• What if Steve Jobs had been running Apple’s Event on Tuesday? – Jiggity’s Essays
  I don't agree with the article's presupposition that Steve's way would have been better, but I will say that I think that the write has very neatly nailed to difference between Jobs' keynotes, and the modern ones, and he has nailed something very important about Steve's way of explaining these things – the emphasis on the human connection, on what these devices will let us do to enrich our lives, rather that the technical specification and Jony Ive's design-porn angle.

I’ve been noodling about in odd moments with a bit of writing with the working title “The Death of Retrofutures” – about how we don’t imagine the future in the same way we used to, and how I think that’s a shame.

Today, I see that BERG is closing down.

I am incredibly sad to see this. BERG are, or were, one of the touchstones I use to describe the best sort of work there is to be done down the internet mines, the sort of work that I really seriously admire, and, on my better days, aspire to do. They were a firm concerned with invention, with taking these technologies that shape our lives, interrogating them, and really thinking about how to use them to do something that actually improves people’s lives in some small way. They really did get on with the job of imagining the future, and we’re all poorer for them not being in operation.

I wish all those employed there every success in their future endeavours – I can’t imagine anyone on that team will have any trouble finding something new and interesting to occupy their time.

• 100 Actual Titles of Real Eighteenth-Century Novels
  Many of these are brilliant. I think we should bring back eighteenth century style naming for fiction.
• How London’s Rivers Got Their Names | Londonist
  Just in case you're curious.

• 10 Evil Crimes Of The British Empire – Listverse
  Just, you know, in case anyone was wondering why I'm not a fan of our current administration: they appear to take as read that the times in which Britain did this were some kind of halcyon age. Also noted for future reference purposes.
• Papa Parse – Powerful CSV parser for Javascript
  I suspect this will be very useful for a number of things.

• Met Police encourages Twitter pile-ons (with images, tweets) · anyabike · Storify
  Mildy horrifying behaviour from the police. I mean, sure, it's "just" twitter, but then, so were the complaints. Why set a pile-on on people who are "just" complaining on Twitter, if it's not important?

• Five Computer Security Myths, Debunked by Experts
  A collection of myths about security (as in, how people justify not being secure enough to themselves). Just in case anyone reading this is someone who might believe any of these.
• danah boyd | apophenia » The Cost of Contemporary Policing: A Review of Alice Goffman’s ‘On the Run’
  Bookmarking this as a reminder to pick this book up.

• Maximum Happy Imagination | Magical Nihilism
  This has sort of crystallised something for me. From where we currently stand, we can just about see a "maximum happy imagination" future ahead of us – not a challenge free future, not by any means, but one where basic material needs can be catered for, for everyone, for free – and yet it seems we keep electing people who are ideologically set against taking the steps that would be required to achieve this. It's almost like pre-emptive future shock.

• Install MySQL on OS X 10.9 Mavericks. | Mac Mini Vault
  Nice set of shortcuts to accomplish a reasonably common development task.

• Badger Map print
  A print of a badger, on a map. This may actually be the best thing in the entire universe, ever.
• Dorothy – Shop
  A collection of really nice street map prints. Bookmarking this so I can buy a couple later on.

• Russell Davies: Consumers, users, people, mammals
  On the importance of being precise about your relationships with the human beings who make up your user/consumer/customer/other base.