Flutterby™! From 2014-10-01 to 2014-10-31

Rooting lemongrass from the produce section to grow in a barrel in the back yard

[ related topics: Photography ]

Another coat on door thresholds

[ related topics: Photography ]

They even call out YellowPagesOptOut.com on the cover, and ignore it

[ related topics: Photography ]

ComputerCOP: The Dubious 'Internet Safety Software' That Hundreds of Police Agencies Have Distributed to Families:

The way ComputerCOP works is neither safe nor secure. It isn’t particularly effective either, except for generating positive PR for the law enforcement agencies distributing it. As security software goes, we observed a product with a keystroke-capturing function, also called a “keylogger,” that could place a family’s personal information at extreme risk by transmitting what a user types over the Internet to third-party servers without encryption. That means many versions of ComputerCOP leave children (and their parents, guests, friends, and anyone using the affected computer) exposed to the same predators, identity thieves, and bullies that police claim the software protects against.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Free Speech Bay Area Software Engineering Sociology Law Enforcement Mathematics Net Culture Cryptography ]

Conversation yesterday about how the Palm Pilot calendar was way more useful than the ones on modern smart phones. #nostalgia

Bought a new soldering station for some projects, and to fix some things around the house including our main TV set. Bought a high-end hobbiest system, X-Tronic 5040-XTS, complete with a warming table and a jig to hold the unit for SMD (Surface Mount) component soldering. 25+ years ago, I was one of the best electronics technicians in town, and I've let those skills slide (implode?). Time to get back on that horse. Makes me wonder how long it will take to catch back up from vacuum tubes and 741 op-amp days. I've been doing the LED lights and other projects with a $20 cheap 15 watt iron...As I glean the apropos tools from the various corners of the "shop", it looks like all I am missing is a good modern O-Scope/Logic analyzer. My old 100mhz Tektronix no longer wants to play.

[ related topics: Photography Technology and Culture Invention and Design Television Fashion Archival Real Estate Furniture ]

Recently referred to the "MySpace-> Twitter-> Facebook-> Tumblr migration", then realized I missed Orkut, and Tribe, and Friendster, and...

[ related topics: Sociology Social Software ]

Floor needs sweeping, but there's the first threshold in

[ related topics: Photography ]

And the second threshold

[ related topics: Photography ]

Are our anti littering and anti pollution laws really so toothless that we don't have a way to go after the distributors of yellow pages?

[ related topics: Government ]

Forbes: Minnesota Now Requires A Criminal Conviction Before People Can Lose Their Property To Forfeiture. That's a good start.

With the proliferation of $1/MO relatively small VMs, wonder if the personal blog space needs a lightweight C++ application server...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Space & Astronomy ]

Tumblr summarizes Greek mythology:

"I will have sex with that beautiful woman by disguising myself as a swan! Human women fuck swans all the time right?"

Scene from a marriage looks at the relationship of Hera and Zeus:

You've been cockblocked by Zeus, stupid boy, she says. Let's make out.

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Really? <span style="font-style: italic;">? I weep for humanity.

[ related topics: Typography Graphic Design ]

Louisiana parish claims incarcerated 14-year-old consented to be raped by a corrections officer: "These girls in the detention center are not Little Miss Muffin," remarked one official.

Meanwhile, also in Louisiana, two female high school teachers have been arrested on accusations they had a threesome with a male student.

I guess if you're a 14 year old girl in jail you had it coming, and if you're a 16 year old boy you're a victim of those evil evil women.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Law Enforcement Salon magazine ]

Woman Spends A Month In Jail After Cops Mistake SpaghettiOs For Meth:

Even though Huff knew she was innocent, during the weeks she sat in jail she was strongly considering taking a plea deal — and a permanent criminal record — just so she could get out, Van Rossem told HuffPost.

“You just get worn out, your spirit gets worn down,” the attorney said. “You reach a point where you’ll do anything just to get out of jail.”

[ related topics: Drugs Law Law Enforcement ]

RT Brad obese Taft ‏@bradtaft:

On the @google campus on my bike this AM. Driverless car next to me slows down, driver intervenes and speeds back up.

RT Mike4StP ‏@mikesonn

@bradtaft lulz!!! Welcome to the future

RT Brad obese Taft ‏@bradtaft:

@mikesonn i was like wow, "the bike lane ends, and this driverless car recognized it" then it speeds up to pass me and, hand on the wheel

Mike4StP ‏@mikesonn:

.@bradtaft Drivers won't stand for a car that driver responsibility. Driverless is a joke if driver can override it.

Brad obese Taft :

@mikesonn just before a crash, driver throws hands up, moves feet. "it was in driverless mode, I don't know what happened"

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Automobiles Bicycling Rocky Horror Picture Show ]

Quinn Norton: The morality of John Rabe. Some interesting thinking on good and bad and cultural relativity, with help from a Nazi and some Jewish history.

[ related topics: Sociology ]

OH, re software development: "i should have gone into plumbing & electrical. worked harder on my drywall skills." #QFT

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Stores with loyalty programs have higher prices. Privacy is a liability that consumers will pay more to be rid of.

[ related topics: Privacy Consumerism and advertising ]

The thing about that Danny Macaskill video is all those helicopter shots, but he hikes up the hills. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ_IQS3VKjA

[ related topics: Movies Video Aviation - Helicopters ]

Well. So. Apparently stuffing database dumps in a git repo isn't a good idea. Might be time to go back to manual diff & versioning.

[ related topics: Databases ]

Spam subject: "Oprah exposed at last". That's some pretty niche porn people are looking for...

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Spam Monty Python ]

He's black, so he looks exactly like a suspect. Sandusky Ohio police way the fuck out of control.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays Law Enforcement Video ]

Chuck Marohn in The American Conservative: Indiana’s Toll Road Goes Bankrupt:

The ITR bankruptcy should teach us, first and foremost, that building more roads is really stupid. While the government it not compelled to maximize profit, when it comes to building and maintaining public infrastructure its revenues must be equal to or greater than its expenses (the latter condition is known, in accounting terms, as “profit”). If the government doesn’t collect enough money through taxes and fees to build and maintain public infrastructure, it falls apart, altruistic motives or not.

Maybe privatizing some of these really dumb decisions is a good idea after all...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Nature and environment moron Currency Handicaps & Disabilities Government hubris ]

Whoah: Not only is the WiFi in that overpriced hotel sucky and an additional cost, Marriott was jamming customer's attempts to use their own mobile WiFi hotspots.

[ related topics: Current Events Travel ]

I'm looking for new, interesting and different lunches: Serious Eats: DIY instant noode cups.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Food ]

Ello is so over. http://owdy.co/ is the future.

... Go ahead and request an invite, and we'll make sure to send you one just as soon as Robert Scoble's made you feel as though your life won't be complete without one - but well after all of your friends get theirs. ...

So this Tweet from STOP THINK CONNECT ‏@STOPTHNKCONNECT popped up in my timeline

As we kickoff #ncsam, tell us how you keep your family safe online. Visit http://dhs.gov/cyber for more information

Ack. Of course it takes 4 clicks or so to get to the real solid fear-mongering, but this is entirely "help, the populace isn't clamoring to fund DHS as much as we'd like!"

[ related topics: Bay Area Sociology ]

At Sebastiani Theatre in Sonoma for a Snow Leopard Conservancy event

[ related topics: Photography Theater & Plays ]

OH: "...the whole state of Florida has no [services]. Are they running .Net?"

[ related topics: Sports ]

Ha ha I live here and you don't

[ related topics: Photography Theater & Plays ]

You may demolish the girdered platforms, but you'll not take our climbing opportunities

[ related topics: Photography ]

[ related topics: Photography ]

Greg at Oregon Burls posted a Facebook "person to guess closest to the weight of this burl gets a couple of pen blanks" entry. So I assumed a spherical lump of uniform density, did a little ¾πr³ action, and nailed it. But I don't have a lathe, nor did I invest in the fancy long drill bit, so this is a jig to rotate the block on the milling machine, some sanding, and the guts from a mechanical pencil. Got a few measurements hilariously wrong, but I think I kind of like it overall...

[ related topics: Photography Woodworking ]

Woman, 90, locked officer in basement, settles with police: Baltimore woman receives $95,000 settlement

Cop forced his way in without a warrant, commenced a search, she locked him in the basement.

[ related topics: Privacy Law Enforcement ]

Upon hearing my cackle of triumph: "Have you ever considered being a supervillain, Dan?"

What does a board do when it's out of ideas? HP officially confirms it will split up.

Again.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Lab grown penises are ready for testing. Truly, this is the utopian future we were promised.

Appears to be the press release rewrite of Laboratory-Grown Replacement of Penile Erectile Tissue In Animals Suggests Potential to Benefit Patients.

"Could you please reply to this email to confirm that you did not receive it?" But I did receive it. #yellowpageslittering

Sense City, on how cities have become data sources, and some of the possible unintended consequences of this.

Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal: OUR OPINION: Tagert’s highway finance views address hard reality:

Tagert, who met with the Daily Journal’s editorial board Friday after his candid luncheon speech at Tupelo’s Kiwanis Club, wasted no time in getting down to the business of saying that more revenue is necessary to repair and make safe about 700 state bridges, plus assuring the endurance of new highways with timely, quality maintenance.

"I can't afford the Internet subscription for my XBox, I need money to get more games so I can really use that subscription."

Or whatever other "we need to shovel good money after bad" and "double down on the double zeroes, this wheel has to pay off eventually" metaphor for bad investments you'd like to insert...

[ related topics: Games Invention and Design Bay Area Heinlein Net Culture Currency ]

Former Vice Media editor says company killed stories over ‘brand partner’ concerns

[ related topics: Journalism and Media ]

OH: "Complete sentences are everybody's friend."

DEA agent takes data on seized cell phone to set up phony Facebook account:

In a court filing, a U.S. attorney acknowledges that, unbeknownst to Arquiett, Sinnigen created the fake Facebook account, posed as her, posted photos, sent a friend request to a fugitive, accepted other friend requests, and used the account “for a legitimate law enforcement purpose.”

That filing says:

In response to Paragraph 11 of the Complaint, Defendants admit that Plaintiff did not give express permission for the creation of the Facebook page, but state the Plaintiff implicitly consented by granting access to the information stored in her cell phone and by consenting to the use of that information to aid in an ongoing criminal investigations.

Sooooo... when you consent to a search (which you should never ever ever ever do), the DEA is saying that you've then consented to being impersonated

[ related topics: Wireless Photography moron Law Law Enforcement ]

RT Steve Silberman ‏@stevesilberman:

Well, this worked out well. [NYT 1924, via @JewishStandard]

[ related topics: Photography Archival ]

Slate: Smart People Prefer Curly Fries, and other insights gleaned from analyzing your social media accounts. Basically press release churnalism about two projects from the Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge, You Are What You Like.com and Apply Magic Sauce.com.

The former says I don't like enough things to make a prediction, the latter thinks I'm a 27 year old single woman.

[ related topics: Journalism and Media Education Clowns ]

Elf Sternberg @elfsternberg:

OH: "It's not quite a love triangle, but it's more than a V. It's more like a love lambda. #λ"

[ related topics: tolkien ]

Adobe spying on users, collecting data on their ebook libraries:

And just to be clear, this includes not just ebooks I opened in DE4, but also ebooks I store in calibre and every Epub ebook I happen to have sitting on my hard disk.

And then sending that data back to Adobe's servers in plain text.

Part of why I am no longer a libertarian of the Ayn Rand ilk is that at some point I realized that an economic system which allowed for the concentration of capital was indistinguishable from monarchy.

Daily Kos looks at Tom Monaghan's town, Ave Maria, Florida, and how deed restrictions and the like are put in place to maintain control, including no contraception sold in the town, restrictions on magazine and bookstore content, and the like.

Sarasota's Herald Tribune: New Fla. town aims to ban contraceptives: Pizza mogul paying to build Ave Maria and a university says Catholic principles will rule.

Gov. Jeb Bush, at the university's recent groundbreaking, lauded the development as a new kind of town, where faith and freedom will merge to create a community of like-minded citizens. Bush, a convert to Catholicism, did not speak specifically to the proposed restrictions.

[ related topics: Religion Politics Objectivism Libertarian Privacy Invention and Design Current Events Civil Liberties Community Education Economics Government ]

When I lived in Chattanooga it was kind of accepted that if you grew okra, you'd have the cops come by and ask to look around your garden occasionally. Never turned into a raid... Washington Post: Heavily armed drug cops raid retiree’s garden, seize okra plants: Georgia police declare war on okra.

The Cannabis Eradication programs have historically inflated the size of their hauls by including non-psychoactive "ditchweed" in their totals of plants seized. In past years, ditchweed accounted for up to 98 percent of seized outdoor plant totals. According to the ONDCP, ditchweed still makes up an unspecified percent of outdoor plants seized.

[ related topics: Drugs Interactive Drama Health History Current Events Law Enforcement Chattanooga Gardening ]

Form asking if I have a "blended family". No, I prefer mine on the rocks. With some salt on the rim.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sociology ]

Worth reading: "JWZ: Youtube's joke of a fair-use appeal process" http://www.jwz.org/blog/2014/1...ke-of-a-fair-use-appeal-process/

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Police pepper spray black teen inside his white foster family home after he's mistaken for burglar.

I actually suspect some police action that occurred once near us was a similar misidentification.

[ related topics: Food Sociology Law Enforcement Pop Culture Race ]

Foxhall police encounter caught on video and the interaction is fascinating:

Westby then grabs Stucky by the hand, helps him up and makes the decision to leave the scene with him, on their own. In light of the high profile incidents of police brutality recently, it’s a stunning exercise of rights that goes almost completely unchecked by the officers. As they leave, the officer says: “Ma’am. Stop.”

“She doesn’t have the authority to stop him,” Westby replies, “I’m an attorney and this is wrong. Now please leave our neighborhood.”

[ related topics: Law Law Enforcement Civil Liberties Video ]

RT ‏@dontsave:

reminder to have a midlife crisis every day because u never know when the exact middle of your life is

Families of inmates at Mississippi's Wilkinson County Correctional Facility are paying "protection money" to keep their relatives behind bars safe.

Brenda Moreno, whose son, Clifton Majors, was murdered behind bars last year, said she paid $200 to a correctional officer, who telephoned her and promised to keep her son safe at the State Penitentiary at Parchman.

She quit paying after learning the officer was collecting money from multiple families, she said.

[ related topics: Bay Area Current Events Currency Education ]

Traffic circle experiment draws mixed reviews / Some S.F. motorists confused by devices:

"Having something in the middle of the road makes people more cautious. They slow down instead of just flying through," Wingart said. "People roll through stop signs. It got to where it was so bad in this neighborhood that it was too dangerous to cross the street where there wasn't a traffic light."

Yep. Stop signs are counter-productive. Confused disoriented drivers is a good thing, because it makes them pay attention.

[ related topics: Photography Aviation Bay Area Work, productivity and environment ]

Must read: Glen L. Carle in the Boston Globe: Torture is Wrong:

I had direct experience in every aspect of interrogation and intelligence in the so-called “war on terror.” From producing intelligence through interrogation to assessing it to seeing policies made from it, I was there. Let me be clear about what I learned: Torture undermines all sound principles of good interrogation, intelligence collection, and assessment. It does not work, it is unnecessary, it is illegal, it betrays our ideals and our nation’s laws. There is no practical, legal, moral, or utilitarian argument in favor of torture. We don’t need it, and it betrays who we seek to be. No fine-tuning of the law is necessary to justify it — ever.

[ related topics: Ethics History Law Work, productivity and environment Government ]

Book review of Rethinking Autism: Variation and Complexity. Looks like it might be worth reading:

Dr. Waterhouse goes beyond “the autisms” and argues that autism is not a disorder, or set of disorders. Rather, it’s a trait which may be produced by many different underlying conditions. Calling these conditions “autisms” would be like saying “flu is one of the fevers,” or referring to all fever-causing conditions as “the fevers.” In her words,

I suspect that the review doesn't really do the argument justice, if only because my impression is that we've already started breaking down autism into 5 different sub-groups based on expressed symptoms, but given that autistic behavior is a symptom not yet traced to any particular underlying causes, we clearly need different ways to categorize and view it.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books Law Enforcement ]

‘A Diamond is Forever’ and Other Fairy Tales: The Relationship between Wedding Expenses and Marriage Duration, Andrew M. Francis and Hugo M. Mialon, both of the Emory University - Department of Economics:

Abstract: In this paper, we evaluate the association between wedding spending and marriage duration using data from a survey of over 3,000 ever-married persons in the United States. Controlling for a number of demographic and relationship characteristics, we find evidence that marriage duration is inversely associated with spending on the engagement ring and wedding ceremony.

Via HuffPo, which notes:

Interestingly, spending $1,000 or less on the wedding decreased the chances of divorce, but spending too little on an engagement ring backfired; those who spent less than $500 experienced higher rates of divorce.

[ related topics: tolkien Sociology Marketing Education Economics Marriage ]

Annals of Internal Medicine: Ebola Fever: Reconciling Ebola Planning With Ebola Risk in U.S. Hospitals

Exceeding these recommendations may paradoxically increase risk. Introducing new and unfamiliar forms of personal protective equipment could lead to self-contamination during removal of such gear. Requiring HazMat suits and respirators will probably decrease the frequency of provider–patient contacts, inhibit providers' ability to examine patients, and curtail the use of diagnostic tests. Patients without Ebola may also inadvertently be harmed because Ebola precautions will be required for all suspected cases even though malaria and other infections are more likely in patients from West Africa presenting with fever. Using extra gear inflates patients' and caregivers' anxiety levels, increases costs, and wastes valuable resources. More insidiously, requiring precautions that exceed the CDC's recommendations fans a culture of mistrust and cynicism about our nation's public health agency.

[ related topics: Health Invention and Design Sociology California Culture ]

I think this is optimistic, but it's a fascinating read: Think Progress: This Is The Way The War On Pornography Ends.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture History Law Enforcement ]

RT Ted Rheingold ‏@tedr:

Lolz. Someone connected Burning Man's K Street "Billionaire's Row" and camps that failed garbage cleanup. Whoops.

[ related topics: Burning Man Photography Maps and Mapping Archival ]

This is awesome: Spontaneous Discharge of a Firearm in an MR Imaging Environment:

The officer notified the technologist that he was carrying the weapon before entering the MR dressing room. The technologist told the officer to take the gun with him. The technologist intended to meet the officer in the MR patient waiting area before the examination and secure the weapon in that room, where he felt it would be safe. However, the officer apparently misunderstood and took the gun into the MR suite. The technologist was entering the officer's personal data into the computer and did not see him entering the MR suite.

Anyone who's worked with MRI machines knows what happened next...

[ related topics: Nature and environment Bay Area Guns ]

Dear things of unspecified type and origin following me on Twitter: I'd much rather engage with people than brands. Just sayin'.

Baker Hughes pays 6th of the Komen Foundation CEO's salary. Irony of pink ribbon on Alhambra Water truck not lost http://public.bakerhughes.com/pink/

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Machinery ]

Subaru commercial had me until they put a "Woodstock, NY" sign on very obviously Sonoma County. #SMH https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LwCLHwBHjM

[ related topics: Movies ]

NY Times: Video of police officer accused of stealing more than $1000 prompts investigation. Most shocking to me: The NYPD hasn't said "oh, yeah, here's the carbon copy of the receipt". Right there seems like strong evidence of wrongdoing.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Video ]

RT ‏@mcclure111:

We dreamed of cyber punk but instead we got what turned out to be sort of cyber smooth jazz

Storytelling is about showing the emotion through circumstance. Personal communication is about separating the emotion from the circumstance

Pornhub briefly erects huge billboard in Times Square after a long search for a great non-pornographic ad. I thought the "all you need is hand" slogan was interesting in the social handwringing about how virtual experiences are upending Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

similar article in The Guardian.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Satanic panic: how British agents stoked supernatural fears in Troubles.

“It was quite clear that the church, both the Roman Catholic church and the Protestant church, even for the paramilitaries, held a fair degree of influence,” Wallace said. “So we were looking for something that would be regarded with abhorrence really by the two communities, and at the same time would be something that paramilitaries couldn’t justify, and also would be in many ways seen as a reason why some of the outrages were taking place.

Something something opiate of the masses...

[ related topics: Religion Current Events Community Douglas Adams ]

Most misleading domain name ever: http://topdaddies.com/

Honouring & Recognizing Great Dads

This is weirder than lumbermansexchange.com or powergenitalia.com

Thinking that "101x Santa Rosa to Petaluma" might not be the right name for a north bound bus...

[ related topics: Public Transportation ]

Uh oh, bikes are lining up for the not yet here 48x and 48. And have I whined about eye watering tobacco smoke at bus stops lately?

[ related topics: Bicycling Public Transportation ]

"Ally" suggests we both face the same risks and consequences for failure. Used with gender equality, it's a weasel word.

[ related topics: Political Correctness ]

RT [redacted]: My boss is not biting on my recommendation that we all celebrate Mental Health Day by shutting the office and going home.

[ related topics: Health ]

Okay, so you've probably seen the 3d printed paper airplane machine gun (YouTube) (with disappointingly slow rate of fire, probably because feeding paper is hard). So I'm linking it here because of MeFi user BlueDuke's response to user blue t-shirt:

3 months till these are being used for advertising

"Say 'hello' to my little trend!"

[ related topics: Movies Aviation Consumerism and advertising Graphics Pyrotechnics Guns Clothing ]

RT Jeff Wysaski @pleatedjeans:

Any wedding can be a fairy tale wedding if you serve porridge and release three angry bears into the reception hall

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Marriage ]

Aaand the home server's root filesystem (with relatively new drive) has gone read-only and won't reboot remotely. Grrr...

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

RT Jeffrey Veen (@veen)

Pretty sure when my kids are teens, they will think driving is "something old people do." Sort of like talking on the phone is today.

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

It's time to acknowledge the huge negative impacts of cube farms, and commit to only eating wild-caught cubes.

RT Matt Haughey ‏@mathowie:

Right now is the Eternal September for pot smoking

I remember scoffing when I preferred processes to threads, now the preference is VMs over processes.

Education is full of the right answer vs the one the teacher wanted to hear, but the test publishers? http://www.washingtonpost.com/...-in-the-high-stakes-testing-era/

[ related topics: Children and growing up Education ]

Voted

[ related topics: Photography ]

The temporary lower assessments on property taxes seem to have disappeared just when the city wants a sales tax increase. #ouch

[ related topics: Politics Government ]

That's why the bike hasn't been shifting well...

[ related topics: Photography Bicycling ]

dinner coming together

[ related topics: Photography ]

When I rule the universe, all fatal error messages will list the invalid data, and the criteria for valid data. #distzilla #perl

[ related topics: Perl Open Source hubris ]

Chattanooga had it's first Maker Faire, and I'd say it was a heck of a 1st event. Robots, Arduino's 3d printers.. you know the stuff.

But the real fun was being part of a team that made a very Burning Man-esque "sculpture".. Click on the image to see video's and a couple more stills.

Best part of the build experience: Besides the people, playing with a top of the line welder is a lot of fun.

[ related topics: Burning Man Photography Robotics Graphics Chattanooga Video ]

Copenhagen's bicycle parking problem. Actually a great visualization: Can you imagine what facilities and roads would have to look like to attain equivalent mobility for automobile users?

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

Netscape Navigator turns 20.

Granted, and… ~ thoughts on education by Grant Wiggins: A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 students for 2 days – a sobering lesson learned

It was not just the sitting that was draining but that so much of the day was spent absorbing information but not often grappling with it.

I asked my tenth-grade host, Cindy, if she felt like she made important contributions to class or if, when she was absent, the class missed out on the benefit of her knowledge or contributions, and she laughed and said no.

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

OH: "But I don't live in the town that matches that zip code. The post office has it wrong."

[ related topics: Theater & Plays ]

Always bet on text:

At every step of communication technology, textual encoding comes first, everything else after. Because it's vastly cheaper on a symbol-by-symbol basis. You have a working optical telegraph network running in 1790 in France. You the better part of a century of electrical telegraphy, trans-oceanic cables and everything, before anyone bothers with trying to carry voice.

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

RT Violet Blue ® ‏@violetblue

So basically, under Abramson, when the US gov said to nuke a story / stop reporting on a topic, the NYT complied: http://www.mediabistro.com/fis...-risen-piece-for-nytimes_b133146 …

Dear @twitter: Rather than suggesting more people for me to follow, how about ways to trim my feed. ie: Keyword/sports/tv show filtering.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Television ]

RT Chris BLOODell ‏@superpixelchris:

"@bellamackie: Bravo Private Eye: " Nails it

"

[ related topics: Photography Archival ]

If the documents say a cluster of 64gb machines is the sweet spot, don't try to make it work on a single 4gb machine.

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

Roving Trigger Discipline Classes For Cosplayers — Now in Session:

But SF/F cos­tumes often include rep­re­sen­ta­tions of firearms, and cos­players often don’t know basic fire dis­ci­pline. They don’t know to keep their finger off the trigger. They don’t know not to scan people with their muzzle.

[ related topics: Weblogs Bay Area Pyrotechnics ]

I'd actually be a huge fan of automated traffic enforcement, if traffic enforcement wasn't perverted into a bullshit revenue generation thing: Chicago generated 77,000 additional red-light tickets by shortening yellow-light times, report says.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Current Events ]

Y'all know how fusion has been 10 years away for 50 years? Well, it's now 5 years away, but... http://news.yahoo.com/lockheed...-project-123840986--finance.html

...Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready in a decade.

It was 4 years away in February of last year, so apparently we're losing a year of delivery time every year and a half of elapsed time http://www.dvice.com/2013-2-22...promises-fusion-power-four-years ...

Via MeFi and Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Current Events Machinery Archival ]

RT Brennan Lee Mulligan ‏@BrennanLM: "Free Will is okay, but with Premium Will you get a sense of purpose and bonus self-control points every time you don't check Facebook." https://twitter.com/BrennanLM/status/522457211877228544

JWZ discovers Android computer ships with the same MAC address, meaning you have to jailbreak to use 2 of them. http://www.jwz.org/blog/2014/10/flyer-screens-2/

[ related topics: Weblogs Macintosh Machinery ]

Checked back on Ello. Saw largely links that made the rounds on Facebook 6 months ago.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

OH: "anacronym"

OH: "Using lines off code as a reference, you've worked negative three months." "yeah, but my diffs are huge!"

RT Mur Lafferty ‏@mightymur:

Wait- put aside the outrage of the child porn comments for one sec: John Grisham thinks prisons are "full" of 60 yr old white men... O_o

(re John Grisham: men who watch child porn are not all paedophiles)

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Movies Current Events Race ]

Revealed: how Whisper app tracks ‘anonymous’ users:

The practice of monitoring the whereabouts of Whisper users – including those who have expressly opted out of geolocation services – will alarm users, who are encouraged to disclose intimate details about their private and professional lives.

Whisper is also sharing information with the US Department of Defense gleaned from smartphones it knows are used from military bases, and developing a version of its app to conform with Chinese censorship laws.

Go read it. There's more. Don't trust 'em.

[ related topics: Free Speech Government ]

QOTD: MeFi user RogerB on Bill Gates' review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century:

"Guillotines Impractical, Divisively Partisan, Opines Illustrious Monarch"

[ related topics: Quotes Humor Books moron ]

Keep seeing tweets in my timeline, going to click on the RTer so I can turn off content-free RTs, and then realizing they're promoted.

OH: "...but it's just one fedora away from reality."

So apparently the way to make Perl's CGI module deal with UTF-8 correctly is to remove the "-utf8" from the module options.

[ related topics: Perl Open Source hubris ]

So is it reasonable to expect someone practicing as an engineer (any discipline) to have a working understanding of Fermi estimation?

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

In case any of y'all are watching this fall apart, I saw the original Kickstarter on the Chugalug mailing list, hints of these problems on Violet Blue's Twitter feed, but Reddit: Anonabox - Tor router box is false representation, possibly even scam! looks like a good run-down about how the whole story is falling apart.

[ related topics: Privacy moron Law Woodworking ]

Fuck kids on bicycles helmet laws: Bicyclist Sues San Francisco Police After Arrest For Carrying Infant Son In Baby Carrier.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Bay Area Law Enforcement California Culture Bicycling Government ]

Telegraph stories affected by EU 'right to be forgotten':

EU ruling demands Google removes links to content deemed 'inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant' following complaint from anyone named in it. Here we will maintain an up-to-date list of Telegraph content which has been removed from search results

The BBC is to publish a continually-updated list of articles removed from Google searches under the controversial "right to be forgotten" rule.

Mr Jordan said the BBC had so far been notified of 46 links to articles that had been removed.

They included a link to a blog post by Economics Editor Robert Peston. The request was believed to have been made by a person who had left a comment underneath the article.

[ related topics: Weblogs Current Events Monty Python Economics ]

imgur: Dear Huffington Post, this is why we laugh at you. Redit: Dear Huffington Post, this is why we laugh at you:

[ related topics: Photography Archival ]

Stored here so that I can install it at home and play with it: Camlistore. Looks like distributed file storage and sharing.

ffs ssl.

A fantastic rant about Certificate Authorities and the HTTPS SSL process in general and the security implications of copying and pasting shell commands off web sites and more.

Well worth reading.

[ related topics: Archival ]

Another arduous painful process to make a Samsung Galaxy more useful by turning off the pre-installed crapware.

The Conservative Case Against The Suburbs: http://www.theamericanconserva...vative-case-against-the-suburbs/

[ related topics: Law ]

MT [redacted]: "Some people are just more functional as pizza toppings"

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department "Special Operations Group" on trial for stalking and threatening FBI agents to stop an investigation into brutality and corruption in LA county jails.

[ related topics: Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Oh, look, PG&E is still playing the "parasitic power" BS game. PR makes bad policy.

[ related topics: Games ]

RT T.Rob ‏@tdotrob:

Hmmm...hardcore Captcha: To prove you are not a robot please injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

[ related topics: Robotics ]

On recruiting (programmers, but anybody, really): https://www.jeremymorgan.com/b...gramming/the-great-unicorn-hunt/

[ related topics: Weblogs Software Engineering ]

Just when I thought the season was over...t hey keep coming.

[ related topics: Photography ]

I sure hope no taxpayer dollars are going into this "Sonoma County Energy Independence Program" boondoggle. Ludicrous recommendations.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

New evidence of the NSA deliberately weakening encryption.

Dives a little deeper into some of the stuff in this Intercept article.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Cryptography ]

Apparently last night in Keene, New Hampshire, rowdy revelers overran the Pumpkin Festival. Reading between the lines, it was self-entitled frat boys from Keene State College. I've been following a whole bunch of Twitter feeds of people involved in Ferguson and St. Louis awareness, and I think it's worth re-posting some snark.

First off, note that in CNN: New Hampshire Pumpkin Festival crowd sets fires, throws bottles there is mention of "bonfires in the streets". Not arson.

I haven't seen this particular clip, but RT C. Jay Conrod @cjayconrod:

If you still don't get white privilege, it's feeling comfortable enough to tell a CNN reporter your name and age while vandalizing a town.

RT Scary Blah Lady @AngryBlackLady

White ppl looting at Lacoste.

That's the whole joke.

Just "white people looting at Lacoste." #keenepumpkinfest

Bonus: An Expert Look at the Pumpkin Riots of 2014, or what if white people violence was reported like Ferguson.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Invention and Design Education Race Archival ]

Weekend projects 1: gravel out of dirt to prep for a flagstone walk

[ related topics: Photography ]

Weekend projects 2: final light fixture so we can get the electrical rework inspected

[ related topics: Photography ]

About to go hack some "yes, it's Gmail, they have a bogus security certificate strategy" into my email client to stop the warnings.

Light fixture box says A15 bulbs. $75 for 3 later, install the fixture and out doesn't take A15 bulbs. Back to the store. Grrrr.

Does anyone know what this plant is?

[ related topics: Photography ]

Aka "we don't want Dan's business"

Aka "we don't want Dan's business"

[ related topics: Photography ]

Offered: about 18 scalloped edging blocks.

[ related topics: Photography ]

The strawberries are sending runners

[ related topics: Photography ]

Working in the garden with her recuperating foot

[ related topics: Photography Work, productivity and environment Gardening ]

Amazing scent, but taproot and puffball seeds (yellow flowers) and we call it a weed

[ related topics: Photography ]

Latest Planet Money, on women & coding, is fascinating. Suggests some serious education system failings. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...de-576-when-women-stopped-coding

[ related topics: Software Engineering Space & Astronomy Currency Education ]

I have some fresh turmeric, so: a curry. With tomatillos.

[ related topics: Photography ]

"Since about that time, war had been literally continuous, though strictly speaking it had not always been the same war." -- 1984

[ related topics: History ]

Looking pretty cool from the kitchen window

[ related topics: Photography ]

Orwell, Huxley, Gibson: All prescient. We're just waiting on the dystopian prophecies of David Brin and Stephen King now.

Amazing what the liberal application of lube in all the appropriate places does for comfort. Feels like a new bicycle.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Pedal Power Bicycling Personal Lubricant ]

You wanna know about misogyny and slut shaming? 73 year old teacher fired over erotic films shot 50 years ago: http://www.cbc.ca/asithappens/...arring-in-vintage-erotic-movies/

[ related topics: Children and growing up Erotic Movies ]

So that I can find it next time it comes up on the social medias: RT Eλf Sternberg ‏@elfsternberg:

(1) No legal action has ever been threatened to the Idaho "Hitching Post" wedding site. (2) They lie about history: http://www.goodasyou.org/good_...-make-more-solid-legal-case.html

[ related topics: Sociology Law Civil Liberties Marriage ]

Reminder: If you're having SSL handshake errors today, find a way to force TLS (usually it's a checkbox in your mail config)

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Using Gnu Stow to manage your dotfiles.

Have been saying "I should really get off my butt and..." for a while now. This looks like a great way to get the basic config stuff (like base config for Emacs, git, probably Perl's basic local::lib stuff) in version control so that I can have more consistent environments everywhere.

[ related topics: Perl Open Source Current Events hubris ]

I have not convinced myself yet that I really need to get over the SSL annoyance, but this seems to be the right way to do it: https://sslmate.com/ SSL certs from the command-line, and it looks like the command-line tool is smart enough to do some level of server config. And can be cron-jobbed to do renewals automagically.

I've fallen and I can't get up (Vimeo video). Kind of Porrasturvat meets MASSIVE crowd simulation, a simulation of virtual people running into a giant rotating bar.

[ related topics: Sports Video ]

The American Conservative: Obama is a Republican.

Yeah, pretty much. I stand by my "another Reagan" prediction from the elections.

I have a directory full of text files that include a few passwords. I'd love to toss this folder in a git repo, because I sometimes want to edit things elsewhere, and a backup is nice, but I also don't want to necessarily put those passwords in a version controlled repo on my fully exposed network hosts.

Looks like https://github.com/AGWA/git-crypt is the solution.

[ related topics: Privacy broadband ]

A little video (and transcript) about an 84 year old man running his sawmilll:

PIP COURTNEY: Despite saying he'd quit the mill when he turned 80, Ralph can't quite manage to pull the pin.

RALPH AFFLECK: I'm not to the stage of playing lawn bowls or something like that. I'm still making things - like I've just made a new clutch for this thing up here. I enjoy the challenge of making something that's going to work and having the pleasure of using it and saying, 'Yeah, well, Ralph, you could have done better, but you didn't make a bad job of it.'

[ related topics: Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Heinlein Sports Video Woodworking ]

Charlene has pulled down the climbing beans, and the SETI antennas in the back yard are revealed.

[ related topics: Photography Astronomy Gambling ]

Always amazed when the "thought leaders" refer to labels as "coined" over a year after I used that term in that context in a public talk. #sigh

Turned on my computer 45 minutes before the webinar, see "Configuring Windows updates 32%", wondering if it'll be usable in time...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Microsoft ]

Saudi Arabia's top Muslim cleric Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh says Twitter is "the source of all evil and devastation". http://news.yahoo.com/twitter-...ml;_ylt=AwrBJSDqj0ZUhkUA0znQtDMD

[ related topics: Current Events ]

I LOLed: Creepy text theatre with Sasha Grey.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays ]

NY Times: What if age is nothing but a mind set?.

Of course much of this is a puff piece for a Langer's summer camp for retired people, but I might want to read Bruce Grierson's What Makes Olga Run?: The Mystery of the 90-Something Track Star and What She Can Teach Us About Living Longer, Happier Lives

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

Malicious web pages attempting to change home router DNS settings. Is it time to block http://googlesyndication.com ?

[ related topics: Current Events Woodworking ]

Careful: Windows FTDI drivers are intentionally bricking devices that use counterfeit FTDI chips.

The workaround for this driver update is to download the FT232 config tool from the FTDI website on a WinXP or Linux box, change the PID of the fake chip, and never using the new driver on a modern Windows system. There will surely be an automated tool to fix these chips automatically, but until then, take a good look at what Windows Update is installing – it’s very hard to tell if your devices have a fake FTDI chip by just looking at them.

MeFi has more linkage

[ related topics: Free Software Interactive Drama Microsoft Movies Open Source Invention and Design ]

Washington Post: No, marijuana use doesn’t lower your IQ. About a study from the Claire Mokrysz of the College of London.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer has a slightly different take on the press release, pointing out that very heavy use among teenagers may have as much as a 3% impact. But this is dwarfed by other factors, like alcohol use.

[ related topics: Drugs Education ]

I'm discussing some business things going on in W. Africa and asked why "Ford" (not his real name), whome is intelligent, helpful and wants to get things done is not taken seriously. Answer: "He is in/from the wrong tribe."

Tribes here are serious and well defined social/family things, but it makes me think how much we create our own tribes and do the same thing. Clothing, vernacular, jewelry, hairstyle, theology...

The difference is: we can change our tribes with a little effort, and often belong to several.

[ related topics: Sociology Automobiles Clothing ]

Playboy Pinups From the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s on Meeting the Male Gaze: Playboy models from Miss March 1954 to Miss January 1979 on meeting the male gaze then—and now.

Via MeFi.

Bwahahaha! Rock/Creek employee chases, catches shoplifter

Rock/Creek is known, among other things, for its sponsorship of ultra-distance trail runs, including its Thunder Rock 100-miler held in May. And some of its employees are serious runners.

Dude, you can get away with that shit at REI, but not Rock/Creek... (A Chattanooga outdoor gear store I used to frequent).

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

USA Today: Special report: America's perpetual state of emergency:

An emergency declared by President Jimmy Carter on the 10th day of the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979 remains in effect almost 35 years later.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events ]

Check-build - Verifies that your NodeJS project follow team conventions, is well written and secure.

Gonna be doing another NodeJS and JavaScript from the command-line talk shortly, figure I should update it.

Intercom: This is not a map:

Peter Drucker is famous for saying “The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it’s selling”. The implication of this quote is that to improve a product you must first understand what it is being used for.

[ related topics: Weblogs Maps and Mapping ]

Good reminder: When you use SMS for 2 factor auth, you're giving (local!) law enforcement DOS capability over your communications channel.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

Enrique Peñalosa (Mayor of Bogota, Colombia) in SF: A Livable Streets Visionary Shares His Wisdom, for this observation about parking and automobiles:

Peñalosa pointed out that there’s no other piece of personal property for which the public provides free space for its storage. When someone buys a refrigerator, for example, the public isn’t obligated to provide a kitchen.

“Asking, ‘where should we park?,’ is like asking where you should put your clothes or your food,” he said, eliciting chuckles and applause from the packed crowd at SPUR.

[ related topics: Food Bay Area Space & Astronomy Automobiles Clothing Gambling ]

Realization: If Internet weren't included in my job, we'd be paying about the same for Internet as for electricity *and* gas. Average Comcast bill approaches twice that. http://qz.com/286099/what-comc...t-the-state-of-cable-in-america/

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Cool Science Heinlein Net Culture ]

RT Conan O'Brien ‏@ConanOBrien

I picked out my Halloween costume. I’m going as “Slutty Madeleine Albright.”

RT Madeleine Albright ‏@madeleine

.@ConanOBrien I'm considering going as hunky Conan O'Brien - but that might be too far fetched.

Love it when we see long established medical lore start to fall: Why ice doesn’t help an injury, and could make it worse.

Research on the efficacy of ice is, in fact, more tepid than many might think. “Ice is commonly used after acute muscle strains, but there are no clinical studies of its effectiveness,” noted a 2012 study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Some studies say this practice could be counterproductive in the long run. “Topical cooling (icing) . . . seems not to improve but, rather, delay recovery from eccentric exercise-induced muscle damage,” according to a 2013 study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.

Via Larry Burton.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

RT Simon Harris ‏@haruki_zaemon

Projects that failed under Waterfall were killed by Waterfall.

Projects that failed under Agile weren’t done properly.

Won't be too many years before the only remaining business model is delivering ads from other companies selling ad delivery.

Tried to register the Twitter account "💩". Disappointed that they just allow ASCII letters and numbers...

TOR exit node that's hot-patching binaries with malware.

At DerbyCon this year I gave a presentation of my binary patching framework, BDF. Many binaries are hosted without any transport layer security encryption. Some binaries are signed to prevent modification, but most are not. During that presentation, I talked about the MITM patching of binaries during download, and showed how easy it was using BDFProxy. I also mentioned that similar techniques are probably already in use on the Internet.

I had only circumstantial evidence until recently.

[ related topics: Weblogs Movies Law Net Culture Cryptography ]

RT Atom Vincent ‏@Child_Labor:

I heard a good joke about Ebola today...but you won't get it.

This is great: New York Times: Old Masters at the top of their game

[ related topics: Games Invention and Design New York ]

Guy Fieri quote? Sonoma is this close to having a t-shirt shop...

[ related topics: Photography Clothing ]

RT Hartley of Darkness ‏@NedHartley:

Comics people, it's over. He's not called V any more, he's 4chan man (via @jlist)

Edit: Damn it, it's fake. https://twitter.com/jlist/status/525585741951139841

[ related topics: Photography Comics Archival ]

Okay, go ahead and read the comments... http://www.marthastewart.com/1085315/party-themes-punk-rock

A Tale of Momentum and Inertia http://vimeo.com/105788896

Yet another reason to not let the cops have access to your smartphone, ever:

• East Bay CHP Officer Accused Of Stealing Nude Photos Says It’s ‘Game’ For Police
• Warrant: CHP officer says stealing nude photos from female arrestees 'game' for cops

As this newspaper first reported earlier this week, the investigation began with a single incident: Harrington's conduct during the Aug. 29 arrest of the San Ramon woman. The woman discovered that photos had been stolen from her phone five days after her release, when she noticed on her iPad that the photos had been sent to an unknown number. A record of the messages had been deleted from her iPhone, but the phone had been synced to the iPad.

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Privacy Games Sexual Culture Nudity Law Enforcement California Culture ]

Reminder: PowerPoint is bad for your business, but it's also an exploit vector: http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/...ations-from-strangers-right-now/

[ related topics: Graphics Mathematics ]

Either Amazon is serving up pop-unders, or my Chrome browser on Ubuntu is infected. This is disturbing.

[ related topics: Books ]

Tracking energy costs: Anyone got a suggestion for big beefy solar attic fan solutions that can move a lot of air?

[ related topics: Photovoltaics ]

Really? Don't run "strings" on untrusted files. Apparently at some point some yahoo had the brilliant idea to make the "strings" utility try to understand the structure of files, rather than just looking for strings. Bugs in "libfd" allows for arbitrary code execution from well crafted files.

"strings -a" does what "strings" should do, so is safe.

[ related topics: Bay Area ]

The worst thing about GamerGate? Realizing that we've got a generation of young men who can say "ethics in journalism" with a straight face

[ related topics: Ethics Journalism and Media ]

The big UX challenge is not "newer better" interfaces, it's using the ones users are familiar with in new ways.

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

Need a place to stash this for building our shower/tub surround when we do the bathroom remodel later this month (and so that I can build a parts list): Schluter Kerdi Board shower handbook (PDF), specifically page 18. And I think we'll want a couple of the "Schluter®-KERDI-BOARD-SN Shower Niche" assemblies.

[ related topics: Journalism and Media ]

The first rule of Ebola security theater is that you can’t admit it’s Ebola security theater.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays ]

Darius Kazemi, Tiny Subversions - XOXO Festival (2014) (YouTube). Yes, it's long. Yes, the first 15 minutes seem like just a stand-up routine, the end, from about 18 minutes, pulls together some interesting notes.

In a way this is similar to how Nassim Nicholas Taleb has been talking about investing... Interesting ideas here.

Via a lot of places, but the MeFi entry is what finally got me to watch it.

[ related topics: Movies Gambling ]

RT Auntie Scraghands ‏@solmaru:

If it doesn't have butch women or sexually flexible men i just... don't care anymore.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Okay, now it's really time to enable HTTPS on my sites: Verizon wireless inserting tracking headers into web traffic http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/mo...ireless-customers-online-n234726

[ related topics: Wireless ]

iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive.

If you're using a Mac you may be uploading way more stuff to iCloud than you thought.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Macintosh ]

Just another Sonoma County sunrise

[ related topics: Photography ]

A little truth for Halloween: RT Amy Spiker (@ASpiker):

Who cares about wearing a costume 1 day a year? It's more impressive that I masquerade as an adult with my shit together the other 364 days

DIY iPhone Telescope Adapter Mount for Moon Photos with Final Product (YouTube) and, for completeness, the author uses RegiStax to stack video frames for noise and motion blur reduction.

[ related topics: Photography Movies Video iPhone ]

The terrorists have won: All you have to do is put up a WiFi SSID to cancel a flight: LA to London flight held on ground for 3 hours and then canceled when a passenger noticed an "al-Quida Free Terror Nettwork" (sic) Wifi network available on their phone.

There's some evidence on the cell phones on airplanes are a bad idea side of the balance sheet...

Among other places, via JWZ who noted the "about of an abundance of caution" line, to which user nooj replied:

I wish there wasn't such an abundance of caution. Can we ration it? Is there a U.S. Strategic Caution Reserve?

Word.

[ related topics: Weblogs broadband Aviation ]

his might be of particular interest to Meuon: A project out of Google for generating location codes for places that have streets, but no formal addressing system.

https://github.com/google/open-location-code

From the FAQ:

More than half the world's urban dwellers live on streets that don't have formal names. We expect these codes will be mostly used by people in areas lacking street addresses, but could also be used in areas that are mapped but where street name data is not widely available or where both formal and informal names exist.

Also related, but different: Missing Maps: nothing less than a human genome project for cities

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

Oh this is awesome!

So Rite Aid, CVS, Wal*Mart, Best Buy and others have decided that they're not going to take Apple Pay, largely because they're building a competing payment system called "CurrentC".

CurrentC just had their first data breach:

Just hours after publishing a blog post answering some questions about its upcoming CurrentC mobile payments system and touting the security of its cloud-based storage of sensitive information, the company behind the effort, Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) has alerted users of unauthorized access to their email addresses.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Weblogs ]

Quoting Jim Wright on Facebook:

From the Didn't Really Think This One Through Department:

"Maine officials have ordered [nurse Kaci Hickox] to hole up at home until 21 days have passed since she last contacted an Ebola victim where she was volunteering in Sierra Leone. And a state trooper stationed outside her home told NBC News that Hickox will be arrested if she walks outside."

A state trooper stationed outside her home said Hickox will be arrested if she walks outside.

He'll arrest her, if she walks outside.

And THEN what?

No really, think about that. After they arrest her, then what?

Are they going to put her in the back of a police cruiser and take her to jail? Are they going to process her into the penal system, you know, fingerprints and all of that? This woman they're all so afraid of? The one that might have OMFG! ZOMBIE PLAGUE! What if she wipes a booger on the fingerprint sheet? And then what? Will Maine build a secure biological isolation ward in the local jail? Or are they going to put her into General Population WITH OTHER PEOPLE? Or are they going to stuff her into another tent? Who's going to guard her? Cops in biohazard suits?

But yeah, let's arrest her. Good idea.

Maybe, and this is just a thought, maybe they could find a medical professional who has direct experience treating Ebola in Africa to advise them ...

Oh wait.

________

I visualize the scene in the police car like this:

From the backseat: <sneeze! COUGH COUGH!>

Cop: For God's sake, Lady, Cover your mouth!

From the backseat: <sniffle> Sorry, can't. Handcuffs you know...

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Current Events Law Enforcement California Culture Automobiles Gambling ]

Just in case you haven't read it yet: Judy Haiven's "‘Honour killings’ in the West" letter to the editor in the Toronto Star.

Yep, talk about those backwards Middle Easterners all you want, we've got "honor killings" here in the industrialized west too.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Law Aviation - Helicopters ]

So a bunch of people have been linking to 10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman (YouTube video, 1:57) a project of the Hollaback campaign to end street harassment.

If you're male, it's worth two minutes of your time, if you're female you've probably lived it, but as I watched it I realized...

This is a level of social awareness that wasn't technologically possible 30 years ago. To start with, you couldn't hide a VHS camera, let alone a Betamax rig. The idea of 10 hours of video edited down? Even with an A/B roll deck it'd be a long ass project.

There are definitely down-sides to living in the panopticon, but dash cams, cell phone cameras, projects like this: All amazing, and changing society in ways that we don't necessarily recognize, but I think are strongly for the better.

(Additional: Slate claims Hollaback's look at street harassment in NYC edited out the white guys.)

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Wireless Photography Movies Video ]

So does leaving flyers (ie: litter) on the porch count as canvassing or soliciting (counter to our "no..." sign)? Grrr.

We need a universal "I've already voted absentee" signal to send canvassers with literature and robo-callers and push-pollers.

Because it's possible that I'll be provisioning a new Windows machine sometime in the near future: Shawn's notes on setting up a new Windows machine, which uses the Chocolately machine package manager for Windows.

[ related topics: Microsoft Invention and Design ]

The Internet of Things ... That Shall Not Be Named.

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

The Internet of Things which disregarded the advice of their mother, fell in with a bad crowd, had many perilous adventures, but ended safe

[ related topics: Bay Area Net Culture ]

State Farm seeks FAA permission to test drones for doing damage assessment during natural disasters, apparently following USAA doing the same.

Back when I did my CERT class, they talked about how after a major disaster, emergency response services would largely be tied up for quite a while doing damage assessment and triage determinations, and I thought about autonomous aerial photography, it's interesting to see that the insurance companies are headed that way.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Opal - Ruby to JavaScript compiler.

RT Ben Werdmüller ‏@benwerd:

I was working at my desk, late one night

When I saw the code for our website

Lines and lines of broken code

Technical debt that we now owed

continued:

(It was a hack!)

It was a mooonster hack!

(A monster hack!)

It set us months back!

4000 lines of procedural code

.. It was a monster hack!

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Woodworking ]

Orbot is an Android Tor client.

Facebook has set up a native Tor endpoint, and runs that on SSL (which is important because we've seen injection exploits from Tor exit nodes (previously).

[ related topics: Weblogs broadband Law Archival ]

Conshohocken, Pennsylvania police department creates a designated safe zone to complete online purchases, suggesting that people use the lobby and parking lot of the police department building, which has 24/7 surveillance video and a panic button, for transactions.

[ related topics: Bay Area Law Enforcement Douglas Adams Video ]