Umamiblog

The Guardian’s Ben Child reports:

Harrison Ford is apparently in early talks to return as the replicant nemesis in Scott’s forthcoming followup to his 1982 sci-fi classic. If the prediction turns out to be true, it would be even more of a shock than the news in March last year that the veteran British film-maker was to shoot a new Blade Runner film.

Please please please not suck.

Stephen Franks on a book review of The City That Became Safe:

One year I noticed a peak in the Central Police district homicide figures (Wanganui, Manawatu, Hawkes Bay) and had a statistician friend check for me – that district did indeed have a higher murder rate than New York.

While purely subjective, I often feel safer in London than I did in NZ. Heather Mac Donald’s book review here.

NZ Legislation shifts file-sharing from bittorrent to tunnels:

The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. Legislation will never be able to keep up with technical innovation.

What happens when you change the law and the market can’t/won’t/isn’t offering an easier solution.

Self-determination for New Zealand is not a choice, it’s a reality. No one is going to look after us.

- Lloyd Morrison. RIP.

TNW UK reports:

UK mobile operator Three helped its customers utilise more than 80 terabytes of mobile data on New Year’s Eve, recording a 600% increase on figures from the year before

The thing is, I’d love it if my own mobile data usage had increased 600% year on year. But no, I still have the same 1GB-sized quota that I had the year before…

Matt, at TVHE:

Does the US have a marginally functional government?

We already know they don’t have a fully functional government, or a reasonably functional government. But we are waiting to see if the government really exists at all, and is able to muster itself together enough to avoid accidentally defaulting on debt and starting a new financial crisis.

I’m a little late to this nugget but what a great question. (Happy to see he’s writing again.)

DHH, on LinkedIn stock:

So they want you to pay $85-92 per share for a company that posted 9 cents per share in earnings last year (or put another way, value a company with $18 million in profits at $8 billion). Heh.

Heh indeed. At least they’re actually making a profit I guess.

Interesting to see Chrome break 20% market share, mostly by eating into IE, but also a fraction of Firefox.

Certainly is my browser of choice.

Arts & Letters Daily introducing ‘How China sees the world’:

Beijing’s chattering class. China has 400 think tanks, where opinions vary from government-approved to government-approved…

Interesting article if you’re into any combination of China and foreign policy.

Mercenary Trader on the AUD/USD pair:

It might be time to get short the Australian dollar if you haven’t already.

Go have a read, not a bad analysis. I’m hesitant to bet against AUD and I suspect the tipping point is still months away. But, I’m shorting regardless (I have time).

What you get visiting Turntable.fm these days:

We’re very sorry, but while we would love to let you in and rock out with us, we need to currently restrict turntable access to only the United States due to licensing constraints.

This really sucks. You may remember how excited I was about Turntable.fm. It’s hard to watch music startups hit that music-industry-plus-internet roadblock.

Nat at Simple & Lovable on the first fatality-free holiday road toll:

As someone on the road who, just by being in a car has a chance (albeit a small one), of winding up a statistic, I appreciate their efforts.

Nice work five-O.