The No- Frills Way to Watermark Memos and Track Leaks. Let’s say you need to send a private message to a group of people, but you’re afraid one of them will leak the message elsewhere, and you won’t know who. Fast Forward Labs has a rough- and- ready solution that will expose anyone who publicly copies and pastes your message, without letting them know they’ve been caught. Identify elements of your memo that can change without anyone noticing: Whether you use double or single quotation marks; whether you write out numbers like three or use numerals like 3; whether you use semicolons or commas in a list. The subtler the difference, the better. If you want to get a little sneakier, you can replace certain letters with similar- looking Unicode characters, but as FF Labs points out, these special characters might be exposed if the message is converted into plain text. Now, instead of BCCing everyone on one email, send each recipient their own BCC. As long as your recipients are used to receiving group messages via BCC, they won’t know the difference. On each BCC, make a different subtle change. FF Labs suggests combining different changes to increase your possible unique messages: One recipient gets “three”; one gets “3”; one gets . Now if anyone reveals your message to the public, you can check it against your outgoing emails and identify the leaker. If your changes are subtle enough, they might never know how you caught them. Let's End the GIF/JIF Pronunciation Debate Right Now. Once a week, for the past eight- odd years, I overhear it: “It’s GIF, not JIF.” “Actually, it’s officially JIF.” If the arguers are educated in the subject, they’ll rattle through their supporting arguments: It’s JIF because its inventor says so and it’s like “giraffe; ” it’s GIF because it stands for “graphics” and it’s like “gift.”Obviously everyone’s having a bit of fun, and arguing over how to pronounce an acronym is just a cute way to pass the time. Only it’s not so cute any more. The debate has thoroughly been had, and there’s nothing to add. There’s a seven- point defense of GIF on howtoreallypronouncegif. JIF (and a regularly updated blog) on The GIF Pronunciation Page. There’s even a weird Great Compromise proposal by coder- blogger Andy Baio. The GIF is 3. 0 years old. Debating its pronunciation is as fresh as a “hang in there” kitten poster. Like the Oxford comma debate, the tabs/spaces debate, and the spaces after a period debate, GIF/JIF pronunciation is best treated as a matter of style. Just pick one, be consistent, and deal with the consequences of your choice. As linguist Steven Pinker told The Atlantic: It’s not that good writers have chosen to flout a rule; it’s that the rule is not a rule in the first place.. What makes a rule a rule? Who decides? Where does it come from? They write as if there’s some tribunal or rules committee who makes the rules of English, which there isn’t, or that it’s a matter of logic or objective reality, which it isn’t. Starvation probably doesn’t sound like a key to living well into old age. But as strange as it seems, calorie restriction, done intermittently, appears to be one of. There are a lot of so called exercises to lose love handles out there but the majority of them are hogwash. In this article I’ll break down for you what really. An Oxford comma can prevent misunderstandings, which is why it’s crucial in legal matters; a missing comma cost one dairy company $1. But the comma is not a one- stroke solution to all phrase ambiguity. As Pinker points out, language is too ambiguous: You can rearrange “a panel on sex with four professors” to the less salacious “panel of four professors on sex,” but you’re back in trouble if the panel is “on drugs.” That’s why the AP Stylebook (anti- comma) and the Chicago Manual of Style (pro- comma) both note possible exceptions. As the Chicago Manual puts it, “it’s best to stay flexible.”Similarly, the tabs/spaces debate has real consequences—tabs decrease file size; spaces are more precise. Each of these, in certain situations, matters! Just not enough to obliterate the other option. The most important thing, says coder and Stack Exchange founder Jeff Atwood, is team consistency: Choose tabs, choose spaces, choose whatever layout conventions make sense to you and your team. It doesn’t actually matter which coding styles you pick. What does matter is that you, and everyone else on your team, sticks with those conventions and uses them consistently. When you fight for the Oxford comma, you’re really fighting for precision of meaning; when you call it JIF, you’re protecting the moral rights of the inventor; when you correct the record on double- spacing after sentences, you’re championing historical revisionism. That’s why these petty arguments get so heated, and also why it’s important to maintain some perspective. Every meaningful team has some disagreements about form and style, but every effective team works through them. I’ve written happily for pro- and anti- comma editors; I live in an interfaith GIF/JIF household. My Week On The Cinch Fast Forward Menu Plan. Day One Report. 7:00 am Scrambled egg with spinach is very good and filling.I’m tempted to add garlic but I don’t. Let’s say you need to send a private message to a group of people, but you’re afraid one of them will leak the message elsewhere, and you won’t know who. There’s a seven-point defense of GIF on howtoreallypronouncegif.com and a five-point defense of JIF (and a regularly updated blog) on The GIF Pronunciation Page. While you may not have been blessed with a naturally voluptuous backside, there are things you can do to effectively. We put aside our differences so we can fight the real enemy: People who give no fucks. It’s the first day of my six-day fast at TrueNorth, an anonymous-looking cluster of buildings on a quiet street in Santa Rosa, California. A water fast is not a.
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