Flutterby™! From 2013-01-01 to 2013-01-31

While I'm physically in Chattanooga, I'm working on servers in S. Africa and West Africa, where it is already past midnight, making sure some end/first of the year jobs run properly and 2013 starts off on the right foot. It has me reflecting on 2012 and making plans for 2013 and beyond. I'm reminded of two mantra's of mine:

Do not confuse stability with stagnation.

In order to win, you must be prepared to lose.

It's been a good year, lots of interesting travel, many good people (personal and business), and only one notable asshole (business). One less good friend, although he lives on the hearts and lives of many, and several new friends.

May 2013 be even better for all of us. --Mike--

[ related topics: Invention and Design History Work, productivity and environment Chattanooga ]

OH at Costco: "He'll drink Corona". Isn't that like the first question when trying to decide if you're an alcoholic?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Workers of All Worlds, Unite! Reason explains how the flying saucer people will bring on the dictatorship of the proleteriat.

Also, Happy New Year!

[ related topics: Political Correctness Astronomy Bizarre ]

RT Daniel E. Renfer @duck1123:

OH: Ain't nothing more manly than a beard filled with metal shavings.

Yes! Amtrak seeks to change FRA rules to allow European and Japanese style lighter passenger trains.

[ related topics: Current Events Machinery Trains Public Transportation ]

If we have drone strikes to on wedding parties in Pakistan, why can't we use them on developers who put user data in XML element names

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Web development Content Management Marriage ]

"...oh, don't ask why..."

[ related topics: Photography ]

Stop Project Paperless - an attempt to stop the patent trolling by "Project Paperless" and Hill, Kertscher & Wharton LLP.

Via this Ars Technica article about patent trolls asking for $1000 for every employee using a scanner and sending that image via email, which came Via /.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Work, productivity and environment ]

What City Skies Would Look Like Without Light Pollution

alternate link.

The artist's site directly: http://thierrycohen.com/pages/work/starlights.html

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Space & Astronomy Aviation - Helicopters ]

Regexper - You thought you only had two problems....

Graphical representations of your regex state machine.

New York Times: Paper That Put Gun Permit Map Online Hires Armed Guards

“When these laws were conceived, there was no social media, there was no Google maps,” he said.

The irony, it keeps folding back on itself.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events Journalism and Media Guns Maps and Mapping New York Government ]

Why we're pivoting from mobile-first to web-first.

Some interesting musings on mobile apps, advertiser supported development, revenue models, that sort of thing.

NPR: Neighborhood Connections Key To Surviving A Crisis

You're telling me that if I live in an old style urban neighborhood ... that I am more likely to survive a disaster because of the kind of community I'm in?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Theater & Plays Community ]

For Eric and the other VW fans: Changing the belt on a VW bug in 5 seconds (YouTube).

Remember when you could work on your own car?

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Work, productivity and environment Automobiles Embedded Devices ]

Charlene's been off for these two holiday weeks, and I've taken a few extra days, so with the time of both of us around the house we've managed to start on the remaining big house project: Wiring.

The bottom half of the house is old 2-wire Romex-like stuff, it bothers Charlene a bunch, but the part that really wigged me out was the lighting circuit, which was knob-and-tube, which had been patched and grafted on to, and then had insulation blown-in over it. In fact I didn't know that it was knob-and-tube, thought it had all been upgraded to the Romex-like material and there were just one or two vestiges to an exterior light fixture, 'til I tackled that.

At any rate, in the process of replacing and upgrading this wiring, we're starting to get the chance to upgrade some components. The bathroom now has 2 GFCI electrical circuits, which means we're ready to put in the fancy bidet seat. We can run a separate circuit for a ceiling heater fan combo. The living room ceiling fan box is no longer buried in insulation, so I can think about things like a thermostatic controller that'll turn on automatically to remove the thermocline that settles over the living room when we turn on the heater. Maybe even upgrade the ceiling fan, though I think I've put that off.

So we've got a grand or few in appliance-like hardware to buy. Some of this stuff is available at the big box stores, at least in the lower grades, some product lines are allegedly carried by dealers down in San Rafael or over in the East Bay, but all of it is available on-line.

In another vein, Charlene is jealous of my iPad and wants to get a tablet. Various stores around us carry the lower-end models, but none of them stock the ones you might actually want.

Here's the thing I find striking: Looking at and handling a product doubles the price. And, of course, there's no guarantee that if we drive the 20+ miles to the store they'll have anything we're interested in, just some products from the line. Further, for many things the only way to get them at the big box store (Home Despot, Lowe's, etc) is to order them. People talk about the value in retail being in able to handle the product first, but that's 50% hit and miss, and then the physical store wants double what the online store does to order it for you.

We've sucked it up and ordered online product. We'd like to be able to look at things, to support our more local economies, to reward value, but it just no longer makes sense to go retail. Merchandising has stopped meaning that much to us. The economy will be shifting, hard.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Bay Area California Culture Economics Real Estate ]

Tossed in here so Charlene sees it: Olive wood burl for sale in Chico...

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

America's Real Criminal Element: Lead.

Yeah, it's Mother Jones, and Reason Magazine is skeptical, so I should dig further.

[ related topics: Weblogs Nature and environment ]

Part of the electrical rework involved acknowledging the need to fix the doorbell. We had an old wired transformer doorbell that had gotten disconnected, had double-sticky-taped up a wireless one (that looked tacky as hell), and we needed a solution.

So I looked at replacing the wired transformer one, discovered that the transformers apparently draw 3 watts at idle. Well, hell, a Raspberry Pi draws less than 2 watts at idle, could scan a TTL I/O bit and then do things like take a picture, alert some device out in the workshop, and either play an audio file that doesn't sound like the crap bad '80s synth that the off-the-shelf doorbells do, or control some mechanical process (solenoids hitting cast-iron sewer pipe?).

I briefly considered trying to figure out enough of how the doorbell systems work to retrofit with a modern switching power supply, and reworking the Via Epia boards I have on my shelf to do this, and then realized that this could be a two hour project or a several day mucking around with compilation switches project. Two Pi are on order.

[ related topics: Wireless Music Work, productivity and environment ]

How fast could you travel across the US in the 1800s?

An interesting item via BoingBoing: Autism diagnoses go up or down depending on where you live. Even odder, if you move to certain neighborhoods in LA you can become autistic, sorta. This is a bit like things I've heard before about other medical procedures existing in hotspots, so that some cities do more appendectomies than others, for no good reason. Often its one or two surgical enthusiasts driving the spike. I also know a doctor who said that spikes in difficult to nail down illnesses like Kawasaki Disease usually appear right after an article on the illness gets published in a medical journal.

[ related topics: Health ]

Vigil, the programming language that punishes misbehaving functions.

But isn't a language that deletes code crazy?

No, wanting to keep code that demonstrably has bugs according to its own specifications is crazy. What good could it possibly serve? It is corrupted and must be cleansed from your codebase.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Rich Blocks Poor Blocks (.com): Mapping neighborhood incomes from census data.

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

"I Regret to Inform You That My Wedding to Captain Von Trapp Has Been Canceled."

Via/mirror.

[ related topics: Marriage ]

Hike today, out in the area around Sutro Baths, to see this little dude, a river otter, the first in San Francisco in a long time.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Bay Area California Culture ]

The status updater broke feeding things into Flutterby recently. This is a test to see if it's fixed.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

IRC typing into the wrong window speak of the moment: referring to someone as "a QT3.1415".

Anyone out there got e-reader hardware designs they'd be willing to license? Interesting proposition has come up...

More wiring accomplished: Front porch, two additional light sockets for living room, groundwork for bathroom fan/heater coming Wednesday!

Last winter I put aside some Meyer lemons to salt-cure. Just opened them. Wow. Will be doing that again!

Apparently EnergyUpgradeCA.com was developed to make it as confusing as possible to use that program.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

In the Android task manager I click "Kill All", and then chuckle evilly: "Yes. Kill them. Kill them all. Muahahahaha!"

Pew Research Year In Review: ‘Dual Screening’ Live Events:

27% of voters ‘dual screened’ the presidential election returns, watching both on a TV and a mobile device. 39% of voters under 40 followed election night news this way.

Frankly, I'm shocked that it was that low. More fodder for that bandwidth bet with TC that we need to settle...

[ related topics: Technology and Culture broadband Theater & Plays Current Events Television ]

XML parsers: Why? Anyone publishing XML is going to screw something up, so you'll need regexes to fix their bogus data, why not start there?

[ related topics: Web development Content Management ]

Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone: Secrets and Lies of the Bailout.

Worst of all, the Implicit Guarantee has led to a dangerous shift in banking behavior. With an apparently endless stream of free or almost-free money available to banks – coupled with a well-founded feeling among bankers that the government will back them up if anything goes wrong – banks have made a dramatic move into riskier and more speculative investments, including everything from high-risk corporate bonds to mortgage­backed securities to payday loans, the sleaziest and most disreputable end of the financial system.

Yep, the leeches sucked off the taxpayer hugely, but, worse, now know that no matter what trouble they get in to, crony politics will bail them out again.

Via a whole bunch of places, here's MeFi's link to it.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics moron Current Events Currency Economics ]

Rachel Aviv in the New Yorker: The Science of Sex Abuse, on how we incarcerate people for crimes they haven't committed, and then goad them into confessing to crimes they couldn't have committed:

... Another former patient, Sean Francis, testified that, in order to stay in the “safe confines of Butner,” he “fabricated” fifty-four victims and invented and embellished rape fantasies. “Every single human being, if we were to open their head up, has some form or fashion of a deviant sexual fantasy,” he said at his hearing. “I don’t deny that.” But Francis said that he turned himself into a caricature of a sex offender in order to please the “psychological gods that they have working at Butner.” Patients would sit in groups and offer one another tips for sprucing up their criminal histories. ...

Particularly leaped out at me that the prosecution's forensic psychologist in one of these cases, Amy Phenix, suggested "...that John had roughly a 24.7-per-cent chance of reoffending within five years...". Ho. Ly. She. It. We've got a psychologist claiming 3 digits of probability accuracy on future behavior? Why isn't this woman working in advertising? We've pretty much established that sociological predictions are hoohey, but here we have someone claiming predictive behaviors on an individual to a tenth of a percent over five years?

Man, if you ever needed some strong confirmation that the modern mental health industry is full of crap, that's a pretty strong exhibit.

(Via MeFi)

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Health Invention and Design Bay Area Consumerism and advertising Work, productivity and environment Fashion hubris ]

If I had but known: Sundial Wire will buy your old knobs and tubes.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

New Scientist: West vs Asia education rankings are misleading. Maybe doing well on standardized tests isn't everything?

Baker found negative relationships between mathematics rankings and numerous measures of prosperity and well-being: 2002 per-capita wealth, economic growth from 1992 to 2002 and the UN's Quality of Life Index. Countries scoring well on the tests were also less democratic. Baker concluded that league tables of international success are "worthless" (Phi Delta Kappan, vol 89, p 101).

[ related topics: Invention and Design Mathematics Education Economics Furniture ]

SMAN Cruisers - wooden bicycles

[ related topics: Bicycling ]

We are now a high tech household.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Anyone out there have experience with using 5v TTL for door (or other mechanical/reed switch style) sensors? How long a wire run, how much current I should pull, etc?

February 12th at Work Petaluma: Virtual Curbside Chat with Chuck Marohn of StrongTowns.org. You should come. All of you. RSVP, please.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Distinguish Yourself! There Are 181,000 Social Media 'Gurus,' 'Ninjas,' 'Masters,' and 'Mavens' on Twitter http://adage.com/article/digit...s-masters-mavens-twitter/239026/

[ related topics: Journalism and Media ]

Looks like his archive links aren't there yet, so this was originally posted on Robert Wills Blog on Thursday, January 3, 2012: A Rockslide in Action: an arch falls into the sea, in which Robert Wills captures a sequence of photos of a collapse of an arch near Tennessee Beach, in southern Marin County.

Same content mirrored at Tom Stienstra's SFGate.com blog: Stunning Marin beach landslide caught on camera (two galleries)

[ related topics: Photography Weblogs Nature and environment Bay Area Bioinformatics Chattanooga ]

Dan Pallotta in the Harvard Business Review:

... The new Microsoft Surface tablet reportedly rips at the seam where keyboard cover meets tablet. Was it tested for durability? If not, why not? If it was, why was it allowed to go to market with such a defect? Probably because of the same kind of self-talk that goes on in a gay man's head before he's ready to come out: "Why make a big deal of it? It doesn't really matter." But when he finally comes out, he realizes it was the only thing that mattered, and that coming out transformed his life. Speaking the truth can do the same thing for businesses.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Humor Sexual Culture Microsoft Invention and Design moron Economics ]

What if Natives Stop Subsidizing Canada? One of the hardest parts about reconciling the various aspects of Objectivism for me (and one of the cracks that started me away from that philosophy towards pretty raw pragmatism) was trying to square notions of real estate ownership with children: If you raise population levels, you start competing for resources.

This is a little look at how competition for resources is running roughshod over real estate ownership. As a white male United States citizen of European descent I have obviously profited immensely from taking real estate by force, so I'm not gonna decry it. But we should look at it and acknowledge that that's what's happened and is happening.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Politics Objectivism Weblogs Sports Race Philosophy Real Estate ]

Because I'm thinking about such things: Electric Door Strike for Schlage Locks, 8-16VAC or 3-6VDC. Because if you're going to make the doorbell a Linux server, how about either an RFID reader, or making the doorbell check to see if my smart phone has recently connected to the WiFi network (indicating that I just came home)...?

[ related topics: Free Software Interactive Drama broadband Open Source RFID ]

Well, that vendor upgrade that was only supposed to need a 4 character change on my end and take 20 minutes... Wasn't that simple.

The last sweet years or bad romance? Handling infidelity in the nursing home

Ulf suffers dementia and lives in a nursing home. He often interacts with Lena, who also has dementia. They seek each other out, invite each other to their rooms, hold hands and kiss. They can clearly express what they prefer (or not). The staff think they enjoy life and each other’s company. There is just one problem for the happy couple: Ulf is married, and his wife is not happy. She and their children strongly dislikes the relation between Ulf and Lena and asks the staff to keep them apart. They argue that if Ulf had been free of dementia he would not have desired contact with Lena; he might sometimes even be confused and think Lena is his wife.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Weblogs Sociology Marriage ]

Bike lanes barely change cyclist risk at all, "sharrows" increase risk: http://cyclingincities-spph.si.../2012/06/TeschkeVeloCity2012.pdf

[ related topics: Bicycling ]

Fart jokes and cycling in an advertisement for a gas card (YouTube). Confession: I laughed. Thanks, Shadow.

[ related topics: Movies Sports Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Ted Kapotchuk of Harvard Medical School studies placebos:

Last year, he and colleagues from several Harvard-affiliated hospitals created the Program in Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter (PiPS), headquartered at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center—the only multidisciplinary institute dedicated solely to placebo study. It’s a nod to changing attitudes in Western medicine, and a direct result of the small but growing group of researchers like Kaptchuk who study not if, but how, placebo effects work. Explanations for the phenomenon come from fields across the scientific map—clinical science, psychology, anthropology, biology, social economics, neuroscience. Disregarding the knowledge that placebo treatments can affect certain ailments, Kaptchuk says, “is like ignoring a huge chunk of healthcare.” As caregivers, “we should be using every tool in the box.”

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Maps and Mapping Economics ]

Oh, Firefox: Y U suddenly stop loading some web pages with something that looks like DNS weirdness?

Grocery Bag Bans and Foodborne Illness, Jonathan Klick and Joshua D. Wright, November 2, 2012 (PDF) :

Recently, many jurisdictions have implemented bans or imposed taxes upon plastic grocery bags on environmental grounds. San Francisco County was the first major US jurisdiction to enact such a regulation, implementing a ban in 2007. There is evidence, however, that reusable grocery bags, a common substitute for plastic bags, contain potentially harmful bacteria. We examine emergency room admissions related to these bacteria in the wake of the San Francisco ban. We find that ER visits spiked when the ban went into effect. Relative to other counties, ER admissions increase by at least one fourth, and deaths exhibit a similar increase.

[ related topics: Politics Bay Area California Culture Government ]

Yay! Another Java zero-day exploit! Disable those browser plugins, kids! http://labs.alienvault.com/lab.../2013/new-year-new-java-zeroday/

[ related topics: Children and growing up Invention and Design Software Engineering ]

gigaom: Nokia on their Asha and Windows based Lumia handsets: Yes, we decrypt your HTTPS data, but don’t worry about it.

Nokia’s MITM on HTTPS traffic from their phone.

Kinda makes sense, that's what these compressing pre-rendering mobile browsers are about, but it brings up the important question: How much do you trust your web browsing hardware and software?

[ related topics: Microsoft Software Engineering Graphics ]

Okay, attempting to return blog discussions to the days when we cross-pollinated:

Dave Alden had a look at disaster resilience and urban planning in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. My response:

On the issue of under-investment for resilience, this is something I've been struggling with ever since I took a CERT class: What's a reasonable amount to spend on a once-in-a-hundred year chance? If I, as an individual, keep a fully stocked disaster stash, rotating materials through as they expire, that can cost a lot of time and money, and I could very well get through the rest of my life without having to use it.

A bureaucrat planning for disaster could very well get through their entire career, certainly their stint in a particular post, without having to use disaster preparations, at which point those preparations are money that could have been spent on resources that will be otherwise used.

And what if the maintenance and preparedness creates a system that's further invested in an obsolete technology track, so that when the disaster comes sunk costs force you to rebuild in an out-of-date way?

There are definitely no easy answers here. The Sandy scenario was definitely predicted and planned for, it's hard to fault anyone with the response to it, but it's also the case that entities that spend on investments that have shorter-term returns, rather than on resilience, get a leg up. Slow-and-steady only wins the race when the race is longer than the sprint, in this case longer than a human career span, if not life span.

And I think that this sort of discussion has immediate application to municipal governance. We have very few structure fires any more, and our fire departments are now being dispatched to medical situations that, 50 years ago, wouldn't even have elicited a doctor's visit. There is probably a better structure for that particular sort of emergency preparedness, I haven't looked at the numbers but I could imagine that the costs of retrofitting wiring and sprinklers in to older houses are less than keeping a firehouse in every neighborhood, but the human inability to accurate assess and respond to risk means we're unlikely to do any such optimizations any time soon...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Health Law Pyrotechnics Community Currency Economics Real Estate ]

My morning's IdentiFaceTwitSpace update was:

Work discussion: Now that "Nirvana" is classic rock, we need a classic classic rock station.

And on Facebook, Scott Piehler commented "This is why Bowling for Soup's "1985" is so painfully accurate!"

I was previously unaware of Bowling for Soup's "1985" video. Helloooo the '80s.

[ related topics: Movies Work, productivity and environment Community Video ]

Even advantaged white Americans with health insurance have a lower lifespan in the U.S. than other developed countries: National Academies press release: Americans Have Worse Health Than People in Other High-Income Countries; Health Disadvantage Is Pervasive Across Age and Socio-Economic Groups, about National Research Council and Institute of Medicine: U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health.

Via /..

[ related topics: Health Race Economics ]

Apparently asking the user to repeat the process until it succeeds, once, and then marking the bug "Cannot Reproduce", is wrong. Who knew?

Respectful Insolence: In which Joe Jackson's wisdom about cancer is apparently not validated. A great run-down of the current science on what foods and dietary trends cause cancer.

(Summary: the data are way too noisy and influenced by publication bias)

Newspapers: Breaking archival links and then presenting celebrity pics of the day is not "embracing the new media". Lookin' at you @mercnews

[ related topics: Invention and Design Journalism and Media Archival ]

Virtual tour of a nuclear power plant.

gource - Software Version Control Visualization. Proof that there's too much processing power in the world, but a cute way to look at your git (or other) repo and see who's changing what.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Interesting little interview with Liberty Bradford Mitchell, daughter of Artie Mitchell. Artie, with his brother Jim, was one of the (in)famous Mitchell Brothers, of the porn theater on O'Farrell in San Francisco, the film Behind The Green Door, and all sorts more Bay Area and '70s hijinks, and was eventually shot and killed by Jim. Bradford is doing a show called "The Pornographer's Daughter" down in LA, and is looking for a way to bring that up to SF.

I'd be fascinated to go see it.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Bay Area Theater & Plays California Culture ]

Twitter feed is filled with "unlocked Badge" messages from someone's ski area app. If you have to gamify skiing, something has failed.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sports ]

http://designjargonbullshit.com/

Any sufficiently advanced cynicism is indistinguishable from the news.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Union City man jumps into mineshaft to ‘appease the gods’. He survived, but what stood out was this quote from Gerry Blair, a Coconino County Arizona sheriff’s spokesman:

“He said that he was trying to appease the gods,” Blair said. “It seems like we may be dealing with a mental condition as well. … Basically all we know is what he told us.”

"It seems like we may be dealing with a mental condition as well." Ya think?

[ related topics: Weblogs hubris ]

Body found in a recycling bin at a (just outside) Petaluma garbage disposal site. Ya know people, the handout clearly specifies paper, plastics 1 through 6, and certain metals only in that bin.

And Petaluma just renewed its garbage contract, we've got the standard three waste, recycling and greens bins, so there's no room to renegotiate for a fourth bin.

[ related topics: Community ]

Well, shit. RIP Aaron Swartz.

• Cory Doctorow's euology at Boing Boing
• Violet Blue's article on ZDNet
• Lawrence Lessig's short announcement
• Matt Haughey's remembrance on Metafilter

Me: "I can't believe that's just held in by plaster." Charlene: "Oh, come on, they had contractors back then..."

Hate to link to things that'll go away, but Shadow sent along today's Pearls Before Swine, on cyclist and everybody else interaction.

Larry will want to see this...

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Bathroom heater/fan/light combo installed. Mostly.

So what's the right way to switch a 20A circuit from my home network & tablet. Z-Wave? Zigbee? Don't make me build my own...

[ related topics: broadband ]

If your home automation starter kit contains a remote control, you have failed. Anyone in your demographic has a smart phone or a tablet.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Marketing ]

Branko's Brain Dump: On the state of Windows on the desktop. In which a Linux user tries to install and use Windows.

It quickly become apparent that Windows has no package management to speak of. I had to actually go directly to software vendors' websites and manually download, unpack, and install software. In some cases, the packages would come as a RAR file, and there was no unrar to extract the files with. The worst thing though, is that Widows wanted me to reboot it every time I installed something new.

[ related topics: Free Software Microsoft Open Source Invention and Design Software Engineering ]

Independent journalist Michael Totten is an excellent source on what's happening in the Middle East, since he actually goes out there and talks to people about what they're thinking. In this new piece he answers, at least partially, a question I have long had: if everything works out great with the Arab Spring, what would a democratic, tolerant Middle East look like? He goes to Morocco, which survived many years of repression to end up with a monarch who voluntarily surrendered much of his power and kickstarted a liberal reawakening of his country. What you end up with is freer than most Islamic countries, but still conservative enough to not trigger the crazies. For example, Totten calls their press "95% free".

It is interesting to try and figure out why it works here and not elsewhere. One thing is that while they were repressed by the old king he didn't destroy all other institutions of civil government. Mubarek and Quadaffi and Saddam made sure that there were no alternatives to their misrule, which guarantees a disaster after they disappear. I hope for the best, but fear for the worst over there.

[ related topics: Weblogs Journalism and Media Dictators ]

I'm sure mis-heard comment from neighboring cube: "children of the cron". That's ... scary. #nerd

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

Tim Wu in The New Yorker: How the Legal System Failed Aaron Swartz—And Us

... today our criminal laws are so expansive that most people of any vigor and spirit can be found to violate them in some way. Basically, under American law, anyone interesting is a felon. The prosecutors, not the law, decide who deserves punishment.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Law Government ]

Genehack: There are fates worse than death: The OPW2013 keynote. On being a ... well ... Perl programmer, though maybe not.

[ related topics: John S Jacobs-Anderson Perl Open Source Software Engineering hubris ]

Truck labeled "Tarantino Plumbing" parked next door. "You know what they call a kitchen faucet with sprayer in Paris?"

[ related topics: Machinery ]

Shadow passed along Talking Points Memo: OpenStreetMap Reaches 1 Million Users, Will Rival Google Maps In 2 Years.

Interesting. I'm also wondering how long it'll be before indexing of EXIF data provides us with "Street View" from ad-hoc web imagery.

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

Live Action Toy Story http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G0j_Huv2Fg

[ related topics: Pixar Animation Movies Theater & Plays ]

This came across the Personal Clouds mailing list, and I felt compelled to respond to it. David Siegel: Personal Data Locker (vimeo video):

I think there's some silly SciFi there that hasn't been thoroughly thought through, and because of that his presentation isn't a metaphor that helps me better see how to better implement these things. And I don't have a single control panel for all of those things, but I can do most of those things right now.

And very few of them interest me.

Maybe I'm too stuck in concrete thinking, but a few random notes:

• "Reminder that her oven's warranty is about to expire" - as presented this scenario feels too much like it puts the power with the vendor, not with Maxine. The idea that my oven manufacturer can send me messages anonymously, just knowing that I'm an owner of that device, feels like the difference between "Hey, I saw you were on my block and think you need a coffee?" vs "I could use a coffee, I wonder what options are nearby".

Yeah, it's subtle, and that description can be interpreted both ways, but I feel like Siegel is biasing his presentation towards the companies that want to exploit this.

• "Everything she owns, including her house, is listed for sale" - One of the things that anyone's played around with anonymity and privacy has dealt with is that identifiers aren't just the ones we explicitly offer to people. If you've ever tried to keep multiple online personae separate, you know that publishing this sort of stuff is fraught with issues.

Also, why is it up to her to list things for sale? Why is it not up to the purchasers to say "I want..."? Someone browsing my art collection feels downright creepy, frankly. Sure, his discussion talks about it being anonymous, but abstractions leak.

• "Never sees a phone number or an email address" - identifiers are tied to personas, we often need to talk to the same person in the context of different personas, and the identifiers we use for that are deeper than the individual.
• "All the media live on the open web" - we complain at letting advertisers pay Facebook *forty cents* a month on our behalf. Who's paying to run this infrastructure?

So I'm not sure what "personal cloud" means to everyone, but this seems like free association without critical thinking. Too much "magic happens" and "everything is under Maxine's control". It's kinda like saying "we're gonna have flying cars!" without thinking about overhead utilities and trees around our driveways, backyard privacy, downwash from the rotors blowing kids off their tricycles...

... let alone the lack of a power source.

And I don't find that sort of thinking useful. Except in staking out overly broad patents so I can profit off of other people's actual innovation.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Privacy Nature and environment Aviation Theater & Plays Law Consumerism and advertising Journalism and Media Art & Culture Community Video Clowns Real Estate Woodworking ]

The Brothers Who Busted Philly Unions. For Good.

“It’s standard for construction sites to have surveillance cameras,” says one of the two 30-something brothers responsible for capturing the incident on video, Michael Pestronk. “The only novel thing we did, which just seemed obvious to me, was to post the videos on the Internet.” And with that, everything changed.

[ related topics: Photography Net Culture Machinery Fabrication Video Model Building ]

BTW, think I'll be giving a 5 minute talk at the http://personal-clouds.org/ gathering on the 29th.

Hmmm: Case Study: Pro-active Log Review Might Be A Good Idea

[ related topics: Law ]

My Little Pony wood automatons (YouTube videos). In decreasing order of coolness:

• Fluttershy's bird choir uses a bellows and a slide whistle to chirp out the theme song, too!
• Rarity dressmaking
• Twilight Sparkle reading
• Fluttershy and Angel Bunny
• Rainbow Dash.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Movies Birds Woodworking ]

Dave who has had his own issues with media appropriating his images, mentioned Ars Technica: News flash for the media: You can't sell photos grabbed from Twitter wherein Agence France-Presse took photos which Daniel Morel had put on Twitter and placed them on the AFP newswire without payment.

It's even more convoluted than that, but the end result is: Make sure you have a trail of ownership and permission before you use pictures, especially for commercial purposes.

United States District Court Southern District of New York: Agence France Presse v. Daniel Morel v. Getty Images, Inc et al. (PDF) is the court decision.

Reuters article on the case.

[ related topics: Photography Invention and Design Writing Current Events Consumerism and advertising Journalism and Media New York ]

Fair Warning Reports: Billboard Industry Touts Discredited Research to Support Safety Claims for Electronic Signs. Apparently the advertising groups are relying on an FHWA sponsored study that has conclusions opposite of previous studies and contains unbelievable data:

“The reported glances to billboards here are on the order of 10-times shorter than values reported elsewhere,” one reviewer wrote. “The pattern of results certainly raises questions over the quality and legitimacy of the underlying data.”

Said the other: “The data reported as average glance durations are not possible.”

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising ]

Philip Greenspun: Plea bargaining and torture in light of the Aaron Swartz case, in which Philip summarizes Torture and Plea Bargaining by John H. Langbein (University of Chicago Law Review 1978) and suggests that the extreme punishments that could occur when a case goes to trial vs the small punishments for taking a plea bargain have created an environment in which we're likely convicting a lot of people who are innocent, or would be found so by a jury.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Law Education ]

• Eric Wemple in the Washington Post: The Atlantic’s Scientology problem, start to finish
• Poynter: The Atlantic publishes then pulls sponsored content from Church of Scientology
• Eric Kissane/Incisive.nu: Why The Atlantic's Scientology Advertorial Was Bad

But the real lesson here is that paid editorial content, "native ads", are a huge thing. From that Washington Post link:

Native ads are critical to The Atlantic’s livelihood. They are one element of digital advertising revenue, which in 2012 accounted for a striking 59 percent of the brand’s overall advertising revenue haul. Unclear just how much of the digital advertising revenue stems from sponsor content. We’re working on that.

Via /..

[ related topics: Religion Scientology Current Events Consumerism and advertising Work, productivity and environment ]

New Study Reveals the Impact of Post-Roe v Wade and "Pro-Life" Measures

On January 15, 2013, the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law published a study, "Arrests of and Forced Interventions on Pregnant Women in the United States, 1973- 2005: Implications for Women's Legal Status and Public Health," written by Lynn M. Paltrow, NAPW Executive Director, and Jeanne Flavin, Professor of Sociology at Fordham University and NAPW Board President. This study makes clear that post-Roe anti-abortion and "pro-life" measures are being used to do more than limit access to abortion; they are providing the basis for arresting women, locking them up, and forcing them to submit to medical interventions, including surgery. The cases documented in our study, as well as recent cases, make clear that, 40 years after Roe v. Wade was decided, far more is at stake than abortion or women's reproductive rights. Pregnant women face attacks on virtually every right associated with constitutional personhood, including the very basic right to physical liberty.

Well, yeah.

Via Guardian.co.uk: Study finds widespread 'criminalisation of pregnancy' in US institutions

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture Weblogs Health Invention and Design Law Civil Liberties Education ]

Scrabble needs new scoring system, researcher says.

BBC: Scrabble: should letter values change?:

"The dictionary of legal words in Scrabble has changed," says Joshua Lewis, researcher and creator of a software program which allocates new, up-to-date values to Scrabble tiles.

"Among the notable additions are all of these short words which make it easier to play Z, Q and X, so even though Q and Z are the highest value letters in Scrabble, they are now much easier to play."

The researcher appears to be Joshua Lewis / jmlewis and his platform looks like valett - Data-driven letter valuation for word games.

And I kind of agree with him. With ZA, XI and QI added to the dictionary, Q is no longer a terrifying letter to draw in the end game, and the opportunities to triple or better Z and X are really high.

[ related topics: Games Invention and Design Software Engineering Law Current Events Monty Python Scrabble ]

CERT - Vulnerability Note VU#625617 Java 7 fails to restrict access to privileged code

Unless it is absolutely necessary to run Java in web browsers, disable it as described below, even after updating to 7u11. This will help mitigate other Java vulnerabilities that may be discovered in the future.

That seems a little heavy handed, given that they haven't made the same recommendation for Windows...

[ related topics: Microsoft Software Engineering ]

Larry responds to proposed gun control laws, and asks for input. Here's mine.

So, the first thing I'd like to see is a classification of reasons for gun related injuries and deaths, and that every proposed solution contain a rationale for which of those reasons that solution addresses. I realize that the NRA has done its best to suppress some of the research necessary to make truly informed decisions on these points, but I'll settle for ballpark figures if you don't have hard data. For instance (and taking Larry's numbered points in order), in the comments:

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Guns Government ]

Thanksgiving and Hanukkah overlap this year, for the first time ever and the last time until 79,811. Assuming no other calendar changes.

Potato cannon muzzle speed measurement and autonomous drones.

[ related topics: Food ]

CES: The misogyny I was expecting, and some I wasn’t.

Old eats-a-lot-of-bacon jumped back in with the genius retort, “Hey, ladies! Why would you even want to take off the case anyway?”

(I admit in fairness I may have had some extra baggage with him because he reminded me of Karl Rove.)

“Well,” I said, “I’m a technology editor and I often have to try other cases and docks on my phone besides yours.”

Silence.

Courtesy of Tara Calishain at http://researchbuzz.me/

[ related topics: Law Conferences Food - Bacon ]

Republican State Leadership Committee: REDMAP 2012 Summary Report. In which the report writers brag about their ability to gerrymander and manipulate electoral districts:

The rationale was straightforward: Controlling the redistricting process in these states would have the greatest impact on determining how both state legislative and congressional district boundaries would be drawn. Drawing new district lines in states with the most redistricting activity presented the opportunity to solidify conservative policymaking at the state level and maintain a Republican stronghold in the U.S. House of Representatives for the next decade.

Via Think Progress.

See, the thing about playing the long game in politics is that politics is the extension of violence, and that's okay, but the thing is that you're trying to build shared belief structures so that people don't actually resort to violence, so that we can spend less of our economy in protecting transactions, and more of it actually building things.

Which means that even if you're playing deceitful manipulative games, you don't fucking brag about it in public.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Games Weblogs Invention and Design Writing Current Events Law Enforcement Economics Real Estate ]

Typo of the moment: "tatabase". Not sure what it's tracking...

Stored here 'cause I know I'm going to refer back to this as a lesson in how much doesn't change: Goofy in Motor Mania (1950) (YouTube)

... but, once behind the wheel a strange phenomenon takes place. Mr. Walker is charged with an overwhelming sense of power. His whole personality changes. Abruptly he becomes an uncontrollable monster. A demon driver. Mr. Walker is now Mr. Wheeler: A motorist!

Via Modern Car-Toons: A look at cars in mid-century animation, which came Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Animation Movies Automobiles ]

The Never Empty Double Gun:

What makes the NEDG unique is that it allows its operator to clear a jam, or reload the weapon, while simultaneously maintaining it in a ‘live fire’ or ‘ready’ status, ensuring the operator is always able to fire the unit ‘immediately and without hesitation’ – even if they are in the middle of a process that would normally render them defenseless. ...

So it's kinda like a double-necked bass. Which means that if we're gonna turn this into a true heavy metal hair band analogue, we need to find the keytar of firearms.

Also, Pink Gun.com allows you to order a custom floral or leopard print patterned handgun and pick it up at your local gun dealer.

Both via this Atomwire press release.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Music Theater & Plays Graphics Pyrotechnics Guns ]

Everything you need to know about the Lumia 820 and 3D printing. Nokia wants to help you make your own cases and modifications for their cell phones.

Via BBC: Nokia backs 3D printing for mobile phone cases which comes via /..

[ related topics: Law Current Events Monty Python Graphics Graphic Design ]

El Pais: Honesty of the long-distance runner

Two weeks ago, on December 2, Spanish athlete Iván Fernández Anaya was competing in a cross-country race in Burlada, Navarre. He was running second, some distance behind race leader Abel Mutai - bronze medalist in the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the London Olympics. As they entered the finishing straight, he saw the Kenyan runner - the certain winner of the race - mistakenly pull up about 10 meters before the finish, thinking he had already crossed the line.

An appropriate story, I thought, for this morning after a certain person who shall not be named but whose name is associated with yellow rubber bracelets, did a bunch of attention whoring with a well known talk-show host.

[ related topics: Sports Woodworking ]

@davealden53 has a write-up on the @StrongTowns talk in Petaluma on February 12th: http://northbaydesignkit.blogs...is-coming-to-petaluma-ready.html

Once again, The Onion manages "ha ha only serious": Internet Users Demand Less Interactivity:

SAN FRANCISCO—;Tired of being bombarded with constant requests to share content on social media, bestow ratings, leave comments, and generally “;join in on the discussion,”; the nation’;s Internet users demanded substantially less interactivity this week.

Fuck. Yes.

And while we're at it, can we do away with the "change the page length when you scroll to the bottom" to go to the next page interface paradigm (that screws with scrolling and mouse behavior and freakin' everything), and the "bang your head against the ceiling repeatedly to reload" alternative to a "load more" button?

[ related topics: Food Bay Area Journalism and Media California Culture Net Culture Community Fabrication ]

Wooden Boats.com forum thread on scow schooners. Includes a huge horrible link to drawings of the Alma.

Because in two years we may want to build another boat...

[ related topics: Boats Machinery Community Databases Joss Whedon - Serenity / Firefly ]

http://www.deloreanhovercraft.com/

Hovering DeLorean spotted near Golden Gate Bridge.

[ related topics: Weblogs Bay Area ]

Hackerspace has replaced cyberspace as the vision of the near future. Is there a boom in self-reliant hippie-punk fiction coming?

It's deadpan video day.

• Woodworker's Guild Of America talking about designing and building stools (Thanks, Shadow)
• Just try and make your own gun (Coil Gun) (Via MeFi)
• Don't worry, it's just ESD (Via MeFi)

[ related topics: Movies Guns Video Woodworking ]

Kayaker runs 100 foot tall Ozone Falls on the Cumberland Plateau. Dayum. Thanks, Jeff.

[ related topics: Weblogs Nature and environment ]

RT @JBrodkin: Internet Explorer market share vs. U.S. murder rate http://i.imgur.com/47D7zGq.png

[ related topics: Net Culture Economics ]

Awesome: Glenn Beck: Double-agent for Agenda 21? On walkable urbanism and Independence, USA http://dc.streetsblog.org/2013...beck-double-agent-for-agenda-21/

[ related topics: Gambling ]

In-progress wall-mounted box. Lots of oak sawdust in the shop today

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment ]

I could go to the hardware store and hope they have the wall plate I need, or I could grab the router...

[ related topics: Photography Woodworking ]

Back of that wall plate...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Homemade wall plate installed, but I still need to buy prettier screws...

[ related topics: Photography Fabrication ]

Wall box, mounted, closed

[ related topics: Photography ]

Wall box, mounted, open

[ related topics: Photography ]

From the Chicago Tribune: the National Geographic is running a scam project to show people where their ancestry flows out prehistoric Africa and across the world. A woman tried to find if she had any Hawaiian blood and discovered she had:

native Hawaiian blood, as well as sub-Saharan African, South Asian, Southeast Asian, Southwest Asian, Northern European, South African and Mediterranean. Her mtDNA showed her mother's ancestors were in the first wave of migrants who left Africa. She also is 3 percent Neanderthal or Denisovan.

3% Neandertal??!!? So much after 250,000 years? Can she use that ancestry to get a United Neandertal College Fund grant, or maybe open up a casino?

[ related topics: moron Education Race ]

While Dan's been making cabinets, and installing higher technology toilets, Nancy and I are finishing up a long joint project, reinventing our work spaces. I'm working a lot more at home, as is Nancy, and it was time to remove the big desk across the front of the house and make our home offices.

Step 1, a corner of the big desk and the original alcove that came with the house.
Step 2: Gut things. Did I mention this is a week before house guests?
Step 3 for Mike: A higher technology alcove office, with LED strip lighting, a 42" monitor/TV, and a lot more storage than you realize.
Step 3 for Nancy: It was time for some privacy and solitude.. and a very stylish office for Nancy. Much less tech, more Nancy.

[ related topics: Photography Privacy Technology and Culture Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Television Archival Real Estate Furniture Home Improvement ]

Yes, it has been a while since I rolled maki.

[ related topics: Photography ]

How do we know the square dancing thing may have gone too far? Just ordered a projector to mount on the ceiling to project animations on to the floor so that we can practice new calls at our own pace...

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

Too much time in the Castro? Just read "3 weeks 'til pitchers and catchers report", took 2 reads to see it was about baseball.

[ related topics: Sports ]

Wow Lego 1:12 scale Spitfire Mk. II with working prop pitch, control surfaces, and landing gear (YouTube).

Details at the thirdwigg.com blog post which reveals some obsession. In complaining about the problems in acquiring various colors, the author laments:

... The canopy frame should be all Dark Green, but it was not going to happen with what is available. ...

[ related topics: Weblogs Movies Robotics Aviation Work, productivity and environment Lego Mindstorms Embedded Devices ]

Brain Pickings: The Art of Ofey: Richard Feynman’s Little-Known Sketches & Drawings.

[ related topics: Art & Culture ]

Anyone have experience with NameCheap.com?

DomainMonger.com pissed me off with their recent software update that left several of my domains down for several days, no way to access the DNS control panel, and it took them a long time to call back and even then it was up to me to fix their muckups. Undid many years of goodwill and good service in less than a week.

What I'm saying is that I'm ready to change, and NameCheap.com is having Move Your Domain Day in which they give money to the EFF.

[ related topics: Free Speech Software Engineering Currency ]

Programmer, Interrupted - the true cost of interrupting your programmer.

I have been having a hell of a time at the current job finding any sort of flow, and interruptions are a big part of that. It drives me crazy to be in a cube farm where neighboring people are doing phone support, but worse than that, to be in a position where when people don't understand what's happening with a system it can be escalated to me.

Every time I see a message pop up in the inbox or IRC, it could yank me out of what I'm doing and deep into state of another system to try to track down the "what"s and "why"s. Good to see yet another quantification of this.

Not that there's anything here about programming that we didn't know back in the '70s.

[ related topics: Weblogs Software Engineering Heinlein ]

Not really news: The Guardian: How the Vatican built a secret property empire using Mussolini's millions. The most surprising bit of this? That half a billion pounds based off of whatever Mussolini used back in 1929 to buy his legitimacy matters in the scale of international Catholic church finances:

The Mussolini money was dramatically important to the Vatican's finances. John Pollard, a Cambridge historian, says in Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy: "The papacy was now financially secure. It would never be poor again."

But who's profiting off the real estate is worth thinking about a little bit when you're downtown in some monstrously touristy location looking at the designer jewelry.

[ related topics: Religion History Current Events Currency Dictators Gambling Real Estate ]

Because by now you have undoubtedly been forwarded one of those "oh noes, the South Americans are starving because American yuppies are eating all of their quinoas!" stories that someone is pushing. I don't know who's behind that particular PR blitz, but I'd suspect it'd be a company with a big financial interest in maintaining the current grain hegemony, a Monsanto or ADM.

I haven't linked to the stories here because they're frankly kinda laughable: Complaining that farmers might be getting rich because U.S. consumers are buying their product doesn't make a whole lot of sense, complaining that people are starving because food is getting more expensive seems more like an issue of local politics.

Anyway: Bear Witness Pictures: An open letter to NPR regarding quinoa.

[ related topics: Politics Photography Food Consumerism and advertising ]

If we can't pass a "not guilty by reason of dubstep" Constitutional amendment, can we at least work it into case law?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Law Work, productivity and environment ]

Trying out Amazon Prime. Searched for toilet paper, got results and "11 new and *used* from..." (emphasis mine). Uhhhh...

[ related topics: Books Invention and Design ]

4H meeting. So far we're discussing swine children and Valley of the Moon children. Context is everything.

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

So I've been trying to explain why a customer is having issues with their RapidSSL (Geotrust) certificate in technical terms. I gave up. Below is part of an actual email I sent them. I'm hoping it helps other lost souls.

Later tonight XXX time, I'll see if I can make things work better. The issue is what you had to add when you installed the latest cert. Remember adding:

SSLCACertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl/intermediate.crt

in: /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/website.ssl

That's the chaining part.

Lets put this in politically incorrect non-technical terms:

We all trust God. God's Certificate is installed in our browsers from the factory.

God says: I trust the Angel Michael.

So when we go to Angel Michael's website, we see God's seal of approval. We accept that, because God says Michael's site is real.

But Angel Michael is a little more lax in his seal of approval, it gets spread around a lot, and a Golgathan Demon convinces Michael to stamp him... (under duress... or false witness)

So when we go to the Demon's website, we see Michaels seal, and we can see that God trusts Michael, but we don't have Michael's stamp of approval in our trust circle.. And we don't convey God's trust of Michael into Michael's trust of a Demon.

Which is why some browsers (smart ones, actually) don't trust sites with an intermediate certificate. We want our trust directly from God himself. because Angels can be fickle beasts. Even God's favorite angel Satan went bad, and God revoked his trust certificate.

It's time to buy a certificate from God, directly. he ain't cheap. You can pick any God.. just pick one installed directly in most browsers. That's what you are paying for, God's word direct distribution network in the souls of your web browsers. The encryption part is easy. You can sign your own certificates, but no-one will trust that God automatically.

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama broadband Work, productivity and environment Cryptography Dan & Charlene's July 2003 San Juan Trip ]

The unreasonable effectiveness of C.

Seems particularly apt because I'm immersing myself in some sub-cultures of Perl right now, and it seems like there's a pathological resistance to C, but also a tendency to think that if we only build these byzantine structures around Perl we'll have a better environment. And, frankly, what most of those byzantine structures introduce seems to be noise, complexity, and intermittent failure.

Relatedly, yesterday I ran across sweet.js - scheme and rust-like macros for JavaScript, and my reaction was "wait, this doesn't solve any of the syntactic evil that's part of JavaScript, but puts in extra cognitive load when I'm trying to read stuff later".

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Perl Open Source Nature and environment hubris ]

In a recent email exchange, Meuon mentioned that in many third world countries the cell phone is the preferred payment mechanism because cell phone providers are more trustworthy than banks.

The U.S. Military switched to paying the Afghan National Police with cell phone transfers rather than through the Afghanistan government hierarchy resulted in employees thinking they'd gotten a 30% raise because they were suddenly getting all the money they were due, rather than with a large portion being chiseled off by corruption and graft.

[ related topics: Wireless moron Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement Currency ]

TechCrunch abandons Facebook comments:

But we eventually discovered that our anti-troll tactic worked too well; The bullies and asshats left our comments sections, but so did everyone else

Charlene finishing lemon verbena book ends. Long story behind these...

[ related topics: Books Photography ]

And Now For Something Completely Different, in which Stacey contemplates filing bug reports as poetry. Among others:

This is just to say

I have tested

the bug

that was in

the test instance

and which

you thought probably

you fixed last night

...

I LedOL

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Lust: Maple and birch LEGO compatible construction bricks.

Via Gizmodo by way of DesignTaxi from Violet Imudence tumblr feed.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Current Events Lego Mindstorms Machinery Fabrication Model Building ]

A supersonic ping-pong gun.

The Ping Pong gun or Ping Pong bazooka has been a popular and compelling tool for physics education. However, the design necessarily means the ball emerges at subsonic speed. The design has been modified to include a pressure chamber and a convergent-divergent nozzle, similar to the design of some supersonic wind tunnels. This modification results in supersonic speeds. The current design has achieved a launch speed of 406 m/sec, about Mach 1.23.

[ related topics: Aviation Space & Astronomy Graphic Design Guns Education Model Building ]

The no-hire paper trail Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt didn't want you to see.

On Steve Jobs, Google, and Palm using patents and threatening each other to collude on keeping employees from jumping ship. Apparently collective bargaining is fine when you're screwing workers.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Humor Work, productivity and environment Machinery Aviation - Helicopters ]

A followup to my story from last week about a woman being listed as "3% Neandertal" in a DNA test: reports have surfaced about a scientist looking for an "adventurous woman" to be the surrogate mother of a Neandertal baby produced from recovered genetic maerial. Alas, it was a misunderstanding, and no plans for such a delivery are in progress. However, I'm sure SYFY channel will have a Saturday night movie ready to go before Valentine's Day.

[ related topics: Movies Biology ]

We really need 64 bit Unicode so that all SVG files ever created can each become a glyph. And I see a great need for &goatse;

Time asks if steampunk will really be the next big fashion trend.

Uh, anyone remember the Wired "Zippies" issue?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Fashion ]

The Daily Beast - Interactive Map of America's Abortion Clinics.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Maps and Mapping ]

Neal Ford writes a blog I need to start following. And in this recent entry, he uses a programmer's relationship with their primary tool and how that relates to larger software architecture issues. Contextual systems (Eclipse, Windows) reduce the initial learning curve at the expense of customizability. Composable systems (Emacs, Linux) have a higher learning curve but allow for infinite customizability.

Personally, I think the real difference is contextual systems have an asymptotical learning curve that starts close to zero but increases at least exponentially as you move away from the origin, eventually reaching a point of impossibility (e.g., I need install Windows, I need to write a simple program for Windows, I need to write a device driver for Windows, I need to modify the Windows kernel). Composable systems have a linear learning curve that sometimes starts above zero but increases only as a factor of the distance from the origin, (e.g., I need to install Linux, I need to write a simple program for Linux, I need to write a device driver for Linux, I need to modify the Linux kernel).

[ related topics: Free Software Weblogs Microsoft Open Source Software Engineering Astronomy Automobiles Education Architecture Java ]

New York Times: How much can restitution help victims of child pornography?. Fascinating read. I'm trying to find a pull-quote, but the context of the discussion is important.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Erotic Sexual Culture Invention and Design Community New York ]

http://thepennyfloor.com/ - using currency as a flooring material, gluing pennies to the floor with construction adhesive, grouting, and then covering with a clear coat.

[ related topics: Machinery Currency Fabrication Model Building ]

Now You're Just Some Budding Yeast I Used To Grow (YouTube). Takes Gotye's "Now you're just somebody that I used to know" into the realms of biology and research funding.

[ related topics: Movies ]

Yay to the driver of the gray Prius CA # 5WLH348 who just changed lanes w/signal to pass cars stopped at a crosswalk for a pedetrian. #moron

[ related topics: moron ]

Man vs Subway (YouTube). In which a man races the Paris subway, on foot. Note that this is getting off the subway car at one station, getting back on at another. If you have any sort of headway between trains at all, this means it's possible to beat the subway on foot over much longer distances.

See, for example, SF Muni underneath Market Street, which I used to beat on foot all the time from the Metro/Civic Center Station down to the Embarcadero Center.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies Robotics Bay Area Automobiles Machinery Embedded Devices Trains Race Economics Public Transportation ]

Via Debra Hyde: Flavorwire: Revealing Photos of Burlesque Stars Nude and in Costume [NSFW]

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Nudity Burlesque ]

This is kinda cool: Holton Rower has a series of paint/sculpture things he calls "Pour".

a time lapse video of creating two of the paintings.

[ related topics: Video ]

The 2016 GOP Presidential Primary is heating up, Chris Christie has been doing his best to position himself for that run, but here's a strong opening move by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal: speaking to the Republican National Committee’;s winter meeting he said:

“We’ve got to stop being the stupid party. It’s time for a new Republican Party that talks like adults.”

Word.

[ related topics: Invention and Design hubris ]

NPR: The Fake Economist Who Conned A Nation.

Dave said: "was amazed to find that this article was not about Paul Krugman."

But rather than picking on Krugman, I'm gonna ask two questions: How do you tell if you've been conned by an economist? The lack of verifiable models suggests that this may be impossible. Second, given that, aside from lying about his degree, how did he "con" Portugal?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Currency Economics ]

Twenty six thousand year old sculpture of a woman carved from mammoth ivory.

Know what I like about public transit? Sitting in a concrete canyon breathing pot fumes while that sunset is elsewhere

[ related topics: Photography Public Transportation ]

A company called "Quirky" accused OXO of ripping off the design for a dust-pan. OXO responds, in an article which cites patents from 1919 and YouTube videos and is really well done.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Graphic Design ]

Morning commute: panhandler asking for rolling paper on the Joe Rodota Trail...

Kodak and On Demand Books sign deal to put book printing in CVS stores.

I frankly don't know if the physical book will survive the ebook, whether this is Kodak making a better film camera, but it does not bode well for the bookstore.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books Photography ]

Fuck yeah Newegg! How Newegg crushed the “shopping cart” patent and saved online retail.

PDF of the decision, the story from lots of places, that latter link via Metafilter.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property ]

Slate: Reporting from the Adult Entertainment Expo: Porn Fans Aren’t What They Used To Be:

In addition to reaching out to gun owners, the AEE has made strides to corner the young, douchebag market by expanding the convention experience beyond autograph signings and DVD racks. ...

Now that pornography is more socially acceptable, and there's so much porn available for free, performers and producers are struggling to differentiate themselves and create an individual brand in an oversaturated commodity market.

Especially interested because in various online discussions there's been question of "the porn star look", and who finds that particular aesthetic attractive. I think a case can be made that those of us who critique those things aren't the paying audience, and a lot of what we're seeing is an industry tailoring itself to a very specific set of demographics because those are the people who aren't seeing their vision of sexuality in every-day life or their other media options.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Space & Astronomy Sociology Law Journalism and Media Marketing Guns Economics Aviation - Helicopters ]

Always Innovating: MeCam. They're claiming a $49 Android controlled quad copter with camera. Here's my credit card.

[ related topics: Photography ]

I can't actually bake these for Charlene, 'cause the last thing either of us needs more of in the house is cookies, but: Whale you be my valentine?.

[ related topics: Weblogs Real Estate ]

3 hours(!)of square dancing, followed by Craigslist score of a Jet 14 bandsaw with 12" throat from http://stanthegateman.com/

Dan Bricklin, author of VisiCalc, writes about the 30th anniversary of Lotus 123.

Dear @OnSafety: It is *completely unacceptable* to have broken all those links on your web site. Useful information is now inaccessible.

Holy crap. The "I want install a virus on your Windows machine" guy called back for 5 rounds of abuse! They want suckers, badly.

[ related topics: Microsoft virus ]

Road Spending by State Funded by User Taxes and Fees, Including Federal Gas Tax Revenues http://taxfoundation.org/blog/...cluding-federal-gas-tax-revenues

[ related topics: Politics Weblogs Government ]

Ugh: 6th call today from the "we want you to install software on your Windows computer" scammers. #makeitstop #killthem #killthemall

[ related topics: Microsoft Software Engineering ]

Last night's #pcloud gathering has me thinking about platforms vs operating systems vs protocols & big picture vs solving immediate needs.

Golden Gate Bridge starts testing all-electronic toll hardware; toll-takers to leave end of March.

The interesting bit here is that "pay by plate" is going to augment, and probably eventually replace, the Fastrak transponders.

[ related topics: Bay Area moron ]

So "The Big Game" is how non-licensees reference the Super Bowl in marketing materials? #stillnotwatchingit

[ related topics: Games Consumerism and advertising Sports Marketing ]

Because I'll be doing this shortly: Installing a web cam on Raspberry Pi.

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett Weblogs ]

Dale Carnegie junk mail promises coworker that he'll be "igniting workplace enthusiasm". I'm hiding the blow torch.

Energy bar back cover copy goes bizarre: "Running, biking, lifting, working, dating, mom-ing, dad-ing, studying, shopping, blogging." (Emphasis mine)

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Sports Bicycling ]

Why Everyone (Eventually) Hates (or Leaves) Maven. Interesting discussion on programming tools and why we don't use 4GLs any more and lots more.

[Edit: Apparently John was crediting Flutterby when he mentioned me in the tweet. Doh. Eric linked to the article here. Go read it.]

Hat tip to Genehack

[ related topics: John S Jacobs-Anderson Software Engineering Community ]

Never disable error messages in your static code checker. The people who maintain the static code checker probably know more about the cause and consequences of labeling something an error versus a warning versus not reporting at all. If it's an error, it's likely always a bad thing.

Found in the team .pylintrc:

disable E1101

E1101 is what you get when you make a typo in a function name from another module. I'm just glad I checked my email last night before bed and was able to fix my stupid mistake that was holding up the regression testing.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Mathematics Furniture hubris ]

Wanted to snark about Twitter being down, but mostly to people on Twitter. Yet another reason vwe should return to blogs...

Slides+what I wanted to convey re my #pclouds talk on Tuesday eve at http://www.flutterby.com/archi...oudsTalk/PersonalCloudsTalk.html

[ related topics: Archival ]

People calling for more political or commercial oversight of technological advancement would do well to revisit AT&T vs Hush-A-Phone. #DMCA

[ related topics: Politics moron ]

Observation: outsourcing government services creates a bigger incentive to increase their scope compared to keeping them in-house.

[ related topics: moron Real Estate ]

This is how you do public outreach: Chicago Transit Authority: DIY Transit Info Display beta

The Do-It-Yourself Transit Info Display (beta) from CTA makes it easy for anyone with some computer savvy to show estimated bus arrival times on a display in a building lobby, a storefront window, inside a shop... Anywhere you like!

[ related topics: Public Transportation ]

Couch Cachet:

... finds the coolest parties in your neighborhood, and automatically checks you in on Foursquare so all your friends can be super jealous of how awesome you are. Plus it will tweet all the right lyrics from the right indie rock bands, post amazing images of young 20-somethings in skinny jeans from instagram and wax poetic about that perfect local, organic, microbrew that everyone's drinking. You won't be cooler, but you will seem that way.

Via MeFi: