Apple topped this year’s ranking by scoring 3.94, giving it a wide margin of victory. Berkshire scored 3.58, and the mean was 2.37. Apple received the highest number of Highly Respect votes …

Berkshire Hathaway moved to the number two slot, ahead of Boeing and Google in third and fourth places.
Read full story => 9to5mac

Technology News: With Political Failures Left and Right, Tech Needs To Rethink Its Strategy
Politics is the bête noire of hackers and entrepreneurs. It lacks the precision and logic of a function in a computer program while being incredibly inefficient to boot. Taxi services have been bad for decades in cities like San Francisco thanks to local politics, but a dedicated technology startup managed to ameliorate the situation in just a handful of years.
Read full story => TechCrunch

Programming News: Sick of Ruby, dynamic typing, side effects, and basically object-oriented programming
This has been a long time coming. I had meant to write this post around the New Year, before the wave of death of Ruby stuff and before DHH’s “TDD is dead” ruckus.

I think subconsciously more and more people are figuring out something is wrong or lacking with Ruby development, but they are lashing out at the wrong things. Oh, your Ruby app is a steaming pile of shit? It’s because you weren’t diligent enough writing tests or you weren’t following TDD principles closely enough. Or you aren’t knowledgable enough with design patterns to break it up into the right patterns. Or you aren’t following the Single Responsibility Principle, or Law of Demeter, yadda yadda. Here, read this book on patterns or testing or OO design and get back to me when you reach enlightenment.
Read full story => AbeVoelker

Photography News: Photos For OS X Will Come With Advanced Features
Just last week we reported that Apple’s Aperture photo editing software would ceased to be developed any further. This cant be good news for current photographers who rely on Apple’s software for a living, but we guess an alternative would be Adobe Lightroom which is currently under a paid subscription system.
Read full story => UberGizmo

Technology News: Microsoft wins right to disclose FBI’s demand for info about Office 365 customer
In a significant victory for transparency and free speech, a federal judge in Seattle granted Microsoft permission to unseal documents related to an FBI investigation into one of its cloud customers. The case relates to a National Security Letter issued to Microsoft in 2013 that ordered the company to turn over information about one of its enterprise customers, whose identity remains a secret. The customer stores data on Microsoft’s Office 365, a service that lets companies keep email and work collaboration tools in the cloud.
Read full story => Gigaom

Programming News: Upgrading to Ruby 2.1 (and why complex regexes will inevitably hurt you)
When we first launched FreeAgent, it ran on Ruby 1.8.6 MRI (and Rails 1.2!). We graduated to 1.8.7 REE when that became popular, then in the summer of 2011 we upgraded to Ruby 1.9.3. We’ve been running on that version (1.9.3-p194 to be specific) ever since. It has served us well, but performance is not one of Ruby 1.9.3’s strong points and we’ve seen our application server response time gradually grow over the years to the point where we really wanted to do something about it. Just over a year ago, Ruby 2.0 was released. This introduced DTrace support and GC optimisations, both of which were of particular interest to us at FreeAgent since they allow us better insight into what Ruby is spending its time doing. As an added bonus, we also expected an improvement in performance. Late last year we spiked up a branch of FreeAgent that ran on Ruby 2.0 but before we’d even started to QA this, Ruby 2.1 was released on Christmas Day!
Read full story => Freeagent

Photography News: Forget the Street Photography Gimmicks, Concentrate on the Image
A lot of what gets praised as great street photography these days has to do with juxtaposition, forced perspective or some bizarre subject matter. For sure, those images deserve their due. However, I tend to favor photos that have great light and composition, and where the subject is a little more sublime. Take this picture by Swiss photographer Alexander Ess, for example. The three girls aren’t doing anything particularly exciting but the photo captures a sense of detachment, or perhaps boredom. You’re especially drawn to the girl on the left, whose face is wonderfully highlighted by the soft light coming through the window.
Read full story => HuffingtonPost

Technology News: Has technology killed our ability to have a face-to-face conversation?
Not so long ago, meetings were a staple of working life, but a recent survey conducted by technology market research firm Radicati reports that ‘pinging’ over a message is now the most popular way to communicate in business. It is easy to see why. Not only is it fast, but the response you receive is often more concise, saving time that could have been wasted by sitting through a marathon conference. Just sum it up in an email, please.
Read full story => Metro

Programming News: Ruby 2.1 In Detail
Ruby 2.1 is the next significant version of Ruby, having been released on Christmas Day 2013, just 10 months after 2.0.0. It comes with a whole host of changes and improvements, and this post dives in to the details of what’s new. With 2.1 Ruby moves to a new versioning scheme based on Semantic Versioning. The scheme is MAJOR.MINOR.TEENY, so with 2.1.0 the major version is 2, the minor version is 1, and the teeny version is 0. The teeny version number takes over from the patchlevel for minor bug and security fixes. The minor version number will be used for new features that are largely backwards compatible, and major for incompatible changes that can’t be released as a minor. This means rather than referring to, say, 1.9.3 in general and 1.9.3-p545 specifically it will be 2.1 in general and 2.1.1 specifically. The plan is to release a new minor version every 12 months, so we can expect to see Ruby 2.2 on Christmas Day 2014.
Read full story => GlobalDev

Photography News: Wildlife and Landscape Photography Tips from Photographer Florian Schulz
This short video has some great insights as Marc Silber interviews landscape and wildlife photographer Florian Schulz about his work. A couple of great insights:

• On landscape photography – pay real attention to when looking at an area to the thing in the scene that ‘calls your attention’. Finding a ‘dramatic opening’ into the scene is key.
• On wildlife photography – putting in the time is really key. Observe, watch and learn about the animal’s behaviour. As you observe an animal look for repetitions in their behaviour that you can capture.
• And lastly – his advice on thinking about the ‘story’ in your images is really great in your quest to take images that resonate with those who view them.

Read full story => DigitalPhotographySchool

Technology News: Americans Are Bullish On Technology’s Distant Future, Less So Its Present
Despite the number of popular dystopian novels written over the years, Americans have continually been optimistic when it comes to the future of technology. At least, the distant future of technology. We’re far less sanguine about the technology that threatens to upend our lives today or tomorrow, as a new Pew Research survey suggests. In 1988, the Los Angeles Times took a break from crushing traffic (no, not really) to anticipate they’d have robotic maids and holographic conference calls in just 25 years. That prediction didn’t come to fruition, but it hasn’t stopped people from dreaming of a distant future where humans can teleport from one place to another, or control the weather, even as we anguish over near-term technological realities of “Glassholes,” inbox overload and more. Following this trend, Americans are currently bullish on lab-grown organs, computer-generated art and other plausible advances in technology, with 59% expecting that technology will make our lives better.
Read full story => ReadWrite

Programming News: Rake Part 1: Files and Rules
If you’re a Ruby programmer, you’ve almost certainly used Rake, the build utility created by the late Jim Weirich. But you might not realize just how powerful and flexible a tool it can be. I certainly didn’t, until I decided to base Quarto, my e-book production toolchain, on Rake. This post is part of a series on Rake, starting with the basics and then moving on to advanced usage. It originated as a series of RubyTapas videos published to subscribers in August-September 2013. Each post begins with a video, followed by the script for those who prefer reading to viewing. Oh, and if you are grateful for Rake, please consider donating to the Weirich Fund in Jim’s memory.
Read full story => Virtuous Code

Photography News: Get lost around Europe in 11 photos
Packing your gear and leaving your hometown for couple of days to explore new places is the best way to fill your batteries? Or you’re enjoying it as a part of your job? Look what we found for this week’s photo list!
Read full story => PictureCorrect

Technology News: Embracing the cloud: How Microsoft is radically changing its vision
In the heart of Microsoft’s city-sized headquarters, amid dozens of self-same office buildings, is a courtyard designed to commemorate the 40-year legacy of the world’s most successful software company. Hundreds of stone plaques along the ground bear the names and release dates of various Microsoft products, from well-known commercial blockbusters (Microsoft Windows 95), to the most obscure titles in the company’s catalogue (Microsoft Dogs). Today the plaques feel a little like gravestones. Taken together, they describe the sort of company that Microsoft is trying very hard not to be.
Read full story => TheGlobeAndMail

Programming News: Simple recommendation system written in Ruby
I’m looking for new job; so yesterday I went through my old Rails projects, trying to describe them for my updated CV. I found interesting old project where I wrote recommendation system. Nothing fancy, just simple tag based recommendation for blog articles. I decided to extract some of the code and blog about it. Algorithm used for recommendation is based on Jaccard Index and is also known as the Jaccard similarity coefficient. Jaccard Index was invented by botany professor Paul Jaccard and is basically a number that represents similarity and diversity of sample sets.
Read full story => OtoBrglez

Photography News: Landscape Photography by Peter Dawson
Peter Dawson pursued photography while studying biology and organic chemistry at Seattle Pacific University; it’s an experiment that has yet to end. Originally from Washington State, he later attended the Brooks Institute of Photography. Peter continues to make his home in Los Angeles; where in his free time you’ll find him hiking the Sierra mountains, trail running in Griffith Park, snowboarding, and following his interests in aviation, architecture and the occasional road trip.
Read full story => PhotoGrist

Technology News: HP unveils business-focused ElitePad and ProPad tablets, TX1 POS system
HP is showing off two new tablets, as well as a new point-of-sale retail system, ahead of Mobile World Congress. Both the ElitePad and ProPad tablets feature Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 and 64-bit compatibility for a focus on business, and the ProPad supports HP’s new TX1 POS Solution. Let’s start with the ElitePad, which will be the first device to go on sale in March. The 10.1-inch tablet is HP’s thinnest yet. It measures 0.36 inches thick and weighs 1.5 pounds. The tablet should have a premium look and feel to it, thanks to an aluminum unibody chassis that meets military standard 810G for durability.
Read full story => Gigaom

Programming News: Ruby 1.9.3-p545 is released
Happy birthday, Ruby! Today, Feb. 24th, is the 21st anniversary of Ruby. In commemoration of it, Ruby 1.9.3-p545 is released. This is the last ordinal release of Ruby 1.9.3. It means that Ruby 1.9.3 goes into the state of the security maintenance phase, and will never be released unless any critical regressions or security issues are found. This phase is planned to be maintained for 1 year. Then, maintenance of Ruby 1.9.3 will be ended at Feb. 24th, 2015.
Read full story => ruby-lang.org

Photography News: Breathtaking Photos of Finnish Landscapes by Mikko Lagerstedt
Photographer Mikko Lagerstedt first taught himself to use a camera in 2008 and has since fallen in love with the medium, having captured hundreds of dreamlike photographs of the Finnish landscape. He has since been bitten by the photography bug, finding a passion for shooting the breathtaking Finnish landscapes. Lagerstedt has taken dozens of images in his surreal style of the spectacular geography he calls home. This latest body of work is a reprise of his much viewed Edge, which was an eerily lovely collection of photographs. You can follow Mikko’s photography on his blog, via Facebook and on Behance and prints are available on RedBubble.
Read full story => FreeYork

Technology News: If only we had technology to limit credit card fraud… Oh, wait…
There was Target. Nieman Marcus. CitiBank. Between 2012 and 2013, the number of data breaches involving credit or debit card information increased by 41.2%. It’s really too bad there isn’t some way to use modern technology to dramatically reduce credit card fraud. Oh, Wait … there is … and has been … FOR ALMOST A DECADE … CHIP & PIN.
It’s called Chip & Pin technology, also known as EMV, it’s a little cryptographic chip embedded in the card, and unlike those magnetic stripes, it doesn’t just hold all your info unencrypted for every Tom Dick and Harry with a card reader or hacking skills to copy or scan or download. And there’s the added protection of a PIN number.
Read full story => MarketPlace

Programming News: A Ruby on Rails Continuous Integration process using Github, Semaphore, CodeClimate and HipChat
We all know the feeling when your ticketing system starts screaming at you with bug reports because you’ve deployed some buggy code and your application has started to misbehave. With that in mind, I’ll show you how our Ruby on Rails development team handles this with testing and a Continuous Integration process. Continuous Integration (CI) is a software development practice where members of a team integrate their work as frequently as possible to reduce integration problems and code conflicts. Every push to a source code repository is verified by an automated build and a test suite to detect errors as quickly as possible. A good CI tool also has a good notification system which effectively notifies all the team members about conflicts and issues with their code.
Read full story => Infinum

Photography News: Night-Time Landscape Photos that are Completely Lit by Moonlight
On display at White Cube Bermondsey in London from January 22 – April 14, 2014 is a new solo exhibition from artist and photographer Darren Almond entitled, To Leave a Light Impression. In a breathtaking series of night-time landscape photos, Almond takes 12 – 30 minute long exposure photographs under the light of a full moon. In a recent interview with The Guardian, Almond explains:

“With long exposures, you can never see what you are shooting, but you are giving the landscape longer to express itself.”

Read full story => TwistedSifter

Technology News: When cloud computing is just computing
According to Midsize Insider (an IBM publication), “The term ‘cloud’ has been an IT catchphrase for a short period although the types of services that define this technology have been in use for some time. This kind of computing may already be mainstream and no longer have the need for a catchphrase.” This is something I’ve been saying for awhile, that the term ‘cloud’ will eventually bake out of cloud computing and it will be just another model for computing. Much like other technologies that came along in the past, it just becomes a part of our architectural arsenal.
Read full story => Gigaom

Programming News: Using yield in C# like I would in Ruby
You say you want to use C#’s yield keyword the same way you would use Ruby’s yield keyword. You seem to be a little confused about what the two actually do: the two have absolutely nothing to do with each other, what you are asking for, is simply not possible.
Read full story => StackOverflow

Photography News: Photographing the Night Sky Using Your Digital SLR
Although sunset photos are attention-getters, you and your digital SLR can get great shots of the night sky after the sun goes down. The trick is to find a great spot with next to no ambient light from cities. And, unless you’re in a tropical paradise, the lower-humidity of the fall and winter makes for clearer pictures. To capture a photograph of a scene complete with stars, you need to use a long exposure. You also need a tripod or some other means of steadying the camera, as well as a remote trigger to operate the shutter.
Read full story => For Dummies

Technology News: 2013 Was A Lost Year For Tech
All in, 2013 was an embarrassment for the entire tech industry and the engine that powers it—Silicon Valley. Innovation was replaced by financial engineering, mergers and acquisitions, and evasion of regulations. Not a single breakthrough product was unveiled—and for reasons outlined below, Google Glass doesn’t count. If it’s in the nature of progress to move in leaps, there are necessarily lulls in between. Here are all the reasons 2013 was a great big dud for technology as a whole.
Read full story => Quartz

Programming News: Exception Causes in Ruby 2.1
Sometimes when rescuing an exception in Ruby, it’s useful to handle the error scenario by raising another, different exception. As an example, we may want to add domain-specific failure information before passing the error on to client code.
Read full story => DevBlog

Photography News: How to Use Your Fancy New Camera Like a Pro
Congratulations, you just scored an awesome new camera. Welcome to our annual guide to getting started with your new tool. Whether you’re shooting on a DSLR, a mirrorless compact, or even just a top-notch point-and-shoot, these tips will get you on your way. The rest is up to you. If you just got a snazzy point-and-shoot that basically only points and shoots, you probably want to check this guide instead.
Read full story => Gizmodo

Technology News: 8 tech trends to watch in China for 2014
The new year is a time for reflection, but it’s also a time for looking forward. In this regard, we’ve taken a broad look at some of the budding trends we expect to continue in China in 2014. In an ecosystem growing as fast as China’s tech scene, anything is possible within a year, but here’s a few predictions we think will change the country’s landscape.
Read full story => TechInAsia

Programming News: Ruby 2.1: Profiling Ruby

Ruby 2.1 is shipping with rb_profile_frames(), a new C-api for fetching ruby backtraces. The api performs no allocations and adds minimal cpu overhead making it ideal for profiling, even in production environments. I’ve implemented a sampling callstack profiler for 2.1 called stackprof with this API, using techniques popularized by gperftools and @brendangregg. It works remarkably well, and provides incredible insight into the execution of your code.
Read full story => TMM1 Net

Photography News: Christmas humour: You know if you’re a real photographer if…
Following on from the popularity of the last stereotype post that left no single photographer un-insulted, and in an attempt to bring some comedic relief to what is otherwise a very, very serious site: enjoy today’s post. Laugh if you recognize yourself or your friends. And feel free to suggest any additions in the comments.
Read full story => MingThein