Appy Weather celebrates its second birthday today. At the start of 2016, I was hoping to drop 2.0 to mark this occasion. But life happened. The good news is I'm on the verge of leaving behind The Swamp.
Another piece on the dilemma faced by our neighbours down the coast – from John Graham:
Here’s an interesting article comparing housing costs and development policy in San Francisco and Seattle, both going through tech booms – but only Seattle responding with a massive increase in supply.
“All options need to be on the table. If a taller, denser San Francisco will make the city more affordable, then it’s time we study how to make that happen,” Says Mission District Supervisor David Campos, who has, in the past, supported some of the most restrictive zoning laws in San Francisco history. For Campos, density may be the only way his residents can keep their homes.
Campos may be reading the political tea leaves correctly: I ran a small zip-code targeted public opinion poll showing simulations of a taller San Francisco to respondents and found that a slight (statistically insignificant) majority of residents support a Manhattan-like city landscape if it meant affordability (data here). …
Of course, not every city suffers from high-tech growth. Berkeley Economist Enrico Moretti credits Seattle for blunting the forces of inequality by supporting their tech hub with a surge in new apartments.
It looks like Sportsnet Now has ditched its last tie to traditional cable services when it comes to the platform’s new 4th-Generation Apple TV app.
While Rogers’ customers and Sportsnet Now subscribers can log into the app through their computers, tablets and smartphones, the telecom has yet to rollout an Apple TV app until now.
For $25 a month, Apple TV owners can subscribe to Sportsnet Now independently of a Rogers cable subscription.
According to Alphabeatic, the app is set to go live within the next two to five days and is currently moving through Apple’s approval process.
Sportsnet Now launched back in April as a standalone streaming service, allowing users to livestream games from Rogers’ various Sportsnet TV channels, including all Blue Jays games, NHL, NBA and other sports.
While $25 a month is a hefty fee, 4th Generation Apple TV cord cutters now have a viable option to watch a variety of different sports without the need for a traditional cable subscription.
Mobi is still pretty small with 36 stations (so far) and roughly 390 bikes (growing daily). And young — at two weeks or so into the rollout. But signs are good that Vancouver could be successful in joining the ranks of 800 or so cities with busy bike share systems.
Mobi has attracted 1,761 active users (people who’ve taken a Mobi ride) during its soft launch. As of August 4, apparently 3,577 people have taken annual Mobi memberships and can join in the soft launch. This is high annual-member-per-bike uptake, even for mature systems.
The number of rides per day so far is between 700 and 970; averaging around two trips per bike per day. This would be low if Mobi were a mature, large system, such as New York City, Paris, London and so on, where the rides per day per bike can approach 6-8. But for a 2-week old system with limited coverage area and limited user base (annual memberships only), it’s very encouraging. And it’s attracting attention in high places (the Federal Cabinet).
Next steps?? Open up day passes ($7.50 for unlimited 30-minute trips) and monthly passes for purchase from kiosks in high-traffic areas. Plus gearing up rebalancing crews to move bikes around from full to empty stations. Effective rebalancing depends on finding usage patterns from trip data and station numbers over time. And it’s not an easy thing to manage.
My personal experience so far has been excellent over a total of around 15 rides. The communication gizmos work fine, the bikes are great to ride (if slow and heavy compared to my regular bike), and when I need help the staff are there and responsive. So far so good. Roll on Mobi!
With information from Mia Kohout (Mobi GM) via Postmedia’s Vancouver Sun and the Daily Hive.
Since the story on the cube house on Point Grey Road generated so much interest, let’s go for another architectural and open-space controversy.
Michael Geller starts it off in his Courier column:
The third important event that happened last week has nothing to do with housing. It has to do with how we plan our downtown.
The story started with a call from CBC’s Early Edition inviting me to comment on a proposal to replace a glass rotunda and plaza with a new commercial development. …
The researcher wanted to talk about the plaza and rotunda at Howe and Georgia streets, part of Cadillac Fairview’s Pacific Centre, for which a proposal was going to the city’s Urban Design Panel (UDP) later in the week. …
I subsequently attended the UDP meeting where I was shocked to see plans and a model for a three-storey retail complex on the plaza. However, I was told the proposal was in accordance with a 2006 rezoning.
When I subsequently asked why a proposal for such a prominent site was proceeding without any community input, I was told by an official city spokesperson that this was standard procedure for a development permit application in accordance with zoning, and staff would be seeking public feedback through the neighbourhood notification process.
Surprised by this response I decided to review the 2006 rezoning decision myself.
While it confirmed council had approved a deal to allow the plaza to be redeveloped in return for a developer contribution towards the cost of the nearby SkyTrain station, council also decided “in the preparation of a development application, the public should be consulted about proposed land use and design concepts, through workshops and open houses.”
Compared to most world cities, Vancouver has few public open spaces and plazas, and sadly we seem to be losing many of the spaces we do have.
Before we lose another plaza at Howe and Georgia, I urge the mayor, council and the city’s planning department to instigate a proper public consultation process to find a better solution to retain all, or at least a portion of this important downtown open space.
Ray Spaxman weighs in:
This is so awful!
It is bad architecture at this location, bad urban design for this location, bad loss of public usable space, bad scale in that location, terrible corner and frontage to Howe Street. It looks as if it was relocated from Robson Street (where it might fit well).
Perhaps some people want Georgia Street to look like Robson Street – crass commercialism overwhelming public good and opportunity. The design rationale in the application seems unaware that there is something called Urban Design. We seem to have lost the ability to visualise the potential design and functional richness of a whole street.
And where is the city’s Downtown public open space plan?
With the arrival of our new chief planner, Gil Kelley, previously from San Francisco, this current piece in The Guardian seems relevant – linked to by Durning, who pulls out some quotes:
…”well funded opposition…” Wonder if they have a CityHallWatch in San Francisco?
…”not to build is to displace …” – Renter’s Union spokesperson. After the Grandview-Woodland ‘debate’ … well, misinformation is a powerful tool.
“The tech boom is a clear factor,” said Peter Cohen, co-director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations. “When you’re dealing with this total concentration of wealth and this absurd slosh of real estate money, you’re not dealing with housing that’s serving a growing population. You’re dealing with housing as a real estate commodity for speculation.”
But Cohen is quick to note that there are other culprits behind what some realtors peg as San Francisco’s $1.2m pricetag for a starter home and its tops-in-the-nation $3,510 median rent for a one-bedroom apartment: population growth, income inequality, history, geography. …
Since Kenneth Rosen moved to the San Francisco Bay Area 42 years ago, he has counted six boom and bust housing cycles.
The primary cause for the current boom, says Rosen, chairman of UC Berkeley’s center for real estate and urban economics, is something most cities technically envy: “Extraordinary job creation,” 30,000 to 40,000 jobs per year for the last five years in San Francisco alone.
Rosen figures that 70% of the new leasing and job growth springs from the tech sector. For housing costs to drop and affordability to rise substantially, he said, “we’d have to see a correction in that sector”. …
Compounding the problem of population growth in San Francisco is the fact that the city has built far too little housing for far too many decades. Since 2010 alone, its population has grown by more than 60,000, but only 12,000 new units of housing were constructed.
On the plus side, though, San Francisco is in the middle of one of the biggest building booms in its history.
Most of the new units, however, are in flossy skyscrapers filled with high-end condos. Because, as Paragon Real Estate Group described San Francisco in a spring 2016 update: “Development is not for the faint of heart or shallow of pocket.”
Sonja Trauss is founder of the San Francisco Bay Area Renters Federation, which the activist describes as “the increase capacity arm of the anti-displacement movement”.
“I want to remind everybody that not building displaces people,” she said at the hearing.
“I don’t really see any downside at all,” she said, “besides the fact that some neighbors might have to let their eyes pass over a new thing that looks different and unfriendly to them. We’re talking about places that people live, and I don’t think it’s worth it to save the way a house looks to deny someplace for someone to live.”
To which Monica McFadden, a self-described fourth generation San Franciscan whose children are “fourth generation Noe Valleyans”, replied: “We can’t allow one-person’s greedy wants to overshadow literally the quality of life of many.”
Stephen Black,
The Walrus,
Aug 07, 2016
According to the (anonymous) author of this article in the Walrus, "Academia has become a high-stakes gamble— and the losers can barely afford pants." It's a fair point, but as critic Melonie Fullick writes in University Affairs, "the piece is basically written as if he is the first person to have discovered this is an issue that might be worthy of discussion." Neither piece really comes to grips with academia's increasing reliance on serf labour to balance the books.
[Link] [Comment]When I was 15, I had an arch nemesis. Let’s call him Mark.
We both wrote about video gaming tournaments. Only he got the best scoops. He got the special access to VIPs. He got let into the ‘players only’ areas of tournaments. He got asked for his opinion by mainstream publications when they wrote about the topic. I was the better writer, he was the better journalist.
I earned a good part time income, he sold his gaming site for just over a million bucks.
The difference was relationships. He was fantastic at building them. I showed up the day of a major event, he showed up a few days early and hung out with everyone (organisers, security, gamers etc…). I locked myself in my hotel room to write up my stories, he wrote his in the thoroughfares – complete with the annoying interruptions from friends and acquaintances.
You get the idea. The difference between us was relationships. He spent about half of his time and maybe a third of his revenue building them. He flew to places to meet people. He visited the top gamers at home to do interviews. He bought people drinks. He showed up every day and helped others.
In 2013, I took a month-long work trip around the world. I went from London to Dubai to Australia and then across the USA and back to the UK. I had dozens of meetings, coffees, breakfasts, lunches (sometimes two on the same day) with community professionals, friends, event organisations, platform vendors etc…
I can probably trace around $500k in revenue to relationships established (and solidified) during this trip over the following years. The next year (2014) I spent a few weeks travelling through the USA again. There was no clear purpose of the trip. Yet the trip yielded a future employee, a new idea for our courses, and a couple of new clients (eventually).
And this is the problem. If you’re doing this work, you understand the value of relationships. Yet because this value is so difficult to quantify, we don’t invest anywhere near as much time building them as we should. Even when we do establish a relationship, we don’t maintain it.
When there is budget to spare, it goes towards more staff or better technology. But the best results will usually come from radical relationship building. Your best members, future staff, new ideas, and great feedback is going to come from the relationships you’ve literally invested in.
Travel more. Host meetups in different cities. Segment your mailing list by location and meet people everywhere you go. Bring new groups together and start regular meetups. Take people out for food and drinks. Hear their stories. Look for trends and new ideas. Identify possible future super users. Post photos of meetups with members in the community if you like. The cost of doing this is miniscule compared to the possible benefits.
If you think this only works externally, try it with your colleagues. Host a weekend barbeque and invite your team. Set-up a regular coffee or lunch with your boss or acquaintances from random departments in the organisation. It’s a lot easier to get support for your ideas when people already know and like you.
Don’t forget the bible neither.
Ah, to be a 10-year-old boy again. Back when the only hint we had of corruption in sport was the suspicious frequency of certain “shinies” in the Panini football sticker packs compared to rarer-than-hen’s-teeth others.
I don’t have a faith or a religion, so I’m often reluctant to describe things as “transcendent”; I don’t want to speak to an experience that’s not my own. But 5 years ago today, I witnessed one of the most amazing moments of my life, something that transcends anything but life milestones like my wedding or the birth of my child.
I got to witness the final launch of the final space shuttle, Atlantis, right from Kennedy Space Center. Mission STS-135.
Watching that space shuttle take off was, unquestionably, one of the most emotional and moving events of my life. I am not embarrassed at all to say that it brought me to tears.
Some of that emotion was inspired by having simply grown up as a geek. While older folks had Apollo, the Space Shuttle was “our” space program, with the earliest tests and launches being among my earliest memories, just as I was discovering my love for space and science and nerding out.
On the day before the launch, we got a chance to visit with staff from across NASA, including the opportunity to talk to a few astronauts. But while it was a thrill to meet people who’d actually been to space, what moved me most was the more anonymous staffers who had less visible jobs at NASA. Their pride in their work was palpable, with a passion undiminished even over the decades that some of them had worked there. A few told me they’d been around for the first shuttle launch, thirty years earlier.
While we heard their stories, they took us on a grand tour of the facility, where we even got to approach incredibly close to the shuttle as it sat on the launch pad. We nervously waited to hear whether the weather would hold out for launch the next morning.
I watched the launch from just a few feet away from the countdown clock at the start of this video.
When it was finally time for the countdown, they brought us all to a grassy field that was as close as civilians could get to the launch tower. As the countdown commenced in earnest, the thought that kept returning to my head was, “This is what we can do together.”
It took the love of so many people—thousands!— over so many years to create this, the most amazing machine that I’ve ever seen in my life. The most impressive and glorious display of scientific knowledge that I could imagine.
And when that rocket takes off, you feel the launch in your chest. Your ears hear a sound like a distorted speaker that’s in overdrive. But it’s not the sound, really, so much as the physical sensation. What you feel is the force of countless people’s optimism.
I know there were many flaws in the shuttle program. I saw the quiet grief of those who had worked at NASA and had lost shuttles over the years. I knew the technology behind that shuttle was ancient by contemporary technological standards. But even on the last day that it would ever take off, that enormous machine was purely magical.
What I saw when I watched a Space Shuttle soar into the sky was simply a reminder of what is possible. We can do amazing things! I know because I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
We don’t have a new product or major software update to announce, but it’s an exciting day nonetheless. That’s because our website has just been overhauled for the first time in many years. We hope you’ll have a look!
Our last major update occurred way back in 2008, when we worked with Dan Cederholm on a design that has served us well for many years. That site grew and evolved as our company did, but now the time has come to modernize. Our designer Neale began that process earlier this year, when he introduced our new style of product page, one which aims to reduce clutter while still providing all the information customers might want.
Today, we’ve updated the frame of our site as well. You’ll generally find everything in the same place, but the site is brighter overall, and should be a bit easier to navigate. The new frame also includes a new company “identity”, which means a new look and a new logo. You can see the entire new site at rogueamoeba.com, and read on if you’re interested to learn more.
Our company has a strange name, and we extended that eccentricity to our original logo/mascot, Ammo. When creating Ammo back in 2002, we sought to marry the brashness of Rambo (“rogue”) with the silliness of a Gary Larson-style drawing (“amoeba”)1. Ammo served as a fun part of our visual identity, and an attention-grabbing one at that. Ultimately, we didn’t think too much about him after his initial creation.
Ammo the Amoeba
Over the years, however, we occasionally heard from folks expressing their distaste for our gun-wielding little mascot. Because these emails were quite rare, we made note of the feedback but kept our focus on continuing to improve our software itself. After all, a digital logo can’t do any direct harm. Physical guns exist in the real world, and disarming Ammo won’t change that.
However, over time the appeal of our cartoon logo has waned. As the list of gun tragedies has grown ever longer, our lighthearted riff has lost some of its humor value. Meanwhile, our products have matured into more professional markets, and we’ve wanted a more professional look to match. We decided that a new logo was in order, one with less firepower and more focus on audio.
When we founded Rogue Amoeba, we didn’t plan to focus on audio software, but that became our niche. Our new logo is intended to be a bit more professional, while also evoking some of that old time rock and roll.2
Neale went through many ideas to get to our final result. One of the goals was to evoke a moving, undulating microscopic creature, and inspiration came from several amazing images of amoebas (including this gorgeous image). The overall shape was then simplified through countless rounds of sketches. Neale said “the hardest part was getting the essence of a wriggling mass of protoplasm to also feel orderly and composed”, and that’s just not a sentence you hear often.
In addition to its amoeboid shape, the logo also features a “nucleus”, seen in the stylized “O” in the word “Rogue”. That “nucleus” provides a nod to our specialization in audio software, with its subtle speaker shape. It’s a touch that not everyone will notice, but it’s a detail we’re happy is there.
While we’re sad to see Ammo retire, we wanted something more cohesive and clean for our site. We love the new logo, and think it will better defer to the actual content of our site, allowing visitors to focus more on our products. After all, that’s the real point of our website!
Our bristly little mascot is no longer front and center on our site, but he’ll likely continue to appear now and again in some form. In fact, you might just find him in your mailbox! We recently dug out a leftover box of the plush toys we created way back in 2005, and we figured our customers might like to get their hands on them. So, we’ll ship a free plush Ammo toy to the first 100 people who make a new software purchase and then request a plushy.
Coming Soon?
Just place an order through our store, then request your free plushy through this form. If you’ve been considering picking up one of our apps, today’s a great day to do it!
Our site has changed, but our commitment to great audio software remains the same. If you haven’t seen our latest work, be sure to check out the improvements found in version 3.3 of our audio recorder Audio Hijack, the new Bluetooth speaker support in Airfoil 5, and our newest app, audio router Loopback. We’ve got plenty more in the works, including further updates for MacOS 10.12 (Sierra), Chromecast support in Airfoil, and much more. As always, stay tuned to this blog to get the latest.
Footnotes:
The Content Security Policy standard lets you define a list of the inline scripts, inline stylesheets, and subresources that your page permits to load. You can define a content security policy on each page to restrict the capabilities that an attacker would have should a content injection vulnerability exist on the page. If your page displays user-generated content (e.g. a user profile page that renders markup provided or influenced by its owner) then Content Security Policy can be used to restrict the capabilities of such content. Think of Content Security Policy as an insurance policy against coding mistakes.
The latest WebKit builds and Safari Technology Preview now support all of the features of the Content Security Policy Level 2 standard, including hashes for script and style elements.
You can now permit an inline script or inline stylesheet to load by including a cryptographic hash of its content in your CSP. Hashes make it easy to adopt Content Security Policy on existing pages that must include inline scripts and inline stylesheets. Add the SHA-256, SHA-384 or SHA-512 hash of the content of each inline <script> and <style> on your page to your policy to allow these elements to load and prevent loading arbitrary inline scripts and inline stylesheets that were not properly escaped in user-generated content or, worse, injected by an attacker. Using hashes also allows you to avoid adding the risky 'unsafe-inline' keyword to your policy.
Let’s look at an example. If you are using the latest WebKit build or Safari Technology Preview and you click here then you will see a white silhouette of the WebKit compass inside a blue square. Otherwise, you will see a blue square. Here is the CSP meta tag of the page:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Security-Policy" content="style-src 'self' 'sha256-G0CufoWPLTm5OhVU1OioVsF0ge/f2hWhXLJHu3QH0bQ='; img-src 'self'; default-src 'none'">
The inline stylesheet that loads the compass image has the hash source expression 'sha256-G0CufoWPLTm5OhVU1OioVsF0ge/f2hWhXLJHu3QH0bQ='. It is allowed to load because its hash appears in the CSP meta tag.
We enhanced Web Inspector to show the CSP SHA-256 hash expression for a selected script or style element in the Node details pane.
This allows you to simply select the <script> or <style> in the Elements tab and copy and paste the “CSP Hash” from the Node details sidebar into your policy. This is how I obtained 'sha256-G0CufoWPLTm5OhVU1OioVsF0ge/f2hWhXLJHu3QH0bQ=' to use in the CSP meta tag above.
Browsers that support CSP , but do not support CSP hashes will refuse to load the inline stylesheet in the example. We can make the example backwards compatible with such browsers by adding 'unsafe-inline' to our meta tag, as shown below. The added keyword will let these browsers load the content of all style elements on the page. Browsers that support CSP hashes will ignore the 'unsafe-inline' keyword and perform hash comparisons.
<meta http-equiv="Content-Security-Policy" content="style-src 'self' 'sha256-G0CufoWPLTm5OhVU1OioVsF0ge/f2hWhXLJHu3QH0bQ=' 'unsafe-inline'; img-src 'self'; default-src 'none'">
WebKit supports all of the CSP Level 2 hash algorithms: SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512. Even though your policy can have hashes that are a mix of different hash algorithms, using more than one hash algorithm can cause a browser to perform unnecessary hash computations. If you do make use of hashes then ensure that you add them to the most specific directive in your policy: script-src for script elements and style-src for style elements. Avoid adding hashes to the default-src directive as it guarantees that a browser must compute the hash of- and perform hash comparisons for- each script and style element in the page.
Historically a CSP policy was defined using a list of source expressions that matched the URLs of the subresources that the page permitted to load. The source expression * is a wildcard expression that matches any URL that is not data: or blob:. WebKit further restricts the URL schemes that * can match to prevent you from inadvertently permitting loads from these special schemes when such loads could be exploited by user-generated content or an attacker to run arbitrary code. This change is a backwards incompatible change and represents a careful balancing act between web compatibility and mitigating content injection vulnerabilities in sites that make use of *. The advantage of this change is that it makes * have a safer default behavior. The disadvantage is that you will need to explicitly add special schemes and custom protocols to your policy so as to permit loads from them. Here is a composite breakdown of the schemes that * matches when it appears in the source list of various directives:
| Directive | * matches |
|---|---|
| img-src | “scheme of the page”, http:, https:, data: |
| media-src | “scheme of the page”, http:, https:, data:, blob: |
| Anything else | “scheme of the page”, http:, https: |
We felt it was acceptable to allow * to match data: for images, and data: and blob: for media because JavaScript code embedded in URLs with these schemes will not execute when loaded via an <img>, <video> or <audio>.
As aforementioned, you will need to explicitly whitelist any custom protocols in your policy if you develop an app that embeds a web view and loads resources over custom protocols. For example, if you wanted to restrict loading images to common schemes and your own custom protocol app: you would use:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Security-Policy" content="img-src * app:">
As usual, report any bugs you find in Content Security Policy at bugs.webkit.org. For comments or questions, feel free to contact the WebKit team on Twitter at @WebKit or Jonathan Davis, our Web Technologies Evangelist at @jonathandavis. Enjoy!
mkalus
shared this story
from  Consumerist.
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Mercury poisoning doesn’t sound fun, but it also doesn’t necessarily sound like something the average consumer runs into a lot in modern cosmetic aisles, what with federal regulations banning dangerous levels of the stuff. However, there are a slew of illegal skin care products for sale out there that contain mercury, and the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t want folks slathering them on their bodies.
The FDA says many cosmetics marketed as “anti-aging” or “skin-lightening” contain mercury, and are usually marketed as treatments that remove age spots, freckles, blemishes, and wrinkles. Young people may also use them as acne treatments.
So how will you know if there’s mercury? Check the label, the FDA says: if the words “mercurous chloride,” “calomel,” “mercuric,” “mercurio,” or “mercury” are listed, mercury’s in it and you should stop using the product immediately.
What if there are no ingredients listed? Don’t assume it’s fine, the FDA warns.
“Federal law requires that ingredients be listed on the label of any cosmetic or nonprescription drug, so do not use a product that doesn’t have a label,” the agency advises. “In addition, don’t use drugs or cosmetics labeled in languages other than English unless English labeling is also provided. That’s also a sign that the product may be marketed illegally.”
These kinds of products are usually manufactured abroad and then sold illegally stateside, Jason Humbert of FDA’s Office of Regulatory Affairs explains, often in stores that cater to the Latino, Asian, African, or Middle Eastern communities. They’re also promoted online on social media, media sold through mobile apps, and some people may bring them back from other countries for personal use as well.
“Even though these products are often promoted as cosmetics, they also may be unapproved new drugs under the law,” says Linda Katz, M.D., director of FDA’s Office of Cosmetics and Colors.
According to the FDA, mercury compounds are easily absorbed through the skin, and tend to accumulate in the body. They may cause allergic reactions, skin irritation, or neurotoxic problems.
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mkalus
shared this story
from Consumerist.
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Things are about to be a bit more electric over at Mercedes-Benz: the carmaker is reportedly set to intensify its work on alternative-fuel cars with the introduction of four new models.
Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, reports that Mercedes will build its own distinct line of electric vehicles starting with two SUVs and two sedans.
The new cars will be sold under a new sub-brand that has yet to be created, the sources say, noting that the plan falls in line with CEO Dieter Zetsche’s June announcement that the company would unveil an electric car at the Paris motor show this fall.
That vehicle is expected to be an SUV capable of driving about 300 miles on a single charge, Bloomberg reports.
The line of electric vehicles isn’t exactly a new endeavor for Mercedes, the carmaker has previously dabbled in the area, adding electric motors to existing models.
The new vehicles are expected to be offered for sale by the end of the decade, the sources say.
Mercedes Is About to Unveil an Entire Fleet of Electric Vehicles [Bloomberg]
A survey of more than 1,000 Insurance Corporation of BC (ICBC) customers found that half of them are unlikely to buy a self-driving car if autonomous vehicles go on sale in B.C., while 30% are not interested at all in a fully automated vehicle. …
The ICBC survey found 87% of respondents had heard a lot or some about the technology and a slim majority (53%) believe that self-driving cars would make B.C. roads safer.
“Few consumers trust self-driving cars completely when it comes to getting them safely to their destination,” said the report, indicating 12% of respondents said they trust the technology completely, while 16% do not trust it at all.
Half the respondents said drawbacks included safety consequences of equipment or system failure and 45% were concerned about legal liability if a self-driving car crashed.
Hacking (29%) and tracking of locations and destinations (14%) were other concerns.
The report does not indicate whether any of the respondents had ridden in a self-driving car, but it did include a section on “emotion felt when riding in a self-driving vehicle.” Anxious (28%) and powerless (15%) were the most popular emotions.
Gord Price: In addition to the emotional concerns, the respondents are rightfully concerned about system failure and liability – and those, more than consumer response, are the reasons why these advanced technologies will change our fundamental relationship with the car.
Why bother actually owning a car if you have to be responsible for maintaining it, particularly when any failure might result in your death or a staggering liability in the event you injure or kill someone else? Why not, instead, leave the maintenance and liability up to a fleet manager like a car-sharing firm from which you purchase a mobility package?
The technology will initially be expensive – and quickly obsolete. Another reason not to commit to personal ownership.
But what happens when people no longer have that same emotional connection to the car as we do now, where the vehicle is a reflection of our status and personality? As with a cell-phone communications package, we will love the service a transportation package provides, but with no particular attachment to the always-changing hardware itself.
And once that emotional bond is broken, it also means government has a different relationship with the vehicle too – or more particularly to the citizen-driver. When it comes to taxation and regulation, government will be dealing with service providers, not drivers. The end-user may not even be aware of what the taxation component is, just as today with the cell phone.
That changing relationship may be a more significant change than the technology which makes it possible.
In India, Google and Facebook’s rivalry is clear.
Like all writers, I have a fraught relationship with copy editors. I give them my perfect prose and then it’s pick, pick, pick. But I can’t live without one. Today: how to value copyeditors and your own prose, all at the same time. I’ve taken you through the whole editing process this week: idea development, … Continue reading Editing week, Level 4: How to love your copy editor →
The post Editing week, Level 4: How to love your copy editor appeared first on without bullshit.
The Beaverton, always a reliable source for ideologically untainted news, weighs in on Vancouver real estate. Writer Jacob Duarte Spiel drills down to show how one clever but desperate local family has found a, like, totally exciting way to snatch a piece of the property bubble while it’s still expanding.
In an ominous procedural omission, apparently no neighbours were consulted and so given veto power over the purchase. 
The Adventure, private collection (from The Cosmic Child). All images courtesy the artist, unless otherwise noted
In the late 19th century, Southern California attracted misfits, idealists, and entrepreneurs with few ties to anyone or anything. Swamis, spiritualists, and other self-proclaimed religious authorities quickly made their way out West to forge new faiths. Independent book publishers, motivational speakers, and metaphysical-minded artists and writers then became part of the Los Angeles landscape. City of the Seekers examines how creative freedom enables SoCal artists to make spiritual work as part of their practices.
Urban folk artist Bunnie Reiss' works are magical offerings, protection charms, and visual incantations that seek to remind viewers to focus on the good, despite the bad. Her large-scale murals and painted installations are scattered across unexpected pockets of Los Angeles, imbued with vivid and enchanting tales of magic culled from a neverending sketchbook full of random lists, strange stories, and intricate drawings.
Amara Kitchen, Highland Park, Los Angeles. Photo: Marnie Sehayek
Raised in Colorado by way of Maryland, Reiss comes from a Polish and Russian family. She describes her upbringing in a conservative Jewish household as being full of hearty meals, lively conversation, and a strong sense of community. Early on, the artist inherited an appreciation for the traditional customs, strong beliefs, and imaginative stories that her Eastern European forebears passed down by word of mouth. "I continue to nurture that part of my brain by developing intricate stories and characters from my everyday life," she tells The Creators Project. And though she rebelled against the organized aspects of Judaism, she acknowledges, "I rely on the mysticism part of it to guide my adult life."
Little Tokyo, Los Angeles
After earning an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute, Reiss relocated to a small French town in Brittany to study formal drawing and painting. Eventually, she returned to California and found herself in Los Angeles in order to work on a larger scale. "You can spend a lifetime exploring LA and never really see all of it," Reiss describes Los Angeles. "It’s like a strange country with many different states. As a muralist, it’s incredible how many walls there are! I get really excited every time I drive to a new part of town and see more and more potential areas to paint in."
Besides putting up murals in different LA neighborhoods, Reiss also recently published a children's book called The Cosmic Child, which features 15 of her paintings. She works primarily with water-based materials, but depending on the surface, she's been known to use enamel and spray paint as well. "I’m also a secret quilter, and sometimes make huge quilts that look just like my paintings," she admits.
The Luxelust Life, Highland Park, Los Angeles. Photo: Spencer Harding
Reiss' inspirations range from animals, folk art, and old woodcut illustrations, to magical symbols and the stars. "I want people to feel they have the right to look at beautiful things, to feel good—even for just a quick moment—when walking by one of my murals," she explains. "There’s a kind of freedom one gets from just letting it all go. I believe strongly that what I am doing is part of a larger 'job' and that getting up to create and release every day keeps a small part of this giant universe moving along like an inchworm. I keep things simple, so my work can continue to grow."
The Donut Farm, Silver Lake, Los Angeles
As part of a ritual to develop her personal and creative growth, Reiss immerses herself in nature and camps in her VW van as much as possible. If nothing else, it enables her to simply marvel at the elusive, intervening spaces between the natural and man-made. "I love being in a huge, bustling city that is literally surrounded by mountains and the ocean," she says. "There’s nature all around us, and that’s super unusual to have both options. I can be Downtown around all the noise and then just drive 30 minutes and be in the Angeles National Forest. It’s pretty incredible."
Tree of Life, private collection
Though Reiss feels that the world can sometimes seem like a dark place full of bad news, she believes that individuals have the power to personally transform reality. "You can take a stab at changing the world by changing someone’s mood," she explains. "It sounds silly, but feeling good can lead to better decisions, less fear, more openness, more understanding. There’s something really amazing about being impacted by a painting or installation in a public space, or in your neighborhood. You get a sense of something bigger than yourself, and that you are somehow part of it. It’s reassuring, motivating, and just makes you think."
Magic Owl, Manila, Philippines
Studio setting. Photo: Marnie Sehayek
Little Trucky I call David Bowie. Photo: Marnie Sehayek
Bunnie Reiss’ work is featured in a group show at La Luz de Jesus in Los Angeles from August 5 - August 28. Follow her on Instagram and visit her website here.
Related:
Meet the Soft-Sculpture Artist Making Beaded Paintings | City of the Seekers
"You’ll Be Back in the Next Life, So Don’t Stress Out" | City of the Seekers
A few weeks back we wrote that Facebook planned to incorporate the IP of Masquerade into its live video streams. Based upon today’s announcement, it looks like the company may now be using that IP in a new consumer product.
Start today Facebook will begin testing filters and stickers in Canada and Brazil. At first they will only be available during large live events, in this case the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. During the Olympics, Canadians will be able to show their pride by placing stickers on their face when in selfie mode, or adding filters to their videos. It’s possible that the IP used to make this happen is from the Masquerade acquisition that took place in March of 2016.
Facebook says that testing will begin today with a wider rollout happing in the coming days as the Olympics gear up. They also stated that the in-app camera feature will show at the top of your news feed and be only available during select events at first.
Let us know if you’re seeing the filter camera yet in the comments below.
While I am still waiting for availability of the Logi Create for the iPad Pro 9.7, Apple shipped both options I would like to test: the Smart Keyboard for iPad Pro 9.7 and the Magic Keyboard. I will work with both over the weekend, I will let a true touch typist try both and then tell you how I feel about those two options.
Apple has always had a spectacular agency. Less than 24 hours from order to delivery, DHL Express accounts for 21.5 hours of that time frame.
Once Logi ships the Create to my door, I will update my findings. Until then, round #1 goes to Apple.
Steven Sinofsky at D11 1 on product disruption and what can be done to ease its effect on the user:
Any time you change a product you introduce that challenge. If you have any install base at all. And that is one of the biggest things that really makes disruption sort of a challenge. If you have no market, no customers then you're not disrupting any body but all the other companies. And if you have a product with customers and you introduce something that's not exactly the same as the old one, by definition you're going to disrupt them. And that's a balance that you face in anything you do. Whether you're making a sequel to a Star Trek movie. Or anything. And, so, can you always do more? Well, after the product comes out, if it turns out that it was easier or harder, then you can do more or less and change it and you just adapt. And that's part of what it means to do this. There's no magic answer. But you can't sort of A/B test your way to it. Because a billion people don't get your product until a billion people have your product.
Tim Cook loved to say you make a set of choices and people are sort of paying you to make those choices. You use your product development intuition to do things. Cause when you test a product, any product, not Windows 8, any product before it's in market, the people who naturally go to use it will use it and push it the way that they push the old one. Eric Ries talks about this in The Lean Startup. You come out with a brand new product and you let some enthusiasts use it and then you just have to break from them and re-do it. Those first hundred people are very upset. But you want a million people. Not a hundred. And to get a million you're going to do something different than that first hundred. And so all the pre-release testing in the world doesn't necessarily help a product that's going in a different direction because the people that are just there are the experts and enthusiasts that like the old direction. That's why they signed to the pre-release.
Windows 8 was disruptive. I get why. Microsoft's mistake wasn't that it was, but that they didn't make a concerted effort to mask its disruptive qualities. Yes, it is a new era for Microsoft. But, it was naive to expect a billion users to sign up, let alone be ready, for change of this magnitude. They were not prepared for the future. Especially not a future that wasn't even feature-complete. However, whereas Windows 8 made no tangible concessions to facilitate the transition, Windows 8.1 does the opposite. And that's not a bad thing. Those billion users will be given the tools, and more importantly the time, to familiarise themselves with the future without needing to commit to it. And once the future becomes the present, whether that's Windows 9 or 10, users won't be blindsided. And there lies the answer. To successfully 2 release a disruptive product update, unless it is objectively and immediately better than its incumbent, the execution of its vision needs to be gently spread across a number of releases. With each iteration boasting more of the future and less of the past. Eventually, a release will be stripped entirely of its legacy. And the best part is, when this happens, users 3 won't even notice.
1. If you've not watched the entire interview, then I recommend you do.
2. Keep in mind, success can be considered in any number of ways. Such as, if you lose only a small sub-set of users. Or if you win more new users than lose old ones.
3. There will be users who are adept at detecting early the implications of the changes. Some of whom will jump ship immediately, whereas others will use a wait-and-see approach. That is, executing your vision periodically, as opposed to suddenly, doesn't necessarily mean you won't lose any users - you will but on a smaller scale and at a slower rate. Losses that won't hurt as much. And, anyway, let's not forget you can always be replacing lost users with new users.
No product recommendation is perfect. While most of our testing takes place in our own homes, everyone’s setup is different. As a result, the product you install in your house might not live up to the standards of the sample we tested. However, if we encounter complaints about a product, we investigate them to see if we need to adjust our recommendations. The most recent example of this pertains to the Monoprice 9723 subwoofer featured in our guide to the best budget subwoofer.
Hello Mozillians,
We are happy to announce that Friday, August 12th, we are organizing Firefox 49 Beta 3 Testday. We will be focusing our testing on Windows 10 compatibility, Text to Speech in Reader Mode and Text to Speech on Desktop features. Check out the detailed instructions via this etherpad.
No previous testing experience is required, so feel free to join us on #qa IRC channel where our moderators will offer you guidance and answer your questions.
Join us and help us make Firefox better! See you on Friday!
Flack Block’s highly decorative (and gorgeous) entrance, pretty much unique in Vancouver, featuring dragons and faces. Hastings near Cambie.
From Historic Places.ca . . . Flack Block is significant as an important surviving example of the work of William Blackmore (1842-1904), one of Vancouver’s most accomplished early architects. Blackmore’s work in the Romanesque Revival style helped to establish the character of Gastown and Victory Square as successful and progressive commercial districts. Designed in 1898 and built in 1899-1900 for Thomas Flack, who made his fortune in the Klondike gold fields, this building exhibits the mature development of the Romanesque Revival commercial style, with its powerful rhythmic articulation, textured surfaces and unity of materials that conveyed an image of corporate strength and security appropriate to late Victorian and early Edwardian-era sensibilities. The Flack Block retains significant characteristic stylistic features, including its rough-dressed stone facades, round-arched windows, voussoirs and twinned columns.
The existence of two new Nexus-branded smartphones isn’t official by any means, but if a new rumor is to be believed, Verizon Wireless customers have something to look forward to.
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