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Google Platforms rant by Steve Yegge

A rare inside look at Google and Amazon’s cultures and products written by Steve Yegge yesterday (2011-10-12). Long but very interesting. He accidentally published it, deleted, but the full article is still available here at Rip Rowan’s Google+ page. This is a must read if you’re interested in computing and company culture.

If you’re interested in platform, [...]

Some reasons to move to Google+

I haven’t been always skeptical about Google’s ability to create a good social network. It’s not because they don’t have engineering ability to do that. It’s just that their engineer, geek culture normally favors independent and sometimes anti-social tendencies, so it may not be suitable with the current social network moods and their associated herd-syndromes. Google [...]

Biển Đông Việt Nam trong phương chí Trung Hoa

Khảo luận này bước đầu đặt vấn đề nghiên cứu có hệ thống các sách Phương chí, một loại hình trứ tác quan trọng trong thư tịch cổ Trung Hoa, bao gồm Nhất thống chí, Tỉnh chí và Địa phương chí. Phương chí nói chung là loại sách lịch sử địa lý tự nhiên và [...]

Digital wallet and 4 dollars per SMS

I’m reading the article about Visa, Google digital wallet on ZDNet and insulin pump hacking by Jay Radcliffe and recall this incident. Some time ago, our cousins and niece were shocked to find that their mobile bills went over the roof due to some mysterious value-added 4-dollars SMSs tagged with Ericsson Telecommunications name. A small search lead [...]

Readability for web pages

Readability.com from Arc90 lab is probably the current best tool to remove distractions on web pages so that you can read comfortably or print out nicely (with links as footnotes). However, their default bookmarklet is not really good. Web2pdfconvert (web2pdfconvert.com/readable) provides a better tool to customize it.

Talk about print, WP-Print plugin developed by Lester Chan is probably the best plugin [...]

Some useful Google Chrome parameters

To enable incognito (privacy) mode in Google Chrome: –incognito
To disable print preview (a new feature in Google Chrome 13 which automatically converts web pages to PDF file to preview. It’s good as you like the default version, as you can right click & save the PDF file immediately. It’s pretty annoying if you want to customize [...]

Canon URF II vs PCL

The problem: Windows 7 laptop couldn’t connect to our Canon network printer (iR C2880). Default driver installed by Windows 7 and Canon’s latest driver (PCL6_v6.85_WinXP-Win7_x64_INF.exe) didn’t work. The only visible setting difference between Windows 7 driver and Windows XP driver is that “Enable bi-directional support” in Ports setting is grey, which led to a number [...]

Access Facebook in Vietnam

2011-06-19 update: I tried the previous trick in Hanoi this week but it no longer works. However, Tor Brower Bundle (torproject.org) works perfectly fine. Tor also works for Android and jailbreak iPhone (http://sid77.slackware.it/iphone). Another reason to jailbreak iPhone or move to Android phones :)

I heard that they’re banning Facebook in Vietnam, probably to save time [...]

How to extend wireless LAN's coverage with 2 routers

The objective is pretty simple: extending our wireless LAN’s coverage with a spared wireless router, so our devices can always connect to the same LAN with the same SSID. With that, our phones and laptops can be moved around the house and automatically connected to the router with strongest signal without any network interruption. Besides, [...]