Flutterby™! From 2014-04-01 to 2014-04-30

Reuters: Exclusive: NSA infiltrated RSA security more deeply than thought - study:

"We could have been more skeptical of NSA's intentions," RSA Chief Technologist Sam Curry told Reuters. "We trusted them because they are charged with security for the U.S. government and U.S. critical infrastructure."

[ related topics: moron Cryptography ]

Lazy is seeing a language that I should be able to read, and copy and pasting it into Google translate instead. No, I'm not telling...

"I tell tops go volunteer, because that's where the bottoms are." Laura Antoniou on Why Are People Into That?! teaching me too much about myself

Who Should Pay for Netflix? | AT&T Public Policy Blog is the usual whining about how informed consumers are undermining the monopolistic shared services business model, but luckily the commenters are on it. I'm just gonna quote Nathan Robinson's comment:

Let me see if I got this right, Mr. Cicconi… in 1996 your industry accepted $200 Billion from US taxpayers to upgrade your infrastructure to all high speed fiber-optic connections which could EASILY handle this netflix traffic. Instead of using that money to upgrade said infrastructure, you payed it out as bonuses and dividends, thereby defrauding the taxpayers. Now that the demand is exceeding your outdated infrastructure you are looking for another bailout, this time from netflix, which given past actions, you will probably blow on bonuses and dividends instead of using to upgrade your infrastructure.

Is this correct? http://www.newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm

How about this: you can charge netflix a fee to carry their data, but you have to pay back the $200 Billion which you stole from the US taxpayers. Also, since you are charging netflix to carry their data, then you no longer need to charge your customers to deliver said data to them.

You make some excellent points, Mr. Cicconi. So,

1. pay back the $200 Billion you stole from the American taxpayers
2. stop trying to charge twice to deliver one set of data
3. next time think before you shoot off your mouth

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs History Consumerism and advertising Currency ]

Ugh. @Woodcraft has stopped stocking the Bakuma 300 pull saw, which will make the Wooden Boat Challenge this year more difficult.

[ related topics: Boats Machinery Woodworking ]

Hat tip to @bwinton for pointing out that to punish Brandon Eich (and make the world better) we should boycott JavaScript, not Mozilla.

[ related topics: Open Source ]

RT Brian_Henderson ‏@brian_henderson:

The "function dance" !! via @PhilipsShiu http://pic.twitter.com/9g4gGNr5Eb needs animation & music. :)

"

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Music Photography Animation Robotics Mathematics Embedded Devices Archival ]

Okay, I'm not much of an April Fool's fan, but I did get a few giggles out of L.A.F.A.B.L.E - Large Agile Framework Appropriate for Big, Lumbering Enterprises.

[ related topics: moron ]

Deakin University Australia: Carrying extra weight could be healthier for older people.

Deakin University’s professor of nutrition and ageing, Caryl Nowson, led a research team that looked at the relationship between BMI and risk of death in people aged 65 years and older. They found that the lowest risk of death was among those with a BMI of around 27.5, which is considered overweight according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines; and mortality was significantly increased in those with a BMI between 22 and 23, which is in the normal weight range. The results of the study, published in the April issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition , suggest that current BMI recommendations may not be suitable for older adults.

Via.

[ related topics: Health Current Events Education ]

Things I should be able to schedule: Permissions changes, so that I can coordinate features roll-out with training...

The Google+ account requirement seems to have lowered the quality of YouTube comments. I didn't think that was possible.

Cleaning the shop while listening to an interview with Melissa Gira Grant, author of Playing the Whore. http://thewhorecast.com/podcas...laying-whore-melissa-gira-grant/

[ related topics: virus Pop Culture ]

You already knew this, for one thing the "five hops" criteria that they were using to surveil from foreign targets coupled with the fact that we all use the same voicemail number meant that you were two hops from any target, but...

James Clapper has now confirmed that the NSA performed warrantless searches on American calls and emails.

[ related topics: Beer ]

Anyone got suggestions on a Linux toolchain for driving CNC routers? Inkscape -> gcode -> grbl seems less mature than I expected...

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source ]

This Is A Trent Reznor Song OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO with Freddy Scott. Except it's not. Except it is. Meta is hard....

[ related topics: Music Movies Video ]

Today I learned that "Floppy Emulators" are totally a thing.

Ordinary citizens in using regular Google searches are better foreign policy predictors than intelligence analysts.

/. reports that a Pepsi/Mountain Dew sponsored hackathon game development event has imploded because one of the organizers was just so horrendously over the top sexist and obnoxious that several of the participants quit.

That links to:

• Indie Statik: How The Most Expensive Game Jam In History Crashed And Burned In A Single Day
• Adriel Wallick: Let’s talk about accountability
• Zoe Quinn: Unreality: My feelings after being on and subsequently walking off a reality show about game jams
• Robin Arnott: “GAME_JAM” and the Power of Integrity: “Do you think you’re at an advantage because you have a pretty lady on your team?”

The story of those people taking a stand is worth a read, and maybe if we have more principled people like this we can start showing advertisers that we don't like what they're doing to our world...

...but..., I will say that all 4 of those pages caused me to do something I haven't done in years: Go to the "View" menu, select "Page Style", and then "No Style", in order to read them.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Games Weblogs Consumerism and advertising Birds ]

MeFi user Pertz explains Bitcoins to visiting aliens:

"Well, what we do is we take some black rocks or gas and burn it to boil water, or we flood an area and run water through a small spot, this is all so we get these magnets to turn even if they don't want to. Then we bake sand in to very intricate shapes, which also takes a lot of that fresh-squeezed magnet juice we were talking about earlier. So you put all that magnet-juice in to the sand, and you get certain numbers, and these numbers can be exchanged for food because... well as you can see the numbers are really hard to get! So we figure they must be worth a lot of food."

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Food ]

Not sure which one, but when I shut off the apps on my phone that I don't use, my data usage went from "seems high" to "really, just that?"

Low level helicopter trip in Rio de Janeiro, 1967 (YouTube). In which the pilot flies through a car tunnel. Among other things that modern safety and insurance standards don't allow.

[ related topics: Movies Travel Automobiles Aviation - Helicopters ]

“Internet of Things” is the new Windows XP—malware’s favorite target. Bitcoin mining in DVRs and more...

[ related topics: Microsoft Invention and Design Net Culture ]

A little reminder of what a surveillance state is like: BBC News: How the secret police tracked my childhood, in which Carmen Bugan talks about growing up Ceausescu's Romania as the daughter of a dissident, and in discovering the Securitate records of the surveillance of her family.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sociology Current Events Monty Python Law Enforcement ]

How does one get to be a web developer in 2014 without ever having done "$.get('url', function(s){ $('#divid').html(s)} )"?

[ related topics: Mathematics ]

RT Adam Messinger ‏@adam_messinger:

Amazing artwork by a student at the International High School in San Francisco. http://pic.twitter.com/zt5cWLwNzw

[ related topics: Children and growing up Hardware Hackery Photography Robotics Bay Area moron California Culture Embedded Devices Archival ]

Scientific American Blogs: Toxins in Nutrition Supplements Still Escape FDA Oversight

The supplement [OxyElite Pro] was linked last May to severe hepatitis, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, tasked with removing such dangerous substances from store shelves, did not learn of the cases until four months later. By February, months after the product was voluntarily taken off the market, there were 97 cases linked back to the supplement, including one death and three liver transplants.

[ related topics: Health Food Economics ]

Streetsblog SF: The Case for Evening Parking Meters, Graphed.

Yep. We recently went to a party in San Francisco, south of Market, and lapped twice to find parking. Would have gladly paid a couple of bucks to cut down on the driving.

[ related topics: Bay Area Law California Culture Economics ]

Walk at lunch-time, car rolls through stop sign like it's not there. At least cyclists can hear you yell the expletives at them...

[ related topics: Automobiles ]

Washington Post pulled a Pearls Before Swine comic from its paper version, not from the online version.

So apparently newspapers have just accepted that the only people still reading the dead trees editions are pearl clutching people with delicate sensibilities.

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

Big data/user profile information fail: LinkedIn suggests I might want to join the group "Social Media Marketing".

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Journalism and Media Marketing ]

FTC Subpoena Revelations, Thousands Of Complaints Send Yelp's Stock Price Tumbling. Apparently the FTC is following up on Yelp's extortionist tactic. But, really, it's another "you're the product, not the customer" situation...

[ related topics: Economics ]

Why trust cannot be delegated: Zeus Windows malware found with a valid digital certificate http://www.csoonline.com/artic...icate.html#tk.rss_dataprotection

[ related topics: Content Management Microsoft ]

Eric Garland: How to get beyond the parasite economy. On Guitar Center, private equity, and productive work.

Via Big Ed.

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

Wilson Hill this morning

[ related topics: Photography ]

Moo in Chilleno Valley

[ related topics: Photography ]

After years of thought, several weeks of planning, collecting feedback, etc. I soft-launched Life 3.0 at the beginning of this week. The next day my employer informed me they were not renewing my annual contract and cut me loose. So now this effort is getting all of my focus.

I've been watching crowd-sourcing grow for some time and feel all the pieces are finally in place to disrupt the employment industry as we know it. The new model is already a success for some producers of media and I believe it's also viable for software development. Support Shawn's work is my first step down this path. I'm not asking Flutterby readers to contribute (although it would certainly be welcome) but would be very appreciative if you would help me spread the word. The permalink is http://tiny.cc/support-cms

I'd also like to hear any tips, advice or experiences using PayPal to take donations. I'm looking for a low-friction service that will let me take one-time and recurring payments without the giver having to create another account. I've been avoiding PayPal because I've heard horror stories, but they may wind up being the best option.

[ related topics: Open Source Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Shawn's Life Economics ]

An easy way to test your RewriteRules: Makes debugging Apache mod_rewrite rules easier.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source ]

Many of you will be aware of the game 2048. Many of you will also be aware that there's a 2048-AI.

And if you watch the AI play for a short time, the lightbulb goes on and you can solve the game. 21344 points to get to the 2048 tile.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Games Movies Artificial Intelligence ]

Amazed that some of the strawberries on the roof have survived my mismanagement, but planted a bunch of herbs and bee flowers up there too

The #1 new paid app in the Android Play store costs $4, has over 10,000 downloads, a 4.7 star rating, and is a total scam.

In which "Virus Shield" is shown to be a form with a toggle-able checkbox.

But there's an accountablity and trust issue that is going to have to be resolved in software...

[ related topics: virus Invention and Design Software Engineering moron Space & Astronomy Aviation - Helicopters ]

Bondi Hipsters Recreate Miranda Kerr GQ Photo Shoot With Thought-Provoking Results (NSFW), Australian Pranksters Reshoot Supermodel’s GQ Shoot To Hilarious Effect.

[ related topics: Photography ]

That morning sitting in the office chair all-over ache of a weekend of hard work. A lot of concrete paving stones and hay bales to the roof.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Furniture ]

Amtrak's insane train boarding rules, explained:

However, at larger stations, Amtrak chooses to ignore 150 years of accumulated human wisdom about boarding trains. ...

Also delves into some of the "anti-terrorism" idiocy that Amtrak engages in.

[ related topics: Machinery Trains Public Transportation ]

Okay, this is an actually funny April Fool's joke: Professor has a policy that if your phone rings in class, you answer it on speaker phone. Student obliges. (YouTube).

(Via).

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies moron ]

Stackexchange: Visually stunning math concepts which are easy to explain.

[ related topics: Mathematics ]

The office park in which I work is full of WTFery, but the lack of pedestrian accommodations at this intersection tops them.

In this picture I'm essentially standing in the parking lot of the retail strip mall of the development, so all of the workers on that loop in front of me need have to either cross without the crosswalk or a safe place to stand in the middle of the divided road, or go a distance either way to to the next intersection.

[ related topics: Photography Work, productivity and environment ]

Huh. Heartbleed Bug is a vulnerability in OpenSSH OpenSSL that, from my reading, says that in theory, if you connect to a compromised server, the server server can potentially read memory, including possibly private key information from your client server HTTPS machine.

No indication of an actual exploit in the wild, but you should make sure your SSH is up-to-date, and think about multi-layered security.

Apparently there are exploits in the wild, update your OpenSSL clients, and, yes, pay your CA to re-auth new keys.

Speaking of which, I realized recently that because I'm using my GPG and SSH keys without a passphrase, I'm at the mercy of anything I run as my primary user on my hardware.

Careful, kids...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Cryptography ]

Overheard coworker say "it's Chinatown", and it turns out he was talking about an address, not speaking metaphorically.

'Gods' Make Comeback at Toyota as Humans Steal Jobs From Robots:

... Toyota’s next step forward is counter-intuitive in an age of automation: Humans are taking the place of machines in plants across Japan so workers can develop new skills and figure out ways to improve production lines and the car-building process.

But it's okay, we can continue to ship our designs to be built in China, right?

Edit: Alt theory: The sinking global economy has just reverted to the place where it's cheaper to hire people than to automate.

Via.

[ related topics: Robotics Invention and Design Theater & Plays Current Events Work, productivity and environment Automobiles Machinery Gardening hubris ]

How much is that gallon of gas really costing you, and how are the externalities being exploited? http://www.ethanol.org/pdf/contentmgmt/The_Real_Price_of_Gas.pdf

Edit: A couple of people have pointed out that this is coming from a web site with an axe to grind. Yeah, it is, and it can be ground back at 'em, too...

Once again, don't depend on PayPal for anything: Paypal Strongarms Patreon to Deny “Adult” Content Creators Funding.

Economist: Lads' mags: Nuts goes tits up. Someone was saving that headline for years.

Courtesy of @EccentricFlower.

[ related topics: Current Events Economics ]

Metafilter: And sometimes the blonde likes to wear... is someone looking for a routine by Mae Martin answering the question "For a lesbian couple who gets to be the man of the relationship?", and says that in this video it starts around 7 minutes

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Movies Video ]

That feeling you get when the ONE slimeball person you've done business with in the last 6 years gets arrested along with a few others (governmental entity management level), for "fraud". While in French West Africa.

RG+ David Gerard: "Internet Of Things" is just another word for "Unfixable Heartbleed Everywhere FOREVER".

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

Something Positive on pets vs kids. http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp04072014.shtml

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

Shadow forwarded along whistler day 5 P.M - July 6th 2012 (YouTube), a little POV downhill mountain biking. To which I have three responses:

1. Dude is insane.
2. Where are your gloves?
3. Holy crap, codecs are doing some amazing things with vertical shake that they weren't doing well a few years ago.

[ related topics: Movies Bicycling ]

LAPD officers tampering with their recording devices.

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck and other top officials learned of the problem last summer but chose not to investigate which officers were responsible. Rather, the officials issued warnings against continued meddling and put checks in place to account for antennas at the start and end of each patrol shift.

Can we please get some obstruction of justices/tampering with evidence charges against these guys?

Whoah. So apparently an apt-get upgrade wasn't enough to fix the heartbleed bug, but a subsequent reboot did. Scary .so caching issues?

Petaluma PD praises (Prescription) "Drug Take Back Day" as "at an all-time high". ... <-- I see what they did there.

[ related topics: Health ]

BBC News: Tamiflu: Millions wasted on flu drug, claims major report.

Drug companies do not publish all their research data. This report is the result of a colossal fight for the previously hidden data into the effectiveness and side-effects of Tamiflu.

The Cochrane Collaboration: Neuraminidase inhibitors for preventing and treating influenza in healthy adults and children

The Guardian: What the Tamiflu saga tells us about drug trials and big pharma:

First, the Cochrane researchers wrote to the authors of the Kaiser paper. By reply, they were told that this team no longer had the files: they should contact Roche. Here the problems began. Roche said it would hand over some information, but the Cochrane reviewers would need to sign a confidentiality agreement. This was tricky: Cochrane reviews are built around showing their working, but Roche's proposed contract would require them to keep the information behind their reasoning secret from readers.

When you want to know why the anti-vaccine movement is gaining ground? Look at Roche.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Health Current Events Work, productivity and environment Monty Python ]

Whoah: MyPy brings static typing to Python.

[ related topics: Monty Python Python ]

When the morning's email tasks becomes going back and copy-pasting from previous emails to the same person. #shootmenow

Theo de Raadt on OpenSSL deliberately coding around OpenBSD's exploit countermeasures http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/211963

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Charlene wanted to blow big bubbles with her students, so we practiced: http://youtu.be/Roik7D4RB6A

New Shared Fence Law Effects Property Managers and Rental Property Management Companies. Because we're going to be re-doing the fence adjacent to one property shortly, and the details are handy to know.

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

Detectify: How we got read access on Google's production serves. Once again demonstrating that XML is teh evil, and using an XML parser to parse XML is double evil.

[ related topics: Web development Content Management Weblogs Theater & Plays Work, productivity and environment ]

Let's go on a bender - male versions of cartoon female heroines, from Ariel of The Little Mermaid to Princess Mononoke.

[ related topics: Graphic Design ]

Aaand, NSA Said to Have Used Heartbleed Bug, Exposing Consumers

The U.S. National Security Agency knew for at least two years about a flaw in the way that many websites send sensitive information, now dubbed the Heartbleed bug, and regularly used it to gather critical intelligence, two people familiar with the matter said.

[ related topics: Current Events Consumerism and advertising ]

RT Jose ‏@researcheneur:

http://pic.twitter.com/SdYmBcvHCz

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Books Photography Robotics Embedded Devices Douglas Adams Archival ]

Because TC asked about a picture of the roof

[ related topics: Photography ]

Oh, look, nodejs has npm, yet another freakin' package manager to figure out how to untangle. How attractive is that?

[ related topics: Sociology ]

Dear LibreOffice documentation: "Click the Glue Point icon..." doesn't help if I can't figure out WTF that icon looks like or where it is.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Shadow forwarded along Joseph Rose: When a road-raging cyclist crashes, should you stop and help?.

Rose answers "no", and I've got to admit I'm not necessarily opposed to that; if one of the people who's threatened me with a motor vehicle crashed, I'd be hard pressed to find it in me to stop and help.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Flowers ]

The Atlatnic Cities: Why Munich Went Ahead and Set Up 6 Official 'Urban Naked Zones'

[ related topics: Nudity Graphic Design ]

The Sacramento Coalition to Save Public Education: Kate Lenox: The CORE Waiver--the End of Local Control.

So apparently "No child left behind" was a very deliberate mechanism to funnel public dollars from well-off districts into private consultancies. I mean, really really deliberate.

[ related topics: Education ]

"Kids ... runing wild..." I both hate and respect auto correct...

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

A performance comparison between Java and C on the Nexus 5. Java vs C++ on the Android platform, with some relative comparisons on an x86 architecture laptop.

Spoiler: C still wins. Just a little over 2x with a lot of manual Java optimization (at the expense of readability), but clearly the Java optimizers have a long way to go.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Theater & Plays Architecture ]

Fascinating: Why are porn performers scared to talk about Internet piracy?

Seems like yet another situation where the stigmatization of porn, which leads to making payment processing and hosting and all sorts of other technical issues very difficult, means that the performers can't take control of the economics of their performance.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Theater & Plays Net Culture Economics ]

Why have the tech buses invaded San Francisco?:

Google, for one, would love to build housing near its campus in Mountain View. They have tried to get it permitted and it has been rejected, while at the same time the city has approved additional office space. In fact, the city of Mountain View expressly forbade housing in its citywide general plan for the area around the Bayshore Campus. This would have put large numbers of Google employees walking distance from work, while also providing a walkable neighborhood near a light rail station. Google has also started investing in affordable housing, including one project in Mountain View, but unfortunately it’s only 51 units. The truth is that suburban communities don’t want to build more housing, and Prop 13 gives existing owners little reason to care about increasing housing prices.

Why structuring your tax revenue models is important...

[ related topics: Politics Bay Area Space & Astronomy Work, productivity and environment California Culture Community Trains Public Transportation Real Estate ]

Some comics you may not be reading:

• Mary Death, what if Calvin was a girl and Hobbes was the personification of death?
• Dumbing of Age, angsty college kids, but a remarkable complexity of characters, and a tie-in to some Slipshine NSFW story lines (that I have not yet paid for).

I really need to revive the "export my RSS reader to a side bar" code...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Content Management Comics Education ]

Whoah! Check Out Finland’s New Graphic Gay Bondage Stamps. New Finnish stamps feature homoerotic themes.

Finland is releasing a new line of stamps based on the work of Touko Laaksonen, aka "Tom of Finland".

If the USPS wanted to revive interest in paper letters...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sexual Culture Invention and Design Current Events Work, productivity and environment ]

Keep misreading "OutageDuration" as "OutrageDuration" and wondering if the field is large enough for what we need to store there.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

So y'all wondering about that US Airways errant tweet, very NSFW: https://twitter.com/SAPPHlRES/status/455788753257504768/photo/1

[ related topics: Photography ]

Hey, I volunteered to give a talk on something I didn't know anything about. You should come! http://www.meetup.com/beawimp/events/175860382/

Southwest Airlines flight attendant gives the ultimate safety speech (YouTube).

A whole bunch of lines I haven't heard before, well delivered.

[ related topics: Movies Aviation ]

The Page-Fault Weird Machine: Lessons in Instruction-less Computation:

Trust Analysis, i.e. determining that a system will not execute some class of computations, typically assumes that all computation is captured by an instruction trace. We show that powerful computation on x86 processors is possible without executing any CPU instructions. We demonstrate a Turing-complete execution environment driven solely by the IA32 architecture’s interrupt handling and memory translation tables, in which the processor is trapped in a series of page faults and double faults, without ever successfully dispatching any instructions. The "hard-wired" logic of handling these faults is used to perform arithmetic and logic primitives, as well as memory reads and writes. This mechanism can also perform branches and loops if the memory is set up and mapped just right. We discuss the lessons of this execution model for future trustworthy architectures.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Nature and environment Software Engineering Mathematics Architecture Conferences Furniture ]

Time: This 1981 Computer Magazine Cover Explains Why We’re So Bad at Tech Predictions, has a Robert Tinney cover from Byte Magazine of a smart watch in which a guy is inserting a micro-floppy.

So for all of the whining about bad predictions, that miniature floppy is just about exactly the same size as a modern microSD card.

[ related topics: Movies ]

Many of you have read The New Yorker story about structural engineer William LeMessurier getting a call from an undergraduate student who told him that the New York City Citicorp building he designed would blow over in a strong wind (PDF), and re-doing his calculations, discovering that the undergrad was correct, and the efforts taken to stabilize the building.

the 99 Percent Invisible podcast tackles that, and talks to the undergrad, Diane Hartley. Linked here so I can get it on my phone and listen to it.

[ related topics: Invention and Design New York ]

Dear Lazy Web: Recommendations for a Markdown/text/whatever to HTML slide generator? Using Landslide, but it's got some weird quirks...

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/tennessee-bans-bus-rapid-transit/

Better article:

http://utdailybeacon.com/news/...ation-faces-legislative-hurdles/

Tennessee State Senate approved Senate Bill 2243, a measure that forbade all metropolitan cities within the state from “constructing, maintaining or operating any bus rapid transit system using a separate lane," effectively stifling any plans to move forward with the AMP.

I'm not sure of the driving forces behind this, or how it will impact the bus system in Chattanooga, but this strikes me as strange. While not always, many bus systems sometimes use a separate lane for certain places, especially loading/unloading.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events Chattanooga Public Transportation ]

Children can swipe a screen but can't use toy building blocks, teachers warn:

"I've spoken to a number of nursery teachers who have concerns over the increasing numbers of young pupils who can swipe a screen but have little or no manipulative skills to play with building blocks – or pupils who can't socialise with other pupils, but whose parents talk proudly of their ability to use a tablet or smartphone."

(via /., from the Manchester, UK Association of Teachers and Lecturers conference>). I'm sure some of this is just pearl clutching, but the Waldorf culture in which I grew up made extra effort to keep kids from being exposed to technology, and ... I have many issues with Waldorf education, but I'm not sure that I disagree with the general sentiment.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sociology Current Events California Culture Education Conferences ]

As my first foray into a new way to think about employment, I've launched a crowd-funding campaign to build an open source Android (and later iOS, Windows Phone, etc.) app for looking up nutrition information. The initial focus is on getting nutrition stats for restaurant menus, but it will also support USDA data for individual foods.

At this early stage I could really use help spreading word about the campaign. (The short URL http://tiny.cc/foodstats points to the campaign for now, and will redirect to the app afterwards.) The app should be especially useful for those with diabetes, high blood pressure and/or varioous dietary restrictions.

The full announcement can be found on my blog.

Thanks for your help :-)

[ related topics: Free Software Health Open Source Food Economics ]

Leaked Report Says CIA Tortured Illegally; Feinstein's Mad Somebody Leaked It:

The McClatchy news service reported Friday that it had obtained a leaked copy of a Senate Intelligence Committee report that contradicts pretty much everything the CIA has said about its Detention and Interrogation Program. Here's the list of the report's conclusions (PDF), but let me just break it down for you:

• The CIA tortured people;
• Even under to the DOJ's definition of "torture," it tortured people;
• It lied about how many people it tortured;
• It lied about how brutal the torture was;
• It "avoided or impeded" congressional oversight;
• It lied about whether the torture worked; and
• The torture didn't work.

Via JWZ.

[ related topics: Politics Weblogs Software Engineering Current Events Work, productivity and environment Heinlein ]

Something about the word "hermeneutics" makes me think it's the Fred Gwynne character's answer to Dianetics.

I have been wanting to do a nutrition db query app for years, and now Shawn is. Backed. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/foodstats-android-app

[ related topics: Health Databases ]

Wow: Great takedown of bike lanes vs cyclists taking the whole lane: http://streetsmarts.bostonbike...4/15/is-this-street-wide-enough/

Edit for the archives: http://vimeo.com/92095170

[ related topics: Bicycling ]

EASY Pinewood Derby Car WINS using Science!!! (YouTube). How to make the ultimate (race legal) Pinewood Derby race car.

In case there are any Cub Scouts in your life...

[ related topics: Movies Law Automobiles ]

"The LOVE IS ART KIT - LUVTONE edition includes all of the materials you need to safely create a abstract painting while being intimate with the one you love."

Jackson Pollock without the cigarette ash and disdain for the audience.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Art & Culture ]

http://git-man-page-generator.lokaltog.net/

Kickass! Missouri is taking positive steps towards highway safety with LRAD sound cannons on maintenance vehicles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fr3zUG86Ns#t=21

[ related topics: Movies ]

Cracked.com: 6 famous geniuses you didn't know were perverts. Although if you didn't know James Joyce was a little pervy, you definitely weren't paying attention.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

How to make Atlassian the rule, not the exception: StartupAUS director Jana Matthews, just for this pull:

...And as for venture capital, Australians bet more money on the Melbourne Cup each year than they put in venture capital funds that “bet” on tech start-ups. ....

[ related topics: Currency ]

http://sebpearce.com/bullshit/

It is a sign of things to come. The future will be an interstellar blossoming of understanding. We must learn how to lead dynamic lives in the face of discontinuity.

Useful for warm fuzzy filler for websites... or Burning Man Camp Placement Applications.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Law ]

Cleaning up Wischemann Hall after another excellent Redwood Rainbows potluck.

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

Things which I shouldn't admit: 104904 in 2048

[ related topics: Photography ]

I know that the organization of PVC fittings in the big box hardware store makes sense to somebody, however....

Wish Daily Acts would do a now that you've sheet mulched your lawn how do you go back to an easy to maintain yard workshop.

Ludlow: One hundred years of silence

Frank Petrucci’s three brothers and a sister died in the Colorado Coal War. His family and the nation still struggle to talk about it.

A little more on this era of American history in high school would, I think, make for a better informed populace.

[ related topics: Ziffle Children and growing up History Sociology ]

Reading @robkroese's latest, Mercury Revolts, and giggling regularly. Recommended.

[ related topics: Astronomy ]

Transcribing [Player] Piano Rolls, the Pythonic Way.

Using video of a player piano roll moving through the piano while the player was running to create a long image of the roll, and then creating Lilypond notation to print out sheet music.

Via Hackaday, courtesy of Tara Calishain

[ related topics: Music Weblogs Monty Python Sports Video Python ]

In fairness to Mr. Carrillo, I too have been pantsless in situations that seem like bad judgement in retrospect. But never had to explain...

For those of you not in the North Bay, there's a circus of a trial going on over one of our County Supervisors getting busted for stalking/peeping when he came home blasted at 2:30 in the morning, grabbed a couple of cold ones, and went over and knocked on a neighbor's door to ask if she wanted a drink. And then attempted to climb in her bedroom window, allegedly...

“In retrospect I should have had my pants on,” Carrillo told the officers.

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20140418/articles/140419480

http://www.newscientist.com/ar...t-the-meshnet-that-survives.html Need to read this in detail later, looks like a good overview from a non-technical perspective.

More: http://oti.newamerica.net/ seems to be the interesting take-away. Which takes you to: http://commotionwireless.net/download/routers/ for an OpenWRT variant

Time to play with these...

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

I'm having to build a set of normal human facing web interfaces that allow "logging in" in multiple ways, that include the possibility of a person logging in with an email address and password that is on multiple accounts. It's wrong for many many reasons, but for this possible business process flow, it's needed. Normally, I force a 1:1 relationship of the login to the account and use "basic auth" for everything. It sure solves a lot of issues from the programming perspective.

As I do my "updating my thought processes, process" I found a helpful overview of securing sessions with PHP, and as good as it it, it also grates on me how bad authentication is on the web as a whole. Cookies and sessions and encryption and hashes and identity and.. and.. are just intertwined in terribly b0rken and complex ways and we keep breaking the rules to "make it work" and be easier for the end users...

[ related topics: Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Cryptography ]

Why Are 20 Far-Away States Trying To Block The Cleanup Of The Chesapeake Bay?.

The American Farm Bureau, a powerful agricultural interest group which has sued the EPA on behalf of farmers multiple times before, has led the charge against the EPA, claiming they’re concerned the agency’s actions in the Chesapeake Bay region could lead to similar plans in the Mississippi River watershed. The Mississippi runs through the heart of agricultural country in the U.S. and empties into the Gulf of Mexico, a water body that’s been plagued by massive dead zones for years.

Via MeFi. I would like to change the rhetoric in this country to where we start looking at polluters who take economic advantage of externalities as the sort of evil we don't tolerate.

[ related topics: Law Current Events California Culture Economics Global Warming ]

RT rivenhomewood ‏@rivenhomewood

States with no-fault divorce 2003: 30% drop in domestic violence, female suicide down 11%, wife murder down 10% https://gsbapps.stanford.edu/researchpapers/library/RP1828.pdf

Posted because it's pretty sure that the social conservatives' attack on divorce is ramping up pretty hard.

[ related topics: Language Books Education Marriage ]

Study casts doubt on climate benefit of biofuels from corn residue:

The researchers, led by assistant professor Adam Liska, used a supercomputer model at UNL's Holland Computing Center to estimate the effect of residue removal on 128 million acres across 12 Corn Belt states. The team found that removing crop residue from cornfields generates an additional 50 to 70 grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule of biofuel energy produced (a joule is a measure of energy and is roughly equivalent to 1 BTU). Total annual production emissions, averaged over five years, would equal about 100 grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule -- which is 7 percent greater than gasoline emissions and 62 grams above the 60 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as required by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays Work, productivity and environment Global Warming ]

The OpenBSD folks are going through the OpenSSL code base and refactoring. Might be worth a read through to see what kinds of security mistakes people make, and ways to improve your own code...

Newspaper sums up the marijuana debate. Intended to do a two page spread, pro legalization on one side, con on the other. The con side ended up as a blank page with one sentence:

On behalf of the Dayton City Paper staff, we apologize, but we were unable to locate a debate writer who was able to submit a view opposed to the legalization of marijuana in Ohio at this time

[ related topics: Drugs Libertarian Writing Journalism and Media ]

Green Caltrain: Clipper 2.0 update:

Haskin commented that ideas for fare integration that would increase ridership might not be seen favorably, since some transit services are at capacity. ...

No! We can't have more riders! Get those people back in their single occupancy cars so we can justify building more roads to carry them!

[ related topics: Privacy Public Transportation ]

Feds Beg Supreme Court to Let Them Search Phones Without a Warrant, because if phone users have a "kill switch", they can remotely wipe the phone even when it's in police custody.

Law enforcement officials ranging from New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to San Francisco District Attorney General George Gascón to several major city police commissioners have all pushed for a bill introduced in February by Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar requiring the kill switches in all smartphones.

“You have this weird scenario where law enforcement has demanded remote wiping be deployed,” says ACLU principal technologist Chris Soghoian, “and now they’re using that to also justify warrantless searches.”

Ya know, if anonymous tips are now probable cause, we're already way the hell over the line.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Privacy Invention and Design Law Enforcement ]

Once wrote the heavily threaded kernel to a distributed database, and had fewer concurrency issues than this business logic code. #sigh

[ related topics: Databases ]

Ethan wanted a violin, he, Will and I built something ukulele-like

[ related topics: Music Photography ]

My Dad forwarded along: Reflecting on the Journey - First Descent: Michoacan (YouTube), some awesome creek boating in Mexico.

[ related topics: Movies Nature and environment Boats ]

RT Alex Sexton ‏@SlexAxton:

Gonna start referring to planning meetings as "Pre-mortems"

Fuse is a telemetrics platform for your car on your calendar.

Fuse is an OBD II reader tied to a smart phone app.

[ related topics: Automobiles Archival ]

RT Elf Sternberg ‏@elfsternberg

I got a loyalty card for Lover's Package. They send me email. "We've got your kinky needs covered!" I don't have the heart to tell them.

[ related topics: tolkien ]

The Proof Is Trival.com

Dear lazy web: Easiest way to get 64k+ of external RAM for an Arduino Mega shield. Any US providers of same?

Turning basin

[ related topics: Photography ]

Back side of Petaluma

[ related topics: Photography ]

Wooden Boat Challenge 2014. Video coming shortly

[ related topics: Photography Boats Machinery Video ]

2014 Bodega Bay Wooden Boat Challenge Final Heat: http://youtu.be/-lrEEoLrOWA

[ related topics: California Culture Boats Machinery ]

Wisconsin is about to build a freeway interchange that costs $5.39 per every single person in the United States:

The Zoo Interchange carries 300,000 cars per day. It is “Wisconsin’s oldest and busiest interchange,” according to the state. A big part of Wisconsin DOT’s justification for the Milwaukee interchange is “safety.” According to WisDOT, there were an average of 2.5 collisions a day on the interchange between 2000 and 2005, and nine were fatal.

By comparison, according to the 2009 National Household Travel Survey, Americans make about 112 million walking trips daily. About 4,000 pedestrians are killed annually on American roads.

Bike vs Car in the Mill Valley bicycle road rage arrest: The rest of the story:

According to those who were there, Smock was indeed hit by the mirror on the pickup truck. The two drunk occupants of the truck then stopped, got out of the truck, and began swinging at Smock.

In other words, the unnamed drunk belligerents allegedly started it, and Smock finished it in this cowardly two-against-one attack. The drunk driver was tested during his brief 45 minute hospital visit and found to be over the limit for DUI.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Bay Area Automobiles Machinery Pedal Power Bicycling Woodworking ]

We cherry-picked a quarter of our data and are claiming three digits with fewer than a hundred samples #overlyhonestmethods #noseriously #sigh

[ related topics: Currency ]

RT Gary Hasty ‏@gary_hasty

AT&T plans to launch in-flight Wi-Fi service; Gogo plummets http://seekingalpha.com/news/1...ight-wi-fi-service-gogo-plummets

To which I observed:

.@gary_hasty once again showing that what's necessary for the legislated monopoly to innovate is for someone else to build the market. Sigh.

Basically, they're going to use the 4G LTE network to do an air-to-ground system.

[ related topics: broadband Aviation Space & Astronomy Current Events Economics ]

The Dragon Sam made for the figurehead at the boat races

[ related topics: Photography Boats Machinery Race ]

http://vignesh.foamsnet.com/20...gs-to-organize-bash-history.html

[ related topics: Databases ]

Hey, one of y'all recently had a recommendation for a cell phone mapping/nav app that worked off-line. What's awesome?

[ related topics: Wireless Maps and Mapping ]

Dear Hillary Clinton: Stop lying about Edward Snowden. If you don't know better, you're incompetent, and if you do, we can't trust you.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics ]

Charlene's experiencing this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/1308572

This entry is a reminder that I need to remove all of the duplicated ways that Gnome wants to take control of the screen blanking functionality so that it stops screwing things up. Gnome brings that Windows experience to Linux, and sneaks in in the most pernicious ways...

[ related topics: Free Software Microsoft Open Source ]

Science Magazine: Male Scent May Compromise Biomedical Research:

Jeffrey Mogil’s students suspected there was something fishy going on with their experiments. They were injecting an irritant into the feet of mice to test their pain response, but the rodents didn’t seem to feel anything. “We thought there was something wrong with the injection,” says Mogil, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. The real culprit was far more surprising: The mice that didn’t feel pain had been handled by male students. Mogil’s group discovered that this gender distinction alone was enough to throw off their whole experiment—and likely influences the work of other researchers as well.

The paper is Nature Methods: Olfactory exposure to males, including men, causes stress and related analgesia in rodents.

We found that exposure of mice and rats to male but not female experimenters produces pain inhibition. Male-related stimuli induced a robust physiological stress response that results in stress-induced analgesia. This effect could be replicated with T-shirts worn by men, bedding material from gonadally intact and unfamiliar male mammals, and presentation of compounds secreted from the human axilla. Experimenter sex can thus affect apparent baseline responses in behavioral testing.

Via MeFi, in which Etrigan observes:

So... men are literally biologically worse at science.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Current Events Work, productivity and environment Education ]

Is the DOJ Forcing Banks to Terminate the Accounts of Porn Stars? It may be the US DOJ:

It’s called Operation Choke Point, and it has nothing to do with deep-throating.

Instead, it’s a targeted effort to shut down as many as 30 separate industries by making it impossible for them to access banking services.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Thursday, American Bankers Association CEO Frank Keating wrote that the Justice Department is “telling bankers to behave like policemen and judges.”

Extrajudicial punishment. What could possibly go wrong? Via Reason.

[ related topics: Ziffle Erotic Sexual Culture Current Events Law Enforcement Fashion Economics ]

Rules are lossy abstractions so that we don't have to think about and react to the details of the deeper underlying structures.

Bug bounties are fine, but what about usability bounties. Like: I managed to create a Yahoo account! (but not, alas, re-use my old one)

RT Very Nontransferable ‏@LoriAdorable:

BOOKS: The original paywall

LIBRARIES: The original plugging-the-NYTimes-headline-into-Google

[ related topics: Books ]

So, wait, the gang members who went to stop the eviction of the squatter Cliven Bundy are now setting up checkpoints and restricting travel?

Sebastopol has a "police services" Prius, Rohnert Park has a pick-up truck police cruiser. Once again, reality trumps satire.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Machinery ]

In fairness to those who assert that Obama is a Muslim, he has continued many Bush Administration policies that promote Al Qaeda recruitment

[ related topics: Politics ]

Two videos for the morning:

• HHow to Make a Sick Mountain Bike Edit (Vimeo): All the mountain biking video tropes in one place (hat tip to Shadow).
• A super-cut of the "superhero three-point landing" cliché (YouTube)

[ related topics: Movies Aviation Video Bicycling ]

So I have found Rob Kroese's "Mercury" series, and "Disenchanted", well worth a read.

He's got a new book coming out, Starship Grifters (full disclosure, I've been sent a review copy, haven't read it yet), but...

If you're interested in diluting your social media brand, he's doing a Thunderclap campaign and would appreciate the pimping, and the email that sent that suggested:

Option Two: Invite your friends to attend the Online Release Party for Starship Grifters on May 6.

"Online Release Party" sounds suspiciously close to "webinar", but I may have to block out some time for this nonetheless...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books Invention and Design Space & Astronomy Astronomy Journalism and Media ]

RT Sarah Wendell ‏@SmartBitches:

YOU GUYS. If you search on Google:books, there are a lot of anuses around necks. https://www.google.com/search?...q=%22Her+anus+around+his+neck%22

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books ]