"This specification defines an API that allows Web application authors to spawn background workers running scripts in parallel to their main page. This allows for thread-like operation with message-passing as the coordination mechanism."

"In a CouchDB-enabled web, data-flows don't have to be centralized, which means friends can communicate without going through a fixed domain. This makes the web more efficient. It also means I can make data available to my social network without relying on 3rd-party services."

"The distinction matters, Harkinson argues, because the larger figure makes it appear that support for the Chamber’s positions—many of which Mother Jones opposes—is more broad-based than it really is. “The Chamber claims to speak for the U.S. business community,” he says, and the widespread use of the three million figure “certainly adds to” the impression that it does. But if many of those three million aren’t sustaining the Chamber financially or playing a role in setting its policies, how meaningful is the number? On Wednesday, Harkinson published an open letter to several reporters who had recently used the “three million” figure (sometimes with caveats or qualifiers), asking them to publish a correction."