Flutterby™! From 2015-12-01 to 2015-12-31

I listened to The Planet Money episode on the self-balancing handle-less scooters variously known as "Hoverboard", "Swagway", although the original appears to be the Hovertrax.

Buzzfeed: How to make millions of Hoverboards almost overnight is another take on the same story.

The kicker is that the design for the Hovertrax involves assorted MEMS "gyroscopic" sensors and some intelligence in balancing, the product that's overtaken the market pushes all of that processing back onto the human nervous system, and nobody seems to have noticed.

But this is also a huge reminder, an uncomfortable reminder, that engineering is a commodity. Knowing how to build the product is nice, sure, and iteration in designing the product is super important, but knowing what product to build and how to get that into the channels is far more important.

Sobering, for those of us who've spent decades trying to learn more about how to build it.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Graphic Design Currency Economics ]

Related to my thinking about the Hovertrax, I recently saw another video about some flight testing with the Volocopter and realized that the limit right now there with n-copters is with batteries.

But clearly the Shenzen factories can turn out cheap brushless motors, control systems that can manage the failure of multiple motors or rotors are open source and run on Arduinos, there's far less in the way of mechanical linkages to worry about in n-copters vs a traditional helicopter.

How long before someone takes something like a Solar T62 gas turbine (as used in the Helicycle, and as an APU in various aircraft and fixed applications), hooks that to generator, puts enough battery or supercapacitor in the middle to smooth out load vs demand, and starts turning out $25k 2 seater n-copters?

[ related topics: Free Software Aviation Video Archival Aviation - Helicopters Woodworking Photovoltaics ]

Signs that the devops strategy for your flagship phone may be broken @LGUSAMobile

[ related topics: Photography ]

1st run in a week, cut the short loop a little short, too fast a start Check out my 2.2 mi Run on Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/442744697

Saved for later reading, because I was once spending time trying to figure out how to get Linux boots down under 10 seconds... How to Boot Linux in One Second - Jan Altenberg (YouTube)

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...s_item&px=Booting-Linux-1-Second

[ related topics: Free Software Movies Open Source Shoes ]

Shut up and take my money! Latest in the Bill The Vampire series comes out December 11th: http://www.poptartmanifesto.co...s-going-to-be-wickedly-good.html

[ related topics: Currency ]

I actually think this is low, because we should count much of our foreign policy and military spending in the "subsidizing fossil fuels" category, but Fortune: 10 Things You Should Know About Global Clean Energy mentions:

The fossil fuel industry collects far more subsidies than clean energy sectors: The IEA says that the fossil fuel industry received $490 billion in subsidies in 2014. That's truly shocking considering coal, oil and gas are relatively mature industries. In comparison clean power received $112 billion in global subsidies in 2014. The subsidies for clean energy will rise to $170 billion by 2040, the IEA said.

And I wanted to put this place somewhere I could find it, because I'm writing another piece about technological solutions to ecological problems and a half a trillion bucks a year in subsidies is a part of why we're getting Uber and AirBNB rather than energy solutions.

[ related topics: Writing ]

I am confused? How does 3.1 miles in 25:32 work out to 8:01min/mi? https://www.strava.com/activities/443279253

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Hands!

[ related topics: Photography ]

Gears and escapements and such!

[ related topics: Photography ]

How did this conversation go down: "We've got a security problem? Let's replace all of our JSON with SOAP, that way nobody'll be able to figure it out!" Security Advisory: Dell Foundation Services Remote Information Disclosure (II), in which the "fix" for a security problem becomes far worse than the original.

Always skeptical of UX designers whose front web pages take six seconds to load.

RT Scott Stanton @Scott_Stanton:

@thorsheim A password walks into a bar. Obviously the bar for passwords is pretty low.

Best Christmas decoration ever!!! http://m.imgur.com/AmXyeq6

Daily Beast Finds Terroristy Name In Phone Book, Solves San Bernardino Case.

On the perils of real-time Internet "journalism".

[ related topics: Books Law Journalism and Media Net Culture ]

RT hotel zulu lima @hotelzululima:

HAH!!.. if Clinton wants "hitech disruptors" to interdict ISIS then I want to see some "Letters of Marque" pretty damn quick! #AIS8C11USCON

#:

Once Congress authorizes same as provided in Article 1,Section 8,Clause 11, then "hitech disruptors"->indemnification !!

#:

then its "game on"...

#:

and lets not forget "admiralty courts" to decide if the prize taking legit!!(email lists? sucker lists? twitter accounts?)

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Games Travel ]

Latest Explanation For James Clapper Lying About 'Essential' NSA Spy Program: 'He Forgot About It'

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Top Programming Languages That Generate Software Vulnerabilities:

Scripting languages, in general, tend to spawn more security bugs in applications, as Veracode reports, a security firm that has analyzed 208,670 applications from October 1, 2013, through March 31, 2015.

as measured in flaws per megabyte of source code

[ related topics: Software Engineering Current Events ]

Because I want to publish at least Flutterby.net on IPFS: Hosting a Website on IPFS.

How Stoya Took on James Deen and Broke the Porn Industry's Silence:

She was in San Francisco when it happened, Stoya said. She and Deen were not at work. I asked her what words she would use to describe it now. "If you hold someone down and fuck them while they say 'no' and 'stop' and use their fucking safeword, that is rape. But when it first happened, I felt numb. And I went to work the next day. And I went to work the day after that. And I did a scene with him two days after, maybe three days after, I'm not sure. Then I felt like I'd been violated by someone I trusted." She said this was relationship violence. She said she would try to bring it up with him: what happened, what had he been thinking? He would tell her, she said, that her tears were "abusive".

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Bay Area Work, productivity and environment California Culture ]

RT Trevor Timm @trevortimm:

On the left: Trump's remarks on the Internet & free speech everyone is making fun of.

On the right: Hillary Clinton

And then Trevor does it with an embedded image, but I'm gonna link to sources for these quotes because I love y'all:

[ related topics: Quotes Interactive Drama Politics Humor Privacy Robotics History moron Space & Astronomy Civil Liberties Net Culture Embedded Devices Cryptography Furniture Government ]

Kanji: てすと (te-su-to) Hankaku: ｱｲｳｴｵｶｷｸｹｺｻｼｽｾｿﾀﾁﾂﾃ Romanj digits: ０１２３４５６７８９ Romanj lowercase: ａｂｃｄｅｆｇｈｉ Romanj uppercase: ＡＢＣＤＥＦＧＨＩ

☺ ☹ ☻ 😀 😁 😂 😃 😄 😅 😆 😇 😈 😉 😊 😋 😌 😍 😎 😏 😐 😑 😒 😓 😔 😕 😖 😗 😘 😙 😚 😛 😜 😝 😞 😟 😠 😡 😢 😣 😤 😥 😦 😧 😨 😩 😪 😫 😬 😭 😮 😯 😰 😱 😲 😳 😴 😵 😶 😷 😸 😹 😺 😻 😼 😽 😾 😿 🙀 🙅 🙆 🙇 🙈 🙉 🙊 🙋 🙌 🙍 🙎 🙏 🚀 🚁 🚂 🚃 🚄 🚅 🚆 🚇 🚈 🚉 🚊 🚋 🚌 🚍 🚎 🚏 🚐 🚑 🚒 🚓 🚔 🚕 🚖 🚗 🚘 🚙 🚚 🚛 🚜 🚝 🚞 🚟 🚠 🚡 🚢 🚣 🚤 🚥 🚦 🚧 🚨 🚩 🚪 🚫 🚬 🚭 🚮 🚯 🚰 🚱 🚲 🚳 🚴 🚵 🚶 🚷 🚸 🚹 🚺 🚻 🚼 🚽 🚾

Fox Point to require reflective clothing for nighttime pedestrians:

Fox Point - In an effort to keep walkers and joggers safe at night amid the village's darkened rural characteristics, Fox Point officials this week voted to adopted an ordinance requiring reflective clothing.

It's just a short step from here to mandating bullet proof vests...

[ related topics: Bay Area Current Events Clothing ]

The missing generation

Left to languish in psychiatric institutions or drugged for disorders they never had, many older adults with autism were neglected or forgotten for decades. Efforts to help them are finally underway.

How diagnoses of autism are giving developmentally disabled adults who had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and manic depression or bipolar disorder new opportunities and possibilities, and reducing the cost of caring for them.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Honestly, this was simply the next logical progression after we started asking pedestrians to wear high visibility clothing: Bulletproof Vests Are The Hot New Item For Lady Educators.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Clothing ]

As the world goes a little nuts about the holidays, religion, politics and political correctness. I want to say "Merry Christmas" with the best possible connotations attached to a celebration of the birth of a prophet and/or santaclausification and/or other common attached meanings. If you respond with or greet me with something related to or from Festivus, Hanukah, Krampusnacht, Pancha Ganapati or even Kwanza: I will assume that the best possible wishes are attached and gratefully accept them.

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Politics moron ]

Twitter Told a Bunch of Users They May Be Targets of a 'State Sponsored Attack'

How to Use the Feynman Technique to Identify Pseudoscience:

I finally figured out a way to test whether you have taught an idea or you have only taught a definition. Test it this way: You say, 'Without using the new word which you have just learned, try to rephrase what you have just learned in your own language. Without using the word "energy," tell me what you know now about the dog's motion.' You cannot. So you learned nothing about science. That may be all right. You may not want to learn something about science right away. You have to learn definitions. But for the very first lesson, is that not possibly destructive?

This. This is so much at the heart of the failures in education around software development. And a lot of other things.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Software Engineering Education Dogs ]

Gloria Brame: 3 things I learned from a crotch shot. Two distilled observations:

... Prudes have all the social power. ...

and

... Post an erotic photo and you're banned from social media. Advocate for killing the families of terrorists and you're a presidential candidate ...

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Sociology Journalism and Media ]

host -t TXT z.DNSCLUSTER.ru:

;; Truncated, retrying in TCP mode.

z.DNSCLUSTER.ru descriptive text "void attack(unsigned long srcip, int srcport, unsigned long destip, int destport, char *message){int s = socket (PF_INET, SOCK_RAW, IPPROTO_UDP)\;char packet[4096]\;struct iphdr *iph = (struct iphdr *)packet\;structtcphd" ">" "struct sockaddr_in sin\;struct pseudo_header psh\;sin.sin_family = AF_INET\;sin.sin_port = htons(destport)\;sin.sin_addr.s_addr = destip\; memset (packet, 0, 4096)\; ...

[snip]

... "8===========================================================================================================================================================================>"

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

Internatlional Atomic Energy Agency finishes decade-long investigation into Iran's nuclear program finds no evidence of weapons development after 2009. Thanks, Obama!

[ related topics: Software Engineering History Guns ]

I was listening to Planet Money: Episode 667: Auditing ISIS, and felt compelled to leave a comment over there that I'm going to duplicate here:

I was listening to this episode, and heard the stat that the security costs of the budget were forty some-odd percent of the budget, and that got me thinking. I went to my (relatively liberal San Francisco Bay Area, Northern California) city's budget, added up all of the spending line items that started "Police", and came up at about 40% ($15.7 million out of a $39.5 million budget). And then I got to thinking about "confiscations", and wondered what Asset Forfeiture revenues looked like for my town.

I know that quite often even in economic systems that look very disparate there are similarities: People find ways to pay interest on money even when a religion forbids it. How about a look at this ISIS budget relative to what a similar sized town in the United States spends, to give us a little perspective?

[ related topics: Religion Bay Area moron Space & Astronomy Law Enforcement California Culture Pop Culture Currency Economics ]

CSS Protips, a collection of CSS tips that might be useful

RT Philadelphia Police ‏@PhillyPolice:

No, posting #StarWarsForceAwakens spoilers is not a crime. Yes, it should be. We enforce the laws - we don't make them. Sorry.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Government ]

Rafe's comments are b0rk3d, so I'm gonna link from here: RC3: What's up with the blog?. My response:

Re "I’ve become less willing to air my dilettantism publicly", one of the problems I have with much modern Internet "bloggery" (I quote it because it's not the blogging I knew) is that in being targeted and polished, it's far too often simply regurgitating widely held beliefs in a way that gets hits and page views, rather than actually having insight and useful perspective.

We've lost, in many ways, the rough edged amateur view that made the earlier web such a tool for growth and change. I'm looking hard for where that space is now, because that's where the next evolution is going to come from.

[ related topics: Weblogs Space & Astronomy Net Culture ]

Juniper finds backdoor that decrypts VPN traffic:

Juniper has not commented on the origin of the code it found. However, Juniper’s products were singled out, among others, in the National Security Agency’s product catalog developed by its ANT division. In a December 2013 article written by Jacob Appelbaum, Judit Horchert and Christian Stocker in Der Spiegel, the NSA’s FEEDTHROUGH implant was tailored for Juniper firewalls and gave the U.S. government persistent backdoor access to these high-end networking machines. NetScreen appliances are high-end enterprise firewall and VPN products, used also by telecommunications carriers and in data centers; ScreenOS is the underlying operating system running those appliances.

There's an emergency patch.

US CERT: Juniper Releases Out-of-band Security Advisory for ScreenOS.

http://forums.juniper.net/t5/S...ement-about-ScreenOS/ba-p/285554

[ related topics: Religion moron Sports ]

Academy of Model Aeronautics - Hold Off On Registering Model Aircraft. The AMA is pushing back on the FAA drone registration database.

[ related topics: Aviation Databases ]

Welcome to Arkham: The (HO) Model City. Model railroading meets H.P. Lovecraft.

There's still a squid auction at the Obed Marsh warehouse every Thursday, and occasionally one can still see a big squid like in the old days, like this prize 27-foot Architeuthis just hauled up from Innsmouth. After the auction, it will be cut up and rendered in the trypots for squid oil.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Nudity Pyrotechnics Machinery Toys Clowns Furniture ]

Washington Post: What was fake on the Internet this week: Why this is the final column:

There’s a simple, economic explanation for this shift: If you’re a hoaxer, it’s more profitable. Since early 2014, a series of Internet entrepreneurs have realized that not much drives traffic as effectively as stories that vindicate and/or inflame the biases of their readers. Where many once wrote celebrity death hoaxes or “satires,” they now run entire, successful websites that do nothing but troll convenient minorities or exploit gross stereotypes. Paul Horner, the proprietor of Nbc.com.co and a string of other very profitable fake-news sites, once told me he specifically tries to invent stories that will provoke strong reactions in middle-aged conservatives. They share a lot on Facebook, he explained; they’re the ideal audience.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Current Events Net Culture Economics ]

How do you know when a Microsoft product really sucks? When Microsoft decides to make it easier to migrate away from it: What's New in Team Foundation Server 2015 Update 1:

Team Foundation Server now supports adding Git repositories to Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) Team Projects or adding TFVC repositories to Git team projects. This makes it easier to adopt a new version control system while keeping all your current team project data. Team members will need to run Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 to easily switch between TFVC and Git in the same team project.

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft Invention and Design moron Current Events ]

Where Do We Go from Here? Unintelligible Caterwauling Embraces Urbanism, in which Dave looks at the new Jane Jacobs / Robert Moses opera...

The Robert Moses Vs. Jane Jacobs Opera Is Almost Here

[ related topics: Politics Invention and Design ]

RT Christopher Moore ‏@TheAuthorGuy:

If I don't buy her a blood diamond, how will I know that it signifies the proper amount of suffering?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Car Drivers

[ related topics: Photography Comics Automobiles ]

Bwahahaha! This is hilarious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cloud_seeding#Vandalism

Via Shadow. And if you don't want to click through, someone edited the article with the "cloud to butt" extension installed, and didn't realize it was them... Best bit:

So it turns out that my coworkers installed that extension on my computer a few months ago and I hadn't noticed until now...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

RT André Koot RCX ‏@meneer:

Why we need layered security

And, seriously, if you haven't been keeping up with the revelations from the Juniper backdoors story, in this entry, and you're technically minded, take a look at A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering: On the Juniper backdoor.

To sum up, some hacker or group of hackers attacker noticed an existing backdoor in the Juniper software, which may have been intentional or unintentional -- you be the judge! They then piggybacked on top of it to build a backdoor of their own, something they were able to do because all of the hard work had already been done for them. The end result was a period in which someone -- maybe a foreign government -- was able to decrypt Juniper traffic in the U.S. and around the world.

Note that side-effect from prng_reseed().

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Weblogs Software Engineering moron Law Work, productivity and environment Archival ]

European Credit Card Terminals Are Plagued with Serious Vulnerabilities:

The researchers were able to do this by extracting the key used for signing messages from their test terminals. But it turns out every single terminal provided by a payment processor uses the same key.

Dafuq? And then it gets worse!

Via Shadow: Giant Drinking Jenga for my brother. The woodworking is simple, but I admire the patience with the rubber stamps!

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

Idea of the moment: When cars first came out, the onus was on the operator to behave safely around pedestrians. Then in the 1920s came the invention of "jaywalking" and the balance tipped the other way. So: What's the equivalent term going to be for not gettting out of the way of n-copters?

World Cup slalom ski racer Marcel Hirscher nearly hit by falling drone during slalom race.

[ related topics: Sports Aviation - Helicopters ]

Poverty stunts IQ in the US but not in other developed countries.

Large Cross-National Differences in Gene × Socioeconomic Status Interaction on Intelligence (abstract), Tucker-Drob & Bates

[ related topics: Bioinformatics ]

Geodesic Garden Shed. With, apparently, plans...

[ related topics: Gardening ]

It'd be really really nice if we could remove this "the magic space wizards are going to solve all of our problems and implement whatever policy we decide" relationship between technology and our political system. On all freakin' sides. Whether that's Hillary Clinton's

"There must be some way. I don't know enough about the technology, Martha, to be able to say what it is, but I have a lot of confidence in our tech experts."

or Donald Trump's

"We should be using our brilliant people, our most brilliant minds, to figure a way that ISIS cannot use the Internet,"

And this sort of idiocy isn't just limited to encryption and censorship.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...e-internet-dont-give-it-to-them/

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Free Speech moron Space & Astronomy Current Events Net Culture Cryptography Clowns ]

Yes! If we're going to ask for miracles from technologists, let it be this: RT Edward Snowden ‏@Snowden:

.@JuniperNetworks, this is the moment to launch a #ManhattanProject to deliver the most secure appliances on Earth.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Space & Astronomy ]

Java plug-in malware alert to be issued by Oracle:

According to the FTC's complaint, Oracle was aware of security issues in the Java SE (standard edition) plug-in when it bought the technology's creator Sun in 2010.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Current Events Consumerism and advertising Monty Python Databases Java ]

Another one from Shadow: animated GIF of a guy turning a lamp shade from a stump.

[ related topics: Animation ]

If you remember him from your own childhood, or if your only exposure to him is "bananaphone" over some inane Flash animation, this is a good read: Finding Raffi: The wondrous — and occasionally weird — relationship between the children’s-music superstar, his fans, and the man he used to be.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Music Animation Birds ]

Problems with Systemd and Why I like BSD Init by Randy Westlund. I have yet to have any problems with systemd, but... it's annoying. There's a lot of stuff that's not better, just different. There's a ton that could have been improved that's just like the Windows kiddies got a hold of the design.

Another reason I feel like I should be checking out BSD...

[ related topics: Microsoft Open Source Invention and Design Graphic Design ]

Elephant seal is still trying to cross Highway 37. In other news, humans are still going into space. http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/...rth-Bay-6725567.php?cmpid=brknow

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Current Events California Culture Dan & Charlene's July 2003 San Juan Trip ]

Playing with image recognition tech: any recommended face datasets, especially that include people of color?

Frequent Ejaculation Linked To Lower Prostate Cancer Risk.

An orgasm a day could keep prostate cancer away, scientists claim: Study finds participants who ejaculated more than 21 times a month were at a 22 percent lower risk of getting the disease

previously, previously, previously, and previously (heart attack & stroke).

[ related topics: Health Current Events Gambling Archival ]

Ouch: Once again a little too close to home: The Onion: Media Organizations Make Pilgrimage To Facebook Headquarters To Lay Content At Foot Of Mark Zuckerberg

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Robotics Food Journalism and Media Embedded Devices ]

Oh, sure, now they care: Spying on Congress and Israel: NSA Cheerleaders Discover Value of Privacy Only When Their Own Is Violated.

So now, with yesterday’s WSJ report, we witness the tawdry spectacle of large numbers of people who for years were fine with, responsible for, and even giddy about NSA mass surveillance suddenly objecting. Now they’ve learned that they themselves, or the officials of the foreign country they most love, have been caught up in this surveillance dragnet, and they can hardly contain their indignation. Overnight, privacy is of the highest value because now it’s their privacy, rather than just yours, that is invaded.

[ related topics: Politics Privacy ]

Ugh. Trying to talk Charlene through disabling the apparently false alarm on our inter-connected smoke alarms. Need a disable switch.

How Completely Messed Up Practices Become Normal. I don't think this is a great essay, but one of the challenges in my life right now is trying to work for positive change in an environment in which...

• Everyone logs in to the servers as root.
• The most critical software doesn't have defined release procedures, and as such may or may not end up in version control. And because everyone's in as root, often there's no way to tell who did what.
• The critical error logs are so full of noise that it takes a surge in log activity to alert people, and groups alert other groups to critical errors because they happened to be poking through those.
• Code reviews are largely non-existent.

And... well... there are other challenges. I came into this environment at the urging of another programmer who said "they need a process, we can help develop one". Other programmer left for Google shortly after I started.

I'm now at something of a cusp, and one of the things I'm concerned about is what that essay talks about, where the normalization of bad practices becomes so entrenched that people take those practices from one organization to others.

The company has grown with these practices. All of these practices have perfectly rational sources. The system is mostly working.

But it ain't right.

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

Maternal kisses are not effective in alleviating minor childhood injuries (boo-boos): a randomized, controlled and blinded study. Study of Maternal and Child Kissing (SMACK) Working Group, J Eval Clin Pract. 2015.:

CONCLUSIONS: Maternal kissing of boo-boos confers no benefit on children with minor traumatic injuries compared to both no intervention and sham kissing. In fact, children in the maternal kissing group were significantly more distressed at 5 minutes than were children in the no intervention group. The practice of maternal kissing of boo-boos is not supported by the evidence and we recommend a moratorium on the practice.

[ related topics: Children and growing up moron Work, productivity and environment ]

Just copied over for safe-keeping from a Facebook thread, in which I observed that "I'm pretty queer for a vanilla het monogamous butch guy...", and I've been working on clarifying that statement in a couple of contexts, so a few comments down I wrote:

When I square dance call, especially for gay clubs, I will often wear my "Gay Caller's Association" badge, and have gotten into several conversations of "so... you're clearly straight, why is that your chosen affiliation?", and that's led to a bunch of thinking and discussion on why sexuality and gender identity matter and why they don't.

And I guess I'm kind of coming to something along the lines of "unless we're going to get naked and intimate together, none of those things really *should* matter, and my sexuality involves a level of closeness that I really don't have the bandwidth to maintain with more than one person at a time. So if sex is off the table, then it's kind of my responsibility as an ally to muck with people's expectations around sexuality and gender."

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture broadband Bay Area Nudity Work, productivity and environment Community Furniture ]

OH coworker talking about a game: "I mean it's not bad... if you're single."

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Games ]