Tag: Recently Read

Standing desks are the latest way to trade comfort for the moral high ground, and their health benefits have always been dubious at best. Following an analysis of studies into their benefits, researchers have come up with a loud, resounding “meh”.

A paper in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews analyzed 20 studies that looked into the effectiveness of trying to reduce sitting time at work. The results aren’t flattering to the standing desk trend: not only do standing desks barely reduce the amount of time that people spend sitting at work, but any reduction has barely any health benefits.

Across the studies, the team found systematic flaws with the methodology, either in a lack of controls, randomization, or only using six-month time periods that are far too short.

A more robust cohort study, tracking health data from 5,132 people over 16 years, backs up this conclusion: researchers found that the amount of time sitting at work had no effect on mortality rate, and that other, more conventional methods like going for a jog are far more effective.

Dr Jos Verbeek, one of the health researchers involved in the meta-analysis, told NPR that standing desks are “very much, just fashionable and not proven good for your health.”

So, if you want to lead a healthier life, go get a nice comfy chair, ingest a fuckton of coffee, burn the fitness tracker, and maybe just walk to work instead.

[NPR]

via Gizmodo
Standing Desks Are ‘Fashionable’ Without Any Real Benefits, Says Research

 I started my last company in mid-2009, just as the market was beginning to recover from the fallout of the financial crisis. In the past several years, surrounded by fast-growth startups with sky-high valuations, many of us forgot what the downturn felt like. Today, things are changing. Again, we’re facing economic uncertainty on a global scale. Read More

via TechCrunch
Lessons from starting a company during the last downturn 

That first big trailer for The Force Awakens was great, and we’ve established that anytime you cut another movie in the same style, the end result is just as great. So what happens when you recut Harry Potter with it? Perfection.

http://ift.tt/1pTfQ0L…

Jonny Holloway, a UK screenwriter and filmmaker has gone and taken Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and put it together in the same style as the Force Awakens trailer. The result is pretty damn good, capturing the urgency of the film and all of its great visuals.

[Buzzfeed]

via Gizmodo
Harry Potter Recut By The Way Of The Force Awakens Is Perfection

Here is our annual update on Ohio State University salaries.
Some notes on the data:
You can search by employee name, department or title. Searches by dollar amount will return any results at that level and higher. The results column you likely want is Total, which includes pay from all sources. The Regular column, according to OSU, "represents the pay that comes from base salary. It represents standard hours (full-time equivalent) worked plus paid leave taken according to our leave plans/policies.…
via Bizjournals.com Columbus RSS Feed
OSU salaries database for year-end 2015, 2014 and 2013

We’ve updated our popular Ohio State University salary database, which covers more than 30,000 workers at Central Ohio’s largest employer.
It’s embedded below and you can also find it here.
The database shows Ohio State has 11 employees who made more than $1 million in total compensation last year.
The school also has 110 employees who made more than $500,000 and 781 workers who pulled in more than $250,000.
You have to scroll way down to see all 4,844 employees who made at least $100,000.
Here…
via Bizjournals.com Columbus RSS Feed
OSU salary database updated for 2016, plus the school’s highest-paid employees

Sometimes it’s useful to have a set of data prepared to be used on a fresh MySQL install for testing purposes. Or you might be preparing some training or workshop and want to prepare examples with fake information. For MySQL there are some choices available:
Employees Sample Database: provides a combination of a large base of data (approximately 160MB) spread over six separate tables and
via Planet MySQL
MySQL sample databases: for testing and training

There’s just two days to go before we get new Daredevil episodes, but we’re still getting a bunch of new looks at season two—like this Frank Castle-focused featurette, which it shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with the Punisher to know comes with a NSFW warning for scenes of violence.

The featurette includes a ton of new footage showing Frank Castle shooting his way through Hell’s Kitchen. We get a lot more of the Punisher killing than we’ve seen in any of the trailer, especially of the rooftop scene paying homage to the iconic Devil By the Horns story from the comics. It is, as Punisher actor Jon Bernthal himself says, “kickass, man.”

http://ift.tt/1VcmZF6…

Daredevil season two drops this Friday, March 18th.

via Gizmodo
The Punisher Makes a Bloody Brilliant Entrance in This New Daredevil Featurette

Once you start using subtitles, you really can’t go back. They’re so useful for keeping up with dialogue in shows and films, especially when characters whisper, mumble, or have an accent you’re unfamiliar with. They’re obviously come in handy for foreign-language films, too. So let’s say you have a video file — maybe you ripped one of your DVD or Bluray discs — and you need subtitles. How do you go about this? All you have to do is visit a subtitle repository like Subscene or OpenSubtitles and search for the show or film you plan to watch. The subtitles…

Read the full article: How to Find & Use Subtitles in VLC Media Player for Any Video

via MakeUseOf
How to Find & Use Subtitles in VLC Media Player for Any Video

You had to know this was coming eventually, but the latest John Oliver main story was his take on the Apple v. FBI encryption fight. If you haven’t seen it yet, here it is:

Not surprisingly, Oliver’s take is much clearer and much more accurate than many mainstream press reports on the issues in the case, appropriately mocking the many law enforcement officials who seem to think that, just because Apple employs smart engineers, they can somehow do the impossible and "safely" create a backdoor into an encrypted iPhone that won’t have dangerous consequences. He even spends a bit of time reviewing the original Crypto Wars over the Clipper Chip and highlights cryptographer Matt Blaze’s contribution in ending those wars by showing that the Clipper Chip could be hacked.

But the biggest contribution to the debate — which I hope that people pay most attention to — is the point that Oliver made in the end with his faux Apple commercial. Earlier in the piece, Oliver noted that this belief among law enforcement that Apple engineers can somehow magically do what they want is at least partially Apple’s own fault, with its somewhat overstated marketing. So, Oliver’s team made a "more realistic" Apple commercial which noted that Apple is constantly fighting security cracks and vulnerabilities and is consistently just half a step ahead of hackers with malicious intent (and, in many cases, half a step behind them).

This is the key point: Building secure products is very, very difficult and even the most secure products have security vulnerabilities in them that need to be constantly watched and patched. And what the government is doing here is not only asking Apple to not patch a security vulnerability that it has found, but actively forcing Apple to make a new vulnerability and then effectively forcing Apple to keep it open. For all the talk of how Apple can just create the backdoor just this once and throw it away, this more like asking Apple to set off a bomb that blows the back off all houses in a city, and then saying, "okay, just throw away the bomb after you set it off."

Hopefully, as in cases like net neutrality, Oliver’s piece does it’s job in informing the public what’s really going on.

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via Techdirt.
John Oliver Explains Why You Should Side With Apple Over The FBI Better Than Most Journalists

John Oliver has earned himself a reputation for explaining politically complex topics in a way that anyone can understand during his Last Week Tonight talk show. After tackling net neutrality and Donald Trump, the comedian has turned his attention to the San Bernardino iPhone case. The legal tussle between Apple and the FBI has been all over the news recently, but the various arguments and counterarguments can be difficult to describe to someone that rarely reads about encryption, backdoors and government warrants. If you have friends or family that fall into this camp, Oliver’s new 18-minute breakdown is a good place for them to start.

The TV host delivers the recap with his usual wit and charm, packing in plenty of gags that should keep even the least tech-savvy viewer engaged. In the video, Oliver covers the general purpose of encryption, the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, exactly what the FBI has asked Apple to build and its justifications for such an order. He then summarises Apple’s counterarguments and the potential issues — technical and political — with building such a controversial workaround. It’s not the deepest of dives, but if you know someone that wants to quickly catch up with the whole affair this is an accessible, humorous and fairly comprehensive take.

Source: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (YouTube)

via Engadget
John Oliver breaks down the San Bernardino iPhone case