Based on this logic, Why Can’t Canada Win the Stanley Cup? – NYTimes.com (and Nate Silver, 2013), the answer is No. Not only is the argument convincing, it is depressing if you are a Canadian, since as the post also shows, Canadians are avid hockey fans.
Anyone who loves hockey, the NHL or the Stanley Cup playoffs will enjoy this piece of writing.
Comments Off on Is a Canadian team going to win the Stanley Cup in 2014?
Posted in nytimes.com, sports
Tagged hockey, icehockey, NateSilver, nytimes, sports, statistics
Are low-wage workers going to replaced by robots? There are cases to be made for that happening, both here: The Shift From Low-Wage Worker to Robot Worker from FiveThirtyEight and from the recent book, The Second Machine age (pictured above). Indeed, some have argued that fast food restaurants are a form of manufacturing, and this makes the notion of replacing works with machines more plausible to me.
It is important not just to look at the future, but also the past, in particular, the history of the automat.
The automat was once the future too, and there are still vestiges of them around, but mainly they have died off. There were a number of reasons for this (see Automat – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), but inflexibility was one of them. Right now fast food establishments thrive on inflexibility and low cost.That is also the way to compete with them. I can see how people can compete with that and win, and the way to do that is portable food (e.g., food trucks, food stalls). Barring bureaucratic costs, portable food is cheaper to deliver than traditional bricks and mortar establishments (even fast food ones). And portable food vendors can be much more flexible than fast food places can ever be.
The other way to compete with them is by being human and offering better service. No robot in the next century will be able to do that.
For more on the book, check out: Amazon.com: The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (9780393239355): Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee: Books
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Comments Off on Robot Fast Food workers, automats, and food trucks: food of the future
Posted in new!
Tagged automat, automation, food, foodtrucks, future, robot
I’ve been seeing this showing up on Twitter alot lately:
And so I had two questions: 1) is this new? 2) and can Dropbox do this? I found the answers here: About that Dropbox DMCA thing … | Android Central. The short answers are 1) no 2) yes. (Click through the link for the details.)
Dropbox is a great tool for sharing files, provided they are yours. Always remember: the Dropbox folder is not “yours”, even if the files you place there are. (And if they are not your files, then you have another set of problems.)
If your files are important, I recommend you don’t make Dropbox your one and only place to store them. The more important files are to you, the more backups you should have.
It is easy to feel stupid if you are trying to learn how to use github and you are not a software developer. Many of the github tutorials are aimed at people who are software developers and who have used similar tools. What can seem obvious to them can seem bafflingly to you when you are trying to understand the workings of github. (e.g., if you are not used to source control, then getting your mind around what state your file can be in at any given time in the process can be confusing.)
Despite that, if you are committed to learn how to use Github and git (the basis for Github), I recommend you take the next four steps:
Some additional thoughts: your use of git and github can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. You could have a simple repo on github with one or more files that only you use. Later, you could start cloning other people’s repos, making changes, and making them into your own repo. From there you could get into working with teams of people, branching and merging your files as you go. During that time, you are learning as you go. Don’t be afraid to a) make backups and then b) make mistakes. Eventually you will gain mastery of it and be able to use it to your full advantage. Better still, the material you share can be used by others, and that’s a great thing.
My former colleague and all around great person, Annie English, has a book and a blog on how to retire young. The Toronto Star has reviewed it here: Here’s how this couple retired at 48 in expensive Toronto: Roseman | Toronto Star. Annie and her husband, Rich, were disciplined before retirement, and that discipline has paid off. If you want to learn how they did it, check out the Star article, or their blog, Retired At 48. If this is something you want to achieve, buy the book, too.
Comments Off on Freedom 48 – how to retire early
Posted in advice
Tagged advice, money, retirement, Toronto, TorontoStar
Microsoft is providing Office for the iPad, starting today (See this for some of the highlights: Microsoft Office For iPad Launches Today).
This is one of those milestone events in the history of Microsoft and Apple, and the computing industry in general. Back in 1997, after Steve Jobs returned to Apple, there was the big news of Microsoft investing $150 million in Apple (CNET News). And not just money…
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said today that the software giant will invest $150 million in Apple and will develop and ship future versions of its Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, and development tools for the Macintosh
Back in 1997, Microsoft was dominant and Apple was dramatically regrouping. Apple needed Microsoft, especially their software. Now Microsoft is trying to pivot from the PC market (which is rapidly declining) to the future, which is mobile and cloud based. A future where Apple is currently one of the dominant players, and Microsoft is struggling. Microsoft needs Apple’s hardware, just like once Apple needed Microsoft’s software.
It is hard to say if this is going to change things around for Microsoft. I never count them out, ever. In the meantime, this is another sign that their transition is still a work in progress.
If you want to get it, you can get it here: Buy Office 365 Home Premium – Microsoft Store
Over at Operating Partner, DFJ, Heide Roizen has a great case study of how to negotiate with someone as tough to deal with as Steve Jobs. You may not be in IT, and you may never have to negotiate with someone as demanding and smart as Jobs, but check it out: you can learn something useful and read a great story too.
I found this in less than a minute: Censorship of YouTube – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Here is the extract for Turkey:
Turkish courts have ordered blocks on access to the YouTube website. This first occurred when Türk Telekom blocked the site in compliance with decision 2007/384 issued by the Istanbul 1st Criminal Court of Peace (Sulh Ceza Mahkeme) on 6 March 2007. The court decision was based on videos insulting Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in an escalation of what the Turkish media referred to as a “virtual war” of insults between Greek, Armenian and Turkish YouTube members. YouTube was sued for “insulting Turkishness” and access to the site was suspended pending the removal of the video. YouTube lawyers sent proof of the video’s removal to the Istanbul public prosecutor and access was restored on 9 March 2007. However, other videos similarly deemed insulting were repeatedly posted, and several staggered bans followed, issued by different courts:
- the Sivas 2nd Criminal Court of Peace on 18 September 2007 and again (by decision 2008/11) on 16 January 2008; the Ankara 12th Criminal Court of Peace on 17 January 2008 (decision 2008/55);[72]
- the Ankara 1st Criminal Court of Peace on 12 March 2008 (decision 2008/251);
- the Ankara 11th Criminal Court of Peace on 24 April 2008 (decision 2008/468). the Ankara 5th Criminal Court of Peace on 30 April 2008 (decision 2008/599);
- again, the Ankara 1st Criminal Court of Peace on 5 May 2008 (decision 2008/402);
- again, the Ankara 11th Criminal Court of Peace on 6 June 2008 (decision 2008/624).
- again, based on “administrative measures” without court order following corruption scandal, relating several govermental officials including Prime Minister Erdogan on March 27th, 2014 The block in accordance with court decision 2008/468 of the Ankara 11th Criminal Court of Peace issued on 24 April 2008, which cited that YouTube had not acquired a certificate of authorisation in Turkey, was not implemented by Türk Telekom until 5 May 2008.
Although YouTube was officially banned in Turkey, the website was still accessible by modifying connection parameters to use alternative DNS servers, and it was the eighth most popular website in Turkey according to Alexa records. Responding to criticisms of the courts’ bans, in November 2008 the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stated “I do access the site. Go ahead and do the same.”
In June 2010, Turkey’s president Abdullah Gül used his Twitter account to express disapproval of the country’s blocking of YouTube, which also affected access from Turkey to many Google services. Gül said he had instructed officials to find legal ways of allowing access.[75] Turkey lifted the ban on 30 October 2010.
In November 2010, a video of the Turkish politician Deniz Baykal caused the site to be blocked again briefly, and the site was threatened with a new shutdown if it did not remove the video.
In March 27, 2014, Turkey banned YouTube again. This time, they did so mere hours after a video was posted there claiming to depict Turkey’s foreign minister, spy chief and a top general discussing scenarios that could lead to their country’s military attacking jihadist militants in Syria.
It’s not a new thing: stop writing about it like it is new.
Comments Off on To all the journalists that think Internet censorship in Turkey is a new thing
Posted in Web20
Tagged censorship, Internet, journalism, socialmedia, Turkey, youtube
…then try the One Magic Mile approach, featured in this Runner’s World article. As Jeff Galloway shows:
Running a timed mile provides a reality check on your current goals, helps you determine a safe long-run pace, and gives you a tangible way to track your progress during the season.
Some runners enjoy complex training approaches. Me, I prefer simple ones. If you do too, then I recommend the One Magic Mile approach.
As mentioned on Kottke, it appears that the entire documentary Eyes On The Prize is now on YouTube. You can find it here: Eyes On The Prize – YouTube.
For those of you unfamiliar with this documentary, it was, to quote Wikipedia, “… an American television series and 14-hour documentary about the Civil Rights Movement in the United States….”. That’s an understatement. It’s a great production about a great event in world history.
Highly recommended.
Comments Off on Eyes on the Prize: the complete documentary, on YouTube
Posted in youtube
Tagged civilrights, documentary, kottke, youtube
I am a fan of Michael Ruhlman in general, so I am happy to recommend this recipe of his: Pan-Fried Chicken Thighs. Three comments:
Ruhlman keeps it simple here, but you could easily add dry flavourings (i.e. herbs and spices) to the flour, or wet flavouring (e.g., hot sauces) to the dairy mix. Once you start doing that, you can vary this recipe in all kinds of ways.
Specifically, start here, with Microsoft Security Essentials for Microsoft Windows.
I haven’t downloaded this, but it comes from Microsoft and you will be much better off getting this from them then from some other vendor (or worse, from some site you aren’t sure of.)
I recommend this especially for people who are nervous about such things but don’t know what to do next.
Are low-wage workers going to replaced by robots? There are cases being made for that happening, both here: The Shift From Low-Wage Worker to Robot Worker from FiveThirtyEight and from the recent book, The Second Machine age (pictured above). As well, some bloggers like Matt Yglesias have argued that fast food restaurants are a form of manufacturing, and this makes the notion of replacing fast food workers with machines more plausible to me.
However, in considering this, it is important to look not just to the future, but also to look to the past. In particular, the past that contained the automat.
The automat was once the future too. There are still vestiges of them around, but mainly they have died off. They collapsed for a number of reasons (see Automat – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), but the chief reason was inflexibility.
Today’s fast food establishments thrive on inflexibility and low cost. One way people can compete with that and win is with portable food (e.g., food trucks, food stalls). Barring bureaucratic costs, portable food is cheaper to deliver than when it is delivered by traditional bricks and mortar establishments (even fast food ones) and portable food vendors can be much more flexible than fast food places can ever be. There might still be robots delivering portable food, just like there are vending machines that provide food. But they won’t have flexibility of humans, and they won’t be as cheap. Additionally, humans can offer human interaction: no robot in the near future will be able to imitate that.
I believe eating is a social act and a human act, and buying and selling food should be a social and human activity. We humans need to think about it in ways to provide it that doesn’t dehumanize ourselves.
For more on the book, check out: Amazon.com: The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (9780393239355): Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee: Books. It’s really great.
Comments Off on Robot Fast Food workers, automats, and food trucks: food of the future (some notes)
Posted in new!
Tagged automat, automation, food, foodtrucks, future, robot
I am encouraged by organizations like code.org and the work they are doing to help kids (and adults) learn how to write code using an approach that is condusive to fast learning. You can see their work here: Learn | Code.org. A somewhat differing point of view is here: Thread: Why you should learn to code. I say “somewhat” because while Winer agrees with the notion of more people coding, he disagrees with how this is being promoted by code.org.
I think there are lots of reasons to learn to code: it’s a creative activity, it helps you understand technology better, it can help you get ahead in life, and it can be fun. I don’t think everyone has to learn to code, just like everyone doesn’t have to learn to sing or draw or other creative tasks. People may be anxious about their kids being computer illerate, but that fear has been around since the early days of personal computers and it was always an overblown fear. Learn to code for the goodness it brings, not because you fear something if you don’t learn.
Is this:
Thank you for registering with us.
Email:
Password: ******
Activation code 70751Please click the link below to access the video that shows how the system work.
Below is a link that I don’t recognize. Not surprising, because I have never heard of the organization sending it, never mind asked for an activation code.
Just a reminder: whenever you get email like that, delete it right away.
Comments Off on Phishing attack of the day
Posted in new!
This icon is pretty common:
I wonder how many people know it comes from something like this:
This great article, The Floppy Disk means Save, and 14 other old people Icons that don’t make sense anymore by Scott Hanselman, has 13 more examples of this. Fun to read.
I personally think you can make bacon any time of the day, but for many of you bacon lovers, the time to make it is in the morning, not at night. Regardless of when you have it, this guide on How To Make Perfect Bacon in the Oven Cooking Lessons from The Kitchn is something you should review before you break out the frying pan for your next batch.
Right now, Namecheap.com has .us domains for $1.10 (Canadian) and .org.uk for $6.41.
I was tempted to get iAmSoFabulo.us, but I may get something just for test purposes. (I am testing using cloud sites, and it is helpful to have a domain name, vs going with the full domain name that some of the cloud sites provide).
If you are Canadian or want a .ca domain, then netfirms.ca is a better choice (NameCheap.com has .ca domains for $13.03, vs $9.99 at netfirms.ca).
Finally, from what I hear, namecheap.com has deals all the time. It is worth visiting them from time to time to see what is available.
Comments Off on Need a cheap domain? Namecheap.com has some good deals right now
Tagged DNS, domainnames, IT
Well, not exactly. But this website: Programming, M—–f—– – Do you speak it? is a very expletive laden and funny site for any of you programmers out there, from n00bie to experienced. Click on this especially for some great links to help you with your programming skills.
Also not your average software development T shirts are on sale there, if you are so inclined.
Some days you just want a simple meal for dinner. This soup with some bread, cheese and a salad could be just the thing. Make it even easier by picking up some roasted peppers and using them instead of roasting your own. You can deepen the flavour with some garlic or make it hotter with pepper sauce or even sriracha added in. Lots of ways to change this up and still make it delicious.
You can find the recipe here: Roasted red pepper and tomato soup recipe, from the good folks at Style At Home
Comments Off on 4 p.m. recipe: roasted red pepper and tomato soup
Posted in food
Tagged food, soup, styleathome
It’s not news that Facebook has been running a modified version of PHP for some time. What is news is that now so can you.
You can get a copy of it at this website:Hack. It installs on most OSs (or will, soon), and even runs in the Cloud (on Heroku).
According to this, Facebook Introduces ‘Hack,’ the Programming Language of the Future | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com, what you get is a high performing version of PHP with very little you have to change to get the performance gains.
It will be interesting to see if this helps to drive up usage in PHP. There are lots of new technologies to build web site with these days: this could make PHP a desirable option.
Comments Off on Hack: Facebook’s version of PHP, now for everyone (#technical)
Posted in IT
Tagged Facebook, IT, performance, PHP
There are a number of devices out there to tracking your movement, sleep and other things. But you may own such a device already: it’s your mobile phone. If you combine this with this: Moves – Activity Tracker for iPhone and Android, then that may be all you need to get started.
If you are going to get it, look at the comments here, first: Swissmiss | Moves App. As you can see, there are some limitations to it. My recommendation: try this app first. If you find it useful, consider getting a standalone tracker from someone like Fitbit or Nike.
Anything that helps get people moving, fitter, and healthier is a good thing.
This NYTimes.com article is older (2010), but that just means that these places may be easier to get into now: Budget Boutiques in New York City – Interactive Map – NYTimes.com. (It could also mean that some of these places have come and gone.)
Boutique hotels have a feel of the city that you are in: it’s a feeling that large scale hotels rarely have. I’d recommend checking out this list if you are thinking of heading to New York. Any money you save on accommodation can easily be spent elsewhere. 🙂
This is remarkable:
In this FiveThirtyEight | Why Gretzky Had It Easy, Neil Paine tries and I think succeeds in explaining why the save percentage has gone up year after year. The reason is: Patrick Roy. I have been watching young goalies since my son started playing hockey, and I am amazed at how different they play to when I played in the era of Dryden. Back then, the butterfly was somewhat controversial still, and goalies who played that way and were beat up high were criticized for that style. Not only that, but we were trained to get back up again fast. Now, goalies are going down and staying down. Where once we tried to stop low shots with the stick or the blade (both relatively small), now goalies have both pads (relatively big) on the ice most of the time. Roy brought that on, or is credited with it, and now all the young goalies (and older ones) play that way.
Paine is right to credit the gear too, for it is alot better. The chest and arm protectors are much better than the old ones, and even the top of the knees and the neck are protected now (not so when I was younger). It makes it a bit easier for the goalie to use more of his or her body to stop the shot. I even think the pads make it much easier to slide around than the old pads ever could. But gear alone isn’t the reason: it is the new style and the training to do it that makes a difference.
I disagree with the title: Gretzky had it easy. Watch the video that Paine shows. Watch how patient Gretzky is with the puck, and how he find the opening, no matter how small. I think he would still be doing the same thing with today’s goaltenders. Other than that, a great piece.
The folks at RealSimple.com have put together an On-the-Go-Workout that can be done anywhere. Obviously good for road warriors, but good for those that stay close to home, too.
This post does an interesting analysis of changes happening in Ulster and what might become of it. As the Catholic populations grows and the Protestant population declines, there are a number of scenarios of what might come next, all thoughtfully explored in the piece liked to at Bigthink.com.
As progress was made in Ireland and Northern Ireland, it is easy to imagine it forget about it and assume it is stable. Perhaps it will remain stable, but change is coming, one birth at a time.
(Map shows the areas in Ulster with a majority of Catholics (green) and a majority of Protestants (Yellow).)
Comments Off on Ulster: a study of what’s next, in maps
Posted in new!
From Colossal, is this: A Miniature City Built with Metal Typography. Go to the links to see more images. Remarkable.
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Posted in new!
For people who work in software development, I recommend this article: The End of Agile: Death by Over-Simplification | Effective Software Design. It pushes back against what Agile is becoming. It also has some great links to others complaining about what Agile has become, including this, which I really like: The Anti Agile Manifesto | On the obfuscation of common sense in the software development community.
My belief is that there is a wide range of people using the term “agile”. Some of those people have alot of experience doing software development and can use it to create much better software. And then there are other people who use the term vaguely in order to sound intelligent and flexible. If you want to be more like the former and would like to know more about Agile, here’s a good place to start: Agile software development – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I don’t think it is dead: but I do think it needs resuscitation.
It’s a common problem: your iOS 7 phone doesn’t have the juice you need to get you through the day. If you want to tackle this problem, this article may be just thing you need: How to stop iOS 7 from destroying your iPhone’s battery life. Getting rid of things like background refreshes, 3D features, location based services can all go some way to making your power last longer. Worth reviewing.
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Posted in new!
If you are struggling with managing multiple email user accounts, or having difficulty with the user interfaces of web based email accounts, then you should consider using Thunderbird. (Plus, frankly, the ads that Yahoo! puts on their web site are awful and embarrassing.)
Thunderbird comes from Mozilla, the same people that bring us Firefox. I tried using it years ago, but the integration with Yahoo! mail and Gmail seemed more difficult at that time. This time, it was fairly simple.
You download and install Thunderbird from here. Once you do, select the option to create new accounts. I wanted to set it up with my Yahoo! and Gmail accounts, and to do this all I needed to do was provide my name, userid and password, and Thunderbird set up the rest. (If I recall, one time you needed to have the SMTP/POP settings, etc., but now Thunderbird figures out all that at least for Gmail and Yahoo! You may need to do more work if your email comes from your ISP, but that should be straightforward information to acquire.)
I would like to hear your feedback, but it was a simple process for me. Two problems I did have, though, that you should be aware of:
If you have a new SD card, using the tool SDFormatter makes sense.
However, if you are having a problem with an old SD card or USB drive, it also can help you.
I was trying to install Chrome OS on my SD drive and USB drives using tools unetbootin and win32diskimager. These tools would burn the files to the drive without difficulty. But later, when I wanted to use them, Windows 7 would only recognize 1 GB of space, despite them both being much bigger (4 GB and 8 GB). Typical Windows formatting didn’t help.
I tried SDFormatter on the SD drive first. That worked great. I decided to try it on the USB drive. That worked too! Very quick, and the drives were reformatted and restored to their proper size! Whew. I successfully tested putting a file on each one as well.
It’s a great little tool. I recommend it to help you deal with flash memory.
The web is 25 years old, and I have been using it since the very beginning. For those of you that haven’t — and those feeling nostalgic — here are some fun facts about the early days of the World Wide Web:
Happy birthday, World Wide Web, you great information superhighway! May you be around for 25 more!
The problem with small difficulties is that if you get too close to them, they seem large. Like mosquitoes, even though they are small, with enough of them pestering you, you can find yourself entirely taken up with dealing with them.
With mosquitoes, you might endure them, and this is one way to deal with them if you have to. You can also endure your small problems and fight through them as if they were a swarm of mosquitoes. Or you might step back inside to a sheltered place. Stepping back is also a good way to deal with small problems. Step back and gain some perspective and see the small problems for what they are: small and insignificant in the bigger frame you view them from. You will still deal with them, but regaining that perspective reduces the irritation that they bring on, and helps you deal with them with great patience and equanimity.
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