Rolandt

sickfuture:

rewindunwind:

may day is communist subversion

Everyone knows the communist symbolism in the mcds logo: red stands for the bloodshed of the working class and yellow stands for fries

French Fries have been the international people’s food since the French Revolution.

I spent the weekend making a bunch of progress on the compiler. It has two pieces: a tokenizer, which I created by rewriting the original C code (langscan.c) in Swift, and a parser.

The parser in OrigFrontier was generated by MacYacc, which is similar to Yacc, which is similar to Bison, which is on my Mac. The thing about the parser is that it’s C code, and the rest of the app is Swift.

How do you bridge the two worlds? Easy answer: with Objective-C, which is a superset of C and which plays nicely (enough) with Swift.

So I renamed langparser.y — the rules file that the parser generator uses — to langparser.ym so that Xcode would know to treat the generated parser source as Objective-C. I edited it slightly, not to change the grammar rules but to change how nodes are created (as return values rather than via inout).

I also made my CodeTreeNode class, written in Swift, an Objective-C class so that it would be visible to my Objective-C code.

And then, finally, I started a build…

…and then it stopped with an error because the parser places my CodeTreeNode in a C union, which isn’t allowed in ARC.

Crushed.

* * *

I think I have three options:

1. Go down the rabbit hole of figuring out how to get the parser to work with ARC.
2. Go with the flow: have the parser generate nodes that are, as in OrigFrontier, C structs. The last compilation step would be Objective-C code that translates that tree of C structs into a tree of CodeTreeNode objects, and then disposes the C-struct-node-tree.
3. Write the parser by hand, in Swift.

My thinking:

I could waste a ton of time on #1, and bending tools in that way can be pretty frustrating work when they refuse to bend.

With #2 I’d feel a bit weird about the redundancy: building a tree and then building a copy of that tree with a different type of object.

My heart tells me #3 is the answer. After all, I’ve already done the tokenizer. How hard would it be to parse those tokens into a code tree? I could skip C and Objective-C altogether and stay in Swift. And it would be so fun. (Because that’s precisely the style of weirdo I am.)

* * *

But the real answer is #2. Writing a parser by hand would take way longer than I think. Given enough tests, it shouldn’t be a huge source of bugs, but still.

The thing about #2 is that yes, it’s redundant, it’s doing more work than it needs to, ideally — but my bet is that it would still be so fast that you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Computers are so good at this kind of thing. It’s not like reading files or networking; it’s just in-memory traversal and creating/releasing things.

You remember in Indiana Jones that guy with the twirling swords, and Indy gives that look and then just shoots him? The second option is the Indiana Jones solution.

Update 2:05 pm: Two people have already written me to recommend ANTLR. So I will definitely give that a look. It might be exactly what I need.

A startup that’s part of HTC’s Vive X accelerator program is working on a new accessory that adds eye tracking functionality to the well-received room-scale virtual reality headset.

Beijing-based company 7invensun plans to open pre-orders for its aGlass lenses next month and will sell them in China for $220 USD, which comes to approximately $300 CAD. UploadVR says that the aGlass lens is set to release internationally in the third-quarter of 2017, so those interested in this accessory will need to wait a few more months to get their hands on it.

The aGlass consists of two eyepieces that fit inside the Vive headset, complete with three pair of interchangeable lenses. The company says they’re easy to install and that any Vive owner, regardless of their level of technical expertise, should be able to hook up the accessory. The devices are connected to the Vive via USB and allow the headset to track pupil movement through infrared sensor and lights.

It’s unclear how well 7invensun’s aGlass accessory works, but given how limiting the Vive’s controller wands are, pupil tracking could fill a much-needed control voice in the VR ecosystem. Of course the accessories’ success is directly related to whether developers working in the VR space opt to support aGlass.

Late last year HTC unveiled an upgraded strap for the Vive called the Deluxe Audio Strap and an independent sensor called the Vive Tracker, allowing users to bring external accessories into a virtual reality experience.

Source: UploadVR

The post New HTC Vive eye sensor has the ability to track pupil movement appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Like clockwork, Google has released the latest Android monthly security patch.

As usual, accompanying the update is a new security bulletin over at the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) that details the vulnerabilities Google worked to address with this latest patch.

According to the company, the most severe of the patched vulnerabilities was a bug that would have allowed malicious hackers to gain remote access to an Android device. Google says it has had no reports of anyone exploiting that vulnerability before it was patched.

The update is available in both factory image and OTA forms. Instructions on how to flash your Nexus or Pixel device can be found on Google’s developer website.

Alternatively, MobileSyrup has a more in-depth guide on how to flash factory images here.

Source: Google

The post May 2017 Nexus and Pixel factory images and OTAs now available to download appeared first on MobileSyrup.

I know. I’m using Paper for exactly those reasons, personally.

Did you read my original post? My discussion of commons-based political order is not about businesses, at all. It’s about political decision making and power, not ownership, aside in the very general sense that the state ‘owns’ property on behalf of its citizens.

My discussion of mutualism is about ownership and management of business, but it’s a voluntary option for those that decide to, for example, start or join a credit union. I am not saying that all banks should be appropriated and turned into credit unions.

At the same time, what I am advocating does run counter to unfettered capitalist globalism. But I am not a socialist, per se: I am a commonsist, which is something distinct. Perhaps you could say it’s a form of socialism, but it’s not communism.

TL;DR: In bug 1336763, I have landed a series of patches that should hopefully make tab closing faster for the majority of cases for users that are using multi-process Firefox.

The rest of this blog post tries to explain why.

The beforeunload event handler

Perhaps you’ve seen this dialog before:

Are you sure?

This dialog shows up when a website that you’ve interacted with (or one of its subframes) has set an event handler for the beforeunload event, and you attempt to close the tab or browse away from the website.

Here’s the documentation for how beforeunload works, but long story short, you can do a thing in the event handler that will cause the browser UI to show that dialog, which means giving the user the opportunity to cancel their request to close or navigate away from the website¹.

In any event², if a page is going to be unloaded, and that page (or one of its subframes) has set one or more beforeunload event handlers, then it is necessary to run those event handlers to see if we’re going to show the dialog, or go ahead and unload the page straight away.

How multi-process Firefox used to handle beforeunload

When closing a tab in multi-process Firefox, what we’ve been doing is sending a message to the content process for that tab to check for (and run any) beforeunload event handlers. The parent sends that message, and then just kinda waits for the content process to respond with whether or not the close should occur. If the content process doesn’t respond within 5 seconds (I know), then we consider it a wash, and just close the tab.

The content process is sometimes doing stuff on the main thread, and sometimes it’s just waiting for messages from the parent. In the latter case, tab closes happen pretty smoothly – the message comes in, beforeunload events are fired (and hopefully those don’t take too long, but you never know), and then hopefully a result goes up to the parent, and it can move on.

That’s the best case scenario – but lots of things can prevent the best case scenario; for one thing, the main thread might be busy doing other stuff when the message is sent from the parent. Perhaps it’s doing a garbage collection, or a cycle collection, or it’s blocked on some busy JavaScript that some silly advertisement company is running in the background of one of your tabs. In that case, the message from the parent won’t be processed until the main thread is ready.

Once the message is received, we’re still not out of the woods – the beforeunload event handlers can run any kind of JavaScript inside them, more or less. For example, one anti-pattern I’ve seen in the wild is to use the beforeunload event as an opportunity to send a sync XMLHttpRequest in order to get some data to a server before the page goes away³. So the script on the page has an opportunity to delay you, even if it’s not going to cause the dialog to appear.

This problem seems to plague all browsers. beforeunload is a real pain, and our current implementation can cause slow tab closing even if the tab doesn’t have beforeunload event handlers set⁴. The patches in bug 1336763 offer what I think is a decent, simple solution for that common case in Firefox.

Don’t ask, just remember

In bug 1336763, I’ve made it so that for any given tab running in a content process, if a beforeunload event is ever added in that tab (or in any of its subframes), the content process tells the parent process so it can mark that tab as having listeners we need to fire. If the beforeunload events are removed, we unmark the tab. If no beforeunload events are ever added, there’s no mark at all.

The parent process remembers these markings, so that if the user decides to close the tab, the parent can know immediately whether or not it needs to message to tell the content process to run beforeunload event handlers. In the cases where no beforeunload event handlers have been set, we can close immediately without asking for permission from the content process at all.

Details, details

Using some Gecko terminology here, we start by storing a count on something called the TabChild. It might simplify things a bit if you try to imagine the TabChild as the representative of everything in a particular browser tab, and that underneath that TabChild are a bunch of nodes, forming a tree-like structure.

Let’s call these nodes “inner windows”.

The inner windows under the TabChild contain the documents that are loaded in a tab. For simple web pages, that might just be a single document. In that case, we have a TabChild with just a single inner window node under it.

More complicated pages might contain iframes (which themselves contain iframes, etc). In those cases, we have a TabChild with a single inner window node under it, and that node has any number of inner window children (and those children have any number of inner window children, etc)⁵.

When any of those subframes have a beforeunload event listener added to them via script, the inner window node tells the TabChild to increment its internal count. If a beforeunload event listener is removed via script, the TabChild is told to decrement its internal count.

If the TabChild count ever goes above 0, then we need to tell the parent “Hey, you have at least one beforeunload event listener here”. If that count continues to go up, the TabChild doesn’t need to tell the parent anything – it just needs to record the increase. If the count ever drops back to 0, then the TabChild needs to tell the parent again, “All beforeunload event listeners are clear”.

Pretty straight-forward so far, but there are a few other cases we also have to consider.

Other cases

There are a couple of ways for a set of beforeunload event handlers to go away. We’ve already mentioned one – script on the page might remove them via removeEventListener.

One way is if the inner window gets navigated away from. If we’re on a page, and that page set a beforeunload event handler, and the user clicks on a link, the user might end up navigating away (assuming the dialog wasn’t shown and they didn’t cancel), which essentially replaces the inner window with one for a different page. In that case, script didn’t remove the beforeunload event handlers – the page went away, and so the beforeunload event handlers on the page we’ve unloaded are no longer relevant.

Another way is if an <iframe> which has set a beforeunload event handler is removed from the DOM. Instead of replacing the inner window, we’re snipping the inner window out of the tree structure entirely.

In both of these cases, if there are beforeunload event handlers in the subframe, it’s necessary to tell the TabChild so that the right number can be decremented from the TabChild count.

So what this means is that we need the inner windows to keep a track of how many beforeunload event handlers have been set as well. That way, when they start to tear themselves down, they can tell the TabChild, “Hey, I’m going away now – decrement X number of beforeunload event handlers”.

It might seem redundant to have these two counts – counts in the inner windows, and a total count in the TabChild. It would seem like one can be easily inferred from the other; just sum the beforeunload counts for the inner windows, and you should have your TabChild count.

Having the TabChild keep a count is an optimization that prevents us from having to walk the inner window tree to collect a sum every time the count changes. It’s a classic space / time tradeoff, and I think it’s worth the extra integer member on the TabChild.

Comparison to other browsers

Here’s one way to compare the behaviour across different browsers:

1. In a browser window with more than one tab open, open the developer tools, and make your way to the JavaScript console.
2. Drop this tasty little snippet in and press enter:

   var then = Date.now(); while (Date.now() - then < 15000) {}

This is going to hang the main thread in that tab for 15 seconds, but is otherwise inert.

Now try to close the tab. In Firefox, the tab closes right way. In Safari and Chrome (the two other browsers I have on this machine), the tab hangs out for a while. In Chrome, it appears to wait the full 15 seconds. In Safari, it seems to hit some kind of shorter timeout⁶.

Wrapping up

This was a neat set of patches to work on, precisely because it had me tour the depths of Gecko (dealing with things like inner / outer windows, the stuff that manages events, etc), which end up resulting in a simple property that the front-end can ultimately access to optimize closing tabs. So it nicely spanned the gap between low-level Gecko and higher-level Firefox, all for an event that was added back in 2004, for better or worse.

If all goes well, this change should ship in Firefox 55, and apply to multi-process tabs.

1. It’s not always necessary for the beforeunload event handler to show the dialog. The event handler needs to set the returnValue property on the event to a string in order for the dialog to show, but plenty of other stuff can happen in that event handler. ↩

2. Ooooh pun intended ↩

3. A better way would be to use navigator.sendBeacon, which allows the browser to send one last XHR in the background for a page even after it’s gone away. ↩

4. since we have to check to see if any of those event handlers exist. ↩

5. For my fellow Gecko Hackers – yes, this is not quite right. I’m missing other key structures in my description (specifically, the outer window). Forgive me – this is a very low-resolution mental model to make this post easier to write.  ↩

6. Note that it appears that the script running in the console is treated differently from the script running on the page. If you set up a page with that script, I notice that the tabs close immediately on both Chrome and Safari. I might have goofed in my experiment though – it is rather late at night.  ↩

mkalus shared this story from Consumerist.

In a video that would be laughable if it weren’t so terrifying, a senior executive at Verizon repeatedly lies about the FCC’s recently launched efforts to gut its own “net neutrality” rules, about his company’s support of net neutrality, and what these rules actually do.

In fact, in the below video, Verizon General Counsel Craig Silliman tells two huge whoppers in just a matter a seconds.

• Lie #1: “The FCC is not talking about killing the net neutrality rules”
No, Mr. Silliman, that’s exactly what the FCC is talking about. Look at these bullet points from FCC Chairman Pai’s own fact sheet about his proposal:

It might be semi-coherent policy-ese to most people, but that very first bullet point — “Propose to reinstate the information service classification of broadband Internet access service” — is indeed the death knell for net neutrality.

Why? Because it was that “information service classification” of broadband that resulted in the first death of net neutrality.

In 2010, the FCC issued an Open Internet Order, barring ISPs from blocking, throttling, or prioritizing access to online content or services. But Verizon — yes, Verizon — sued to stop these rules, arguing that the FCC didn’t have the authority to enforce them because of that outdated “information service” label. In Jan. 2014, the court agreed.

Note that the court in that ruling didn’t say the rules themselves were bad or unconstitutional, but that the FCC couldn’t enforce them because broadband was not classified as a Title II common carrier like landline telephone service.

So reinstating that information service classification would make it impossible for the FCC to have any sort of actual, enforceable neutrality rules. Rules that can’t be enforced are worthless, meaning neutrality would be dead.

Even if the FCC were to take another stab at net neutrality without Title II — despite the fact that it failed in court —
looking further into the actual language of the proposed rulemaking, Pai makes it clear that he has no real intention of maintaining the rules against blocking and throttling.

The proposal states that “we oppose blocking lawful material,” but then seeks public comment on whether any sort of anti-blocking rule is needed.

“For example, prior to 2015, many large Internet service providers voluntarily abided by the 2010 no-blocking rule in the absence of a regulatory obligation to do so,” notes the proposal. “Do we have reason to think providers would behave differently today if the Commission were to eliminate the no-blocking rule?”

Shouldn’t the question be: Why not have a no-blocking rule? Every day, hundreds of millions of people go un-stabbed, but there are still rules against stabbing.

The proposal also raises the question (meaning Pai already knows the answer he wants to hear) of whether or not the FCC’s anti-throttling rules are needed, claiming they may be duplicative of existing antitrust and anti-collusion laws: “Could the continued existence of this rule negatively impact future innovative, pro-competitive business deals that would not by themselves run afoul of merger conditions or established antitrust law?”

And all of these questions come with the conditional issue of how the FCC could actually create and enforce one of these rules without the very legal authority that the court has said it needs to do so.

• Lie #2: “Not we nor any other ISP are asking them to kill the Open Internet rules.”
Again, all we need to do to call out this particular lie is point out that Verizon spent four years in court challenging the very rules that it now claims to love, but doesn’t want to be held to.

Imagine the person you’re dating says “I believe and support the idea that I shouldn’t sleep with other people, but I’m going to spend the better part of a decade arguing in every possible forum that sleeping with other people shouldn’t be against the rules, which I swear I won’t break if they don’t exist. Also did you see the hot new neighbor?”

The Fictional Tale Of Verizontown

The real centerpiece of Verizon’s propaganda video is a longwinded straw man analogy from Silliman.

“Imagine in your town someone says ‘I’m really concerned that homeowners may start prohibiting people from walking up their front walks,’ so mailmen can’t deliver mail, Girl Scouts can’t sell cookies; it’ll be chaos,” he begins. “So the mayor says, ‘I’m gonna pass a rule that no one can prohibit people from walking up their front walk, but to pass this rule I need… all homeowners to give me complete authority over your property.’ Well, how are you gonna feel about that?”

There’s one huge problem underlying this risible tale: It’s all built on a fictional foundation.

This story involves a government authority trying to tell homeowners what to do with their property. That is decidedly not the case with net neutrality. The Open Internet Order does not tell internet users which sites or services they can and can’t use; it tells Verizon and other ISPs that they can’t have any influence over what you do online. Net neutrality does nothing to dictate how you, the consumer, uses the internet; it only seeks to prevent ISPs from dictating that for you.

What Silliman is attempting to do through this Bizarro World children’s tale is to paint Verizon as the defender of the homeowner from the overreaching mayor. The government wants to take over your whole house! No Girl Scout cookies! Don’t worry, Uncle Verizon is here to give you back your freedom!

A better strained analogy would have been the mayor declaring that the contractor who paves your driveway or lays the stones for your walkway can’t tell you which pizza place to order delivery. Verizon is no savior.

If Verizon supported the net neutrality rules, they would do so in writing; and we don’t mean in a non-binding blog post. Put it into actual policy. Tell your customers you won’t start throttling access to competing services, that you won’t prioritize access for companies that pay you.

We’ve asked Verizon for comment on this video, but the company has yet to respond.

Meanwhile, this morning the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which had previously shot down telecom industry challenges to the 2015 neutrality rules, once again denied ISP’s legal efforts to gut the law. This time, the full appeals court — as opposed to the usual three-judge panel — denied [PDF] a request for a re-hearing.

Parsons identifies three main stages of the socialization process in relation to American society (each of which is subdivided into two sub): the first takes place in the family, the second is concentrated in primary and secondary schools, and the third in colleges, in the universities and vocational schools. After passing the first major phase of socialization, the child acquires the necessary concept of the main structure of the nuclear family as a social system, which is the prototype of the social system. Theorist suggests that the educational system in primary and secondary schools, primary socialization process is repeated at the next higher level of generalization digestible culture and organization of the social structure. Thus, high school is primarily concerned with the differentiation of the distinction between instrumental types of roles at this level of the organization. In this regard, Parsons stresses: “It is significant that here there is, so to speak, a complete” youth culture “main line differentiations goes between the representatives of the age group that is more oriented to the achievement of the school and the formal” training and those who are focused mainly on the structure of the peer group, in the “leadership”, “popular” and so forth “(ibid: 61)… According to Parsons, the system of formal education is central to the internalization systems of higher order of social organization than at the family level. This stage is influenced by socialization rather “impersonal” and universal forms of control than the “private” and indefinite forms of family interaction. With regard to higher education, Parsons notes that there is “all students and the high and low achievers, though they differ greatly in their academic work usually stick together on the basis of” youth culture while in the public school and having a common extracurricular and informal loyalty This can help build a basis of common solidarity that goes beyond the professional differences that have become apparent “(ibid: 63).

Most significantly in the outlined concept that: 1) the process of socialization is associated with a continuous series of reference groups, which suggests that the structural analysis “becomes an important part of the analysis of one of the most” dynamic “social processes development of persons” (ibid: 65 2)the type dichotomization is both an important mechanism for placing people in the status structure of society, while at the same time and part of the process of formation of various personality types, which are differently adapted to the different types of roles, which implies the closest relationship of the individual and social structures; 3) overall current structural principle is “the selection to the bottom” “This means writes Parsons that process dichotomization age group distinguishes one group, whose members are more likely to want to remain at this level of the social hierarchy, on the other hand, the members of which would to go to the next, higher level. the group, which has been “enhanced”, and then again becomes a subject of the same selection pressure and type again divided along the same lines. It can be seen that the selection process in general corresponds to the personal needs of the “pyramid” built a system in which a relatively large number of people “must be” at the lower levels of the organization, and fewer and fewer as they move to higher levels. The selection process, including the element of “mobility” and the element of class, so that is most closely associated with the preservation of society stratification models “(ibid).

In accordance with this theoretical scheme, Parsons treats the peer group (peer group) an informal group, membership in which is determined by common social and status characteristics (gender, age, ethnicity, occupation, etc.). In research practice the concept of peer group; typically apply to the age groups of children and youth, particularly with regard to teenage groups, where the status of equality becomes essential for each member of the group.

Even if Parsons and attaches importance to personal choice behavior strategies, it is based on a typical unity of social systems, they may be formed at any level. In addition, across the country, and family friendly company-wide or apply the same functional relationships. The Group uses a variety of ways to keep themselves and rebuild it coming newcomers in their own way. Parsons called such methods of socialization mechanisms. They include all the tools and the processes through which passed the one side and absorbed other cultural patterns. This is the language, values, beliefs, symbols. Having learned their new team members and changing the structure of demand. They get used to the new social roles, acquire a taste for their execution, they are now not just a subject to group norms, but they want it. This is how the system interacts with the personal social system (Parsons, 1964: 205-208).

Therefore, the concept of Parsons Socialization is a process that ensures the preservation and functioning of social systems at all levels of social life. Although this process is related to the person, his origins and consequences mainly due to the structure of society and its institutions.

Parsons Theory of socialization is his most important contribution to the development of theories of youth Kovalev, 1996; Lukow, 2007, 2012).

The post SOCIALIZATION THEORY T. Parsons (2nd Part) appeared first on BookRiff.

mkalus shared this story from Consumerist.

For the better part of two years, carmakers have been notifying owners of vehicle included in the massive shrapnel-shooting Takata airbags recall. Given the sheer volume of and airbags involved, it’s understandable that not all repairs can be done right away, but some drivers are finding out that they may not only have to wait a year for the fix, they shouldn’t have anyone else in the front seat with them during that time.

Reader Henry tells Consumerist he recently received a such a recall notice [PDF] concerning his 2009 Subaru Forrester.

The notice alerted Henry that the passenger side frontal airbag could be defective, but that a new part for the vehicle would not be available until March 2018. Oh and by the way, he was instructed not to drive with a passenger in the front seat.

According to the recall notice [PDF] posted with National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the vehicles are equipped with certain airbag inflators assembled by Takata. In the event of a crash necessitating the deployment of the safety devices, the inflators may rupture with enough force to spew pieces of metal at occupants.

For those unfamiliar, Takata’s airbag inflators use an ammonium nitrate propellant. If the device is exposed to humidity and related temperature swings over a period of time the chemical can combust violently, rupturing the inflator when the airbag deploys in the event of a crash.

While the recall notice Henry received isn’t out of the ordinary for carmakers affected by the Takata recall, he was concerned by the year wait for parts and the directive not to allow someone to occupy the passenger seat for that period of time.

“This is not acceptable,” Henry tells Consumerist.

Why The Long Wait?

Henry isn’t alone in waiting for his vehicle to be repaired; millions of consumers have already received notice that their cars are affected by the defect, but unable to be fixed at the moment.

This is because of the large nature of the recall and the tens of millions of new inflators needed. To address the massive campaign, NHTSA issued a consent order in November 2015 that outlined the handling of the recall, breaking repairs into prioritization groups [PDF].

The groups were created [PDF] based on risk factors such as age, geography and climate, inflator position — whether it was in the driver’s side or passenger side — and precession of two recalled inflators.

“Regardless of these circumstances, every defective air bag inflator must be — and will be — replaced,” NHTSA says on its Takata recall website. “We ask for your understanding while the air bags that pose a higher risk to their vehicle’s drivers and occupants are replaced first.”

That first group, deemed to have a much greater risk of rupturing, includes vehicles with older inflators that have experienced prolonged exposure to hot and humid conditions. This did not include Henry’s 2009 Forrester.

Instead, his vehicle is included in the third priority group, a rep for NHTSA tells Consumerist. As part of the agency’s coordinated remedy action, manufacturers of vehicles in priority group 3 are the last slated for repairs.

NHTSA has amended its coordinated remedy program several times as more vehicles have been identified as being affected by the Takata defect. While the earliest version of the order required vehicles in the third group to be fixed by Dec. 31, 2017, later versions moved the completion dates to as far out as 2019.

“NHTSA is prioritizing Takata air bag repairs to ensure that vehicles with air bags that pose a higher threat to safety are fixed first while simultaneously working to ensure that parts are available to repair every affected vehicle as quickly as possible,” a rep for the agency tells Consumerist.

Despite the slow-moving repairs, NHTSA has urged all manufacturers affected by the recall to make customer safety their number one priority.

Don’t Sit There

That’s perhaps why Subaru directed Henry and others not to haul around passengers behind the defective Takata airbag.

The notice Henry received not only describes the Takata issue in his Forrester, but directed him and other owners not to allow others to sit behind the defective airbag.

“Until this repair is performed, do not allow passengers to ride in the front passenger seat,” the notice states in bold lettering.

A rep for Subaru tells Consumerist this isn’t an unusual directive, as other carmakers have issued similar warnings.

“This is a typical situation for all makers with Takata bags,” the rep said. “The driver bag in a Subaru is not Takata where other makers have both driver and passenger.”

For instance, in 2014, Toyota urged owners of some vehicles to keep passengers out of the front seat until repairs could be made.

That recall [PDF] involved vehicles in high humidity areas, which had been deemed the most susceptible to dangerous ruptures.

Toyota said at the time it would disable affected airbags and advised customers not to use the front passenger seat until a replacement inflator is installed. NHTSA has since advised against disabling the airbag.

“It is far more likely that, if you are involved in a crash, your airbag will perform properly and protect you than it will rupture and cause harm,” the agency says on its Takata website. “An airbag that is purposely disabled has a 100% chance of failing to provide any protection in a crash.”

As for Subaru, the company is erring on the side of caution with its warning, adding that it’s not a “perfect situation,” but “at least with Subaru we can say it’s safe to drive the vehicle until the repair.”

Few Alternatives

Except you’ll be driving around alone, or like a chauffeur with your passengers in the backseat. Of course, that’s not always a viable option, you know, if you have a family of five or planned a road trip with a group of your friends.

If you can’t avoid driving around with a car full of people, you essentially have two options: continue driving or get a rental/loaner.

NHTSA notes on its Takata recall FAQ page that the vast majority of Takata air bags will perform as expected. This suggests that you could take your chances driving around in the vehicle.

But if you “don’t feel uncomfortable continuing to drive your vehicle before the recall repair has been performed on your vehicle, you should contact your dealer and ask for a loaner until an interim or a final repair is completed,” NHTSA suggests.

However, a rep for the agency tells Consumerist that it is completely up to the carmaker’s discretion whether or not to provide a loaner vehicle to owners affected by the recall.

In fact, dealers and manufacturers are not required to provide you a loaner car, but it can never hurt to ask.

According to Subaru’s notice to Henry, owners who can’t avoid driving others around in the passenger seat should reach out to the carmaker for alternative options. This could include a loaner vehicle.

A rep for Subaru tells Consumerist that the carmaker has “limited loaner vehicles for special situations.” The company did not provide specifics on what a “special situation” constitutes.

What You Can Do

As of March 31, NHTSA says that 14.35 million Takata airbags have been replaced under the recall campaign. Of those, 7.5 million were located on the driver’s side, while 6.85 million were passenger-side airbags.

As for Subaru, NHTSA says 27.58% of recalled airbags have been fixed, that’s a total of 309,862 passenger-side airbags.

To find out if a vehicle is affected by the recall owners are urged to enter their individual VIN on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Safercar.gov/vin database.

Was this helpful? We’re a non-profit! You can get more stories like this in our twice weekly ad-free newsletter! Click here to sign up.

In this 1974 image the Victory Block (as it’s now named) had space to rent, and a fire escape on the façade. To the west was the Pender Ballroom, and to the east the Roberts Block. When it was built in 1908 (the same year as the Roberts Block) it was called the Riggs Selman Building, named for its investor developers, Samuel Spencer Selman and Dr. Herbert Wilkinson Riggs. If he read it, Mr. Selman was no doubt unimpressed by the news report that “Dr. H. W. Riggs and Mr. S. Salmon have taken out a permit for a four-storey brick block to be erected on Pender street, between Homer and Hamilton street, at cost of $40,000. The building will have a frontage of 50 feet.”

Oddly, for such a strikingly designed building, there’s no reference to an architect. There is another building completed that year which has some architectural details somewhat similar to this block, albeit rather less exuberant; the Shaldon Hotel on East Hastings was designed by H B Watson.

Dr Riggs was a physician and surgeon, born in Wicklow in Ontario in 1872. He trained in Winnipeg and Edinburgh, and arrived in BC in 1899. In 1901 he was still single, but he soon married and had two daughters, lived on West Georgia and was a member of the Terminal City  and University Clubs. As with many of the city’s successful professionals Dr Riggs also took a keen interest in property development. As well as this building, he had interests in the Dominion Trust Company (in 1907) and the Federal Trust Company, and was a director in both companies. He was a Freemason, and also governor of the Pacific-Northwest District of the Kiwanis from 1918 to 1920. He was president of the Vancouver Medical Association and in 1930 was appointed by the Provincial Secretary to the Board of Vancouver General Hospital.

Samuel Selman was a realtor in 1908 (representing the Manitoba Land Co), and born in Ontario in 1862. He married Clara Barr in Ontario in 1883, and by 1901 they had moved to Victoria, and had several children, Ella, (or Elba as she was shown in Victoria), May, Hubert, Gordon, Mary, (Marie on her wedding certificate), and Roy. Clara’s mother, Mary Barr also lived with them. Tragically, Ella accidentally died of drowning in English Bay in 1908; at the time she was crippled, on crutches, and slipped in the water. Samuel switched employment a number of times. In 1901 he was shown in the census as a lumberman, although he doesn’t appear in the street directory in Victoria until 1903 when he was listed as a grocer. In 1911 he was President of the Canadian Pipe Co, a position he first held in 1909. He died in 1947,

Image source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 778-265

The voice-activated assistant market continues to heat up, with Amazon Echo and Google Home leading the charge, despite the fact neither device has officially made its way to Canada yet.

However, new rumours indicate that Apple could be preparing to unveil its own Siri Speaker at WWDC this June. Reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo made this prediction via 9to5Mac, stating that the still unannounced device will be a high-end speaker that features built-in Siri functionality.

The superior audio quality aspect of the device, which would give it a clear advantage over its competitors, is expected to be its main selling point. Kuo says that the device will go on sale before the end of the year, though it’s possible it may not be announced at WWDC, with Kuo stating that there’s a 50 percent chance this could occur. Given WWDC is a developer focused conference, it would make sense for the tech giant to reveal a new product category at the event, giving developers adequate time to begin experimenting with the product before its official commercial release.

This isn’t the first time rumours Apple is working on a dedicated voice-activated assistant have appeared, especially since Apple opened Siri integration up to third-party developers last year. It’s also worth noting that the Cupertino, California-based company recently made Siri available to macOS users, in addition to iOS users.

If a dedicated Siri device does get announced at WWDC, it will be interesting to see if Apple opts for a simultaneous U.S. and Canada launch like it has with most of its products for the past few years. It’s also unclear if Apple plans to use this still unannounced device as the centre of its Home IoT device platform, similar to the strategy Amazon has taken with its Echo voice-activated assistant.

Source: 9to5Mac

The post Apple could reveal often-rumoured Siri speaker at WWDC in June appeared first on MobileSyrup.

At a high-level, Bitcoin is a randomly-established peer-to-peer network composed of thousands of nodes and tens of thousands of connections which rely on flooding to propagate transactions. As an attacker, being able to prevent the spread of information in such a network seems unrealistic, if not impossible.

Yet, this apparently sensible observation does not take into account that the Internet routing infrastructure (i.e., the set of protocols that govern how Internet traffic flows) is notoriously insecure and can easily be manipulated by attackers to intercept Bitcoin traffic. It also does not consider that large Internet Service Providers (ISPs), such as the ones sitting in the core of the Internet, might be naturally crossed by a large fraction of Bitcoin traffic already. Since Bitcoin messages are exchanged in clear text and without integrity checks, any (malicious) third-party on the forwarding path can eavesdrop, drop, modify, inject, or delay Bitcoin messages. The question is then: Is Bitcoin vulnerable to such routing attacks?

In our recent paper Hijacking Bitcoin: Routing Attacks on Cryptocurrencies to appear at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, we shed light on these aspects by studying the security of Bitcoin from an Internet routing perspective and quantify the potential disruptive effects of network attackers. Among others, we show that:

• Bitcoin is surprisingly centralized from an Internet routing perspective: 20% of the Bitcoin nodes are hosted in less than 100 IP prefixes. To put this in perspective, there are close to 600,000 IP prefixes advertised in the Internet today. At the same time, few well-established ISPs (e.g. Hurricane Electric) naturally see a large fraction of the Bitcoin traffic. Together, these two characteristics make large-scale routing attacks surprisingly practical.

Only 13 ASes host 30% of the entire network, while 50 ASes host 50% of the Bitcoin network.

• Because of its centralization, partitioning the Bitcoin network and isolate 50% of its mining power only requires a small routing attack, one which is orders of magnitude smaller than the attacks routinely seen in the Internet today. Any malicious ISP with access to the Internet routing infrastructure can perform this attack which starts to be effective after only few minutes (according to our own measurements on the live network).
• Any ISP transiting Bitcoin traffic can delay the propagation of mined blocks (for up to 20 minutes), in a stealth way, even if she sees one direction of the traffic.
• Bitcoin traffic is impacted by routing attacks today. We found many examples of actual routing attacks that ended up diverting Bitcoin traffic.
• While multi-homing and end-to-end encryption (BIP 151) reduce the risks of network attacks, they do not prevent them. Our results show that even heavily multi-homed mining pools are vulnerable to routing attacks. Further, end-to-end encryption do not prevent an attacker from dropping Bitcoin connections.

In this post, we take a closer look at these issues. We start by describing the two possible network attacks which we consider, namely partitioning and delay attacks, along with their potential impact on Bitcoin. We then discuss some short and long-term countermeasures that would increase Bitcoin's robustness against network attackers. More details on our work can be found on our website.

Partitioning attacks

With partitioning attacks, an attacker aims at splitting the Bitcoin network into (at least) two disjoint components such that no information (e.g. transaction) can be exchanged between them. To partition the network into two components, a network attacker intercepts all the traffic destined to all the Bitcoin nodes contained within one of the component and drops any connection to the other component. To intercept traffic, a network attacker relies on vulnerabilities in the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), the only Internet routing protocol used today, which does not validate the origin of routing announcements. These attacks, commonly referred to as BGP hijacks, involve getting a router to falsely announce that it has a better route to some IP prefix. By hijacking all the IP prefixes pertaining to the nodes in one component, the attacker can effectively intercept all the traffic exchanged between the two components. Once on path, the attacker can sever all these connections effectively disconnecting the two components. An animation of the attacks can be found on our website.

Illustration of how an AS-level adversary (AS8) can intercept Bitcoin traffic by hijacking prefixes to isolate the set of nodes P = (A, B, C, D, E).

The extreme centralization of Bitcoin from an Internet viewpoint makes partition attacks particularly effective as few IP prefixes need to be hijacked. Indeed, our measurements show that 50% of Bitcoin mining power is hosted in only 39 prefixes (i.e., in 0.007% of all Internet prefixes). This allows an attacker to isolate ~50% of the mining power by hijacking only these 39 prefixes. Much larger BGP hijacks (involving orders of magnitude more IP prefixes) are routinely seen in the Internet today.

While intercepting Bitcoin traffic using BGP hijacking is effective, any un-intercepted Bitcoin connection bridging the two components would quickly render the partition ineffective. Due to factors such as multi-homing, some nodes cannot be prevented from exchanging information, forming some kind of persistent connections. The presence of such connections makes partitioning attacks more challenging for the attacker, but not impossible. In our paper, we elaborate on how an attacker can provably identify and mitigate these persistent rogue connections by reducing the size of the partition she is trying to achieve.

By partitioning the network, the attacker forces the creation of two parallel blockchains. After the attack, all the blocks mined by the side with the shorter chain will be discarded together with all included transactions and the corresponding miners’ revenues. Moreover, discarded transactions will be irrecoverably canceled if there exist other transactions in the prevailing branch of the chain which spent the exact same Bitcoins (conflicting transactions).

Delay attacks

Bitcoin nodes are designed to request blocks from only a single peer to avoid overtaxing the network with excessive block transmissions. The block is requested again (from another peer) only if the request is not answered after 20 minutes. This design decision, coupled with the fact that Bitcoin traffic is unencrypted, allows for a powerful attack in which anyone intercepting Bitcoin traffic can delay block propagation on the corresponding connections. To do so, the attacker performs simple modification to the content of the Bitcoin messages she intercepts. As Bitcoin messages are not protected against tampering, neither the receiver nor the sender have any indication that the message has been modified, allowing the attacker to stay under the radar. The actual impact of such an attack depends on the victim and ranges from double spending (for merchant nodes) to wasted computation power (for miners). An animation of the attack can be found here.

Illustration of how an AS-level adversary (AS8) which naturally intercepts a part of the victim's traffic (node C) can delay the delivery of a block to it for 20 minutes.

Like for partition attacks, the centralization of Bitcoin nodes in few networks and prefixes, combined with the centralization of mining power in few pools, make delay attacks practical. We found that three ISPs together see 60% of all Bitcoin traffic. If malicious, these ISPs could therefore effectively and invisibly keep many bitcoin nodes uninformed. Unlike partitioning attacks though, we also found that even these powerful attackers could not disrupt the entire cryptocurrency. So, even though many nodes would be slowed down, Bitcoin, as a whole, would still function.

We verified the practicality of a delay attack by performing one against our own nodes. We found that a network attacker that intercepts only half of a victim’s connections can keep it uninformed for 64% of its uptime. We also found that the vast majority of the Bitcoin nodes (70%) are vulnerable to such an attack today.

mkalus shared this story from EU referendum and Brexit | The Guardian:

I guess in a way the EU has to blame itself. They bend over backwards for 40 years to give the Brits what they wanted so they stayed "happy" in the EU. What does the EU expect would happen this time? The Brits accepting that they are asking for favours instead of making commands? This, parents, is what you get when you don't raise your children right: Spoiled brats that rather burn down the house than clean up their bed room.

Account of meeting between PM and EU commission head has some close to Juncker putting chances of Brexit talks failing at ‘over 50%’

A devastating account of a dinner in Downing Street between Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker has emerged, claiming the European commission president ended discussions about a potential Brexit deal by telling the British prime minister: “I’m leaving Downing Street 10 times more sceptical than I was before.”

Those close to Juncker are said to have subsequently concluded that the chances of Brexit talks failing were now “over 50%”. An EU spokesman declined to comment, except to point out that Juncker had told reporters at a summit on Saturday that the dinner was a “very constructive meeting, a friendly atmosphere”.

#

Except that isn’t what I am advocating. Commonsism is about up-ending geopolitical power, putting more control of a common shared resource, or commons, into the hands of the people closest to the commons. It’s not about owning the means of production, and it’s certainly not Marxism. It’s Ostromism/Leopoldism (after Elinor Ostrom and Aldo Leoplold).

However, mutualism, the other side of the same coin, is about people forming cooperatives, mutual aid societies, and institutions like credit unions, which are owned and managed by and for the members, which I advocate.

But I don’t promote overthrowing capitalism or seizing property, as a general principle. I’m no bomb-throwing anarchist. I’m all for capitalism with a small ‘c’. It’s hypercapitalist globalism that I oppose, where localist trade barriers and work protections are removed in the name of ‘free trade’ so that multinational corporations can cut costs (and workers’ salaries and benefits) to improve margins, pocket 100% of the resulting profits, and distribute them to the shareholders, while localized businesses go bankrupt and the displaced workers are pushed out of work.

Yes, people can buy t-shirts and kitchen tables more cheaply in a globalized economy, but they have less money to do so, now that they are making minimum wage in a service job, instead of sewing the shirts or building the tables, like they used to.

Sandor Gyarmati in the Delta Optimist reports that the Premier knows what is good for you and the Massey Bridge will “make a huge difference in the lives of those who live south of the Fraser”.  Now that is kind of strange thing to say when you are defending the expenditure of $3.5 billion dollars (projected to go over budget according to many sources).

There are other alternatives that would have made a huge difference in the lives of everyone north and south of the Fraser River, including placing this bridge in an area to the east that is not impacting the most arable farmland in Canada. They could have seriously looking at other alternatives to the bridge such as twinning the tunnel, and simply doing some things that are done globally in other “congestion” situations, such as limiting truck traffic during peak times, or getting the port to operate on a 24 hour basis, like every other port in North America. Under the thin veil of talking about “jobs” and “congestion” it is assumed that citizens are not smartly analyzing the lack of public process and the wrong-headed direction which right from the start has nixed the tunnel. And no one is saying the real reason for the tunnel being taken out, which is for the Port (a federal not provincial agency) to dredge and industrialize the Fraser River for deeper, bigger boats carrying coal and liquid natural gas to Asia. It is all a very 20th century approach. A $3.5 billion dollar 20th century approach.

But on to the “benefits”.  The Premier states you  will have “reduced congestion” (which could be solved by more transit and eliminating trucks at peak periods in the current tunnel). You will have “improved safety” (of course you also have ten lanes of traffic). And my favourite-there will “13,000 fewer tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions”, because instead of idling at peak times all those vehicles will be proceeding at speed. There’s no factor for the increased emission resulting from the induced vehicle demand a new bridge will bring. And strangely, no comparison to the Port Mann bridge, or whether this is really worth $3.5 billion dollars.

Sometimes when you promise to do something, you have to make sure it is the right work, not just doing the work right.

President Trump recently bused all 100 U.S. senators to the White House for a briefing on North Korea. His position on Korea now matches the Obama administration’s, in a shift similar to his reversals on NATO, NAFTA, and chemical weapons in Syria. Has he gone sane? Let’s look at the statement. North Korea’s Kim Jong-un has nukes, missiles (although … Continued

The post On North Korea, Trump’s people sound just like Obama. Is this reassuring? appeared first on without bullshit.

Been dreaming of the next generation of Windows mobile devices? You’re not alone.

Designer Casmir Valeri recently posted a concept gallery that displays what a Surface Phone might look like in the flesh, earning a commendatory tweet from preeminent mobile journalist and tipster Evan Blass.

Fun 'Surface Phone' concept [https://t.co/KpVJ7eFuxI] pic.twitter.com/Phw8QparBI

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) May 1, 2017

The gallery, posted on Behance, shows a large silver phablet with straight edges and a design language that’s similar to Microsoft’s existing line of Surface 2-in-1s. There are also some next-level wishlist features, like a ‘Companion Cover’ that “enables near unlimited positions,” doubles battery life and provides additional USB-C ports.

Valeri’s version of the smartphone also supports Continuum, allowing it to power a desktop experience. Additionally, he envisions users could turn the handset into a trackpad with an intuitive user interface or use it with a Surface Pen to take notes.

A ‘Fusion Camera’ features dual lenses and laser-tracking technology capable of mapping objects to create Hololens augmented reality experiences and 3D models.

Unfortunately, there’s been now news pertaining to a real Surface Phone for quite some time, making this mostly a creative exercise — albeit a pleasantly convincing one.

Do you like the concept? Is there anything else on your Windows phone wishlist you’d like to add? Let us know in the comments.

Source: Casmir Valeri 

Via: Evan Blass

The post This concept gallery displays the Surface Phone of your dreams appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Algo MacNada, Max, and daughters ride their trail-a-bike to Moss Park Arena
Photo by Derek Rayside

How do you get your entire family riding together?

Story by Derek Rayside

The Toronto Island Bicycle Rental’s recent sell-off of their old bikes has prompted many people I know to think about getting a tandem. Kathleen wants a bike to ride with her husband. Faisal wants to help his 8-year old keep up with his 14-year old. Sobia wants a better commuting option for taking her 8-year old and 3-year old to school. This article will give you some tips on buying a tandem in Toronto, with a particular focus on riding with children who have become too large for a trail-a-bike, but are not yet old enough to keep up or to navigate traffic on their own.

A great place to start is Canada’s largest tandem dealer: the Meadowvale Bicycle Service in Mississauga. They have been in business since 1991, and have 14 tandems in their showroom. (Their showroom is the garage of David & Brenda’s house, and is open evenings and Saturdays.)  They are the official dealer for Co-Motion, KHS, BBC, and da Vinci (that’s da Vinci tandems of Colorado, which is not related to Cycles Devinci of Quebec). They also rent tandems, so you can try one out before purchasing.

Of the brands Meadowvale carries, David recommends Co-Motion and KHS for riding with your 8-year old. Both manufacturers have models that are specifically designed so that the rear position can be adjusted down for a child (or up for an adult). KHS models are priced around $1,500, whereas Co-Motion models are around $5,000. Part of the difference in price is due to KHS’s economies of scale: they are a larger company that makes fewer models of tandem frames (three) in a Taiwanese factory. Co-Motion makes fifteen different models of tandem frames by hand in Oregon. They won the award for best tandem at the 2016 North American Hand-Made Bicycle Show. With Co-Motion you can get a bike that is fit very specifically for your family (in addition to higher quality components and more choices of paint colours). @WhitlaMike and @PedalPapa both ride Co-Motion tandems with their children around town in Toronto, and @WhitlaMike’s family has also done long-distance touring with theirs.

Mike Whitla with his family + Co-Motion tandem on tour

The bikes discussed so far have what I would consider to be a conventional tandem frame design: captain in the front, stokers in the rear, everyone on a regular bicycle saddle, with a large frame that is hard to travel with. There are at least three tandem designs that break this mold in different ways: Onderwater XL, Hase Pino, and Bike Friday.

The author and his two kids - Photo by Derek Rayside

The Onderwater XL and the Hase Pino put the captain in the rear. The captain is the person who steers the bike, so these bikes have a mechanical linkage from the captain’s handlebars to the front wheel. Being in front gives the stoker a better view, and makes it easier to have conversations while you’re riding. These two tandems also allow the stoker to take a break from pedalling, which is a nice feature for children and is not commonly found on other tandems. Finally, these bikes are both good for carrying cargo when you do not have a stoker --- although the Hase Pino is better for this, with a cargo capacity of over 200 litres (twice the size of the largest hiking backpack). I have used my Onderwater XL to carry a step-ladder, a fifty pound roll of flooring underpadding, some lumber, a stationary exercise bike --- and more ordinary things, like hockey equipment or groceries (both of which I do every week).

Hase Pino pictures from the web:

Image courtesy of Hase Bikes

 Image courtesy of Hase Bikes

Image via Pinterest

Image courtesy o Velos Couches

For all these similarities in features and capabilities, the Onderwater XL and Hase Pino could not be more different. The Hase Pino has the stoker in a recumbent seat and the captain in a regular saddle, whereas the Onderwater has everyone in a regular saddle. The Hase Pino splits into two halves for easy transportation in a compact car. The Onderwater XL is just about the largest and heaviest thing on two wheels: it barely fits into a cargo van, and requires both strength and technique to engage the kickstand.

The Hase Pino is constructed with care in Germany, and is available at Urbane Cyclist on College Street in Toronto, as well as at Hamilton Trike and Bent. The Onderwater XL is hand-made in The Netherlands, and is available from Urkai in Burlington (who will deliver it to Toronto in their cargo van, and is where I got mine from).

Brown Cycles in Colorado makes the Kidz Tandem, which is similar in design to the Onderwater: the kids ride in front. It is not available at any shops in Toronto, but I met a lady riding one in the bike lanes: she imported it herself, and has been commuting her son to school and herself to work with it for several years. My impression is that it is lighter and sportier than the Onderwater, whereas the Onderwater can carry more cargo and weight.

Bike Friday makes tandems that can be packed into two suitcases for air travel, so you can go on bike tours around the world. They made their first Family Tandem back in 1995, and still make all of their bikes by hand in Oregon. Before Bike Friday, they invented the Burley child trailer (almost forty years ago). Their daughter, Hanna, was the first child in the trailer, and is now President of Bike Friday.

Jun Nogami has been riding a Bike Friday Family Tandem with his daughters in Toronto for several years. Bike Friday can be ordered directly from their website, or is now also available in Toronto from a new vendor, CityAndCargo.bike (disclosure: I am friends with the proprietor, Stuart Kinner).

Jun Nogami’s daughters on their Bike Friday family tandem - Image courtesy of Jun 

What if you want to bring two children on your tandem? The Onderwater XL, Kidz Tandem, and the Co-Motion Periscope Trident both have two stoker positions. (Onderwater and Kidz Tandem also have versions for just one child.) The Trident is better for long rides in the country, whereas the Onderwater XL is better for carrying groceries along with your children on short rides around town. Bike Friday has in the past made a triple-tandem, and might do so again as a special order. With a triple-tandem you might also be able to get two adults and a child on the bike, depending on everyone’s size: this is what we do on our Onderwater XL.

If the second child is young enough to ride in a child seat on the rear rack of the bike, then the best choices are the designs where the captain is in the rear: the Hase Pino and the Onderwater XL (and maybe Kidz Tandem). This will make it easier for you to get the young child into and out of their seat, and also make it easier for you to control the bike. An added bonus of this configuration is that your children cannot fight with each other when you are seated in between them. Alternatively, you can hitch a child trailer to any tandem.

There are a few other bike stores in town that can special order a tandem, but they don’t keep them in stock, and don’t know if the one they can special order would be suitable for a child stoker. The two Canadian Tire locations that I frequent both have a Schwinn tandem in stock (for $800), so you could easily try it out to see if it fits your family.

If you are travelling stateside, Tandems East in New Jersey carries Co-Motion, Bike Friday, KHS, and Kidz Tandem. They also carry Bilenky, which makes a bike like the Hase Pino.

The value that you get from a bike depends on how much you use it. My family rides our Onderwater XL every weekend, all year round. It is our main mode of transportation in the city: to the hockey rink, to the grocery store, to the movies, and to the park. These days we only drive when we are going out of town. While our triple tandem might be expensive compared to some other single bikes, it is much less expensive than a car. Mr Money Moustache, a Canadian who lives in Colorado and blogs about frugal living, believes in the home economics of bicycles: even if you also use a car for many tasks, every mile you ride your bike instead of driving a car saves you money. A bike that fits your family and your needs is a healthy and joyous way to pinch your pennies.
See you in the bike lanes!

Related on dandyhorsemagazine.com

Accessible Cycling is Better Together

Cargo bikers roll out for Open Streets

Heels on Wheels Goes Tandem: Leanne Eisen

Samsung’s S8 DeX dock station has appeared on The Source’s website for $249 CAD.

The dock, however, is listed as online-only and currently is sold out, according to The Source’s website. It’s unclear if this is the actual price of Samsung’s DeX dock or just a placeholder.

The latest statement we’ve received from Samsung Canada regarding DeX’s availability north of the U.S. border is the following:

“Samsung Canada is excited to confirm that the Gear 360 and DeX will be available to Canadian consumers in 2017. We do not have confirmed pricing or date of availability at this time but will follow up with more information as it becomes available.”

In the U.S. the DeX dock is priced at $150, which comes to approximately $202 CAD. This means that if The Source’s listing is accurate, the retailer is selling the dock significantly above the current conversion rate.

The post The Source lists Samsung’s S8/S8+ DeX dock for $249 CAD appeared first on MobileSyrup.

This week, a series from urban designer Gloria Venczel (principal of Cityscape Design), who asks: 

Is Vancouver the Urban Design-CityBuilding leader in North America?

Many new mixed-use developments in the City of Vancouver have a strong public realm component to them …   While negotiated, we take these public realm enhancements as a given.  Architectural edge programming in Vancouver is an integral part of  the public living room.  ‘Streetscape vibrancy’ design elements are implemented in varying degrees in contemporary projects on a consistent basis.

Is Vancouver the North American leader in producing contemporary mixed-use, people-friendly, walkable, vibrant  developments? Has the City of Vancouver’s early vision for pedestrian-friendly urban design spurred a symbiotic ( sometimes problematic)  relationship with the development community, resulting in a developers’ “race to the top”?  

It appears that the local Vancouver development market is very competitive in product quality and reputation but is head and shoulders above their North American counterparts in city building savvy and delivering walkable urban design projects.

Some examples, with photos by Gloria:

.

Mixed use, Melville St., Downtown Vancouver . Great building-edge programming  with retail/shops. Always filled with people.  

.

.

Mixed use, Fourth Ave, Kitsilano. Building designs that invite window shopping as well as opportunities to pour people into cafe seating.

.

.

Mixed Use, Fourth Ave, Kitsilano, Vancouver. Building designs that invite window shopping as well as opportunities to pour people into cafe seating.         

 .

.

  Mixed use, Fourth Ave, Kitsilano. Urban design that facilitates creature comforts for the “outdoor living room” like Adirondack chairs, trees, shade, window shopping.J