— Burlington is younger, with an average age of 37[…]
— Burlington is better off financially, with 8 percent living at the federal poverty level[…]
— It’s much more educated, with nearly 40 percent of area residents having at least a college bachelor’s degree[…]

The cultures are significantly different, too. Bicycling, hiking, skiing and other exercises are common in Burlington. Neighborhood groups commonly focus on improving parks, working in community gardens and repairing and improving sidewalks.

It’s great that the city I see every day looked upon so highly in this area. It’s unlike other cities I’ve lived near or visited frequently and I love it. It really is such a positive area to live in.

[Via Jackson Latka]

All you have to do is download and install the voice and video plugin and we take care of the rest. And in the spirit of open communications, we designed this feature using Internet standards such as XMPP, RTP, and H.264, which means that third-party applications and networks can choose to interoperate with Gmail voice and video chat.

Pretty cool.

[Via Hicksdesign]

[I]t’s a method of decrypting and arbitrarily and successfully re-encrypting and re-injecting short packets on networks that have devices using TKIP. That’s a very critical distinction; this is a serious attack, and the first real flaw in TKIP that’s been found and exploited. But it’s still a subset of a true key crack.

Tews pointed out that “if you used security features just for preventing other people from using your bandwidth, you are perfectly safe,” which is the case for most home users. Someone can’t use this attack to break into a home or corporate network, nor decipher all the data that passes.

While this first crack of WPA allows attackers to, “slip a knife into a crack in the encryption scheme and send bogus data,” that crack will widen over time. Good to know that WPA2’s AES encryption is not susceptible.

[Via Daring Fireball]

“If we do end up electing Barack Obama, the founding [of the United States of America] continues to grow.”

I’m ecstatic about, and greatly relieved by, the results of yesterday’s historic election. Not only was Barack Obama the first presidential candidate I was genuinely excited about since first being able to vote in the year 2000 election, but I now feel pride in my fellow Americans for their overwhelming participation in bringing the change we needed. The past two elections had left a bitter taste in my mouth and drained me of most of the hope that our nation could make intelligent decisions about our leaders.

Last night I slept more soundly than I have in a very long time and today I’ve awoken to a new day. Our nation can now continue to evolve as our founders intended and no longer has to wallow as it has for the past eight years.

I’m extremely proud to now call him President-elect Barack Obama and will be even more so when we’re referring to him as Mr. President.

Around the world, honeybee stocks are in decline, which scientists have warned could have devastating impacts on global food supplies. A total of 80 percent of world food crops are primarily or exclusively pollinated by honeybees[…]

I’m not sure whether local apiarists have been finding dead bees, but I have heard discussion of CCD:

While in many cases bees have actually been found dead […] beekeepers have been particularly alarmed by CCD, in which the bees simply vanish, leaving empty hives behind them.

[…]

A number of studies have found that in low doses, neonicotinoids produce symptoms consistent with CCD. Termites exposed to imidacloprid experienced disorientation and immune system failure, while bees exposed to low levels of the chemical experienced impaired communication, homing and foraging ability, flight activity, and olfactory discrimination and learning.

Can we just get off of pesticides already? Time to go read Silent Spring.

[Via Jason Fried]

11. Your Newton is a “project” device. This is what originally drew me to the MessagePad. Setting up wifi and Bluetooth, sending and receiving e-mails, playing around with third-party apps and games, even syncing with OS X – the Newton gives you weekend projects that satisfy your inner DIY’er. The iPhone? Too easy.

When I bought my MessagePad 2100 back in 2005 it was after great hemming and hawing between it and a Treo 650. I decided to skip consolidation and the risk of forced obsolescence and go for flexibility, chosen obsolescence, and community. I’ve never even been tempted to look back.

[Via Grant Hutchinson]

He suffered from a severe heart attack last wednesday while on his bike[…] In the spirit of his open source thinking, Mark was kept alive for a donor procedure and passed away this morning (saturday).

Honestly, I was pretty shaken up and only now able to post this. It hit too close to home, in all too many ways.

I didn’t know him personally, but was an avid reader of geek technique and a fellow advocate of slick old-school hardware. I’ll miss the projects.

My thoughts are with his friends and family.

[Via TUAW]

PleaseDressMe is a classic example of scratching ones own itch. AJ, Gary, and Joe love finding great new tees, but finding said tees wasn’t the easiest thing in the world. Rather than sifting through multiple websites we figured why not just go to one website that makes searching t-shirts easy?

Emily has always wanted the Ice Ice Baby and In Case of Emergency, Break Dance shirts, but I can never remember which sites I found them on. Now I don’t have to.

[Via Daring Fireball]

The Windows beta is set to be released today. Hopefully it won’t remain in persistent beta state like so many of their projects.

Update: now linking to the official comic, not the scanned copy.

[Via Daring Fireball]

What an amazing movie!