The Internet is a radical medium: it mostly reflects polarized positions.

• The Drive to Be Different
  Wired has a piece on our drive to be different and how that can be compensated by satisfying other desires.
• Will your computer’s “Secure Boot” turn out to be “Restricted Boot”?
  The “Secure Boot” feature that hardware vendors have to support for getting a Windows 8 compatibility logo could have disastrous consequences for users of free software. Inform yourself by reading this article and then sign the statement to show your support!
• Malaria scientist celebrates success after 24 years
  While not perfect, this already has a success rate of around 50% and is an important step forward in the fight against malaria.
• First genome-wide association study for dengue identifies candidate susceptibility genes
  Speaking of mosquito-borne infections, there also are some new research results on Dengue, the second most common one after malaria.
• How to create a language in one day
  I’m a language nerd, no matter if you talk about natural or programming languages. So an article where somebody creates an artificial language using Python obviously makes me very happy.
• Programming language development: the past 5 years
  I said I’m a programming language nerd and this is another excellent blog post by Michael Fogus.
• Hacked!
  After his wife’s Gmail account got hacked, a journalist started contemplating the security of data in the “cloud”. This is a good link to forward to your less techy friends.
• What If We Paid Off The Debt? The Secret Government Report
  Would a debt free U.S. be bad for the world economy? There’s also an interesting link at the end of the article, make sure to look at it too.
• The politics of no alternatives or How power works in Russia
  A very long but super interesting interview about the power structure in present day Russia.
• Super bad: First State set police on man who showed them how 770,000 accounts could be ripped off
  And of course he was threatened with legal action. Why do companies with bad security always try to shoot the messenger?

Interestingly, this desire for distinctiveness could be quelled by giving the aroused males a candy bar.