Flutterby™! From 2014-09-01 to 2014-09-30

Grand Ayatollah Issues Fatwa Stating High Speed Internet is against Sharia. The U.S. must be most holy. http://www.iranhumanrights.org/2014/08/makarem-internet/

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

21 years of the eternal September.

[ related topics: Gambling ]

Remember the "You Will" ad campaign? Interesting to see how we had to work around AT&T to create these things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MnQ8EkwXJ0

[ related topics: Movies Work, productivity and environment ]

Wow, using a jackhammer sure does funny things to pedometer counts.

Office-mates are discussing TV news. Television was "don't read the comments" before "don't read the comments".

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Current Events Television ]

Forbes: Jennifer Lawrence Nude Photo Leak Isn't A 'Scandal.' It's A Sex Crime.

I sincerely hope that absolutely none of the victims involved in this current leak takes any form of “responsibility” or apologizes for anything. The victims involved have committed no crime and committed no sin by creating said photos in the first place or in “allowing” them to be stolen. What occurred yesterday is a theft and a crime, plain and simple. It is a personal violation of a prurient nature, with photos of an explicit nature that were intended for private or personal use now unleashed online for anyone to see, for free no less. ...

Ya know what would be awesome? For some of those truly draconian copyright laws to get used in this case...

Also, RT ‏@dotpeople:

"There is no 'cloud', it's simply a bunch of hard drives you don't own being operated by people you don't know." http://arstechnica.com/securit...-teach-you-about-cloud-security/

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Nature and environment History Nudity Law Copyright/Trademark Government ]

operational pgp. So you're already using one laptop solely for email, with only vetted open source software on it, and you want to know how to minimize your risk in using encrypted email? Start here.

[ related topics: Free Software Software Engineering Cryptography ]

"I’m talking about the fact that people won’t feel the same way about their phones after this. Your phone is no longer a part of you. It’s a weapon, pointed at you."

Thinking a bit about how Polaroid and the short heyday of digital photography were the circumstances in which we controlled our imaging.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Photography Guns ]

RT Joan Arkham ‏@JoanArkham

So, I'm supposed to trust "the cloud" for all my banking and work documents, but not for boobie or hoo-ha pics. Got it.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

RT Dan Gillmor ‏@dangillmor:

How routine political corruption has become: Chicago mayor got $100k from Comcast before backing TWC buyout. http://www.ibtimes.com/chicago...-comcast-boosting-merger-1676264

[ related topics: Politics moron ]

Mark A. Hershberger ‏@hexmode:

Acquitted by DNA after 30 yrs in prison. Scalia refused to hear case b/c crime was "so heinous." Who's heinous now? http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09...ay-be-freed-after-dna-tests.html

[ related topics: Law ]

RT Swedish Canary @SwedishCanary:

The fact there's a highway to hell & only a stairway to heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic numbers.

To which I replied

.@SwedishCanary or some planner's failure to understand very basic concepts of induced demand... Cc @genehack

[ related topics: John S Jacobs-Anderson ]

Sundance Vacations: From scams to forgery. In which Matt Haughey, of Metafilter fame, decides to check in to alleged "court order"s related to a cease and desist letter from some condo time share sales company, and discovers that the court orders were made up out of whole cloth.

So if you get a take-down notice, it's worth it to check into the back story they've made up...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Real Estate ]

bunnie huang takes Joi Ito and friends on a tour of Shenzhen:

What we experienced was an entire ecosystem. From the bespoke little shop making 50 blinking computer controlled burning man badges to the guy rebuilding a phone while eating a Big Mac to the cleanroom with robots scurrying around delivering parts to rows and rows of SMTs -- the low cost of labor was the driving force to pull most of the world sophisticated manufacturing here, but it was the ecosystem that developed the network of factories and the tradecraft that allows this ecosystem to produce just about anything at any scale.

[ related topics: Burning Man Weblogs broadband Robotics Travel Macintosh Embedded Devices McDonald's ]

Holy crap: Congrats on the Sonoma County Sheriff's Deputy who took down this guy without shots fired! https://local.nixle.com/alert/5261039/?sub_id=373138

Huh. Apparently Ron Jeremy is also a moderately accomplished pianist (YouTube). That's pianist. Although I'm not so sure about his rhythm. Via MeFi

[ related topics: Music Movies ]

I don't know why PCI has approved scanning vendors, you could get a more comprehensive audit by just pissing off 4chan.

Another day, another regex to clean up vendor supplied XML to keep systems from barfing.

[ related topics: Web development Content Management ]

New rule: If you call something XML and it doesn't parse, I get to beat you soundly and break your fingers so you can no longer type. Cower.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Web development Content Management Invention and Design ]

But it really is important to me to know whether MS Word is married or not.

[ related topics: Sociology Marriage ]

OH: "double redundancy". Yes, despite that, the system being discussed does have a single point of failure.

Gorgeous wood bike: http://www.thewoodwhisperer.co...er-projects/mikes-analogone-one/

[ related topics: Bicycling Woodworking ]

America Without the Makeup: Artez Hurston’s Ferguson:

He has tried payment plans, but they have their own set of drawbacks. “You miss the payment plan one time, they tell you they gonna lock you up if you come to court without the money,” he explains. “So people don’t go to court because they don’t have the money. So then you get another warrant and a failure to appear. They can charge you up to $2,000 for failure to appear if they want to.”

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Privacy Currency ]

Benjamin Bratton: We need to talk about TED:

Recently there was a bit of a dust up when TEDGlobal sent out a note to TEDx organisers asking them not to not book speakers whose work spans the paranormal, the conspiratorial, new age "quantum neuroenergy", etc: what is called woo. Instead of these placebos, TEDx should instead curate talks that are imaginative but grounded in reality. In fairness, they took some heat, so their gesture should be acknowledged. A lot of people take TED very seriously, and might lend credence to specious ideas if stamped with TED credentials. "No" to placebo science and medicine.

But ... the corollaries of placebo science and placebo medicine are placebo politics and placebo innovation. On this point, TED has a long way to go.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Books Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Conspiracy ]

Future social networking tools are going to need shared killfiles so that we can deal with trolls faster than service providers can.

How do we get speed limit signs on Petaluma's Mission Drive? People are speeding, and we need to prevent what happened on Mountain View.

At the Diablo Dancers Mainstream blast class. Amazing calling.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Barak in the new meter and feed line

[ related topics: Photography Invention and Design ]

Break in the new meter and feed line

[ related topics: Photography Invention and Design ]

How Police Caught Daniel Holtzclaw, the Oklahoma City Cop Who Allegedly Sexually Abused 8 Black Women.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Law Enforcement ]

And with the installation of a whole house pressure regulator, we now have 50PSI at the hose taps, rather than 95PSI.

[ related topics: Real Estate ]

Must read! I just freed an innocent man from death row. And I'm still furious.

And every time lazy cops and corrupt DAs and Supreme Court justices who put ideology over justice conspire to pull this shit, not only is an innocent deprived of liberty, a dangerous perpetrator remains free.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

These feature requests will be implemented by making the current messages BIG BLINKING TEXT! And torturing users until they read messages.

RT Peter Merholz ‏@peterme:

As a design leader, I don't want 'a seat at the table.' I want to be underneath it, pretending it's my superhero hideout.

[ related topics: Graphic Design Furniture ]

Johannes Ernst: There are only three base business models. I've been thinking along these lines, Johannes sums this up really nicely.

[ related topics: Weblogs LID (Lightweight IDentity) ]

Grilled tomatillos, even when they're unripe and haven't turned purple yet, are awesome. So glad we got all those volunteer plants.

[ related topics: Gardening ]

Because most photographs of square dancing are kind of dull and this has some good ideas: How to photograph a contra dance.

[ related topics: Photography Weblogs ]

So apparently the Apple keynote is what happens when you attempt to on-demand stream something that should have been broadcast.

[ related topics: Apple Computer ]

Jesse Thomas tests the shaved vs unshaved legs for cyclists in a wind tunnel, and finds 15 watts(!). (Globe and Mail link)

[ related topics: Photography Health Law ]

Re-analysis of clinical trial data can cchange conclusions.

“There is a real need for researchers to provide access to their raw data for others to analyze,” said John Ioannidis, MD, DSc, professor of medicine and director of the Stanford Prevention Research Center. “Without this access, and possibly incentives to perform this work, there is increasing lack of trust in whether the results of published, randomized trials are credible and can be taken at face value. The recent hot debates about whether oseltamivir works are only the tip of the iceberg in this crisis of confidence.”

Of note: Of the nearly 3,000 studies they looked at, 38 had sufficient data to re-analyze ("here's the conclusions we came to, but you don't get to look at our data"?), and the re-analysis of 13 of those came to a different conclusion than the original paper.

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

Growing up poor with three parents. Talking about being poly and privilege...

If privilege can be defined as unearned advantage, then for my family polyamory was not the result of privilege. Rather, it was a source of it. I can see now that my parents’ triad provided them with the resources and mutual support they needed to be so conscientious in raising me and my two siblings. It freed them from many of the difficult decisions a poor, working family often has to make: attend the PTA meeting, or put in some overtime? Actively raise the children, or make enough money to feed them? A three parent household has 50% more time, income, and experience than a two-parent household. That counts for a great deal.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Sexual Culture Sociology Work, productivity and environment Currency ]

RT ClinicEscort ‏@ClinicEscort:

Friends, I regret that I will be unable to give to your @GoFundMe fundraisers. Any of them. Ever. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...he-line-at-abortion-and-sorcery/

Washington Post: GoFundMe, the site that has raised money for convicted murderers, will draw the line at abortion and ‘sorcery’

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Current Events Currency ]

RT New Telegrapher ‏@gln

OH: this code was written by a man in a suit.

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

I don't care if it has less than and greater than signs, you shouldn't be trying to parse it as XML! Use regular expressions!

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Web development Content Management ]

Signs your morning will likely suck: Finding index.php and config.rb in the same directory.

I went to last night's Homebrew Website Club, and though I enjoy seeing the enthusiasm of people working on things they're excited about, and will probably go back (in two weeks?), I've got mixed feelings...

So last night I implemented http://webmention.org/ for inbound links to Flutterby comments. It seems like the latest in a long chain of such things, from referer(sic) tracking to Trackback to Pingback that's easy enough to throw together, but is eventually going to be used for spamming (and, yes, before I dropped support for those previous things I was getting spamming from people implementing the inbound links). It also really looks like unless people implement it very carefully (I haven't yet), it's a huge amplification attack vector (if you can get a thousand sites that have implemented webmention, send a pingback request for a large file on your target site, boom, instant DDOS).

Distributed "Like"s and comments and all... well... There are some cool abuses if IFRAMEs and JavaScript coming, but...

The thing about the early blog community that made it so interesting wasn't that we were all interested in the technology, it's that we were interested in the technology as an end to pursue our other interests. The same thing with the BBS scene. And Facebook and Twitter: Nobody's going to Facebook and Twitter thinking "oh, cool technology", they're going there thinking "here's a community of interesting people I can talk to".

Is the concern about owning our own data enough to be that critical mass? Because all of the old school bloggers are on to other things now, none of them really care about all the details of ownership.

So I enjoyed the conversation last night, I'm skeptical that adding http://webmention.org/ will do anything other than being a technology I'll need to rip out later, but I'm really more interested in conversations about topics where tech is the enabling thing, not where the tech is the end goal.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Weblogs Work, productivity and environment Graphics Mathematics Community ]

Wetmachine: Tales of the Sausage Factory: The Comcast Witness Protection Program and Misplaced Rage:

Why Comcast has such a reputation for exacting reprisals remains unclear. Perhaps it was the time they cut funding for a film program for teenage girls because they didn’t like one of the girl’s Tweets. Or perhaps it was when they retaliated against Bloomberg News and banished them to outer programming Siberia. Or maybe it was the time they retaliated against the NFL. Or possibly the time they retaliated against Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, or refused to carry the America Channel. Anyway, for whatever reason, most folks in the industry pretty clearly believe if you do something Comcast doesn’t like, Comcast will squish you like a bug. And even the biggest companies believe that Comcast is already big enough to hurt them considerably if it wants to retaliate. So the FCC can’t get a real understanding of the industry, let alone of the impact of the proposed merger, unless it can protect companies that fear reprisal that it is safe to talk to them.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Technology and Culture broadband Invention and Design Food Bay Area Software Engineering Current Events Television Sports ]

Why archeologists hate Indiana Jones:

“That first scene, where he’s in the temple and he’s replacing that statue with a bag of sand – that’s what looters do,” Canuto says, grinning. “[The temple builders] are using these amazing mechanisms of engineering and all he wants to do is steal the stupid gold statue.”

[ related topics: Religion hubris ]

[ related topics: Photography ]

Just discovered that there are link-bait-y apps (63 Ways To Lose Weight!) that have 100k+ downloads. Faith in humanity currently negative.

Of all the campy voice clips on the X-Men pinball machine at the office, Rogue announcing that she's an ex-man is the best.

The world's largest wooden board, a 46.53 meter long piece of Doug Fir cut from a forest in Kashubia Poland, and then ripped by hand:

We organised technical, cultural and medical assistance for the participants and... fresh supply of beer. In terms of beer, cutting 1 metre of the board cost 54.3 litres of it... The board was cut traditionally with a two-men saw, just like our ancestors did it.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Sociology Beer Woodworking ]

I have been somewhat skeptical about 23AndMe, there are an awful lot of claims made about the current level of "genetic testing" which aren't backed up by reality, or which are only very thinly supported. But this is interesting...

With genetic testing, I gave my parents the gift of divorce

"I would want a warning saying, 'check this box and FYI: people discover their parents aren't their parents and they have siblings they didn't know about.'"

Follow up to: this post about evaporating a lot of water at Burning Man. While not artistic, I spent $25 on a 12 volt bilge pump and $7.99 each on some kiddie pools, and 4 boards.... and it worked very very well. The bilge pump had it's own float switch so it only ran when it needed to, which was in short bursts. It evaporated much more than 200 gallons, including some water from neighboring camps. 12 volt power came from my camp power supply, 100 watt solar + battery + inverter.. Most of the water pumped up recycled back into the pool, with just a little spraying into the two levels of overflow area.

This is the "leftovers" being pumped into our sludge tank, which included some kitchen waste and some other misc.. Using the bilge pump worked well for this also. Credit needs to be given to our 18+ campmates, who were very good about using the system, kitchen practices, running water through the filter buckets.. and being careful with their water usage.

[ related topics: Burning Man Photography Art & Culture Sports Boats Archival Furniture Photovoltaics ]

Having a trailer or other way to haul stuff at Burning Man is essential, I did a lot of "taxi service" for the camp this year including 90 pounds of ice per day (big camp with great food!), luggage runs to/from the Burner Express bus station, and some people transport... It really sums up what I did this year, help other people, in and out of camp. Fixed Chris and David's RV, helped some wiring at Distrikt, holding a wrench for a dome... and most importantly,: Nancy and I had a great time. Mission accomplished.

[ related topics: Burning Man Photography Food Automobiles Public Transportation Archival ]

Want to see how a Comcast ruled internet will impact you? The Onion has your back... http://theonion.github.io/comcastifyjs/

[ related topics: Food Net Culture ]

House chores accompanied by podcast interview w/post-modern academic sociologist talking about BDSM ethnography. Soooo '90s flashback.

[ related topics: Real Estate ]

I feel all "deconstructing edge play? Y'all are so cute! I just want to pinch your little cheeks!"

Once again, it's quicker and easier to build it ourselves than decipher what options to order. Sigh.

[ related topics: Cryptography ]

Trader Joe's: woman sampling "mini beef tacos": "This is vegetarian, right?" #sob

[ related topics: Food ]

It's that sort of project brainstorming where I now know that 10' of 24" diameter 24" PVC Schedule 80 Pipe costs $142.88 plus motor freight

NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton claims 2% of arrests involve force, City Council analyst uses math, is fired:

In his email, Matusov goes on to say there were 40,000 stop-and-frisk arrests in 2011, and “[o]f those, the arresting officers themselves reported that they used force in 19,360 arrests,” which exceeds Bratton's estimate, even among that smaller sample.

[ related topics: Mathematics ]

RT Markus Persson ‏@notch, back on December 18 2012:

Anyway, my price is two billion dollars. Give me two billion dollars, and I'll endorse your crap.

"Notch" is the original developer of Minecraft. Mojang announces that they're being bought by Minecraft for 2.5 billion dollars. (Via MeFi)

But if you read only one thing on Minecraft and the acquisition today, read Notch on why he's leaving Mojang.

As soon as this deal is finalized, I will leave Mojang and go back to doing Ludum Dares and small web experiments. If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Humor Microsoft moron ]

Yep: Comcast is now looking at what kind of traffic you're using your Internet account for, and is pretty judgey: http://consumerist.com/2014/09...atens-to-kill-their-connections/

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

American arrives in North Korea, tears up his visa, asks for asylum, is sentenced to six years of hard labor for espionage. No information as to whether North Korea hard labor is better than Bakersfield, but I suspect that if those were his only options he made the superior choice.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Will be receptive to more home automation when someone finally builds a presence sensing trash can with a ui that doesn't suck. Grrrrr.

[ related topics: User Interface ]

Da hell is this User Agent string?

"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/35.0.1916.153 Safari/537.36"

[ related topics: Microsoft Open Source ]

Ugh. Hate dumbed down marketing crap: Which @namecheap Comodo cert gives me three or so SNI certs cheapest?

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Marketing ]

Made the mistake of looking at my server logs. Trackback spam is a huge thing again. Maybe we should be sharing "ufw deny" rules after all.

[ related topics: Spam Monty Python ]

For everyone who's ever wondered "huh, did we really leave that in the dish drying rack while company was over?": Forget Where's Waldo -- Let's Play Where's the Dildo? a little article about Subtle Dildo - An installation art project about the place of rubber in our lives.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Art & Culture ]

Syringe with the cap still on the needle in the middle of the Joe Rodota trail. But so far everyone has pants on. Unlike yesterday.

[ related topics: Clothing ]

Benzodiazepine use may raise risk of Alzheimer’s disease. So if you were taking Valium or Xanax to deal with your anxieties, well... here's something to be anxious about.

People who had taken a benzodiazepine for three months or less had about the same dementia risk as those who had never taken one. Taking the drug for three to six months raised the risk of developing Alzheimer’s by 32%, and taking it for more than six months boosted the risk by 84%.

The long acting versions (diazepam (Valium) and flurazepam (Dalmane)) are a bigger risk than the short-acting (like triazolam (Halcion), lorazepam (Ativan), alprazolam (Xanax), and temazepam (Restoril)).

The study is Benzodiazepine use and risk of Alzheimer’s disease: case-control study: BMJ 2014; 349 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g5205 (Published 09 September 2014).

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Health Law ]

Chris Hall in The Atlantic: Is One of the Most-Cited Statistics About Sex Work Wrong? Prostitutes don't in actuality start, on average, at age 13, and insisting that they do misrepresents them.

Via ErosBlog.

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

U.S. committing 3,000 troops to fight Ebola. Will they be going house to house with close air support? And will there be drone strikes?

[ related topics: Real Estate ]

When the project is 5% thinking and 95% wrangling the damned APIs to do what the docs say they should be doing.

RT Nick Wright ‏@AbsurdHero:

GFYS may be internet shorthand for Go Fuck Yourself, but it sure sounds cheery when you pronounce it "jiffies"

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

Judy Endow: We Are Not In Our World. On autism and seeing signs and metaphors we use to examine communication. The Option Institution process, an organization and process that Charlene thinks highly of, works in this space, urging care-givers to join autistic people in their space and understand why they're behaving that way.

Posted here because I wanted to pass it on to Charlene.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy ]

No, the bollard wasn't wearing a helmet.

[ related topics: Photography ]

On the Facebook "real names" crackdown: http://www.consentculture.com/...7/mynameis-threat-digital-exile/

How much damage can a 6 year-old possibly do? An analysis of the cost of raising a child like Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes.

Signs I'm a nerd: Today's Girl Genius had me thinking about ways to generate that much hydrogen without dissipating huge amounts of heat, because even storing that much hydrogen in liquid form wouldn't leave room for the passengers. #suspensionofdisbelieffail http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20140917

Most security thinking: well, the grizzly bears haven't attacked *my* camp yet, but when they do I'll just put a padlock on my tent.

Dafuq are you doing with your SSL certs today, Gmail?

Two from shadow:

• Comparing web developers. I don't think shaving it all off was the right move for me, either...
• What it looks like to get doored while biking (video). Or: Why bike lines are a scary-ass bad idea.

[ related topics: Video Bicycling ]

I have suggested that JavaScript is the VM platform of the future. It can even run the JVM... http://int3.github.io/doppio/about.html

Nuking a duplicate entry

[ related topics: Photography ]

These things are slick as hell when they're wet. #ouch #engineeringfail

[ related topics: Photography ]

My Social Sherpa: The ultimate retaliation: pranking my roomate with targeted Facebook ads.

... It was truly luck that he never discovered any of these ads while he and I were in the same room because my maniacal laughter would have been a dead giveaway. Over the next two weeks I continued to create and target ads that had a progressively more accurate and disturbing understanding of his personal life.

Comics Alliance: Celebrating the happy hunks of Tom of Finland

Via MeFi

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Comics ]

Kevin Roose in NY Mag: Silicon Valley's contract worker problem:

At least one on-demand start-up, Handy.com, has a contingency plan for a possible change in the law. The company's terms of service states that "if Handy.com is found to be liable for any tax or withholding tax in connection with your use of Users' services, then you will immediately reimburse and pay to Handy.com an equivalent amount, including any interest or penalties thereon." In other words, if Handy.com is forced to reclassify its contract workers as employees, its customers – not the company itself – will be on the hook for any extra costs.

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

Apple's "warrant canary" has disappeared, suggesting that Apple is now subject to an order under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act.

ie: All your iOS are now belong to the NSA.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Privacy Invention and Design ]

Hamster Wheel Standing Desk. Awesome.

Via MeFi.

When a coworker asks for debug help, but the Vagrant config doesn't run his code, there's workstation CPAN dependency hell, and it's SOAP.

[ related topics: Perl ]

Marijke Vonk: The Myth of Trafficking:

“It’s as if prostitutes don’t want to be saved,” said a surprised manager of a Rescue Foundation shelter in India. The rescuers had once again made a raid on a brothel, after which the women had been forced into a shelter they weren’t allowed to leave. Again and again women escaped, continually protested their imprisonment in the shelters, and returned to their old workplaces as soon as they were able to make a run for it. It was as if the women were working as prostitutes of their own accord, didn’t view themselves as victims, thought of the rescue missions as threats to their human rights and livelihoods and for the most part felt victimized by the rescue industry.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Current Events Work, productivity and environment Civil Liberties ]

RT Corcosman @Corcosman

The difference between ISIS and the Mexican drug cartels? The Mexican drug cartels have beheaded more people.

[ related topics: Health ]

Post deleted because I'm trying to figure out how not to be engaged by trolling.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Bay Area Current Events Law Enforcement Video Databases ]

Botto Bistro in Richmond California is encouraging its customers to leave 1 star Yelp reviews:

To achieve this end, Botto Bistro is encouraging all of its customers to leave one-star Yelp reviews; it is even offering deals for anyone who pens a crummy review: 25% off any pizza and a chance to win a cooking class. (Hat-tip to Richmond Standard.)

Says it's getting him better customers who spend more.

[ related topics: Weblogs Food History Space & Astronomy California Culture Aviation - Helicopters ]

Via Shadow: DIY Stainless Steel Acoustic Guitar.

[ related topics: Music Cool Science ]

Just as the map is not the terrain, consider carefully before you let the database be the data.

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping Databases ]

Shadow forward this cyclist close call auto accident video. The think about all the videos coming out of the Russian dash cam culture (although this is a fixed overhead surveillance type set-up) is that it makes even more clear how loopy our dependence on automobiles for mobility is.

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett Movies Sociology California Culture Automobiles Video ]

Dayumn: Shadow forwards along this half-log table. There's a whole bunch of "How TF did they keep that straight" and "what does the under-side look like" hidden in that picture... http://imgur.com/6zyjBYp

[ related topics: Furniture ]

Worth reading on a lot of fronts. Via Mary Anne Mohanraj: Why Am I Brown? South Asian Fiction and Pandering to Western Audiences by Jabeen Akhtar, on how stereotypes are promulgated by publishing mechanisms:

In fact, South Asian diaspora novels expose little about the flesh-and-blood people they are trying to portray and everything about the hypocrisy of the publishing enterprise: South Asian authors characterizing immigrant life with clichés and co-opting third-world problems for insta-tragedies; White Guilt readers who feel that they are doing something about third-world problems by proxy just by reading novels about them; and the Western publishing elite who think they’re multi-culti because they make their own hummus and wear earrings from World Market when they are, in reality, only comfortable seeing foreigners behave within the confines of their stereotypes.

[ related topics: Erotic Writing Race Economics ]

No wonder you can't turn eucalyptus into lumber without steaming it straight...

[ related topics: Photography Gambling Woodworking ]

Not a very diverse one...

[ related topics: Photography Gambling ]

Pondering how giving your demographic data to marketers (aka signing online petitions) so they can spam you has become "taking action".

[ related topics: Spam Monty Python Marketing ]

That thing where you have to reset a password on a site to what Mozilla has saved for that site. Online identity sucks.

[ related topics: Open Source ]

Charlene just finished her CERT class, I took mine back in May of 2010, and should probably re-up. Here's why Petaluma no longer sponsors the class: http://www.petaluma360.com/hom...-181/disaster-prep-canceled-city

OH: "No matter how long I work with Cisco, I still have trouble typing "oh shut", and not ..."

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Once again, regretting using the CPAN module rather than rolling my own by forking curl...

[ related topics: Perl ]

It is amazing how often "View->Page Style->No Style" results in a more readable and usable web experience.

RT Chris Bruntlett ‏@modacitylife:

If you have to teach kids behaviour and clothing for "safe walking”, you’ve built a city for automobiles, not people. http://www.portmoody.ca/index.aspx?page=1095

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Bay Area Automobiles Clothing ]

Tourism to Switzerland for assisted suicide is growing, often for nonfatal diseases:

One reason that people with non-terminal conditions might be traveling to Switzerland to die could be that people with late-stage diseases are less mobile, according to Michael Charouneau of the British group Dignity in Dying. “We know that many of those who travel do so earlier than they would wish, whilst they are still physically well enough to make the journey,” he said.

[ related topics: Health ]

Making sprite based games in JavaScript with Canvas.

[ related topics: Games ]

Have been letting Google deal with my email, but am increasingly feeling like I should take that back from them. Mail In A Box:

Mail-in-a-Box turns a fresh Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64-bit machine into a working mail server, including SMTP (postfix), IMAP (dovecot), Exchange ActiveSync (z-push), webmail (Roundcube), spam filtering (spamassassin), greylisting (postgrey), CardDAV/CalDAV (ownCloud), DNS, SPF, DKIM (OpenDKIM), DMARC, DNSSEC, DANE TLSA, SSHFP, and basic system services like a firewall, intrusion protection, and setting the system clock.

[ related topics: Free Software Spam Open Source Bay Area Work, productivity and environment Monty Python ]

Need to fix my social media poster... editing this post to delete extraneous duplication.

That company name sounds like a 1990s Folsom Street establishment...

[ related topics: Photography ]

OH: "I mean, the tip and the ring are touching..." <-- If I didn't know this was about telecom, I'd be slightly aroused.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama tolkien ]

Can you imagine what the web would be like if we'd put all that energy into making usable informative web sites rather than Google ranking?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

The Indie Web is the new zines. There was a big kerfluffle recently over the lack of diversity in the IndieWebCamp community, hoping we can welcome Anomalily in as our ambassador to broaden the reach of that movement.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Community ]

If Ebola continues on this exponential curve, in 15 weeks it could be killing as many people as cars do. http://www.commutebybike.com/2...ebola-and-its-rival-killer-cars/

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Tried to add http://microformats.org/ markup to Flutterby stuff. Tell me if anything looks more egregiously wrong than normal.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Been exploring new flavors. Need to try this Thai three-flavor sauce, via this Ask MeFi question on tamarind paste.

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

On Facebook, a friend asked if the rush to http://ello.co was an antipathy towards the existing social media. I responded:

I don't think it's simply antipathy: A friend of mine reported that his daughter said "Facebook is for people I know and don't like, Tumblr is for people I like but don't know". What drove many of us to BBSes, and then to the Internet, and then to blogs, and then to whatever's next is a drive to improve the quality of our social contacts. I got my Ello invite from an exclusive IRC channel where we've been talking about how to increase the number of quality participants, without some of the down sides of IRC.

Social spaces have entropy, and they stagnate. Many of us are constantly looking around for new ideas, new voices, new experiences, and even though deep nerds like me look to the new walled silo and cynically think "well, that socially liberal TOS will last until the next funding round", we also have this glimmer of hope that this time will be different. Or that in the months or years that this particular space shines, we'll get some of those endorphin experiences.

I still hope that we'll be able to pull the conversation around to something more like blogs: self-controlled, personal, and all that. But most people don't get the why (heck, some of the early bloggers whom I respect don't care about some of those issues of autonomy and control when weighed against low readership), so we keep latching on to this rising star or that one, hoping that this time someone will figure out how to give us something for free without selling us out.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Space & Astronomy Journalism and Media Net Culture Archival Aviation - Helicopters ]

RT Kevin Marks ‏@kevinmarks:

Before worrying about your business model, get your pleasure model straight

Because some things don't warrant the cachet of the "Chicago Electric" or "Central Machinery" brand

[ related topics: Photography Privacy Machinery ]

So we're clear: suffix -gate for actually treasonous activities, -ghazi for manufactured media firestorms with no basis in fact.

[ related topics: Journalism and Media ]

Managing a Nightmare: The CIA Reveals How It Watched Over the Destruction of Gary Webb. Webb wrote the 1996 Dark Alliance: The Story Behind the Crack Explosion, the exposé for the San Jose Mercury News about the Nicaraguan Contras and cocaine trafficking, and the possible CIA involvement, which echoed the 1989 Senate subcommittee report which found such things, and was driven to suicide by the response and scrutiny over that report.

The CIA watched these developments closely, collaborating where it could with outlets who wanted to challenge Webb’s reporting. Media inquiries had started almost immediately following the publication of “Dark Alliance,” and Dujmovic in “Managing a Nightmare” cites the CIA’s success in discouraging “one major news affiliate” from covering the story. He also boasts that the agency effectively departed from its own longstanding policies in order to discredit the series. “For example, in order to help a journalist working on a story that would undermine the Mercury News allegations, Public Affairs was able to deny any affiliation of a particular individual — which is a rare exception to the general policy that CIA does not comment on any individual’s alleged CIA ties.”

[ related topics: Drugs Politics Health Movies Bay Area Astronomy Current Events Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment ]

RT Elf Sternberg ‏@elfsternberg:

"As a salesperson, I want a developer to make a miracle happen, so that I'll make a shitload on commission." Every #agile story ever.

[ related topics: tolkien ]

Paul Palubicki ‏@paplikaplik:

Apple and Google must be doing something right if the FBI is upset that it can't easily spy on citizens.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Interactive Drama Law Enforcement ]

From Shadow: a build log of a wood LED clock that puts the LED segments behind a veneer face. Kinda cool. We currently use a projecting clock in our bedroom, mostly because that was the one lit clock we could find that sets itself using the USNO or whatever broadcast, but this might be a nice way to fit into the decor we hope to build in there.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

In the "Microformats" vs RSS/Atom debate, I'd point out that the latter let you more easily do away with people's gawdawful design notions.

[ related topics: Content Management Graphic Design ]

I'm a Samsung Galaxy S4 user myself, but some of y'all might have gone with the iPhone 6 and need such a tool:

[ related topics: Photography Archival iPhone ]

This is fascinating: Solving the Silk Road captcha mechanism https://github.com/mieko/sr-captcha/blob/gh-pages/index.md

With Ruby code.

[ related topics: Fashion ]

Scott Rosenberg on Ello: "Remove blindfold before embarking for utopia" http://www.wordyard.com/2014/0...fold-before-embarking-to-utopia/

RT Andy Baio ‏@waxpancake

LiveJournal’s Social Contract promised they’d be ad-free forever. http://web.archive.org/web/200...ivejournal.com/site/contract.bml … They started running ads a year after acquisition.

Re that Ello.co thing.

[ related topics: Sports ]

If you don't listen to the This American Life episode on the secret recordings Carmen Segarra made of the Federal Reserve not regulating Goldman Sachs, at least read the transcript and Pro Publica: Inside the New York Fed: Secret Recordings and a Culture Clash.

Also: Michael Lewis writes about it in Bloomberg View.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Sociology California Culture New York Archival ]

Aaaand the spam chicks have already shown up on Ello.

[ related topics: Spam Monty Python ]

Since all the social networks notify us by email anyway, why don't we be revolutionary and go back to email mailing lists?

So BayAreaFastrak.org let me put in an 8 digit license plate number, and my transponder didn't work, and has the worlds slowest web site.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Apparently BayAreaFastrak.org is running on a 386/33 on the far end of a dial-up line. I've used acoustic couplers faster than this.

[ related topics: Sports ]

In September...

[ related topics: Photography ]

RT Christopher Soghoian ‏@csoghoian:

The Michigan Supreme Court, 1922: Cars are tools for robbery, rape, murder, enabling silent approach + swift escape.

The accompanying picture is this text.

The automobile is a swift and powerful vehicle of recent development which has multiplied by quantitiy production and taken posession of our highways in battalions, until the slower, anmal-drawn ehicles, with their easily noted individuality, are rare. Constructed as covered vehicles to standard form in immense quantities, with a capacity for speed rivaling express trains, they furnish for successful commission of crime a disguising means of silent approach and swift escape unknown in the history of the world before their advent. The question of their police control and reasonable search on highways or other public places is a serious question .... The baffling extent to which they are successfully utilized to facilitate commission of crime of all degrees, from those against morality, chastitiy, and decency to robbery, rape, burglary, and murder, is a matter of common knowledge. Upon that problem a condition and not a theory confronts proper administration of or criminal laws.

I think this ties nicely into the "OMG, encrypted communications are for pedophiles" current law enforcement pearl clutching.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Theater & Plays Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement Automobiles Machinery Cryptography Trains Government ]

Imgur: I shot my stalker tonight.. Powerful. Context (linked in that) at http://www.reddit.com/r/self/c...cess_with_private_investigators/

RT Avocado ‏@RealAvocadoFact:

Something as scientifically sound as polygraph testing is asking a nearby avocado or pen whether someone is lying, then guessing the answer.

[ related topics: California Culture ]

If you've seen mention of this new "Khorason" terrorist group, First Look's run-down of the timeline of the creation of this current imaginary threat by the administration is fascinating

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design ]

And a very special FU to the TV van that just cut off our bus and caused some really heavy emergency braking.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Television Public Transportation ]

Things you don't want to see a on a MUP...

[ related topics: Photography ]

RT John B ‏@johnb78:

I'll forgive Zuckerberg a lot for this piece of algorithmic matching excellence.

[ related topics: Photography Pyrotechnics Archival ]

Back in college I wrote a bunch of particle simulation stuff that ran on a 4.77 MHz PC XT, working with a professor who was implementing many of the same ideas on 1 MHz 6502 Apple hardware. So when I had 768 massless particles moving at interactive speeds I was pretty pleased with myself, but every time I tried to scale that to gravity simulation... well... that stuff was hard.

So this: This is awesome: http://www.nowykurier.com/toys/gravity/gravity.html

[ related topics: Apple Computer Work, productivity and environment Education ]

• Cops Seize Car When Told To Get A Warrant, Tell Owner That's What He Gets For 'Exercising His Rights'. The police officer's dash cam mic picked up some of the exchange, but, go figure, his lapel mic wasn't working.
• Pennsylvania police sued for storming house and arresting a woman who was using a cell phone to record them arresting her daughter outside the house.

[ related topics: Cameron Barrett Wireless Privacy Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement Civil Liberties Automobiles Video Real Estate ]

My Boyfriend Takes Pictures of Naked Women—A Practice in Self-Acceptance. {Adult}

We are all here with a clearly outlined list of lessons to learn, fears to overcome and conditioning to release. I would have never known that opening up to my partner’s world of curves, lines, light and shadow would actually be a path to my own freedom had I not made the conscious choice to sit with my fear, day in and day out – gently holding it with love instead of judgment. It is a tough job being a muse, but ya know… someones got to do it.

[ related topics: Photography Privacy Nudity Heinlein Civil Liberties Government ]

Holy crap: Ferguson Missouri police are kidnapping people and bargaining their release based on crowd behavior. Seriously not okay.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

"We are not paid to use every feature of the language. We are paid to write programs that work well and are error free." Douglas Crockford

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Lessons from a 'Local Food' scam artist:

So, when my boss's son put up the “local bananas” sign, I let it alone. A few foodies laughed. A few questioned me accusingly: How could the bananas be local? “Greenhouses,” I said one day. “Miles and miles of greenhouses. In Andover Township.” The word “township” got them; it was so quaint.

But read down, it gets beyond the cold cynicism.

[ related topics: Food moron Art & Culture ]

Remittance Girl: Ask Better Questions. Some musings on women, erotica and erotic content, sex in the culture... a quick easy read.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Sociology California Culture ]

New Haven's drop in gun violence builds over 3 years:

“The New Haven Police Department had fallen back as an organization which was reactive and 9-1-1 driven,” he said.

Furthermore, as the department moved away from community policing, a gap seemed to develop.

“The department had isolated itself from the community,” Esserman said.

Build a police department that interacts with the community rather than imposing upon it, and good things happen. Who knew?

[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events Law Enforcement Community Guns ]

ACLU: New Documents Shed Light on One of the NSA's Most Powerful Tools:

The documents make it clearer than ever that the government's vast surveillance apparatus is collecting information — including from Americans — about much more than just terrorist threats. The government generally defends its sweeping surveillance authorities by pointing to the threat of terrorism. But the truth is that its surveillance powers bear little relationship to that narrow goal. They reach far more broadly, allowing the government to monitor any international communication that contains "foreign intelligence information." That phrase is defined so nebulously that it could be read to encompass virtually every communication with one end outside the United States.

Thank you, Ronald Reagan, signer of Executive Order 12333. Sigh.

[ related topics: Weblogs Invention and Design moron ]

Spying On Celebrities: NYC Taxi Metadata Exposes Celeb Locations And Strip Club Clients

Then, to illustrate the individualized surveillance power of the seemingly anonymous data, Anthony Tockar of Neustar Research cross-referenced the information with publicly available photos of the celebrities getting into cabs with identifiable license plates. That allowed Tockar to declare that Cooper's "cab took him to Greenwich Village, possibly to have dinner at Melibea, and that he paid $10.50, with no recorded tip." He also revealed that "Alba got into her taxi outside her hotel, the Trump SoHo, and somewhat surprisingly also did not add a tip to her $9 fare." (If Cooper or Alba tipped with cash, that might not show up on the records.)

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Sexual Culture Travel Mark Morford ]

Yes Means Yes: California’s Affirmative Consent Law: Beyond The Bullshit

[ related topics: California Culture ]