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“The only useful airport security measures since 9/11,” he says, “were locking and reinforcing the cockpit doors, so terrorists can’t break in, positive baggage matching”—ensuring that people can’t put luggage on planes, and then not board them —“and teaching the passengers to fight back. The rest is security theater.” via Does Airport Security Really Make [...]

On the other hand, watch this video. Even in Mozilla’s own demo — which presumably puts Firefox for Android in its best light —doesn’t the whole thing look a bit herky-jerky, in terms of touch responsiveness and scrolling smoothness? via Daring Fireball Linked List: New Release of Firefox for Android, Optimized for Tablets.

Indebted governments have been pressuring banks to buy more debt, not less. As banks have been increasing capital, they have loaded up even more on “risk-free” sovereign debt, which they can use as collateral for ECB loans. The big ECB “liquidity operation” that took place yesterday will give banks hundreds of billions of euros to [...]

More This Way

“Some men see things as they are and say why – I dream things that never were and say why not.” George Bernard Shaw

That said, retailers are asking customers to boycott Amazon as the new price-check app threatens their holiday sales. via Brick-And-Mortar Retailers Want You To Boycott Amazon | TechCrunch. Missing the point, if you can’t sell something when you have a person in your store, Your doing it wrong – focus on customer service. Or make [...]

The solution, as posted by Stack Overflow user Heike, makes a mockery of our poorly-outfitted visual cortex. Using Mathematica, a mathematics-oriented programming environment developed by Wolfram of Wolfram Alpha fame, Heike uses five lines of code to: 1 Filter out all non-red pixels, 2 Search what’s left for a striped pattern, and finally 3 Draw [...]

It’s funding debt through more debt.  It’s wrong to say the summit accomplished nothing, or consisted merely of empty, unenforceable pledges of austerity, although it did that too. via It is finally being recognized that the eurozone made a major policy breakthrough — Marginal Revolution.

“Contagion is a reality,” said one, “there isn’t a nation in the eurozone – Germany included – that isn’t now exposed because of past political sloth and smugness. France is already a real risk. And if that’s confirmed by a downgrade, then the only trustworthy debt guarantor would be Germany. And as Merkel won’t be [...]

Angela Merkel: Britain is still an important EU member Merkel said that, while she regrets the decision, “it is beyond doubt for me that Great Britain will in future continue to be an important partner in the European Union”. Jokes. If the UK doesn’t pony up an extra £50bn into the IMF to prop up [...]