4 October

The day Facebook performed seppuku

I don’t have much to say about all of this, other than that I would probably, yes, be posting this on Facebook if it were affecting literally anything else in my known realm of existence.

Today Facebook killed itself. But its undead corpse will surely rise again.

The problem is some kind of colossal DNS snafu, which has, for all intents and purposes, temporarily caused facebook.com to cease to exist.

Ah… the air somehow smells fresher today. The water tastes better. The sun shines brighter.

But I know it won’t last.

Anyway… today’s the day it happened. Here’s some more in-depth information from Ars Technica which hopefully will not disappear down the Memory Hole anytime soon.

Update: This Cloudflare blog post probably provides the definitive explanation of what happened.

Science explains my madness, at last

If anyone has been bothering to read my rants for the past five-plus years, you may recall that one of my earliest blog posts was a tirade against the evils of cords.

Finally, while it may not be much solace, science as at least touched upon an explanation for why cords suck.

It’s kind of funny now, looking back at what I wrote in 2002. I was speaking in awed and reverent tones of the mystical wonders that awaited us in the future, these things called “AirPort” (I’m not even sure the term “Wi-Fi” was in use yet back then), and “Bluetooth” — things so new and wondrous that I put them in quotes when I referred to them, without a trace of irony.

Now I am pretty much taking for granted the fact that I’m sitting on my bed typing this on my laptop, connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi link to the router downstairs, and I’m controlling the cursor with a Bluetooth wireless mouse. Frankly, I’m more surprised by the fact that as of last Sunday my Mac is now set up in a triple boot configuration, with Mac OS X, Windows XP, and Ubuntu Linux.

OK, StarTribune, enough already!

I know I’ve already ranted about Katherine Kersten in the past. I’m still not sure what masochistic compulsion drives me to read her column. I guess as much as I don’t want aggravation, I just can’t turn away when it’s staring me down, even when it comes in the form of a right-wing shill, a shameful hack of a “journalist.”

And so, today she’s at it again, this time railing against the “serial law-breaking mob” known as Critical Mass. I knew someone back in Atlanta who participated in Critical Mass, and even though I’m not a regular bike rider, I do choose public transportation for my daily commute, and I commend their efforts to wake up their fellow citizens to the multitude of ways that our gas-guzzling lifestyle is damaging the planet and, well, our lifestyle (if you need to put it in selfish terms to be motivated to care).

The real crime here is that a supposedly respected publication like the Minneapolis StarTribune continues to devote ink and paper, and even worse, money, to such predictably offensive drivel.