Extenuating Circumstances

This is an auto-posted collection of my public links posted to Pinboard.in for February 1st from 14:35 to 15:35:

• Perspective: Objects in Pictures Are Not Always As They Seem – "The video above is only 44 seconds long, but we’ll bet it’ll take up at least a minute and a half of your time — you’ll just have to watch it twice. It was created by British psychological professor Richard Wiseman, and demonstrates the power of perspective. It’s titled, “Assumptions.”"
• One Of The Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working With The FBI – "Learn about your ancestry AND SOLVE CRIME!"
• Verily wants to make smart shoes that track weight and falls – The Verge – what if low power mems accelerometers but in everything
• The untold origin story of eBay that I lived, and the times that could have killed it – Cake – Why General Magic attracted fascinating people // also this quote: "In the small world department, both our companies were growing fast and we needed industrial-strength Internet. So we both rented space at Best Internet, where they had chicken-wire cages for our servers. We brought our own padlocks for the latches and set our servers on the concrete floor. The first three cages were filled with AuctionWeb’s Sun server on the right, Fatbrain’s in the middle, and one from a startup called Hotmail on the left. We saw each other when our servers needed work, which was often."
• Inside the amazing company that invented the iPhone—two decades too early – Cake –
• The fascinating bromance between Steve Jobs and Ross Perot – Cake – "“My question is why does Sun have sales growth that looks like this?” ([Ross Perot] Gestures up and to the right.) “While our sales curve is flat. Now, it seems like there’s one of two things it could be: Either that man cain’t sell a computer.” (Gestures toward Todd Rulon-Miller, our VP of sales, who went ashen.) “Or, our customer has a problem with our computer we don’t know about. Why don’t we call them and ask, if ya ain’t buyin’, why ain’t ya buyin’? If ya tell us why ya ain’t buyin’, we can fix it so you can buy it!”"
• Apple and human curation – Cake – "I remember Steve used to say they take it on the chin sometimes with human curation of the App Store because judgement calls can be contentious. But his opinion was they must make those calls."
• That time Steve Jobs hired a career juggler to teach programming to developers – Cake –
• 50 Years In Tech Part 15. Be: From Concept To Near Death – brb installing Haiku on a VM
• Review: Anker’s 30W ‘Atom’ USB-C Charger is Tiny, Affordable, and Perfect for Charging iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks – MacRumors – "With a new material called Gallium nitride (GaN), semiconductor components have been able to be shrunk down, leading to smaller than ever charging accessories." [citation needed]