Flutterby™! From 2014-05-01 to 2014-05-31

RT Carl Malamud ‏@carlmalamud:

Delaware said they have to control their code because of authenticity concerns. Let me just say this to that: https://delcode.delaware.gov

[ related topics: Photography Archival ]

Holy crap: Austin Grossman has a book after Soon I Will Be Invincible, titled You, and I was not informed?

[ related topics: Books ]

You know what I really love about printing systems? All the layers of indirection between me and where the label actually prints.

Slate: Taco Bell’s Seasoned Meat Is Only 88 Percent Beef. It Should Be Way, Way Less.

Or: If your product's flavor comes mostly from non-meat sources, why not use vegetable protein for the body of it?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Food ]

So MEMS accelerometers in cell phones have enough software-identifiable consistent variation that they can 96% positively identify a given phone.

[ related topics: Content Management Software Engineering ]

Spam of the moment: Someone wanting to purchase "Rocking Hores" from my shop.

[ related topics: Spam Consumerism and advertising Monty Python ]

Didn't expect anything from the roof this year, and the birds are getting many, but...

[ related topics: Photography Birds ]

As I see it, the right wing cries "we don't want government up our ass," even as they write legislation that forces government up our vaginas. ‪#‎rightwinghypocrites‬

Gloria Brame, on Facebook

[ related topics: Sexual Culture moron ]

Time: My Experiment Opting Out of Big Data Made Me Look Like a Criminal.

A couple of good points in here, especially about the non-privacy of electronic messages and the issues with cash vs credit.

[ related topics: Privacy Net Culture ]

Calling the White Man's Police

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Race ]

RT Teju Cole ‏@tejucole:

Be the strange you wish to see in the world.

Yes.

a good run-down of that OpenID 2.0/OAuth security flaw and what your relying party web site can do to keep from being an exploitable point.

I have been trying to make a little sense of the recent arrest of Northern Ireland's Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. "The Troubles" was a particularly violent time in British history, and I would have thought that even if there wasn't a formal "truth and reconciliation" mechanism set up, or a general amnesty declared as a part of the truce, that the politics of arresting someone who undoubtedly had blood on his hands but was a part of the truce was a bad idea.

Turns out he was implicated because some former operatives talked to Boston College researchers doing an oral history of The Troubles.

Chronicle of Higher Education: Secrets from Belfast. It's a fascinating look at promises and lawyering and academics backstabbing their sources:

Ted S. Palys and John Lowman, professors in Simon Fraser University’s School of Criminology who have written extensively about legal protection of confidential research, say the Belfast Project illustrates the necessity of outside review, by both a university research board and university lawyers. No doubt such a review would have raised questions about the wisdom of releasing information about the project while some participants were still alive, they say. It also would have caught the inconsistencies, negligence, and lack of awareness of the legal landscape before the project even started.

And, of course, the limits of the appeals court process across jurisdictions.

Vox: Northern Ireland’s most famous politician just got arrested for a 40-year old murder talks a little bit more about the modern political landscape:

Update: There doesn't appear to be much anger from the Irish government. The reasons, clearly laid out by Henry Farrell, have to do with Irish domestic politics. Prime Minister Enda Kenny sees Adams and Sinn Féin as political threats, and Kenny has previously publicly challenged Adams to come clean about the McConville case. Adams' arrest is thus much more likely to have a significant effect on Irish politics and Northern Irish politics than on UK-Irish relations.

And, just link-dumping: NPR: Sinn Fein Leader's Arrest Ignites Debate Over Academic Freedom is a very high level summary of that first article.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Politics Privacy moron Law Current Events Civil Liberties Education Government ]

I guess IPv6 just got real: I have an allegedly capable CPE to plug in and and test with...

Amazing square dance caller workshop with Rich Reel, now back up to SF for this evening's dance

[ related topics: Bay Area ]

Awesome dancing with people who didn't blink at a circulate from facing diamonds, and first time with a blind square dancer

[ related topics: Handicaps & Disabilities ]

So BASIC turned 50 this week, and I thought this was a particularly good reminder of what's happened to computer usability over the few decades I've been playing with them. RT MacUser ‏@macusermagazine:

To program your Commodore 64, 1982: switch on.

To program your Mac, 2014: https://developer.apple.com/li...SX/chapters/01_Introduction.html

Progress.

#basic50

[ related topics: Language Apple Computer Books Software Engineering Macintosh ]

On the workshop roof, planted a bunch of herbs and picking strawberries

[ related topics: Photography ]

Just because a project at a customer runs Oracle CC&B, has a dedicated SME (Subject Matter Expert), a PMPP project manager, a small room of Java programmers and a salting of engineers, does not mean the data exported via CSV from the system is correct, sane or safe. How they duplicated primary keys still has me scratching my head.

[ related topics: Bay Area Software Engineering Databases ]

So I got hornswoggled in to doing this talk on NodeJS at the end of May, and in the comments there's a little pushback to the "JavaScript sucks" portion:

Unfortunately, many of the executives that make decisions about what technology to deploy can't separate the joke here from the reality of JavaScript's future. To many, JavaScript is still seen as a toy technology and this reinforces it.

So I've been thinking a little bit about the old Scary Devil Monastery notion that "all software sucks" and "all hardware sucks". Those, of course, were introduced to head off the inevitable fanboy-ism and hipster-ism, or, as MeFi commenters often sum up it up, "your favorite band sucks".

And, frankly, if you don't think all software sucks, you have no business being a technology executive.

In that vein, RT Noah Veltman ‏@veltman:

Programming is basically figuring out how to phrase your three wishes to an evil genie. "ALL the rows? As you wish, master... mwahahaha!"

And in that vein, I feel like I should link to http://stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks before yet another person sends it to me. It's all things that we who have been programming for a while know, but this:

Every programmer occasionally, when nobody's home, turns off the lights, pours a glass of scotch, puts on some light German electronica, and opens up a file on their computer. It's a different file for every programmer. Sometimes they wrote it, sometimes they found it and knew they had to save it. They read over the lines, and weep at their beauty, then the tears turn bitter as they remember the rest of the files and the inevitable collapse of all that is good and true in the world.

Needs to be quoted for truth.

[ related topics: Quotes Interactive Drama Software Engineering ]

Diane Ravitch: My Reply to Alexander Nazaryan of Newsweek, which is basically quoted in full in Washington Post: Actually, Louis C.K. was right about Common Core — Ravitch.

Diane Ravitch has always seemed to be to be the epitome of the "stopped clock is right twice a day" saying, but people seem to listen to her, and I think she gets it right here.

[ related topics: Quotes ]

And with this Tweet, Steve Bogart has announced SankeyMATIC: A Sankey diagram builder for everyone. It leverages the Sankey library of D3.js with a UI that should make it simpler to build 'em.

Sankey diagrams are flow diagrams, useful for showing how a set of inputs map to a set of outputs (often in multiple steps).

[ related topics: Language Books User Interface Maps and Mapping ]

Summary: A little bit on Linux audio, Mixxx DJ/mixing engine tool, Autotalent - autotune engine, JACK Rack effects virtual rack for the JACK low-latency audio API, with QjackCtl.

Full thing in the comments.

[ related topics: Free Software Music Open Source Bay Area Machinery ]

And apparently my home network is now IPv6 enabled. Given a v6 outside box I could test AAAA records... http://whatismyv6.com/

[ related topics: broadband ]

RT Stephen Miller ‏@miller_stephen:

Libertarian activists invade New Hampshire town to harass meter officers in their quest for socialist parking: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05...ling-town-live-free-or-else.html

The linked article, New York Times: Libertarians Trail Meter Readers, Telling Town: Live Free or Else, is about the friction between residents of Keene, NH, and those who moved there as a part of the "Free State Project".

But some local residents are speaking out in their stead by challenging the activists through a Facebook page with the unwieldy name of “Stop Free Keene!!!” One of its organizers, Andrea Parkhurst Whitcomb, is asking the relative newcomers a fundamental question:

“Who asked you to come free us?”

I wonder if it has been pointed out to the "Free Keene" activists that the town is a corporation, the bylaws of that corporation dictate how the officers of the corporation are elected and how decisions get made, and that if that corporation weren't formed with a charter that demands free and open access to that process and its grounds, they'd just be run off for trespassing.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Libertarian tolkien Invention and Design Theater & Plays Beer New York ]

Level 3: Observations of an Internet Middleman

A port that is on average utilised at 90 percent will be saturated, dropping packets, for several hours a day. We have congested ports saturated to those levels with 12 of our 51 peers. Six of those 12 have a single congested port, and we are both (Level 3 and our peer) in the process of making upgrades – this is business as usual and happens occasionally as traffic swings around the Internet as customers change providers.

That leaves the remaining six peers with congestion on almost all of the interconnect ports between us. Congestion that is permanent, has been in place for well over a year and where our peer refuses to augment capacity. They are deliberately harming the service they deliver to their paying customers. They are not allowing us to fulfil the requests their customers make for content.

[ related topics: Weblogs Net Culture ]

Your "aging gracefully" read of the morning: The Guardian: Masturbation: the secret to a long life?

Betty Dodson says self-love keeps her young. Now the 85-year-old has a new audience of fourth-wave feminists enrolling in workshops she first ran in the 1970s

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Invention and Design ]

RT Eli Dourado ‏@elidourado:

Everything you need to know about cyberterrorism in one chart http://pic.twitter.com/a4AECZgQ5a

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

RT Brad Frost ‏@brad_frost:

"A web app is a website that doesn't work when Javascript is disabled." @adactio #artifactconf"

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Handicaps & Disabilities Rocky Horror Picture Show ]

How the @#$%^&*( are these people still employed? Did Los Angeles Metro spend $600k to build a perpetual motion machine?. Someone noticed that subways push a lot of air, and thought "maybe we can put in a turbine to take advantage of all of that air".

“Some people have asked, well, gee, aren’t you going to have to use more power to push the train past this thing because of the interference it’s going to cause? Our belief is the answer is ‘no,’ because the machine itself doesn’t create as much of a barrier as the existing signs and electrical boxes that are already in the tunnel,” he said. “But that’s something that presumably needs to be studied more carefully to make sure you’re not creating more problems than you’re solving.”

The article, giving this guy the benefit of the doubt, does go into the ways that such turbines could be selectively switched and placed to grab power that would otherwise be wasted as heat, but...

The original article that Streetsblog pursued: http://thesource.metro.net/201...metro-explores-new-green-energy/

Oh, looks like WWT Tunnel is an organization set up to funnel taxpayer dollars into bullshit consulting projects. I wonder if that's the same California State Assembly Republican Member Frank Bigelow from the 5th District (O'Neals CA)?

[ related topics: Ziffle Interactive Drama History California Culture Machinery Trains ]

Al Jazeera America: Emails reveal close Google relationship with NSA.

Ben Werdmuller: The sustainable web (and why sustainability is a kind of independence) #indieweb #iiw is a riff on Dan Hon: Letters: Episode Seventy Five: The Sustainable Web; TaskRabbit; Airbnb; Cities, which proposes a model that's less isolationist than the "indie web":

So my thing is this: not an indie web, but a sustainable one. One that is kind of adjacent to the indie web, but that builds long-lasting, reliable services, not ones that disappear. This adjacency comes from the answers to the question of: what kind of attributes are required for a sustainable web? Do you need easily exportable data? Sure. Do you need some element of user control? Sure. Are those the *defining* characteristics? Not really. But I think we might be verging on a sort of turning point where applications and services can, at the outset, say: "you know what, here's our plan for being around for a while so you can *trust* us and invest time in us".

I think it's interesting to unpack the assumptions behind the "indie web", and step back and take another perspective on what it might look like.

OH: "Cloud based doesn't mean that the data rains from the sky."

Albuquerque Journal: MISSION CREEP: Homeland Security a ‘runaway train’.

Via Radley Balko in the Washington Post

[ related topics: Movies Current Events Machinery Trains ]

Bike to work day is a bad day to bike and bus to work, luckily there was space on the rack.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Work, productivity and environment Bicycling Public Transportation ]

The bike to work aid station in downtown Santa Rosa made me sorry I ate first. Pancakes and fruit galore.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Bicycling ]

I spent the last couple of days extending someone else's Perl code that downloads files from a bank (via SFTP no less) and imports files into a local database. Adam did a very nice job on the project. Well thought out, documented, notes, readme.. etc.. and yet I hated it. It wasn't "mine".. and I seldom do anything real in Perl any more.

Have to admit, once I got my head wrapped around his thought processes and his personal choices of how to do some things in Perl, I found myself liking Perl more and more again. It was worth spending some time figuring out how to extend what was there and learning, instead of re-writing.

[ related topics: Perl Open Source Writing Heinlein Education Databases hubris ]

Wow! This interview makes me want to run out and buy Melinda Chateauvert's book: http://thewhorecast.com/podcast/episodes/melinda_chateauvert/

[ related topics: Books ]

RT Kyle Machulis (@qDot)

For those that doubt self publishing, I present: Abraham Lincoln: Presidential Fuck Machine - The TRILOGY https://www.goodreads.com/series/99167-presidential-fuck-machine

[ related topics: tolkien Automobiles ]

Awesome: ISP rate limits to the FCC until they get paid more, to protest Net Neutrality decisions https://neocities.org/blog/the-fcc-is-now-rate-limited

[ related topics: Weblogs Civil Liberties ]

Gino Bartali: The cyclist who saved Jews in wartime Italy.

A promo piece for the documentary film DON’T TALK ABOUT IT: Italy’s Secret Heroes:

The story of cycling champion Gino Bartali and other Italians who defied the Fascists in the last years of WWII to hide, rescue and save thousands of innocent people. Directed by Oren Jacoby. Narrated by Isabella Rossellini.

[ related topics: Religion Current Events Monty Python Sports Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Just fired up Mutt as a mail client on a terminal-only system, and am now considering switching back to a text-only client for everything.

The Chicago Bicycle Advocate: Universal Casualty Company Tries to Deny a Left Cross:

... Universal Casualty Company stated, "...a bicyclist has a greater duty to maintain a proper lookout and retain control of their bicycle as they have a greater risk of harm." I'm not kidding folks, I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Pedal Power Bicycling ]

the increasing desperation of the person on the phone enunciating "operator" over and over in the hopes that this time the machine will hear

Saw an article about Enchroma glasses which would help a person like me ("color deficient").. but I'm not wanting to have to mess with contacts to wear them. I'm hoping that whatever these do will soon be available for prescription lenses.. but I'd love to try a pair on for 10 minutes.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

RT Exploding Unicorn ‏@XplodingUnicorn:

Without going to college you’ll spend your career asking “Do you want fries with that?” But with a degree you’ll ask “grande or venti, sir?”

[ related topics: Education ]

Elsevier Accident Analysis & Prevention: Head injuries and bicycle helmet laws looks at the impact of mandatory cyclist helmet laws in Australia. Notably, that they seem to discourage cycling more than anything, and:

Despite the risk of dying from head injury per hour being similar for unhelmeted cyclists and motor vehicle occupants, cyclists alone have been required to wear head protection. Helmets for motor vehicle occupants are now being marketed and a mandatory helmet law for these road users has the potential to save 17 times as many people from death by head injury as a helmet law for cyclists without the adverse effects of discouraging a healthy and pollution free mode of transport.

[ related topics: Health Sports Pedal Power Bicycling Government ]

Why cyclists should be able to roll through stop signs and ride through red lights.

RT Tom Dale ‏@tomdale

Oh, sorry sir, our SLA is actually in German. We guarantee “five neins” of uptime.

These "Things That Correlate" are hilarious: http://tylervigen.com/

Robert Kroese sent me a copy of Starship Grifters (A Rex Nihilo Adventure). I liked it. Not as much as his "Mercury" series, but I still gave it five stars on Amazon. That review follows:

The history of bumbling pulp sci fi heroes is long and proud. Retief, the Stainless Steel Rat, and similar larger than imaginary future life characters filled the tales of my childhood, dashing about the galaxy, saving civilizations, supporting rebellions against evil overlords, with a narrative style that understood both the absurdity of these situations and tales, and the appeal of them.

Rex is a hard-gambling hero, accompanied by his faithful robot sidekick Sasha, who "wins" a poker game in a way turns on him, and ends up holed up with rebels on a forest moon (gee, where have I heard this before?) exploring all the tropes with memorable quips. And the final twist is both solidly supported by the story and completely unexpected. Blowing reactor cores, defending bases from impracticl marauding vehicles, hard drinking larger than life characters, they're all here.

If I have a complaint it's that, although they're funny and witty, the challenges that Rex and Sasha (the narrator) face aren't as existentially enlightening as Rob's "Mercury" series. This is light pulp reading, not material that makes me ponder, but it still gets five stars.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Books Games Cool Science Robotics Astronomy Gambling ]

Ballots need an "Oh hell no" option to go along with the "no" option. #voting

Of all the tricks the devil ever pulled, unstandardized inlet spacing on irrigation valves is up there with the invention of the automobile

[ related topics: Automobiles ]

A little cabinetry for one neighbor, another milling trim in the shop, and several water recovery systems (laundry, roofs) put in place.

Oh, and my arms are actually sore from helping Charlene sand her projects so much...

The bad part about voting now is that I can't withdraw my vote for candidates that robocall between now and election day.

I bought 2 SubC Tabbed NiMH 3800mAh batteries via Amazon.com yesterday to replace some in a device. I paid a little extra to go through Amazon rather than some electronics specialty house directly because it was easy and reasonable secure. Today I got a refund of roughly half of my shipping costs (2.09) because I bought 2. Pleasantly surprised.

[ related topics: Books Real Estate ]

STIR Journal: U.S. Foster Care: A Flawed Solution That Leads To More Long-Term Problems?. Lots of sources in here that I'd love to have the time to deep dive into, this is a complex problem and the obvious answers, even the amazing levels to which I've seen foster parents go, may not be having the effects we think they are.

Via MeFi.

RT Nigel Parry ‏@flyingmonkeyair:

.@Microsoft redefines the Privacy Policy for all time: http://pic.twitter.com/1Eg569suu8 #Snowden #NSA #NSAfiles #FBI

alt link to the picture.

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Humor Photography Privacy Microsoft Robotics moron Law Enforcement Embedded Devices Archival ]

RT Nigel Parry ‏@flyingmonkeyair:

.@Microsoft redefines the Privacy Policy for all time: http://pic.twitter.com/1Eg569suu8 #Snowden #NSA #NSAfiles #FBI

alt link to the picture.

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Humor Photography Privacy Microsoft Robotics moron Law Enforcement Embedded Devices Archival ]

RT Tara Calishain ‏@ResearchBuzz:

I’m never sure if I’m speaking truth to power or trivia to bureaucracy.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Huh. this tweet and this tweet led me to Techtronic TTI - Our Brands, and I'm fascinated. I mean, I knew that companies had brands at different market and price points, but it's fascinating that it looks like RIDGID, which I think of as Home Depot's house brand, appears to be AEG in Europe, and I hadn't guessed that Ryobi (competing with Harbor Freight on the low end, for homeowners who want essentially disposable tools) and Milwaukee (which used to be a mid-range contractor's tool brand, but seems to be sliding down a bit) were the same organization.

It's also fascinating because I recently had a Twitter exchange with a RIDGID rep which eventually escalated into an email exchange which almost became me evaluating some of their tools, but that fell apart because I really don't want another battery brand in my shop, and the rep said RIDGID and Milwaukee tools don't have compatible 12v batteries. Weird that the brands diverge that much.

[ related topics: Economics Real Estate ]

Your Snow Crash quote OTD: "You don't respect those people very much, Y.T., because you're young and arrogant. But I don't respect them much either, because I'm old and wise."

What people are experiencing as gluten sensitivity may be something else. There's clearly a large placebo effect, but there's also a large impact from "FODMAP"s, "Fermentable, Oligo-, Di-, Mono-saccharides And Polyols", short chain carbohydrates that aren't well absorbed in the small intestine.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Oh look, the implications of a seemingly innocuous feature have suddenly exploded, like allowing square roots into your arithmetic. Sigh.

[ related topics: Mathematics ]

Well worth reading: As a sex trafficking survivor, I support full decriminalization of sex work.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Work, productivity and environment ]

Monitorama PDX 2014 - Lightning Talk - Pete Cheslock (Vimeo Video). Lessons we can learn from 17^th Century ship building.

Lessons that we haven't learned from the Vasa.

[ related topics: Machinery Video ]

RT murphstahoe ‏@murphstahoe:

Bin laden used airplanes because if he sent 3000 terrorists to the US and had them drive over a pedestrian or two, nobody would give a shit

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Aviation ]

Looks like Petaluma low-lifes have discovered "SWATting". Irony: the call for anonymous tips... https://local.nixle.com/alert/5197913/?sub_id=373138

NO! The infrastructure problem isn't that we've got crumbling bridges, it's that flawed economic models mean they aren't paying back. Building more, even replacing the ones we have, is just more steps down the wrong path. Sigh. http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/rebuild-america

[ related topics: Economics ]

When the respected academic podcast host puts way more energy into advancing a specific framing than exploring the guest's ideas

Photos of an NSA "upgrade" show a Cisco router getting an implant.

[ related topics: Photography Woodworking ]

Oh, so that's why we're saber ratting: Vice President Joe Biden's son joins Ukraine gas company

[ related topics: Current Events Monty Python ]

FAIR: Will NYT's New Editor Stand Up for Investigative Journalism?

Whether Baquet will be good for investigative reporting at the Times remains to be seen. When he served as editor of the L.A. Times, he was responsible for killing a piece that would have exposed government monitoring of US Internet traffic via "secret NSA rooms" at AT&T switching centers, a story disclosed by whistleblower Mark Klein.

ie: "no".

[ related topics: Weblogs Invention and Design moron Journalism and Media Net Culture ]

Feature request: Phone listens to my conversation and can auto-fill Google searches with uncommon words in last 30 seconds of conversation.

GQ interview with Glenn Greenwald on Edward Snowden, and Greenwald's new book, No Place To Hide (which I just bought).

[ related topics: Politics Books Invention and Design Current Events ]

RT John Fugelsang ‏@JohnFugelsang:

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. - Camus

Saved for deeper reading: Why ContentEditable is Terrible - Or: How the Medium Editor Works.

Via Shadow: Dutch bike path, level: expert http://imgur.com/oCoO9Ta

Summed up in the comments with:

Holland - solving the issue of dirty hippies by legalizing weed and placing narrow bike lanes right near water.

[ related topics: Bicycling ]

Just realized there's a comma in "...until victory is America's and there is no enemy, but peace!" Who knew?

http:///www.youtube.com/embed/fVBCFGebqTg

Inspiring builder/maker and his Wolverine Claws. His design and fabrication skills are incredible and inspiring.

[ related topics: Graphic Design ]

Hanging out in Guerneville for the Stumptown Stomp square dancing weekend

One whose first language is not English saw picture of me at Stumptown Stomp and referred to me as that "cute boy man" #achievementunlocked

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

Am updating and re-writing a project/product, which for various reasons beyond my control, requires using the latest version of: Bootstrap. As I look at the 3k lines of actual program, and compare, I realize the CSS and jQuery required is much larger than the actual functional code, which is not some trivial fluffy stuff.

The web has taken an evil turn somewhere..

[ related topics: Software Engineering Writing ]

RT Glenn Fleishman ‏@GlennF:

Gladwell as a Service. It’s a GaaS. Any argument fed to its API returns massive array of undefined values.

Over the years I have stolen the occasional link from Metafilter, and several of the luminaries there were early members of the blog community and nice people. I have warm fuzzies about the site, even if I only signed up to participate in that community fairly recently.

State of MetaFilter announces that:

While MetaFilter approaches 15 years of being alive and kicking, the overall website saw steady growth for the first 13 of those years. A year and a half ago, we woke up one day to see a 40% decrease in revenue and traffic to Ask MetaFilter, likely the result of ongoing Google index updates. ...

and as a result they'll be laying off 3 moderators.

eli neiburger ‏@ulotrichous observed:

If MetaFilter has layoffs because Google can't distinguish it from garbage, then Google is intentionally building an empire made of garbage.

Searching on Google has become an exercise in frustration. Info on food stuff leads to the big spammy link farms, allrecipes.com, Food Network, etcetera. Programming to similarly spammy and worthless resources, from W3Schools to Stack Exchange.

So there are a couple of kind of scary net culture things here that I'm not sure how to unwrap. Combined with net neutrality, it suggests that the web is going to head the direction of broadcast TV, off to the lowest common denominator.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Technology and Culture broadband Food Software Engineering History Sociology Television California Culture Community Woodworking ]

Morally Ambiguous Honey Badger Love Notes.

@UrsulaV and @MCAHogarth play with Honey Badgers - Ursula Vernon drew Honey Badgers. Hilarity ensued.

Sparked from Violet Impudence reposting this Ursula Vernon captioning of the first one:

Sometimes I feel like my friends are all “I need emotional support!” and this is the best I can offer.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

To consider: The economics of young tech workers moving to SF vs the economics of Central American migrant workers coming to the U.S.

[ related topics: Bay Area Economics ]

My day started by discovering that I'd screwed up billing on almost 20k accounts. Gulp. I think I've dug out now. How's your day been?

Sheila Bair: Why I recommend Tim Geithner's book:

On his book tour, to explain the need for bailouts, Tim has used a clever analogy of a pilot trying to land a plane that is on fire and in the back, sit the terrorists who started it. He argues that the pilot can't leave the cockpit to put them in handcuffs. He first has to land the plane. The problem with this analogy is that the plane landed at the end of 2008. And let's face it, instead of handcuffing the terrorists, we escorted them to the executive lounge.

Emphasis mine, quoted for truth.

[ related topics: Quotes Books Pyrotechnics Real Estate Woodworking ]

Secrets, lies and Snowden's email: why I was forced to shut down Lavabit

Procedural endlessly growing HTML and JavaScript flower.

(Via MeFi)

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Holy crap, people: If you have not tried Word Lens (real-time sign translation on your cell phone) yet, do so. Your mind will be blown.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Wireless ]

There has been much... something, over the resignation letter of (now) former Pleasant Hill, CA City Clerk Kim Lehmkuhl:

This has been an atrocious, incredibly depressing, and mind-numbingly inane experience I would not wish on anyone. I wish the City the best of luck in finding some schmuck eager to transcribe every last misogynistic joke, self-indulgent anecdote, and pathetic pandering attempt by Council, and every tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, racist aside, and NIMBY asshattery from the lovely Council meeting frequent flyers, without which, surely our democracy could not flourish. ...

The thing is... the thing is... I think she's telling the objective truth. But these are the people who are guiding the political process, not just locally but at all levels, and unless we find people willing to endure the mind-numbingly inane experience in order to effect political change, it's gonna stay that way.

And I sure as hell don't have the patience to participate. (Via)

[ related topics: Politics moron Theater & Plays Current Events California Culture Conspiracy Philosophy Government ]

Abstract Math Concepts Spring to Life at UC Square Dancing Club:

“It’s like ‘Oh look! It’s that abstract algebra that I learned, but not abstract because people are dancing now,’ ” Levine said. “For me, (math is) more interesting to see. I’m just a giant nerd, and I keep trying to relate square dancing to what I do.”

Yep. This. Giant math puzzle, with motion.

[ related topics: Bay Area Mathematics ]

A Twitter conversation led me to observe that: "...we don't call things with intrinsic value "art", those are utilitarian. Art is a function of shared cultural trends".

[ related topics: Sociology Art & Culture Mathematics ]

RT Kenneth Field ‏@kennethfield:

May I be so bold as to offer a correct map of where The Proclaimers walked cc @felixsalmon @smfrogers http://pic.twitter.com/eSG1rHeQg3

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Photography Robotics Embedded Devices Maps and Mapping Archival ]

Amazingly disappointed that Metal as a Service (MaaS) doesn't involve pyrotechnics and biting the heads off small animals.

(Via Canonical's cloud-in-a-box: The Ubuntu Orange Box)

[ related topics: Pyrotechnics ]

Hey, fellow middle-aged desk jockeys: Feeling good about being able to run a few miles, bike a few tens of miles? Maybe occasionally hop on the inlines or a skateboard to get around downtown a little faster?

Nine-year-old Sabre Norris just landed her first skateboard 540 on a vert ramp.

[ related topics: Bicycling ]

Tomato starts this time of year are like zucchini in July: You don't want to just till them under, but you can't give 'em away...

[ related topics: Food ]

Hate to give StackExchange any juice, but this is brilliant: Capture image via captureStillImageAsynchronouslyFromConnection with no shutter sound, in which the first answerer describes grabbing the audio file for the shutter click sound from the system, inverting that, and playing that inverted sound simultaneously to cancel out the click sound.

[ related topics: Music ]

Thanks to @philshapiro, thinking about how mailto: links and an integrated app environment relate to identity and web-only environments.

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

Facebook trending: "King Richard III remains to be buried in Leicester". And Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

Stealing my credit card? Annoying. Using it to rip-off "adult services" providers? That's preying on the most vulnerable.

Tab dump:

• Cool picture of bicyclists as shadows to their bikes, from Shadow, via.
• Maciej Cegłowski: The Internet with a Human Face, a talk at the 2014 Beyond Tellerrand conference. On the increasing centralization on the Internet.
• Amazon v Hachette: Don’t Believe The Spin
• Cabinet Magazine: Whitewood under Siege, on pallets, pallet recycling, and emerging pallet technology.

[ related topics: Books Net Culture Conferences Bicycling Home Improvement ]

OH: "8000 simultaneous user is... I have 10 year old hardware doing this." "Not running .ASP."

[ related topics: Sports ]

The Nib nails cloud computing.

I’m Katha Pollitt’s “Highly Educated” Leftist—And A Sex Trafficking Victim

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Apparently people are learning: Nobody wants to host the 2022 Olympics

The failed and aborted 2022 candidacies all have one thing in common: When actual citizens are allowed to have a say, they say they don't want the Olympics.

[ related topics: Sports Education ]

Cool cutting board, with a neat optical illusion pattern, courtesy of Shadow.

RT Reginald Braithwaite ‏@raganwald:

OH: "This meeting isn’t bi-weekly, it’s fortnight-curious."

Root backdoor found in surveillance gear used by law enforcement. The security advisory from SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab, the particular product is Nice Recording eXpress.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

The Erasure of Maya Angelou’s Sex Work History.

Via Eros Blog

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs Work, productivity and environment ]

So now that there's a .ninja TLD, how long for a homeloans.ninja? Or is that too 10 years ago?

Harvard report shines light on ex-researcher’s misconduct.

The real question is: How much data out there is being faked by people who are smart enough to cover their tracks better...

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Space & Astronomy Aviation - Helicopters ]

Johannes Ernst: Marcus Povey and PGP-based login:

Marcus Povey is proposing to use PGP/GPG to log into personal websites such as Known.

ie: LID, circa 2005.

[ related topics: Weblogs LID (Lightweight IDentity) ]

Fantastic thread on power saving techniques for Atmel AVR microcontrollers, with code, and how to make an Arduino better, and... yeah, well worth reading if you're into those platforms.

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Interactive Drama Robotics Embedded Devices Community ]

RT Thomas Drake ‏@Thomas_Drake1

Kerry now kerrycature of self w/ Admin trampling Constitution, citizen rights & sovereignty, exacting NatSec revenge. http://wemeantwell.com/blog/in...-man-up-and-come-home/?wpmp_tp=1

That's a link to Kerry Tells Snowden to “Man Up” and Come Home which points out that the Espionage Act, under which U.S. officials have said they intend to charge Snowden, has no room for motive or discussion of the lawfulness of the programs that the leaked documents describe, and that:

As for Kerry’s remark about patriots not running, the Secretary should check with the Department of State he titularly heads up. He’d learn between 2009-2011 the U.S. granted asylum to 1,222 Russians, 9,493 Chinese, and 22 Ecuadorians, not including family members, among many others from a variety of countries. The U.S. acknowledges these people as patriots, men and women who took a dangerous and principled stand against a government they felt had gone wrong. A double-standard is no standard at all.

And if are not yet reading Glenn Greenwald's No Place To Hide, you really really should. As a reader here there's probably no new revelation, but having it all in one place, laid out, is a fantastic read, and also a great critique of the modern journalism establishment.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Invention and Design moron Sociology Law Journalism and Media Civil Liberties Sports Community ]

First the NSA said it didn't have any Snowden emails, now it found one. Bet he's got more? http://www.theguardian.com/wor...eillance-internal-whistleblowing

I have not watched the video yet, but my NodeJS talk to WIMP is up: http://beawimp.org/2014/05/nod...nd-you-should-use-it-everywhere/

[ related topics: Movies Video ]

Reminder: In an hour and a half (9:00), we're gonna have a coffee & tea social in the front yard: 10 Mission Drive, Petaluma.

Reorganizing the shop. Need to cut some shelves to put the things on that are blocking access to the saw. Doh.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]