Wired: The Eternal Truth of Markdown
Markdown is not just a piece of software. It’s also a markup language–it’s used to format plaintext, which then appears the way you want it to on, say, the internet. Markdown the markup language was designed to be “as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible,” according to creator John Gruber’s syntax guide. “A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions.”
This, I believe, is the cornerstone of Markdown’s success (and why related projects from that era, like reStructuredText and Setext, remain largely unknown): It looked at the world as it actually was and built on the informal conventions people were using. Markdown took common quirks of writing plaintext emails or message-board posts–like wrapping a word in asterisks to emphasize it–and extended those formatting customs. It did not come in and declare an entirely new syntax and ask people to adopt it.
via John Philpin
UPI: ‘Weekend warrior’ exercise can cut risk of cognitive decline, study indicates
Being a “weekend warrior” – engaging in exercise once or twice per week – may be as beneficial as regular sessions in decreasing the risk of cognitive decline that often leads to dementia, a new study concludes.
The study was published Tuesday online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
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A total of 7,945 respondents said they didn’t exercise at all; 726 met the weekend warrior definition; 1,362 reported exercising several times per week; and 2,088 made up a combined group.
During an average 16-year monitoring period, researchers identified 2,400 cases of mild dementia. The prevalence was 26% among the no exercisers, 14% among the weekend warriors and 18.5% among the regularly active.
Hmmm…
Malcolm Gladwell | TED (YouTube): The Tipping Point I Got Wrong
In his 2000 bestseller “The Tipping Point,” Malcolm Gladwell told the story of why crime fell in New York City in the 1990s. Now, 25 years later, he’s back with a confession and a mea culpa: “I was wrong,” he says. He shares how his analysis contributed to the rise of the infamous “stop and frisk” policing policy in New York City — and shows why journalists should avoid the trap of imagining a story is ever really over. (Followed by a Q&A with TED’s Monique Ruff-Bell) (Recorded at TEDNext 2024 on October 22, 2024)
NYT: How Trump and Harris Compare on Climate Change
If he returns to the White House, former President Donald J. Trump, who last month called climate change “one of the greatest scams of all time,” plans to build on his first-term attacks on the environment when he pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement and rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations.
In a second term, he has promised to end federal support for a clean energy transition and hamstring wind and solar development while expanding oil and gas production — including drilling in the fragile Arctic wilderness. He has said he would again withdraw the country from the Paris accord and potentially go further, blocking the United States from negotiating future global climate agreements.
MacRumors: Apple Announces MacBook Pro Models With M4 Pro and M4 Max Chips, Thunderbolt 5 Support, and More
Apple today announced new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models featuring M4 Pro and M4 Max chips, alongside a new entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro powered by the M4 chip.
The new M4 Pro and M4 Max machines come with a minimum of 24GB of Unified Memory as standard, up from 18GB in the previous models. Both models feature three Thunderbolt 5 ports, the newest specification of Thunderbolt that offers speeds of up to 120 Gb/s with Bandwidth Boost, which is triple the maximum bandwidth of Thunderbolt 4.
The Conversation: Making a Snickers bar is a complex science − a candy engineer explains how to build the airy nougat and chewy caramel of this Halloween favorite
As a food engineer studying candy and ice cream at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I now look at candy in a whole different way than I did as a kid. Back then, it was all about shoveling it in as fast as I could.
Now, as a scientist who has made a career studying and writing books about confections, I have a very different take on candy. I have no trouble sacrificing a piece for the microscope or the texture analyzer to better understand how all the components add up. I don’t work for, own stock in, or receive funding from Mars Wrigley, the company that makes Snickers bars. But in my work, I do study the different components that make up lots of popular candy bars. Snickers has many of the most common elements you’ll find in your Halloween candy.
via John Brady
Dodgers won the World Series.
Last Updated: 30.Oct.2024 16:11 EDT
