Lee Curtis movie Trading Places – or, if you are simply knowledgeable about commodities trading — you probably know what “futures” and “shorting” are.


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Nauru is the the third smallest country in the world by land area, after Vatican City and Monaco. It’s the second smallest by population, after only the Vatican. Located in Micronesia (it’s encapsulated in the red dot above), it is easy to miss.


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