Bill Simmons covers the insanity that was the last few minutes of Superbowl XLIX, a column made all the better by Simmons' rabid New England fandom:

And then everything went numb. For like three minutes. Couldn’t react. Couldn’t feel anything. People were yelling in disbelief all around me … I couldn’t move. They showed the replay. The football bounced off Kearse’s hands, Ryan’s hands and back up into the air. As Kearse fell on his back and tried to find the ball, safety Duron Harmon jumped **over his head**. Naturally, the football plopped back down off Kearse’s left leg and then his right leg, buying him time to tip it with his right hand, then it fell into his hands as he remained on his back. Also, he gave birth to a nine-pound baby just because everything else wasn’t unbelievable enough.

Hopefully the fan-cam sideline video linked in the article is still up on YouTube. I watched it about 15 times - the pre-snap movement, the pause, the speed after the snap, the uncontrollable joy from the NE players when they realised what happened, and the *massive* roar of the crowd.

Who said the Superbowl was boring due to non partisan crowds?

Andy Baio celebrates The Internet Archive, and in particular the ever growing software emulation library:

The Internet Archive is a chaotic, beautiful mess. It’s not well-organized, and its tools for browsing and searching the wealth of material on there are still rudimentary, but getting better.

But this software emulation project feels, to me, like the kind of thing Google would have tried in 2003. Big, bold, technically challenging, and for the greater good.

This effort is the perfect articulation of what makes the Internet Archive great — with repercussions for the future we won’t fully appreciate for years.

Don’t miss the 2300 strong MS-DOS game library. Prince of Persia! Castle Wolfenstein!

That didn’t take long. ‘Tolkieneditor’ has cut Peter Jackson’s way too long Hobbit trilogy into a single four hour ‘Tolkien’ edit, that removes the fluff (Elves & Dwarves living together) and focuses on the core Bilbo storyline:

I felt that the story was spoiled by an interminable running time, unengaging plot tangents and constant narrative filibustering. What especially saddened me was how Bilbo (the supposed protagonist of the story) was rendered absent for large portions of the final two films.

Joins Harmy’s Star Wars Despecialized editions on the shelf. It’s interesting to see the fan edit extend all the way to Steven Soderbergh with his black and white and silent Indiana Jones and 51 minute shorter 2001.

Kind of like DJ remixes of classic tracks.

Great guide from Max Temkin to the 40 key episodes, and why Trek is more than just “Guys in pajamas looking at viewscreens and sitting in chairs”.

I watched the entire thing on VHS¹ over the course of several years of man-flu induced sick leave, but this is a nice way to ease into Star Trek and enjoy some of the best sci-fi TV ever made:

Star Trek has a special place in my heart because it shows us a future where we continue to advance technology and explore without destroying ourselves or shouting over each other on Twitter all day. We should all be aware of the many difficult material concerns in our lives, and the unjust power structures that we’re implicated in. But what does life look like without them? Who’s thinking about what comes next? Captain Picard, that’s who. (via Six Colors)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has created a very helpful secure messaging scorecard as part of their campaign for ‘secure and usable crypto’. Interesting to see just how insecure some of the bigger tools are:

Many options—including Google, Facebook, and Apple’s email products, Yahoo’s web and mobile chat, Secret, and WhatsApp—lack the end-to-end encryption that is necessary to protect against disclosure by the service provider. Several major messaging platforms, like QQ, Mxit, and the desktop version of Yahoo Messenger, have no encryption at all.

Hank Pym’s photo archives are to become a reality, with Phil Noto creating 20 alternate covers in the Pym-style for the Feb 2015 Marvel run. Hopefully they’re not super expensive.

David Astle’s WordPlay column in the Sydney Morning Herald recently came up with this gem when investigating the history of onomatopoeic words:

Cliche, say, echoes a printing plate locking into position. The plates were called stereotypes, blocks of recurring expressions that justified their own metal slug, rather than assembling the alphabet on each occasion. The English language can be lovely sometimes.

I recently started disentangling my online world from Google, with the main aim being to no longer logon to a Google identity. The final (final!) straw was when using the Gmail client on iOS meant that you were also identified to all their other apps whether you liked it or not. Enough! Leave me alone.

After much procrastinating, my mail is now routed via the well recommended Fastmail¹. And so far so good.

Having gone through the rigmarole, it was kind of deflating to read Benjamin Mako Hill’s account at Copyrighteous of calculating how much of his non Gmail mail ends up being routed via a Google server:

For almost 15 years, I have run my own email server which I use for all of my non-work correspondence. I do so to keep autonomy, control, and privacy over my email and so that no big company has copies of all of my personal email.

A few years ago, I was surprised to find out that my friend Peter Eckersley — a very privacy conscious person who is Technology Projects Director at the EFF — used Gmail. I asked him why he would willingly give Google copies of all his email. Peter pointed out that if all of your friends use Gmail, Google has your email anyway. Any time I email somebody who uses Gmail — and anytime they email me — Google has that email.

Spoiler: Turns out to be over 50%. Sigh. Still, I’m happy to have moved. It feels strangely liberating actually just paying for a service instead of wondering what that service is secretly costing.

Steven Frank recalls mastering Dragon’s Lair:

Everyone who has seen Dragon’s Lair before has seen the beginning of the game. Dirk runs across the drawbridge, Dirk dodges the falling blocks, he swings across the fire ropes, and he drops on the falling disc platform. Far fewer have seen the scenes in the middle of the game. Fewer still have ever seen how it ends.

I remember it well. So much money, so little reward. Pleased to hear of someone who beat the confounded thing, even if it meant *buying a cabinet* to do so.

The incomparable harmonies of Vince Noir…I mean Freddie Mercury & Queen. Vince would love that jumpsuit¹.

Those voices led to this snippet from the Classic Album series on Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (skip to 6:40). How do three skinny rockers make that sound?

Who reminded me of Michael McDonald’s star turn on Steely Dan’s Aja. (skip to 18:00).

And just to show it’s not an art form that died in 70s rock, here’s Ryan Adams and the Cardinals nailing the last verse of Cold Roses, live. These guys were easily the best all male harmonies I’ve seen, just incredible.