Tim Wu, for The New Yorker Linkbait News Desk:

The old tech adage is that “open beats closed.” In other words, open technological systems, or those that allow interoperability, always beat their closed competitors.

John Gruber:

[O]pen-vs.-closed carries no special weight in determining success as a general rule. Apple is not an exception to the rule; rather, it is a perfect example that the rule is nonsense.

O link-baiter, thou dost beguile us. Thine analytic countenance, affected so, obscures thy pulpy, unsubstantive skull ‘neath which resides yet more fatuous stuff. Thanks be to the knights of reason, the slayers of bullshit who allay the fear and doubt you sow so callously and selfishly. Also, fuck you.

Gruber’s at his best here.

Excellent discussion over at Stack Overflow. Via this excellent piece at CSS Wizardry on selector efficiency.

Tim Maly for Wired:

Chipmaker Freescale Semiconductor has created the world’s smallest ARM-powered chip…

Steve Tateosian, global product marketing manager for Freescale:

We are working with our customers and partners on providing technology for their products that can be swallowed…

Swallowed.

He wasn’t mentioned in this article, but Ray Kurzweil’s been talking about ingestible nanorobots for a long time. I honestly never thought we’d see anything like it this soon, but I suppose that’s why Kurzweil’s a zillionaire and I’m here writing about him, definitely not a zillionaire.

Hilary Mantel:

It is sad to think that intelligent people could devote themselves to this topic with earnest furrowings of the brow, but that’s what discourse about royals comes to: a compulsion to comment, a discourse empty of content, mouthed rather than spoken.

I’ve railed against the monarchy (the idea of one, really – not just the English variety) since I was a wee college freshman, and I haven’t stopped since.

Don’t skip the recorded speech. This is excellent.

Sean Johnson:

It’s hard to hear we’re not all we think we are. But it’s critical we have a feedback loop to call us out, because we’re simply incapable of seeing ourselves as we truly are.

A Russian scientist’s report, upon discovering the family:

The silence was suddenly broken by sobs and lamentations. Only then did we see the silhouettes of two women. One was in hysterics, praying: ‘This is for our sins, our sins.’ The other, keeping behind a post… sank slowly to the floor. The light from the little window fell on her wide, terrified eyes, and we realized we had to get out of there as quickly as possible.

Can’t even imagine what that interchange must have felt like – from either side.

Joshua Topolsky:

The Z10 is a fine device, well made, reasonably priced, backed by a company with a long track record. But it’s not the only device of its kind, and it’s swimming against a massive wave of entrenched players with really, really good products. Products they figured out how to make years ago. Products that are mature. The smartphone industry doesn’t need saving.

XKCD:

Unfortunately, X-Plane is not capable of simulating the hellish environment near the surface of Venus. But physics calculations give us an idea of what flight there would be like. The upshot is: Your plane would fly pretty well, except it would be on fire the whole time, and then it would stop flying, and then stop being a plane.

Yikes.