Extra Future

Hi, I’m Phil Nelson, a writer, developer, and audio-visual maker of stuff. I have been making stuff online for over 25 years. I run RetroStrange and Set Side B. Good to see you.

Blog Archives

Month: April 2013

  • Marco Arment sells majority stake in Instapaper to Betaworks

    [Didn’t see that one coming][link]. I use Instapaper every single day, and I hope this keeps Instapaper around for a long time and frees up Marco to make more new stuff. From his post:

    >I’m happy to announce that I’ve sold a majority stake in Instapaper to Betaworks. We’ve structured the deal with Instapaper’s health and longevity as the top priority, with incentives to keep it going well into the future. I will continue advising the project indefinitely, while Betaworks will take over its operations, expand its staff, and develop it further.

    I’ve been in a similar place before; having a successful project that can continue growing but needs a bigger team and more resources, but you don’t want to make it your entire career. Marco, it seems, felt similarly before he made the decision to sell.

    [link]: http://www.marco.org/2013/04/25/instapaper-next-generation “The next generation of Instapaper – Marco.org”

  • Hunger Striking at Guantánamo Bay

    [Our children will look upon Guantanamo Bay with the same sheepish, embarrassed, confused, eye that we look upon the rounding up of Japanese Americans in camps like Manzanar during World War II.][link] If we’re lucky.

    It is brutal, it is inhuman, and it is the antithesis of the very ideals our country was founded upon. The existence of America’s (torture) detention facility in Guantanamo Bay makes me feel sick to my stomach and rotten to my core. We should be ashamed of ourselves, and so much more than that.

    [link]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/15/opinion/hunger-striking-at-guantanamo-bay.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0 “Hunger Striking at Guantánamo Bay – NYTimes.com”

  • Feds force Oregon to surrender medical marijuana patient records

    >[Federal agents have forced the Oregon Public Health Division to turn over an untold number of patients’ medical marijuana records, according to court records recently uncovered by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.][link]

    These people just want to be able to have their medicine and not be afraid, and this is EXACTLY why a lot of people on the lefty fringe are against legalizing Marijuana in the first place. They’re afraid of being on “some government list” just like this one.

    Now that they know where you live the feds can break down the door at any moment and arrest you, charge you with a federal crime, seize all of your property, etc.

    [link]: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/12/feds-force-oregon-to-surrender-medical-marijuana-patient-records/ “Feds force Oregon to surrender medical marijuana patient records | The Raw Story”

  • Log

    >[“Console.log with Style”][link]

    Works in Chrome, pretty cool. A little verbose for my tastes but definitely better than the default.

    [link]: http://adamschwartz.co/log/ “Log – Console.log with Style”

  • Panic Releases Status Board

    Remember when we all lost our shit over Panic’s awesome in-house status board? [Well they released it on the App Store today.][link] $10.

    You can even [create your own data sources by following this doc][docs]. I’m sure the docs will be available as a non-PDF soon enough.

    [link]: http://panic.com/statusboard/ “Status Board”
    [docs]: http://panic.com/statusboard/docs/diy_tutorial.pdf “Tutorial PDF”

  • csscss

    >[csscss will parse any CSS files you give it and let you know which rulesets have duplicated declarations.][link]

    Been looking for something like this for YEARS now. Hope it’s good.

    [link]: http://zmoazeni.github.io/csscss/?hn=1 “csscss by zmoazeni”

  • Does Startup Life Have To Be A 24/7 Grind?

    [Short answer: No.][link] Long answer: No, but nobody takes advice like this no matter how good it is.

    [link]: http://blog.groovehq.com/post/47537406719/does-startup-life-have-to-be-a-24-7-grind “Does Startup Life Have To Be A 24/7 Grind? | Groove Blog”

  • Pinry

    [A self-hosted, open source, Pinterest clone.][link] Built with Python, from the looks of it.

    [link]: http://getpinry.com/ “Pinry”

  • Bitcoin part 1: Bits

    [This is part 1 in a series that explains how BitCoin works. It’s good on technical details without trying to break your brain if you aren’t a programmer or researcher.][link]

    [link]: https://self-evident.org/?p=971 “Bitcoin part 1: Bits « self-evident”

  • Grimwire: A RESTful Browser OS that does Peer-to-peer over WebRTC

    [That’s a lot of acronyms, and I’m not entirely sure what makes this special yet but boy it sounds impressive.][link]

    [link]: http://blog.grimwire.com/#2013-04-04-grimwire.md “blog.grimwire.com”