November 11, 2016
It’s illegal to be a “software architect” in the UK. / shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com
“When we showed Facebook’s racial exclusion options to a prominent civil rights lawyer John Relman, he gasped and said, ‘This is horrifying. This is massively illegal. This is about as blatant a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act as one can find.’” Facebook’s microtargeting can be used to create “whites-only” ads, like the ones for white housing the New York Times was sued for in 1989. / ProPublica
Every three-digit area code contains more than seven million possible phone numbers, yielding 81 billion possible phone numbers in the US. / math.stackexchange.com, quora.com
And yet more random tech news, though slightly askew: Man asks Google Home to tell him jokes until it breaks. / laughingsquid.com
“Sometimes when people are asking me to speak on a panel or to come lecture, I’m like, come see my play. Come see the art.” All around good discussion between three rising transgender playwrights. Here’s a chat about how to talk about trans, which is still evolving. / New York Times
More women are now serving in the Senate than ever before. Sen. Amy Klobuchar says women legislators are different because they focus more on accountability and accomplishments than their male counterparts do. / The Atlantic
“Gabrielle Nevitt remembers the first time she noticed the smell. It was sometime in the early 1980s and she was an undergraduate, heading out to sea on a research trip. ‘Hey, can you smell it?’ a fisherman said to her. ‘It smells like a productive area for fishing.’” “I shall kill no albatross”? Actually, we might have already. Algae that grow on plastics we throw in the ocean release an alluring, “kinda seaweed-y” scent of DMS (dimethyl sulfide). Then sea birds mistakenly eat the plastic. / The Atlantic
Whatever side of the aisle you’re on, it’s safe to say you’re exhausted? Also fired up but maybe not completely ready to go? Unless you’re a lobbyist, and supposed anti-lobbyist Trump just hired you? Anyway... / The New York Times
1. The significance of Mr. Trump from the perspective of the man, the party, and ideology. “Those progressives who are predicting that the election will have dire consequences for women, gays, and people of color are making a tactical error.” / arnoldkling.com
2. So, which pollster got closest to getting it right? The LA Times poll, though even those who knew the poll best “didn’t trust it in the end.” / hotair.com
3. New Balance supports Trump, and that means fans are burning their sneakers. Chinese fans blame Clinton’s loss for a canceled Katy Perry concert, believing her heartbroken. Meanwhile, the health insurance industry has no clue what Trump plans to do, and no plans to put in place should he do anything. / fortune.com, Quartz, The New York Times
4. Trump performed best in places where the economy was in worse shape, “and especially in places where jobs are most at risk in the future.” Last night he called people protesting his election media-baited “professionals,” and “very unfair,” then this morning praised them for their passion. / FiveThirtyEight, Twitter
5. Want to show that you’re against bigotry? Wear a safety pin in your shirt. / kottke.org
“Sometimes we’re at a store or whatever, and they’ve got the music playing in the background. That song comes on, and of course my husband now knows everything about it. We’re shopping, and we just both pause like, Okay nobody else knows the meaning of that to us.” An interview with one of the lost children of Soul Asylum’s “Runaway Train” video—who later came home. / MEL
“It is telling that nobody quite knows what to ask of Facebook now that the election is over.” Fake news and hyperpartisan news outlets exist because there are audiences for them. / The New York Times
Among the many pre-election proposals deleted from the Donald Trump’s website is his stance on the FDA, which he thinks is guilty of “inspection overkill.” / Eater
“Never in our most ironic dreams did we the think that the spirit of our tired, lager-fueled pisstakes would end up leading to a resurgence of white nationalism and make the prospect of a fascist America faintly realistic. But the internet is weird like that.” Memes are the most effective means of political messaging, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. / The Guardian
“I got to hug her and talk to her and tell her that one of my most proudest moments as a mother was taking Phoebe with me to vote for her.” Woman runs into Hillary Clinton on a hiking trail—the first time Clinton’s been seen since her concession speech. / BBC