- not appreciating the google apps rigamarole on multiple devices. #
- linked in. down again. "momentarily". <grumble, grumble> http://t.co/uesVH1G0 #
- automagically create 3d models from photos. then have it made. neat. http://t.co/fKyzgCWo #
- on the employability of philosophy majors. http://t.co/LtGCTPj7 #
- migrating from personal google to google apps (or rather inability to) is a royal pain. #
- i for one welcome our extremely fast cheetah-like sprinting robotic overlords. http://t.co/GXHMUTnp #
- dammit. figures. 2 days after i buy a nexus 7, kindle launches a cheaper, better tablet. #
- Ethernet standard (802.3) gets updated by IEEE. I've always liked wires more. http://t.co/hUNyjveP #
- seinfeld rails against iphone cases. i'm not as offended, but meh, why bother? http://t.co/QdlvYOzQ #
- best piece out of the many i've read on whole apple/udid/fbi debacle. worth a read. http://t.co/Sim5NiWn #
- great piece on tesla's selling model and the existing auto distro system. http://t.co/KzduRkCU h/t @spelton #
law, technology, finance and other ruminations
weekly tweet roundup
- i've been waiting a long, long, long time for the tablet/laptop hybrids now being announced. finally. #
- this is very cool if you are a data junkie. alpha analysis of your fb info. http://t.co/7wEPzyCx #
- bsod? not necessarily windows. check your ram. http://t.co/okbx8A2T #
- flashed t989d to aokp jb. relatively painless. but no search. #
weekly tweet roundup
- scientists create stem cells from regular cells. using plasmids. you know, like in bioshock. but apparently real. http://t.co/miJzJDG6 #
- interesting take on gaming companies' complaints about windows 8 – worried about competition? http://t.co/soM0F7xe #
- bitcoin in a legal gray area. wasn't this on the good wife last year? http://t.co/LGWIRwmZ #
- neat. touch and pressure sensitive keyboard. smart idea. thinner too. http://t.co/L8IabUJz #
- ebay bans sale of spells, magic. ashame. i had my eye on the varmpire mistress sex spirit. http://t.co/8MmM1vlg #
- renewed interest in analog computing due to much lower power consumption. http://t.co/LN4A8wUz #
- good luck with that AT&T. RT @wired: AT&T claims that charging more for FaceTime is not a breach of net neutrailty: http://t.co/Fu62VQ8t #
- wow. RIM less than 5% market share. 5th behind zte. who's zte? http://t.co/yjzA7xH3 #
- tired of vendors slapping "cloud" on their services and thinking that automatically gives them a pass on ridiculous terms. grr. #
- bitcoin debit/credit card. quite surprised at the rate of progress of bitcoin. http://t.co/KR67epn9 #
- oh noes. the silicon valley sky is falling. useless navel gazing. if it does, it does. if it doesn't, great. http://t.co/3MwamVF4 #
- is it my imagination, or is toronto the "f*** you" capital of twitter? east coast anyway. #
- @asana is down. help. i don't know what to do next. #
i’ve killed my e-mail
You may not notice, but this blog has just been transitioned to a shiny new virtual machine. Seems a bit snappier. More details to follow. Anyway, despite some rather thorough testing (or at least what I thought was thorough), I’ve managed to completely kill e-mail on this domain. So, if you want to send me e-mail, use my work e-mail, comment on the blog, send a carrier pigeon, or just call me. Anything but fax.
best line i’ve read today…
is about Android Jelly Bean, from the lovely folks at Gizmodo:
Android’s base no longer looks like the drunken hookup impregnation of GeoCities by Tron
The rest of the article isn’t too bad – a reasonable review of Jelly Bean by an admittedly biased user (i.e. Apple fanboy).
Short and meaningless posts over the next little while – quite busy at the day job. Also have taken perhaps the decidedly horrendous step of trying to learn a thing or two about nginx, apc, ssh2 and getting reacquainted (and trying to remember) things like sudo service mysqld start. The last time I used sudo was to say sudo make me a sandwich. Which, perhaps somewhat sadly, I still find very funny.
In case you’re wondering, I’m thinking, perhaps somewhat masochistically, of moving this little blog to a VPS so I can get load times down from 4 s to less than 2. I suppose its somewhat like the geek equivalent of guys who take apart engine blocks. I say “somewhat” because those guys usually know exactly what they’re doing.
On another completely unrelated note, very interesting story in TechCrunch on The Khan Academy’s new portal to teach computer science. If you have young kids and an interest in technology (or they do), worth a read. Not sure if introducing my 6 y/o to it would be a good thing. I have these visions of a 10 year camped in front a computer at 2 am with a bunch of empty Red Bull cans and dark circles under his eyes, tapping away, with a view to an exit event at 15…
the raid on kim dotcom’s home
While we’re on the topic of being paranoid, I watched with amazement the footage of the raid by New Zealand special forces officers raiding the home of Kim Dotcom, the head of Megaupload – a company whose domain names (amongst other things) were seized by the US Department of Justice based on an assertion that Megaupload facilitated mass copyright infringement.
Overkill is the first word that comes to mind. Two helicopters, a number of police vans, perhaps a dozen heavily armed officers (some landing by chopper) and sniffer dogs, all breaking down his door at the crack of dawn, while Mr. Dotcom and his family lay sleeping.
Worth a watch. And some serious deliberation on how we’ve ended up here.
it security – be paranoid, be very paranoid
Fascinating story in Wired about how one of their writers (Mat Honan) had his “entire digital life” destroyed by a hacker:
In the space of one hour, my entire digital life was destroyed. First my Google account was taken over, then deleted. Next my Twitter account was compromised, and used as a platform to broadcast racist and homophobic messages. And worst of all, my AppleID account was broken into, and my hackers used it to remotely erase all of the data on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook.
And why did someone go to all this trouble? Was it to try abscond with thousands of dollars? Was it because Mr. Honan had publicly denigrated and embarrassed one of them in one of his articles? Nope. They did all of this simply because they wanted his twitter account.
While, yes, it is important to note the security failures of various service providers like Apple, Amazon, etc. and admonish them for it, there will always be security weaknesses or failures irrespective of what technology or service provider you choose to use. And while yes, it is a good lesson to think about the extent to which you decide to put your life (or at least the important bits of your life) online (and has made me think quite a bit on what I do), perhaps think about this: If one hacker thinks it worthwhile to do all of this for a mere twitter account, imagine the efforts others might take if you are responsible for securing information for an organization that is orders of magnitude more valuable or sensitive. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
google’s self-driving cars – 300,000 accident free miles
In the interests of full disclosure, I must admit up-front to being a huge, huge fan of Google’s self-driving car project. So needless to say, I was quite happy to hear about Google reaching a milestone of 300,000 accident free miles. While there have been accidents, they have not occurred while the computer was driving. Why am I such a huge fan? One reason is because of the potentially huge benefits it could introduce. Google’s site provides a (rather understated) summary of such benefits:
According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.2 million lives are lost every year in road traffic accidents. We believe our technology has the potential to cut that number, perhaps by as much as half. We’re also confident that self-driving cars will transform car sharing, significantly reducing car usage, as well as help create the new “highway trains of tomorrow.” These highway trains should cut energy consumption while also increasing the number of people that can be transported on our major roads. In terms of time efficiency, the U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that people spend on average 52 minutes each working day commuting. Imagine being able to spend that time more productively.
This technology not only has the potential to save lives, but also to radically transform the car industry (and hopefully car designs) as well as the broader transportation industry.
I suppose the second reason is that the ability to design a system that allows for automated driving is itself quite impressive.
Perhaps the only downside is that people may end up getting fatter.
buying illegal drugs on the internet
I suppose that headline is also found in quite a bit of spam. Oh well. I read with interest this story in Forbes about how the Silk Road site is facilitating about $2 million a month in illegal drug sales over the internet, using technologies such as Bitcoin for payment (which apparently is untraceable) and Tor to serve the site (which apparently is also untraceable). As an aside, the only reason I say “apparently” is because it always seems that no matter how airtight any electronic security measure seems to be, there always eventually seems to be someone who comes along who is sufficiently clever and/or dedicated to bypass it.
My initial thought on this story was that it was rather a shame that such useful technology would be put to such notorious uses, and wondered how long it would be until someone called for government control or prohibition of such technologies. Yes, yes, I know, this hearkens back the now somewhat dated debate regarding controls over crypto and the release of the rather poorly received Clipper chip. And yet, I still encounter those who feel that this is the proper approach to such technologies, and the only way that criminals who use such technologies can be pursued and apprehended with any reasonable measure of efficacy.
Perhaps needless to say, but I don’t quite agree with such an approach, largely for the same, very practical reasons that Clipper did not succeed (which I’ll leave to you and Google to find). That being said, I’m fully expecting the dialogue around this story to broach this debate once again.
tweet digest for week ended 2012-08-05
- apparently "shall" can mean "may" in alabama. i did not know that. #
- a good reminder of the desirability of exclusion of consequentials clauses. at least for vendors. http://t.co/XcRJ5jNX #
- google delays nexus q. so that it will "do more". what a surprise. not. http://t.co/NA2IZV7D #
- amazon decides it needs music licenses for cloud player. curious what prompted the change of heart. http://t.co/WgoCPlTY #
- did not realize that samsung was outselling apple almost 2 to 1. http://t.co/etmCxZHR #
- a bit old. apparently using publishing apis reduces engagement by 70%. surprising. http://t.co/t9ZaNutv #
- print your own gun at home. well, more like gun parts. the important bits. a few legal implications, methinks. http://t.co/o48AWxUd #
