Remember Yahoo Pipes? It was a terrific web-based tool for pulling in data feeds, manipulating, combining, and filtering, and then generating a new feed with the results. Like anything useful, Yahoo killed it. Now there is Pipes.digital as a replacement. I wish there was more info on how this will be supported and maintained, or even who is running it. But it’s a nice looking option right now so I’ll be keeping an eye on it to see what it becomes.

By way of Kottke, comes this excellent description of the CRISPR technology. I enjoyed the book Change Agent by Daniel Suarez a lot.1 As with his other books, the basis for the fiction is solid. The futuristic technologies he invents have a firm foundation in actual science. Which is a far cry from a lot of science fiction I read. This article by Derek Lowe is a pretty good overview of what is currently happening in the CRISPR field.

From Renee DiResta at Ribbonfarm, comes this terrific “long-read”1: We’re now in a period that’s strikingly reminiscent of the early days of HFT: the intersection of automation and social networking has given us manipulative bots and an epidemic of “fake news”. Just as HFT was a simplified boogeyman for finance, “fake news” is an imprecise term used to describe a variety of disingenuous content: clickbait, propaganda, misinformation, disinformation, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories.

DEVONthink and Scanner Pro for iOS have both been updated in the last week to provide better integration between the two apps. Now Scanner Pro shows DEVONthink prominently as a destination app for saving scans. The implementation isn’t ideal though. It’s only marginally better than using the “Open In” function and importing into DEVONthink. I would have loved to see DEVONthink as a location for automatic uploading from Scanner Pro.

This trick with Omnioutliner is great. Convert an Omnioutliner document into a mind map by importing it into Omnigraffle. There are other ways to do this, such as converting it to OPML and importing it into one of the many top notch mind mapping apps. But Omnigraffle has super powers that most mind map apps lack, like better image editing and arbitrary canvas text.

I always enjoy the work over at Information is Beautiful. This post about how scientific theories were received throughout history is very good. I’ve always assumed astronomy was the most dangerous field for heretics but this data set implies that Medicine will get you more often.

I love these examples of text transforms with Alfred. I’m still mostly using Keyboard Maestro because I prefer the options it has but if you want just one application to use as a launcher and utility tool, Alfred is a good option.

From BoingBoing comes a house of particular taste.

This Ars Technica seems very dire. It’s a huge breach of trust for Intel hardware.

First, Dr. Drang is one of my favorite people on the internet. I’ve read every word he’s written in the past decade. One thing I know about Dr. Drang is that he can be very specific. He’s an engineer and has a very specific definition for that term. Which makes this latest post so wonderful.1 This is the true value I find in reading indie blogs. They are made by people with a real history and real values.