Monthly Archives: May 2015

Swiss Cheese Hole Crisis Averted

Posted on May 29, 2015 by Michael Froomkin

Best story in today’s paper:

The mystery of Swiss cheese and its disappearing holes has been solved: The milk is too clean. A Swiss agricultural institute discovered that tiny specks of hay are responsible for the famous holes in traditional Swiss cheeses like Emmentaler and Appenzeller. As milk matures into cheese, these microscopically small hay particles help create the holes in the cheese. The government-funded Agroscope Institute said in a statement on Thursday that the transition from age-old milking methods in barns to fully automated, industrial milking systems had caused the holes to decline during the past 15 years. In a series of tests, scientists added different amounts of hay dust to the milk and discovered that it allowed them to regulate the number of holes.

Switzerland: Scientists Find the Secret to the Holes in Swiss Cheese: Hay Dust

Posted in Science/Medicine | 2 Comments

Dream ON

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Michael Froomkin

Posted in 2016 Election | 1 Comment

Tracking Protection Greatly Speeds Firefox

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Michael Froomkin

Firefox’s optional Tracking Protection reduces load time for top news sites by 44%.

How to turn on Tracking Protection:

  1. In the Location bar, type about:config and press Enter.
    • The about:config “This might void your warranty!” warning page may appear. Click I’ll be careful, I promise! to continue to the about:config page.
  2. Search for privacy.trackingprotection.enabled.
  3. Double-click privacy.trackingprotection.enabled to toggle its value to true.

This will turn on Tracking Protection. If you later want to turn it back off, repeat the above steps to toggle the preference back to false.

Posted in ID Cards and Identification, Internet, Software | Comments Off on Tracking Protection Greatly Speeds Firefox

No Joke

Posted on May 24, 2015 by Michael Froomkin

As The Wall Street Journal recently reported, “There’s an Uber for everything now. Washio is for having someone do your laundry, Sprig and SpoonRocket cook your dinner and Shyp will mail things out so you don’t have to brave the post office. Zeel delivers a massage therapist (complete with table). Heal sends a doctor on a house call, while Saucey will rush over alcohol. And by Jeeves — cutesy names are part of the schtick — Dufl will pack your suitcase and Eaze will reup a medical marijuana supply.”

I thought MoDo had been played, but it’s all true, even if some of them only serve Seattle and Silicon Valley.

Posted in Internet, Shopping, So-called Sharing Economy | Comments Off on No Joke

Ireland Embraces Marriage Equality

Posted on May 23, 2015 by Michael Froomkin

Videos like this carry the day in Ireland’s referendum:

How long before the entire US catches up?

Posted in Law: Con Law: Marriage, Politics: International | Comments Off on Ireland Embraces Marriage Equality

Box.com requires TLS 1.0, 1.1 & 1.2

Posted on May 22, 2015 by Michael Froomkin

In order to get box.com to work on my computer, I had to enable TLS 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2 in Internet Explorer, even though I almost never use IE.

I had turned off all three versions of TLS on security grounds. As a result, I kept getting an error message when I tried to log into Box Sync on my computer (“Cannot connect”).

Box.com help desk’s explanation for the requirement — amazingly — is that SSL 3.0 is not secure so they don’t use it. It’s true there have been issues with SSL 3.0, but TLS, as I understand it, has the same issues plus much worse. [UPDATE: Dan Riley explains why I have it all backwards in the comments.]

On the positive side, I only figured out the source of the problem thanks to efficient and friendly work from ‘Ashley’ at the box.com help desk, so they are doing something right.

Posted in Internet | 3 Comments