Why Adele's 'Someone Like You' Makes Everyone Cry →

An appoggiatura is a type of ornamental note that clashes with the melody just enough to create a dissonant sound. "This generates tension in the listener," said Martin Guhn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia who co-wrote a 2007 study on the subject. "When the notes return to the anticipated melody, the tension resolves, and it feels good."

"Someone Like You," which Adele wrote with Dan Wilson, is sprinkled with ornamental notes similar to appoggiaturas.

The science of music is just fascinating. I had never heard of this before, but now I'm going to be listening for it everywhere.

Algebraic Data Types ( for Programmers ) →

A ground-floor introduction to Algebraic Data Types, which form the basis for languages such as ML, Haskell, and OCaml.

Pew Study: 1 in 8 Voter Records Flawed →

More than 24 million voter-registration records in the United States— about one in eight — are inaccurate, out-of-date or duplicates. Nearly 2.8 million people are registered in two or more states, and perhaps 1.8 million registered voters are dead.

Smart people in technology, please fix this.

Building Windows for the ARM Processor Architecture →

To bring up Windows 8 on these new SoCs that did not yet have a graphics driver, [...] our graphics team wrote a soft GPU driver that was capable of working directly against the hardware frame buffer. Aside from enabling development, it also enabled us to reimagine other things in Windows [...]. For example, when running Windows Setup, or in those rare cases when Windows has a "bluescreen," we were able to give it a friendlier look and even localize it, so that even bad news can be presented more nicely across all platforms.

I thought the new BSOD was a product of the UEFI transition, but turns out it's because of the ARM work.

Facebook Is Using You →

Last week, Facebook filed documents with the government that will allow it to sell shares of stock to the public. It is estimated to be worth at least $75 billion. But unlike other big-ticket corporations, it doesn't have an inventory of widgets or gadgets, cars or phones. Facebook's inventory consists of personal data — yours and mine.

If you're not being charged for the product, you are the product.

Europe Proposes a "Right To Be Forgotten" →

European Union Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding has proposed a sweeping reform of the EU's data protection rules, claiming that the proposed rules will both cost less for governments and corporations to administer and simultaneously strengthen online privacy rights. Chief among the new proposals is a "right to be forgotten" that will allow people to demand that organizations that hold their data delete that data, as long as there is no legitimate grounds to hold it.

Insider-Trading Bill Passed by House 417-2 →

The bill would prohibit members of Congress from trading stocks and other securities on the basis of confidential information they receive as lawmakers. It makes clear that the insider-trading ban in federal law applies to members of Congress and their aides as well as to officials in the executive and judicial branches of the federal government.

About time.