Tim Bray about Guido van Rossum’s OSCON talk:

Python 3 will have a String type that is 100% Unicode and that’s all it is, and separately a byte-array type that lets you indulge your most squalidly-perverse bit-bashing fantasies. I approve.

We at Fingertips approve too.

Steve Jobs explains why he thinks the design of an early Segway prototype sucks:

Its shape is not innovative, it’s not elegant, it doesn’t feel anthropomorphic.

Via Signal vs. Noise.

Last week our Paypal integration for Dr Stat suddently started acting up. During posts to the notification URL it threw OpenSSL::SSL::SSLError (unknown protocol) errors. I frantically began searching the web for problems with OpenSSL and Ruby, but I couldn’t find anything.

The solution turned out to be really simple. The Paypal gem had been updated and now supports SSL connections. Apparently it raises exceptions when you don’t use SSL now. So I changed Paypal::Notification.ipn_url from the HTTP to the HTTPS url and everything started working again.

Sigh:

[…] are you actually, without even knowing it, an author authoring authored units to be used in authored components in programmatically-determined web units that can be parsed unambiguously?

It will take only a few large organisations stupid enough to start requiring WCAG 2 conformance for accessibility consultancy to become a booming business.