Retreads

Complete coffee snob here, but I also like to think that I can find the happy medium between crazy/exquisite and important. Here are my pointers:

1. The most important factor is fresh grind of good-enough beans. Grind just enough for each brew.

2. Water temp, which you mention, makes a difference, but no need to get a fancy kettle. Take water off a boil and count 10 seconds. Good enough!

3. Good-enough beans are basically anything that you can buy in whole-bean form. You could spend $10 on a pound of high-end Starbucks or you could spend $5 on a mid-range pound of 8 O'Clock. They taste different, but I find both levels of coffee to be sufficient.

4. Make coffee stronger than necessary and dilute to your preference. Never use fewer beans than necessary as it will make the coffee bitter.

5. Like flavors? Add them afterwards. Additives in flavored coffee will generally leech into almost any brewing vessel and subtly alter future batches.

Brewing method generally doesn't matter. French press is nice if you don't mind inevitable grit and a manual process. Most auto coffee makers are good enough. I try to steer people away from cups and pods due to waste, cost, and the fresh-grind factor, but they are very convenient if you're optimizing for time. My preferred work/flavor balance is a Melitta cone filter that requires hand pour of water.

Good luck!

Really? We're talking about an article that claims Monsanto is, "responsible for a farmer suicide every 30 minutes?" In the very first sentence!

Sorry, I don't care how relevant or accurate the other information is, but it's not valid after that. Monsanto may or may not be evil, and the farmers may or may not be good, but you certainly can't (shouldn't) form any opinion based on this junk.

AKA: Quadrocopters - Flying Robots Deliver Themselves To You!

With all the crazy scamming I've experienced on places like Craigslist, I can't imagine there wouldn't be some jerk that would just start taking the vehicles. Even if there's some type of visual/tracking, they'd figure it out. How many tacos would have to be delivered to deal with that kind of shrinkage?

Thanks for posting. Something about this rubs me the wrong way, so I read it a couple times to help me formulate my feedback.

I think the problem I have with this is that I can't create the same level of abstraction on the 'modern system' and 'slavery' that the author does. I'm not offended by the use of slavery as a point of comparison, but I don't think that it's really compared to the 'modern system' in a useful way. They are so many leagues apart, which can't be shown through the logical comparisons present in the article.

Also, the examples of entanglement aren't really inescapable evils that the argument requires (I'm looking at you car and iphone). I have no doubt those evils are out there.

But, you say, I'm missing the point. True enough, and I think there's a good point in this post that can be teased out through a little more revision. I think the payoff is at the end...the portion on disentangling. This is the hacker ethos, yes? Recognizing the artificial/restrictions and subverting it to make your life better. The best part of the article was where the author linked to his/her startup; it really shows where the logic is taking us. I guess I'd prefer it if this were more explicit in the conclusion (and probably more appealing to the people in this venue, although the many supportive comments indicate that many make this logical connection automatically). Again: Thanks.

Thanks KE! This was my initial reaction as well. Sometimes it's nice to apply abstraction in order to grease the wheels of reason, but abstraction has a nasty double edge. ("Owner cared for well-being") does not equal ("Only individual cares for well-being"). Not even a little bit.

For those who thought they would be OK with streaming-only or DVD-only Netflix: Congratulations on your price hike!

See also: Angies List.

We had (and used) both services, but the price hike caused us to reevaluate all of our media expenses. Cancelled all Netflix and our cable. Retained Xbox Live (and internets, of course).

We were more annoyed by the Netflix change than enraged by it, and it was a convenient reason to examine the value vs. expense ratio of what we were buying every month. So while we used both the streaming and DVD services, we didn't use them enough to justify the expense. Same with cable. Now we just watch less TV and play the same amount of video games. Library card and internet usage have increased.

I am brushing up on my atrophied/outdated code-fu. Years in business will do that to you, but start-up here I come.

Agreed - this was also my favorite part of the post.

Good point. Where else do they provide the backend?

Good testimony. The comments seem like a pretty smooth way for Google to:

-(As the writer identifies) try not to seem like a monopoly

-try to simultaneously reassure investors. It sounds like parody on purpose...nobody can take it seriously except an official record

-acknowledge that any tech is ripe for disruption, even in the face of giants. Google, especially, knows this.

edit:formatting (I'm a noob here!)

When I read about FB Timeline (and watched the trailer), I was concurrently impressed and uneasy.

Impressed because it's an elegant way to deal with a problem that didn't exist until recently...how to make old user info useful and re-relevant. Until they had so many multi-year users there was no need to revisit old data.

Uneasy because I've seen this before. Essentially, they've created a version of the Officer/Enlisted Record Brief (ie - US Army personnel dossier). Surely, there's nothing wrong with creating a consistent, repeatable format for understanding people and their experiences. It saves time and reduces effort required to pass judgment. In two specific ways, though, I found dossiers inadequate undesirable:

(1) A record brief never accurately captured the skills and experiences of the person being considered. A life is so vast (and variable!) that it can't possibly be captured in a proscribed format. I guess this abuts my general unease with FB as a whole. I felt that I would never be able to capture myself through my profile/pics/etc and didn't want to be judged by a poor facsimile. Status updates and the increased ability to interact with friends and family tempered this unease. Now they've gone a step further towards formalizing a life's structure.

(2) The ouputs could drive the inputs. Because FB inevitably has to be selective on what can be recorded in any type of dossier (standardization being the key), FBer behavior might be modified to match those fields. Army dossiers drive Army people to focus on activities and experiences that look impressive on the dossier (awards, deployments, schools). FB Timeline is an order of magnitude removed, but if it catches on and becomes the de facto way that users are judged by family/friends/employers, the possibility of driving user behavior certainly exists.

Yes, I know that FB is voluntary.