2016 mid-year link clearance

Here it is again: The semi-annual link clearance.

• GardenCast is a video podcast that deconstructs Olive Garden commercials Each episode picks a 15-second commercial and watches it over and over and over and over. And over. Episode 1. Other episodes follow. Watch them if you dare.
• Maternal kisses are not effective in alleviating minor childhood injuries (boo-boos): a randomized, controlled and blinded study. Important research results comes to the controversial conclusion “The practice of maternal kissing of boo-boos is not supported by the evidence and we recommend a moratorium on the practice.” (Spoiler: In case you didn’t figure it out from the working group’s acronym, it’s a hoax.)
• “George is, quite simply, the worst helpdesk technician ever.” The Chronicles of George.
• Washing triple-washed lettuce at home increases the risk of contamination. Your kitchen is dirty.
• Scientists have discovered what causes Resting Bitch Face.
• When forensic professionals have questions about file system behavior, we often refer them to the Time Stamps section of the File System Behavior Overview [pdf] document.
• Debugging memory corruption: An excellent debugging walkthrough. Additional reading. Also, the article’s conclusion needs to be strengthened. “Qb abg guebj rkprcgvbaf bhg bs nflapuebabhf cebprqherf vs lbh’er vafvqr n flfgrz pnyy!” should really be “Qb abg guebj rkprcgvbaf bhg bs nflapuebabhf cebprqherf!” Because this. (decoder.)
• Norway and Sweden compete in the biathlon over Sweden’s most famous course. Last year’s course.
• A person known as 4am cracks Apple ][ games for the Internet Archive. This write-up of the assault on the game Gumball is truly epic, including the discovery of an Easter Egg that lay hidden for 33 years. Enjoy the fruits of 4am’s labors. Game controls are at the bottom of the write-up, but this will get you through the first level or two: S = move left; D = stop; F = move right. Space = Toggle the gates. I couldn’t make it past the second level. (My greatest achievement on my Apple ][ was reverse-engineering the firmware for a hard drive so that I could boot ProDOS off it. It officially supported only Apple DOS 3.3, CP/M, and UCSD Pascal.)
• Apparently there’s this thing in the knitting community known as detangling, which is the process of taking a tangled mess of yarn and turning it back into neat skeins. The people who do this, known as detanglers, relish the challenge. I fully understand the appeal of detangling. There’s something meditative about sitting down with a tangled mess and slowly bringing it to order.
• Alicia Keys is done playing nice. Your phone is getting locked up at her shows now. Some performers are enforcing a no-phone zone at their concerts. So far, this hasn’t been a problem at Seattle Symphony concerts. Well, usually not.

And the obligatory plug for my appearances on One Dev Minute:

• Why can’t I draw on the desktop any more?
• Why do you have to click the Start button to shut down?
• Is there code from Windows 95 that is still in Windows 10?
• What monitor does a window default to?
• Why are there four functions for converting strings to GUIDs?

If you want to propose a question for One Dev Minute, put it in the comments below. Remember, the question needs to be answerable in one minute! (And, of course, remember that I’m on the engineering side of things, not the marketing/business side.)