Flutterby™! From 2015-10-01 to 2015-10-31

Thinking about how tech companies used to court nerds as early adopters, but the nerds I know are eschewing connected devices...

Wide range of cars emit more pollution in realistic driving tests, data shows: Diesel cars made by Renault, Nissan, Hyundai, Citroen, Fiat and Volvo among others emitted far more NOx in more rigorous tests, research shows

[ related topics: Nature and environment Television Automobiles ]

Google tells me the bike route is 17.4 miles to work. Just a hair over an hour. Even hitting every stop sign and light through downtown.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Bicycling ]

Re the outroar and uprage over the "Peeple" service, ie: Everyone you know will be able to rate you on the terrifying ‘Yelp for people’ — whether you want them to or not. So what I'm hearing is that we're trending towards ★☆☆☆☆ reviews for any Yelp for Yelp for [anything] service.

BTW, it seems like the right thing to do for this Peeple service is to never sign up.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Your daily reminder than the major "news" organizations are the propaganda arm of the military industrial complex: RT Edward Snowden ‏@Snowden:

New government doc states @60Minutes planted government questions to shape @Wikileaks interview. If true, sad to see.

RT Edward Snowden ‏@Snowden:

Official government source on the @60Minutes email: https://foia.state.gov/searcha...146/DOC_0C05777985/C05777985.pdf

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Invention and Design moron Current Events Archival ]

RT Ana Marie Cox ‏@anamariecox:

Maybe gun purchasers should undergo a transvaginal ultrasound and be informed by a doctor of the possible consequences of their actions.

RT Ana Marie Cox ‏@anamariecox"

Look, we're not trying to take away your guns, we just want your gun decisions to *be informed* and your gun procedures to be *safe.*

RT Ana Marie Cox ‏@anamariecox:

You wouldn't even need a gun if you lived your life according to Biblical principles. Here, come to my gun crisis center and I'll explain.

This is re the shooting spree at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg Oregon that left at least 13 dead. It should also be noted that guns are allowed on campus.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Health Bay Area Current Events Community Guns Education ]

The bike gives time to stop and enjoy the scenery

[ related topics: Photography Bicycling ]

PyFieri, a full-throttle Guy Fieri menu generator that's off da hook.

RT chort [US Person] @chort0

"Update thong"??? Ubuntu, you are TRASH. This is blatantly stupid and NO ONE WANTS THIS. NO ONE.

I think it's time to switch back to Debian, and send some bucks their way.

[ related topics: Free Software Photography Open Source Archival hubris ]

Go read this: RT Eric Wagoner ‏@ewagoner:

“I met you in the rain on the last day of 1972 - m4w (Old State House)” http://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/mis/5237173491.html

[ related topics: Real Estate ]

So I know somebody who knows somebody who's on this boat. But as I was reading this article, I had an epiphany about design. Look at the quoted NWS text at the bottom. You see, when trying to clearly communicate facts, we drop back to monospaced fonts, terse wording. Simple. Clear. The result of decades of evolution in how we communicate.

Next time a designer is trying to tell you you need 3mb of downloaded fonts to display some web page, note that this is directly antithetical to decades of experience in how to clearly communicate facts over computer networks.

Which is fine, it just means that whoever's doing that with their web page is intending to lie to you.

http://gcaptain.com/tote-marit...e-joaquin/#.Vg62DabApFo.facebook

[ related topics: Quotes Graphic Design Boats Machinery ]

OMG yes: Every recruiter email, ever (With apologies to the few good recruiters out there...) http://www.mattfriz.com/#/outbursts/recruiter-email

Email subject: "SAY NO to Domestic Violence Conference on the 7th - 9th..." Why should I be against this gathering? #waitwhat?

[ related topics: Conferences ]

Day two of doing my whole commute by bike. Gotta make this a habit. http://www.strava.com/activities/405047072

[ related topics: Bicycling ]

Sean at the Analy High School Jazz Band fundraiser. My trumpet has gone to a great new owner

[ related topics: Children and growing up Music Photography Invention and Design ]

At Copperfield's waiting for @theauthorguy Christopher Moore

[ related topics: Photography ]

Thinking about disciplines that are completely different if you prefix with "evidence-based"... medicine, marketing, software development...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Software Engineering Consumerism and advertising Marketing ]

Saw "Grandma". First half hour was wondering where it was going, after that... Spawned some good long discussion.

[ related topics: Community Woodworking ]

Generational change: I remember my grandfather repairing things for his church. I do it for my square dance hall

[ related topics: Religion Photography ]

Butching-up Wolverine. Improving one of work's pinball games so it breaks less often...

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

If anyone has a recommendation for a lawyer that we can pay some money to to guide us on exacting revenge on these fuckers, I'm definitely open to it: Volkswagen’s Villains: Don’t blame rogue managers for the company’s emissions scandal. Blame a corrosive corporate culture and the dynasty that shaped it.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama History Sociology Law California Culture Currency Douglas Adams ]

16.7mph, even with my turn around to pump up my tire. Gotta get this gear thing worked out http://www.strava.com/activities/406884510

So, downloading tracks from Strava: automate-able, or do I go back to using a straight-up GPS tracker?

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

Further fodder for the bandwidth bet: RT Kyle Machulis ‏@qDot:

But if you're interested in the ethics of fucking robots, watch @HuffPoLive at 12:10PT/3:10ET today for discussion of the topic.

In the age of the network, we're talking about "watch ... live".

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies Ethics broadband Robotics Theater & Plays Community ]

Wine and Wisdom: or, the Tipling Philosophers (1710)

Or evidence that Monty Python's Bruces' Philosophers Song dates back to 1710...

[ related topics: Wines and Spirits Monty Python Python ]

For discussion with Charlene, because the lawyer is a few blocks from my office: Healdsburg couple files class-action lawsuit over VW diesel deceit.

[ related topics: Law Current Events Community ]

Your regular reminder that most secrecy is not operational, but to prevent discussion of the military-industrial complex: Leaked memos reveal GCHQ efforts to keep mass surveillance secret:

A briefing memo prepared for the board of GCHQ shortly before the decision was made public revealed that one reason the agency was keen to quash the proposals was the fear that even passing references to its wide-reaching surveillance powers could start a "damaging" public debate.

[ related topics: Current Events Community ]

Actual tumbleweeds in the office park

[ related topics: Photography ]

California governor Jerry Brown signs hard-won right-to-die legislation.

Dear fucking every "news" organization out there: How come I had to go to a link-bait-y Quartz site to find the link to the actual signing letter (PDF):

Oct 5 2015

To the Members of the California State Assembly:

ABx215 is not an ordinary bill because it deals with life and death. The crux of the matter is weather the State of California should continue to make it a crime for a dying person to end his life, no matter how great is pain or suffering.

I have carefully read the thoughtful opposition materials presented by a number of doctors, religious leaders and those who champion disability rights. I have considered the theological and religious perspectives that any deliberate shortening of one's life is sinful.

I have also read the letters of those who support the bill, including heartfelt pleas from Brittany Maynard's family and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In addition, I have discussed this matter with a Catholic Bishop, two of my own doctors and former classmates and friends hwo take varied, contradictory and nuanced positions.

In the end, I was left to reflect on what I would want in the face of my own death.

I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain. I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded by this bill. And I wouldn't deny that right to others.

Sincerely,

Edmund G. Brown Jr.

Given his faith, this was not a slam dunk, so it's so nice to see this! Also, this letter is a pretty damned good argument for the Oxford comma.

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Health Sociology Current Events Civil Liberties California Culture ]

Well huh. Was compiling http://www.trustiosity.com/snow/ on my colo box, and it doesn't have enough RAM. Need to build packages, I guess.

Sorry, I'll get tired of this shortly. Almost broke an hour. http://www.strava.com/activities/407202668

Realizing that I can no longer tell if companies named "[X] Design" are a kitchen and bath installer or web development firm...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Graphic Design ]

IoT folks: I want a ceiling fan controller that doesn't randomly turn the fan on high for no reason. Suggestions?

Well that screwed with my time

[ related topics: Photography ]

"DSLAM in the basement" sounds like a pro wrestling move, not a telecom facilities description.

InfoWorld: Internet of things steals cloud spotlight at AWS Re:Invent:

There's a simple reason: IoT needs the cloud to succeed

When I was a kid, my aunt and uncle were playing in a band at a pavilion on the shores of Lake George. I was there with my grandparents, or maybe my parents, anyway, while the adults were up on the lawn listening to the band, I was down in the playground.

There was a slide and some monkey bars, and there was one of those dome things, and another kid and I became conscious that the kids were running back and forth between these play sites in a wave. So if we moved opposite the wave, we'd have more of the space to ourselves. Until the mass of kids saw that the dome or the slide was empty, and would migrate over to it.

I'm gonna say right now that the IoT on the cloud is a bubble, is all the kids running over to the dome thing.

There's opportunity if we build something distributed that'll really take off once gigabit to the home happens. Something that consumers control, and that doesn't rely on selling all of your home's heating and lighting details to advertisers.

But first we have to get home devices to not need replacement every 3 years.

[ related topics: Nostalgia Children and growing up Interactive Drama Space & Astronomy Consumerism and advertising Sports Net Culture Pop Culture Woodworking ]

Hmmm... AirPaper's first service is cancelling your Comcast account for $5.

In the era where companies jack up your rates unless you call and threaten to complain, and where they make canceling a hard sell proposition, I think there's a lot of economic room for companies that'll manage this for you: Call up service providers yearly and threaten to quit unless they give you back your introductory rates (or manage potentially switching between providers to get best rates). Deal with cancellations.

Heck, I've got a Visa that we got for the intro points that I need to remember to cancel in the next two and a half months...

Hmmm... Customer Service as a Service. In fact, that's kinda what Sonic's various re-sold AT&T products are. Sonic has its own products too, but...

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Economics ]

What looks like a UTF-8 character passed through an 8859-1 system is being rejected by every character set iconv knows. #i18nsucks

[ related topics: Typography ]

FKIN: Fear and Loathing part 1:

Las Vegas is what Kandahar would look like if every building were strung with Christmas lights and shot full of holes. It smelled like an open sewer in the mid-summer heat.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Gambling ]

LazyWeb: Talk me out of moving to https://www.scaleway.com from Linode.

Sunken Safe Harbor: 5 Implications of Schrems and US-EU Data Transfer.

[ related topics: Bay Area ]

Huh. So apparently apt-get has a shorter command-line processing ability than xargs or backticks can provide...

Get a skilled trade education. Average college debt payments exceed groceries & auto payments: http://interactives.ap.org/2015/student-debt/

[ related topics: Education ]

This year's Artistry In Wood show is stunning

[ related topics: Photography Woodworking ]

Look for this one on a TV show soon...

[ related topics: Photography Technology and Culture Television ]

[ related topics: Photography ]

Griff always does beautiful furniture

[ related topics: Photography ]

[ related topics: Photography ]

[ related topics: Photography ]

BBC Future: Why pain feels good.

[ related topics: Monty Python ]

Need to fix the bike computer so I can see how I'm doing as I ride. Like the Washoe to 116 stretch http://www.strava.com/segments/1350869 — washoe to 116

[ related topics: Bicycling ]

"AMP HTML works by including the AMP JS library..." <-- I FOUND YOUR PROBLEM, RIGHT THERE! https://googleblog.blogspot.co...ng-accelerated-mobile-pages.html

[ related topics: Language Books ]

And if you can read this, all of the various processes have probably worked their way through and my web sites are on a Scaleway server.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Volkswagen - software to make sure that any tests running on your continuous integration server always pass.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Sports ]

Volkswagen's US CEO Michael Horn: "software engineers who put this in for whatever reason". Yeah, 'cause a couple $100-200k/year coders had reason to perpetrate a multi-billion dollar fraud. Performance reviews at VW must be a bitch...

http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...16-diesel-lineup-from-us-market/

[ related topics: Music Software Engineering Theater & Plays Currency Economics ]

"Surfing the net" sooo... cold and wet and in danger of shark attack for hours, in order to get a few seconds standing up?

Back in '09 I first ran across the notion that the placebo effect is getting stronger. Nature: Strong placebo response thwarts painkiller trials

Based on patients’ ratings of their pain, the effect of trialled drugs in relieving symptoms stayed the same over the 23-year period — but placebo responses rose. In 1996, patients in clinical trials reported that drugs relieved their pain by 27% more than did a placebo. But by 2013, that gap had slipped to just 9%. The phenomenon is driven by 35 US trials; among trials in Europe, Asia and elsewhere, there was no significant change in placebo reponses.The analysis is in press in the journal Pain¹

[ related topics: Drugs Health Nature and environment Current Events Flowers Archival ]

American Psychological Association press release: Teen marijuana use not linked to later depression, lung cancer, other health problems, study finds.

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Rutgers University tracked 408 males from adolescence into their mid-30s for the study, which was published in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors.

"What we found was a little surprising," said lead researcher Jordan Bechtold, PhD, a psychology research fellow at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. "There were no differences in any of the mental or physical health outcomes that we measured regardless of the amount or frequency of marijuana used during adolescence."

Article at http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/adb-adb0000103.pdf

[ related topics: Drugs Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Health Pop Culture Education ]

Ugh. Got almost to Stony Point today before I realized I forgot my badge. Rode home and drove in. So just shy of 100 miles this week.

Sooo... if you work for VW, you now know that management is totally willing to throw you under the bus.

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

A few thoughts on Scaleway servers:

This new pricing lets you enjoy Scaleway services at the smartest price on the market, for €2.99 per month you get a 4 true cores server with 2GB of memory, 50GB of SSD and 200Mbit/s unmetered bandwidth.

At current exchange rates, this is less than $3.50/month. The 4 cores are ARM, and of indeterminate speed. I had been running this site on a Linode server, 25MB of SSD, a gig of RAM, and an Intel VM of indeterminate speed.

The code that runs Flutterby hasn't really changed in somewhere around a decade. There's been a tweak or two, but the core ran back then, and continues to run. It relies on PostgreSQL. Sooo...

Note that the web site load seems to be very much helped by mod_perl, because the site doesn't feel that slow (and "shift+reload and counting Mississippi concurs), although the compute and I/O heavier test of loading a month's worth of archives gets slower in the web page.

Also, on that load the month test, there was quite a bit of time not accounted for by user or sys, so there was likely a bunch of I/O, and Scaleway's "SSD" is probably just "SD".

The extra RAM is nice. I got indeterminate GCC errors when trying to compile http://www.trustiosity.com/snow/ on the Linode box that seemed to be related to out of memory, and sure enough, it got past that stage on the Scaleway (there are other problems there...).

Scaleway does their networking with an IPv4 private network, exposing the devices you want public via some sort of NAT, and they don't have IPv6 yet. The ARM core means a few things are weird, you have to recompile any C or C++ you're going to run on them, and you have to jump through a few hoops to get UFW working right...

I'm still trying to decide how valuable my private web presence is these days. I also know that in an hour or three I could cache a bunch of Flutterby to make it serve faster.

And I'm thinking about what a < $3.50/month "cloud" machine means for the mythical Facebook killer.

[ related topics: broadband Perl Open Source Invention and Design History Work, productivity and environment Sports Databases Economics Archival Furniture hubris ]

I've added a bunch of caching to Flutterby pages. Please tell me if you see places where comments and similar aren't updating.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Stupid Q: what do kids these days say when they really do just want to hang out and watch videos?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Movies hubris ]

Hanging out at Copperfield's waiting for William Gibson... The Martian will have to wait another weekend...

"If we just build more roads, we'll outgrow this congestion!" http://www.usatoday.com/story/...-beijing-china-highway/73644000/

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Current Events ]

Totally fun day square dancing and calling at the newbie callers' workshop. Many thanks to Aahz for organizing.

Super thanks to @brendanstallard for turning me on to the "In Our Time" podcast. Keeping me company while I do housework...

Oh, look: Firefox changed their "Restore Previous Session" behavior again! Lost all those tabs... #ux #itsathing

I blame the Web Standards Project: If JavaScript weren't standardized we'd have a better web without all of these UX abominations.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Web Standards Project - WaSP ]

Closing a Door, in which Sarah Sharp talks about leaving the Linux kernel developer community:

Here’s the deal: I’m not a Linux kernel developer any more. I quietly transferred the maintainership of the USB 3.0 host controller driver in May 2014. In January 2015, I stepped down from being the Linux kernel coordinator for the FOSS Outreach Program for Women (OPW), and moved up to help coordinate the overall Outreachy program. As of December 6 2014, I gave what I hope is my last presentation on Linux kernel development. I was asked to help coordinate the Linux Plumbers Conference in Seattle in August 2015, and I said no. My Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board (TAB) term is soon over, and I will not be running for re-election.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Software Engineering Sports Community Conferences Seattle ]

RT Lucy Wainwright ‏@Whoozley

It is a sobering thought that at this point your genes' best shot at survival may be to make you incompetent with contraceptives.

[ related topics: Bioinformatics ]

From $250 Million to $6.5 Billion: The Bay Bridge Cost Overrun: A new book offers insights on how yet another huge mega-project soared way over budget.

UC Berkeley planning scholar Karen Trapenberg Frick meticulously chronicles the reconstructed bridge in a new book, Remaking the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. With Frick and her book as guide, CityLab tracked bridge expenses over time to get some sense of how the project that Herbert Hoover once called “the greatest bridge yet constructed in the world” became yet another example of a major public works project in which the cost ended outrageously higher than it began—and some ideas for what to do about it.

The sad part is that there's probably going to need to be a second edition on the book, Experts urge quick action to protect Bay Bridge cable:

The cable is wrapped with steel and filled with corrosion-fighting paste, and its suspended cables are painted white. But the panel said such “conventional methods” have “not been effective on large numbers of these bridges around the world.”

[ related topics: Politics Books Cool Science Invention and Design Bay Area Work, productivity and environment California Culture Douglas Adams Race ]

Do bike helmet laws do more harm than good? http://www.wsj.com/articles/do...o-more-harm-than-good-1444662837

[ related topics: Bicycling Government ]

As a black coffee drinker, I am *so* bummed that the ties to my psychopathy aren't as clear as that study claimed: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bro...ck_a_sign_of_psychopathy_no.html

Here's what politics looks like if you take out the men.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics ]

RT Eλf Sternberg ‏@elfsternberg:

OH: "Mike Huckabee has so little class he's virtually a Marxist utopia."

I'm pretty quick to jump on police misconduct, perhaps too quick, but being on the local Nixle feeds is helping me to gain a little bit more sympathy. An example:

California Highway Patrol, Santa Rosa Area: DRUG DEAL TURNS UP FAKE CASH, which starts out as an officer checking out an SUV pointed the wrong way on an on-ramp, turns into a hit and run investigation, and then...

Through questioning officers determined that the occupants of the Chevy contacted Kirk in the parking lot of the Graton Casino. Jacoby gave Kirk approximately $4500 in counterfeit currency for 2 lbs of marijuana. Immediately following the transaction, Kirk became suspicious of the money and attempted to stop the Chevy as they left the casino lot. When the Chevy wouldn’t stop, Kirk followed them onto the Golf Course Dr. on ramp to southbound US-101. A minor collision occurred when Kirk attempted to get in front of the Chevy to stop it. Kirk initially left, but returned to the scene in an attempt to get police assistance with getting his money or his marijuana back. While on scene, officers smelled the distinct odor of marijuana coming from Kirk’s vehicle. A search of his vehicle revealed additional amounts of marijuana.

[ related topics: Drugs Humor Health Star Trek Law Enforcement California Culture Currency Gambling ]

Do I have any Mac owning friends who run Wine? I want to know if SQView runs okay under it...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Wines and Spirits Macintosh ]

GamerGaters are targeting people who were victims of the Patreon Hack.

Randi Harper's patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/freebsdgirl?ty=h , and if you're one of those people who's a proud user of the the GGAutoBlocker, this may be a list you'd proudly join.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

How is NSA breaking so much crypto?.

For the nerds in the audience, here’s what’s wrong: If a client and server are speaking Diffie-Hellman, they first need to agree on a large prime number with a particular form. There seemed to be no reason why everyone couldn’t just use the same prime, and, in fact, many applications tend to use standardized or hard-coded primes. But there was a very important detail that got lost in translation between the mathematicians and the practitioners: an adversary can perform a single enormous computation to “crack” a particular prime, then easily break any individual connection that uses that prime.

Apparently one particular prime gives you 1/5 of the top million HTTPS sites, 2/3 of VPNs, and 1/4 of all SSH servers.

The paper is Imperfect Forward Secrecy: How Diffie-Hellman Fails in Practice (PDF), I have not dug in further.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Privacy Weblogs Civil Liberties Cryptography Government ]

“Arabian Street Artists” Bomb Homeland: Why We Hacked an Award-Winning Series

It cannot be disputed that the show looks good and is well acted and produced, as its many awards prove. But you would think that a series dealing so intensively with contemporary topics including the war on terrorism, ISIS, and ideological clashes between the US and the Middle East would not, for example, name a key terrorist character after the former real-life Pakistani ambassador to the United States. Granted, the show gets high praise from the American audience for its criticism of American government ethics, but not without dangerously feeding into the racism of the hysterical moment we find ourselves in today. Joseph Massad, Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University, addresses this deep-seeded racism of American media towards the Middle East: “‘Homeland’ hardly deviates from this formula [of racist programming], except to add that Arabs are so dangerous that even all-American White men can be corrupted by them and become equally dangerous to America”.

[ related topics: Politics Movies Ethics Software Engineering History moron Journalism and Media Art & Culture Education Race ]

So the U.S. knew that the hospital that got bombed was a hospital, but killing 22 people is acceptable collateral damage for maybe having killed one Pakistani intelligence officer. I thought Pakistan was supposed to be kind of a friendly against the Taliban? APNewsBreak: US analysts knew Afghan site was hospital.

Hey! The west coast is gonna be hotter and wetter this year! Also, NOAA has El Nino predictions: http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/s...or-2015-2016-winter-weather.html

[ related topics: California Culture Global Warming ]

A hundred miles last week, seventy miles this week... I could get used to this bike commuting thing.

[ related topics: Bicycling ]

Okay, this is pretty cool: Winganon, Oklahoma: Cement Mixer Space Capsule:

Around 1959, a cement mixer wrecked on its way to build the bridge over Oologah lake. The truck was hauled off, but the mixer was left. It's been painted many times but now looks like a crashed nose cone from NASA.

Google Street View

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Astronomy Art & Culture Maps and Mapping ]

Don’t Feed the Beast – the Great Tech Recruiter Infestation:

Except many don’t grok the “never contact me again”. Ravenous for the profit they’ll make from a choice DevOps role they try again from their personal email, or chase me down on LinkedIn. One recruiter – behind on her pissing-everyone-off quota for the month – tried pathos. “But it’s my colleague who spammed and insulted you” she whined, “why stop me doing my job?”. “Because the sooner your festering shitheap of a company goes bust the better” I [mostly] told her. The response was pure recruiter genius:

“What if I get him fired, can I put you forward then?”

Awful, backstabby, no-honour-among-thieves, very-bad people.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Heinlein ]

Cyclist Bangs On Police Officer's SUV in Bike Lane Dispute, Gets Handcuffed:

James Liu, an attorney who lives in Logan Square, was cited for disorderly conduct on North Desplaines Street Wednesday after he hit the swerving silver SUV with his hand, he told DNAinfo Chicago. A witness first reported his account of the ensuing incident on Chainlink.org, a community forum for Chicago bikers.

[ related topics: Humor Law Law Enforcement Automobiles Community Bicycling ]

A couple of years ago after a deep dive into transportation systems, specifically automobile and highway modes, I came to the conclusion that the best thing we could to do improve transportation in the United States was to abolish the FHWA. The FHWA is apparently taking a small step in that direction, suggesting dropping 11 of the 13 design requirements that yield benefit only on higher speed roads, and replacing those with the judgment of local engineers. Hooray!

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/pressr...e=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Via http://usa.streetsblog.org/201...inate-barriers-to-safer-streets/

[ related topics: Automobiles Graphic Design ]

Whoah! Different Brain Regions are Infected with Fungi in Alzheimer’s Disease, Diana Pisa, Ruth Alonso, Alberto Rábano, Izaskun Rodal & Luis Carrasco.

Note that although this is on the Nature web site, it's published in an open access journal, and the findings have not been verified, but...

Possible fungal cause of Alzheimers? Whoah.

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]

Looks like there been innovation since this, but Bastiaan Bruijs wind-up vibrators: https://www.designacademy.nl/E...on15/Project.aspx?ProjectId=1082

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

The problem with having sprung for the Kenya AA beans at Petaluma Coffee & Tea is that coffee out pales right now.

Finished Christopher Moore's Secondhand Souls. Much out-loud laughter.

Going through a bunch of old 45s for square dancing. Amazing how many sweethearts were named "Sal"...

I've been vaguely aware of the trampling deaths of some huge number of people at this year's hajj, but this headline put it in the perspective of... say... the 9/11 attacks: Saudi Arabia hajj disaster death toll at least 2,110.

... The disaster was the deadliest in the history of the annual pilgrimage, and came after a crane collapse in Mecca earlier that month killed 111 worshippers. ...

I'm not sure where I'm going with this line of thought, but this is the same nation that's killing bloggers, and whose leaders are sucking face with George Dubya Bush.

[ related topics: Politics moron Current Events Machinery ]

Somewhere in the set of 5 adjoining cubicles there is a phone with occasional vibrating alerts setting on a desk surface...

Two Australian mines are now operating with an all-driverless fleet of trucks

GPS guides the trucks and allows them to deliver iron ore 24/7, 365 days a year, without the kinds of breaks and handover periods that human drivers would need. The GPS navigation system is backstopped by a team of human operators working remotely from Perth, hundreds of miles away. Not only does this reduce the total number of humans who are needed to run the trucking operation, but it eliminates the need to employ those humans in the remote and desolate mining country. A mine needs to be located where the ore is, and you often end up needing to pay a premium to recruit workers to ore-adjacent locations. Remote workers, by contrast, can live in a nice suburb of a midsize city.

[ related topics: Machinery ]

Today in "the thing is the thing and not a representation of the thing" news:

• Gunfight re-enactment in Tombstone Arizona results in hospitalization when the not all of the charges in one of the weapons were blanks.
• Actor slits his own throat when prop knife is switched with real one.

[ related topics: Movies Current Events Guns ]

California Department of Pesticide Regulation: California Tests Show Low or No Pesticide Levels in Many Fruits and Vegetables.

LA Times: Mexican cactus, Chinese ginger top list of pesticide-laced produce.

California-grown spinach and kale, which also made the list, likely was exposed to approved chemicals sprayed on adjacent crops, while the nectarines probably picked up traces from improperly cleaned packing equipment used for other fruit, Farnsworth said.

I got this from Another Reason to Go Organic: California’s Kale Has Illegal Pesticides, but I have some broader concerns: Specifically, I've seen a lot of articles recently like Mythbusting 101: Organic Farming > Conventional Agriculture which points out that:

What makes organic farming different, then? It's not the use of pesticides, it's the origin of the pesticides used. Organic pesticides are those that are derived from natural sources and processed lightly if at all before use. This is different than the current pesticides used by conventional agriculture, which are generally synthetic. ...

It is not at all clear to me that "organic" means better runoff water quality, less overspray, fewer consumed pesticides.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama California Culture ]

Don’t Outsource Your Thinking:

One of the most useful lessons I learned from working at Facebook had nothing to do with technology: Doubt the media. Always doubt the media. ...

The author then uses the example of the Lamar Odom (basketball player and Kardashian and some sort of drug OD situation) case and some herbal supplement called "Reload" to look at what the press should have done.

[ related topics: Health Law Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Sports ]

Teen Who Hacked CIA Director John Brennan’s Email Tells How He Did It. This is soooo rich:

News of the hack was first reported by the New York Post after the hacker contacted the newspaper last week. The hackers described how they were able to access sensitive government documents stored as attachments in Brennan’s personal account because the spy chief had forwarded them from his work email.

So dude was sending sensitive information over AOL email? And got hacked because Verizon shared metadata? But these dudes have class:

“[I]t was like ‘Hey,…. its CWA.’ He was like ‘What do you want?’ We said ‘2 trillion dollars hahhaa, just joking,'” the hacker recounted to WIRED.

Brennan, the hacker says, replied, “How much do you really want?”

They told Brennan “We just want Palestine to be free and for you to stop killing innocent people.”

[ related topics: Children and growing up Invention and Design moron Current Events Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Pop Culture New York ]

Stoya: The Time I Told My Grandmother I’ve Been Using Her Name to Make Porno

Okay, this might actually be some date night viewing: Trailer for Do-Si-Do in the Sky, and Do-Si-Do in the Sky: The U.S. Army Helicopter Square Dance Team.

Via Square Your Dance

[ related topics: Aviation - Helicopters ]

Transcript of "I am colorblind, and you can too!"

Good talk on color and perception and cues.

Foggy damp slow commute, listened to Tristan Taormino & Conner Habib on straight rights to gay people & vice-versa https://www.strava.com/activities/418069219

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Civil Liberties ]

https://github.com/reinderien/mimic - a positively evil little bit of code to run through text files and replace characters with homographics.

It was spawned by a tweet from Peter Ritchie (@peterritchie) November 16, 2014:

MT: Replace a semicolon (;) with a greek question mark (;) in your friend's C# code and watch them pull their hair out over the syntax error

and just takes that and runs with it.

[ related topics: Movies ]

Charlie Jane Anders: The Deadly Legacy of HIV Truthers

“They say HIV was never isolated. We give them excellent electron micrographs of the virus. They say ‘OK, it’s a virus, but it doesn’t cause disease.’ They say that Koch’s postulates haven’t been proven to conclusively show HIV causes AIDS. We give them examples of medical workers who were accidentally exposed to the virus and later developed AIDS. They say they must have undisclosed drug addictions or other causes for the immune decline. They never accept the science—they just keep changing the target of their disbelief.”

JWZ: AirBNB doubles-down on douchebaggery. If you were wondering what the whole uproar over the passive-aggressive ads and Prop F was. As he says:

... When a multinational corporation spends $8M to defeat a ballot measure in a single city, it's a foregone conclusion that you should vote for it.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs ]

Some days ya just wanna eat popcorn and watch the world burn: http://ekhi-guinea.deviantart.com/art/Sofa-431953245

[ related topics: Movies Food Bay Area Art & Culture ]

In a fair and just universe, this upcoming presidential election would be between McAfee and Lessig. https://mcafee16.com/

[ related topics: virus ]

File under "fucking really, Volkswagen?" Let's start with the 8 grand premium we paid for the TDI. In cash.

This was the picture that was supposed to go out with the "Fucking really, Volkswagen?" update: http://www.flutterby.net/Image:2015-10-22VWs.jpg

Excellent! The FCC has capped prison phone call rates! http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...ky-high-prison-phone-call-rates-

Via MeFi

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Emojii as an ontology which will shape how we experience feelings...

Fascinating: Eurozone crosses Rubicon as Portugal's anti-euro Left banned from power. Portugal's President Anibal Cavaco Silva is blocking the new parliament:

Democracy must take second place to the higher imperative of euro rules and membership.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Currency Economics ]

Weird debug problem: 22 digits below bar code. Bar code scans to 30 digits (& not at all w/other scanner). All scans prefixed with "420".

New York Times: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor. I was going to try to excerpt, but there's sooo many links there.

And when we raise the standard of living, the birth rate decreases. This is important.

[ related topics: Content Management Invention and Design New York Gambling ]

I realize that it is completely inappropriate to get a Scorpions earworm every time a major hurricane makes landfall, but... here I am...

Shame, the twelve inch version... uh.....

[ related topics: Photography ]

Tomorrow we lacquer.

Tomorrow we lacquer, take three...

[ related topics: Photography ]

And this is just road infrastructure costs, not health and pollution externalities! http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...ue-costs/412237/?utm_source=SFFB

There are good reasons to believe that the methodology of “Who Pays for Roads?” if anything considerably understates the subsidies to private vehicle operation. It doesn’t examine the hidden subsidies associated with the free public provision of on-street parking, or the costs imposed by nearly universal off-street parking requirements, which drive up the price of commercial and residential development. It also ignores the indirect costs that come to auto and non-auto users alike from the increased travel times and travel distances that result from subsidized auto-oriented sprawl. And it also doesn’t look at how the subsidies for new capacity in some places undermine the viability of older communities.

http://www.uspirg.org/sites/pi...o%20Pays%20for%20Roads%20vUS.pdf

[ related topics: Health Bay Area ]

CSSgram:

A tiny (<1kb gzipped!) library for recreating Instagram filters with CSS filters and blend modes.

[ related topics: Language Books ]

The book was better, and the previews made me remember why I don't go see many movies, but The Martian was actully pretty good.

[ related topics: Books Movies ]

This varnish is tricky to apply, and I need more of the naptha based thinner...

[ related topics: Photography ]

So the US Postal Service's GS1-128 Routing Application Identifier is "420". Huh.

Password shaming: http://password-shaming.tumblr.com/

I associate bullshit password rules like these with people who use "cyber" unironically.

RT Dan Hope ‏@DanHope:

Bacon causes cancer but smoking cures bacon.

[ related topics: Drugs Food - Bacon ]

Learning a ton from teaching square dancing! So grateful to my students and my new club for showing me new things about calling.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Education ]

All the more reason we need criminal penalties against those who abuse the DMCA and copyright law: petapixel.com/2015/10/25/sony-filed-a-copyright-claim-against-the-stock-video-i-licensed-to-them/

[ related topics: Copyright/Trademark Video Economics ]

This Is Not a Game: How SXSW Turned GamerGate Abuse Into a Spectator Sport

[ related topics: Games Sexual Culture ]

How That “All-Day Breakfast” Became Breakfast in the First Place. A quick short history on how Beech-Nut sold bacon as a breakfast food.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Food Food - Bacon ]

Sarah Jeong: Internet Radio Copyright Is Bad and Dumb: A Comprehensive Explainer:

If that seems weird as hell to you, it’s because it is.

Please stop yelling at me, I did not make up copyright law.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Net Culture Copyright/Trademark Handicaps & Disabilities ]

RT Dan ‏@danima_:

don't quit your day dream

Figured out that these services are pulling my picture from Gravatar, that wants a Wordpress login, that... I cannot change this.

Wait, is the @SMARTtrain really reneging on the one immediately useful bit of the project? #savethesmartpath http://www.marinbike.org/SMART/savethepath/

Ran with a co-worker today. 8:24min/mi, 2.3 miles, and a long cool down walk because I pushed him past aerobic.

[ related topics: History ]

You probably already thought this was the case, but Turns Out Police Stingray Spy Tools Can Indeed Record Calls.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California obtained the documents (.pdf) after a protracted legal battle involving a two-year-old public records request. The documents include not only policy guidelines, but also templates for submitting requests to courts to obtain permission to use the technology.

I should probably start using RedPhone with people. I'm already using TextSecure, and you should either be using TextSecure (Android) or Signal (iOS) for your SMS app.

[ related topics: Invention and Design moron Law Law Enforcement ]

I have found the restroom that matches my gender: RT Restroom Genderator ‏@RestroomGender

⛛

daemonic

abominations

⠙⠁⠑⠍⠕⠝⠊⠉

⠁⠃⠕⠍⠔⠠⠝⠎

[ related topics: Photography Archival ]

Okay, I think this is the best possible picture of that runaway blimp: https://twitter.com/WBALPhil/status/659480118155415552

Dear @Twitter: You have almost 30k of my tweets to tell you that "get the best of the biggest sports stories with Moments" isn't me.

At the trolley barn for the dress rehearsal of the premier show of the Petaluma Radio Players

OH: "i don't think i speak agile enough to translate that."

RT rachel axler ‏@rachelaxler:

i want to pet you like an animal / i want to feel you from the outside / my whole existence is flawed / you are a super cute dog

Saved of for further reading: Intel x86 considered harmful (new paper):

We decided to write a paper describing this solution, but prior to that I wanted to write a short paper summarizing all the security (and trustworthiness) problems we face on x86, covering also other things, such as boot (in)security, not just the ME. I thought it would take me a week to write such a 5-10 pages paper...

Turned out it took me a few months (admittedly on and off) and some 50+ pages (admittedly with a not-so-small font, and with references spanning full 7 pages.). Oh, well.

As we talk about what we trust computers for and why we do, looking at firmware design and the entire hardware ecosystem is important...

Sources for the ebook at https://github.com/rootkovska/x86_harmful

[ related topics: Weblogs Invention and Design Typography Graphic Design Shoes ]

Honest Trailers: Inside Out: "She's controlled by a 5 member Voltron force of emotions."

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality ]

More evidence that use of the term "cyber" without prefixing "wanna" is evidence of incompetence:

[ related topics: Photography ]

Opening night for the Petaluma Radio Players performing live two 1944 Verne Jay scripts of The Shadow: Flames of Death & Death in the Tomb

[ related topics: Theater & Plays ]

When you reach the stage in life where a bow tie is no longer considered "dressing up"...

RT JRD Skinner ‏@JRDSkinner

When I was a kid working for exposure only led to a public indecency charge.

[ related topics: Nostalgia Work, productivity and environment ]

Eros Blog: Social Media #Pornocalypse Is Why We Can’t Have Nudes In Playboy. Or it's not really lots of available porn, it's that porn is not a differentiator in the face of Google prudishness.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs Journalism and Media ]

Clearing the tabs: re: how teens and adults text, I would be super interested for you to explain your theory!

Lunch run 2.4 mi at 7:35 min/mi. I haven't been this fast since my teens http://www.strava.com/activities/423173108

Lunch conversation went from the nutritional value of eggplant to gunpowder to cheesemaking. In a logical at the time progression.

OH: "in terms of technical debt, we're hiding from the loan shark's enforcers."

Off to exercise my latent thespian tendencies at the final (sold-out) Petaluma Radio Players "The Shadow" show this evening.

Any of y'all have electric (or well controlled propane) smokers that you'd recommend? It's time to get more control than charcoal allows.

Stephen Sorrentino playing at the cast party

[ related topics: Photography Gambling ]

Yep, still a cast party

[ related topics: Photography ]

New York Times: Academia's Rejection of Diversity, on the irreproducibility of psychology studies:

One of the study’s authors, Philip E. Tetlock of the University of Pennsylvania, put it to me more bluntly. Expecting trustworthy results on politically charged topics from an “ideologically incestuous community,” he explained, is “downright delusional.”

Well, yeah: So much of academia is like a church, dogma repeated because it gains credibility amongst fellow priecests than because it has any basis in fact. In psychology, doubly so.

[ related topics: Religion Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Invention and Design Community Education New York ]

Plugging my fellow Petaluma Radio Players: Amelia Beamer's "The Loving Dead" humor horror: http://www.ameliabeamer.com/the-loving-dead/

[ related topics: Humor ]

Pondering the themes of Esther Saxey's "A Day Without Sunshine" vs Verne Jay's "The Shadow: Death in the Tomb"...