ACW: still great

May 30, 2011 in mastur/metablogging, nukes

Did I mention that Arms Control Wonk is still great? The guided nuclear bomb. Bureaucratic consequences of A.Q. Khan. The clean-up of Semipalatinsk, including an actual loose nuke, which was disposed of back in 1995 without anyone getting hurt.

Elsewhere

May 29, 2011 in mastur/metablogging

At Fistful of Euros: so what did Nicolas Sarkozy know about DSK, why did he only leak the bits he leaked, and what are the voters going to do about it?, how I was wrong about the euro, NATO for dictators, floating without a strategy, although if we had one it would probably be wrong. [...]

got DULL if you want it

May 29, 2011 in economics

I’ve just been reading the Resolution Foundation Growth without Gain report like every other left-wing blogger. Here’s something interesting. About economics and the success or failure of New Labour’s administrative devolution. Don’t all rush at once. You read that right – between 2003 and 2008, disposable income in the UK fell on average by 1.1% [...]

Dr A.Q. Khan: Has a Blog

May 22, 2011 in mastur/metablogging, nukes, Pakistan

Via yet another really excellent Arms Control Wonk piece on Indian and Pakistani nukes, it turns out that A.Q. Khan, formerly of Khan Research Laboratories, the man who sold the world the unofficial open-source community version of the Urenco enrichment cascade, and now of luxurious house arrest right up until the Navy SEALs climb over [...]

consumer

May 22, 2011 in Uncategorized

I went with the ThinkPad option in the end – the wily denizens of the computer souk managed to upsell me from the ThinkPad Edge 11 to a fully fledged X200S that looks like you have to wear a tie to start it up. Next step, clear up my data enough to look at moving [...]

your guide for this evening…

May 22, 2011 in action, London, music

So we did the Stag & Dagger festival. This translated into the following facts on the ground, which I propose to review briefly. Toro y Moi, at XOYO This lot could be interesting – if they stopped, ugh, jamming. EDIT. Ended up back in the bar with the house’s DJ. Venue is pretty great, too [...]

Another OpenTech result

May 22, 2011 in admin

I need to be more damn effective and better organised. If it helps at all, I just bought the O’Reilly books on Android development and on JavaScript, as it’s getting increasingly ridiculous to not know it.

OpenTech washup, and an amended result

May 22, 2011 in hacker, networks, programming, protest, Python, statistics, Tories

So it was OpenTech weekend. I wasn’t presenting anything (although I’m kicking myself for not having done a talk on Tropo and Phono) but of course I was there. This year’s was, I think, a bit better than last year’s – the schedule filled up late on, and there were a couple of really good [...]

Links

May 15, 2011 in Internet

The National Rail website has borrowed the sensible URIs from traintimes.org.uk. Although it does seem a bit of a miss that there’s no shortener like – say – tra.in, as those are by definition quite long strings. The website that identifies the satellite a dish is pointing at, or tells you where to point the [...]

Don’t read Michael Lewis articles, do check if he’s still writing

May 15, 2011 in economics, prediction, press

So that Michael Lewis – you know, the one who writes articles about how stupid Icelanders were. Via The Oil and the Glory, here’s what he was saying in January, 2007, just as the last bulls in the US housing market’s dizziest bubbles finally cracked and the big plummet began. Here it is. But the [...]