- 90 percent of people don’t know how to use control-F
Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic recently chatted with Dan Russell, an anthropologist at Google studying how people utilize search. The sample size in the studies he runs are in the thousands so the single fact Russell shared that had Madrigal gob-smacked is fairly definitive. I don’t actually find it all the surprising assuming that large fraction skipped over traditional word processors and other programs where the shortcut in question is more easily trained into muscle memory, along side the activity of performing search-and-replace. If they all started with a browser, it simply may never had occurred to invoke a search within a page in this way. - One former software pioneer thinks software is eating the world
Slashdot linked to this Wall Street Journal op-ed by Marc Andreessen that makes an argument that even as the computer hardware market is flagging, software is simply getting bigger, pretty much by any measure. I think what he calls intrinsic value is a failure to recognize that software is merging into the fabric of businesses just as many of the high profile social startups many think are driving a new bubble represent in some ways a strong shift of norms to online socialization, as much as any sort of infatuation or speculation. - Serious crypto bug found in PHP 5.3.7
I just posted the quick security alerts mentioning the fixes included in this version of the popular server-side web application language but several sources are urging those who have not already to defer on upgrading. At issue is a pretty serious bug in the crypt function if it is called with the MD5 salts, only the salt is returned instead of the expected result. The fix has already been made and a release should be out in the next few days. - An alternate take on the increasingly common notion of PC’s being in decline, The Atlantic
- Case strengthening fair use cites South Park’s remix of risque viral video, Ars Technica
- Inside UK’s top secret GCHQ military base in Cheltenham, BBC
- Android ported to HP’s TouchPad when that device’s OS now has an uncertain future, The Register
Exploring digital citizenry as a creator and a consumer.