Top Twelve

People love to write Top Ten lists at the end of the year, and I see why.  You can't know where you're going if you don't know where you've been.  I started this in February with one goal only: post something every day.  So far so good, although when moving here from another site, somehow the March 27 post got lost.  No matter, I know that I posted it and the Google+ share of it stands as evidence that something was there.

Anyway, here I am, and of course I have to be different.  Why Top Ten?  If we each had six fingers instead of five, we'd write Top Twelve lists, wouldn't we?  Okay, fine! Here are the top twelve posts of the year as determined by the number of reads y'all gave them.

1. New Ingress Items Coming  A post from September about new features anticipated for the Ingress game.  The features arrived a short time later, sorta kinda as described here.
2. Pen-Gate  This was about Samsung's bad design and worse reaction in the case of a pen that fits inside a phablet.  They made the pen in such a way that a significant number of people were absolutely going to damage their device with it.  Then, instead of admitting the flaw, they told many customers it was user error.
3. The Password is Dead — Long Live the Password  My top information-security post of the year, this was about the collapse of the "User-ID and Password" model for authentication.
4. N is not for Niantic  When Google, Inc. relaunched itself as Alphabet, we Ingress players mostly assumed that "N" was taken.  But within days, it was announced that Niantic Labs, the parent company of Ingress, would be spun out into an independent corporation.
5. Flash Farm Fracking (Ingress, not Shale)  A quantitative analysis of how to use the new Fracker item efficiently, as a substitute for glyphing during a flash farm event.  I make no secret of my opinion that glyphing sucks, especially in supposedly sociable situations.
6. Venn Diagram of BS  Just what it says on the tin: a diagram that shows the overlapping categories of pseudoscience, quackery, religion and many other collective delusions to which Homo sapiens treat themselves.
7. Seriously. Seriously?  A snarky look at data security breach notification letters.
8. Impressions from a Different Ingress Op  My personal version of the "sitrep" (situation report) for an Ingress team operation that covered most of Western New York State with a multi-layered field of blue.
9. Proud to be a Hacker  A somewhat emotional reaction to yet another mindless repetition of the false equivalence of "hacker" and "criminal."
10. Ingress Leveling and Badges (long)  The most opinionated of a series of posts that together constitute an Ingress primer.  (see also this and this)
11. Tennessee to Ban Religious Indoctrination in Schools  In which I am shocked, simply shocked, to discover Christian privilege in the United States of America.
12. End Manhood  A modest proposal to close the prison known as the Man Box.

That's how the votes decided.  Later this week, the ones I just plain liked.  Maybe a prime number, though... hmmmm.