Blog
-
So, I got my car towed this morning. I’ll rephrase. I got my rental car towed this morning, after parking overnight outside my apartment because there was no overnight drop-off. I’ll clarify. I got my rental car towed this morning after parking six inches over the line, my Hyundai’s ass sticking into my neighbor’s driveway.…
-
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of AMERICA. WHEN, in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another; and to assume, among the Powers Of The Earth, the separate and equal Station to which…
-
I Used DuckDuckGo for a Week and Had to Switch Back. Here’s why.
Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google, Internet, NSA, PRISM, Privacy, Product, Search, Search Engines, Startups, Technology
It was really hard to switch off of Google, and when I finally did it, I didn’t think I would switch back. In the past, whenever I’ve tried another search engine, I have failed. Searching is such a natural, compulsory thing to do on the internet, that whenever I have navigated to Bing or DuckDuckGo,…
-
I have to say a few words about Ron May, the legendary tech blogger on the Chicago scene who passed away today at the age of 57. Ron, for anyone who knew him, was a chore. He was annoying, abrasive, irreverent, and sometimes downright mean. But he was also persistent, tenacious, had a sense of…
-
The genesis of this idea was a couple weeks ago when my cofounder said: “Would it be possible to see what percent of our email list was female or male based on their names alone?” Thus Drillbit was born. In the last couple weeks I have been pouring over data sets and trying different formulas…
-
You may have read the article in the New Republic last month about how 300,000 ancient books and manuscripts in the libraries of Timbuktu were evacuated in secret to protect them from Ansar Dine, an Al Qaeda cell. The manuscripts not only survived the burning of the Timbuktu library, but were smuggled in footlockers all…
-
I was recently introduced to a proverb: Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. It’s amazing how succinctly this quote (usually misattributed to Eleanor Roosevelt) describes the way most of our daily interactions work. Look at the media. Find yourself reading People magazine? Maybe you’d learn more by watching the…
-
It’s not every day I feel compelled to write a travel review, but once in a while I have an experience at a place so rewarding that I feel I owe it to the establishment to get its name out there. The fact that Kuglóf Kávézó, tucked into the passageway at Pesti Barnabás utca number…
brian mayer 