Rolandt

(Content warning: misogynistic slurs)

Earlier today Tauriq pointed me to a Demos study on online harassment that’s been doing the rounds recently (and Katherine linked me to a copy of the report. Credit to the both of them).

TL;DR actually a really good study but the core assertion in all the media coverage doesn’t hold up, because media.

The press coverage on the study (which is actually ~2 years old) is pretty strong in its claims, because that’s how headlines work; Buzzfeed says that the study shows half of misogynistic abuse on twitter comes from women, as does the Telegraph and Aunty Beeb.

Whenever I see super-strong claims I tend to brace for a poorly designed study, doubly-so when the strong claims turn what we “know” on its head (extraordinary claims require blah blah blah), but I was actually pleasantly surprised.

The study covered the use of “whore” and “slut”, as words, on Twitter, from January-February 2014. Looking specifically at tweets from the UK, the authors applied a classifier to filter out irrelevant tweets (“rape seed oil”). This left about 108k tweets in total, which were both quantiatively and qualitatively analysed (read: a classifier, and going through samples by hand to feed the classifier and check its workings).

The authors took this hand-coded-and-or-classified data and broke it down even further. So direct abuse and harassment (@tweeting slurs at someone) is distinguished from general misogyny (tweeting a slur about someone, but not at them) is distinguished from conversational (“I was such a [slur] 10 years ago”).

The paper is really good. The breakdowns are logical and make sense; the accompanying of automated classification with hand-coding is vital (machines are really really bad at identifying context or emotional tone), and they even published the classifier accuracy data in an appendix so you can check they aren’t just phoning it in. The one open question I have is how gender was identified (and what you do, in identification, with twitter eggs).

The media coverage is total shite, though.

The BBC, the Telegraph, Buzzfeed - they all ran with the premise that misogynistic abuse is equally distributed by gender. That’s what the study found, they say. Except actually that’s not what the study found at all, and the authors know it; their conclusion is:

Women are as almost as likely as men to use the terms ‘slut’ and ‘whore’ on Twitter. Not only are women using these words, they are directing them at each other, both casually and offensively; women are increasingly more inclined to engage in discourses using the same language that has been, and continues to be, used as derogatory against them.

Sounds like the same thing - it’s not. Women are almost as likely to use the term, but the context might be very very different. While the study’s methodology decomposed tweets to look at context - directed abuse and invective versus generally-broadcasted abuse versus casual conversation - the actual gender-breakdown bit doesn’t.

This is vital. There’s a big difference between those slurs as reclaimed terms (for example, the slutwalk), or to refer to oneself in a self-deprecating way, and pointing those slurs at specific individuals. There’s also a big difference between making a claim about individuals into the aether and @tweeting it at the target. Both are toxic and misogynistic, but the actual experience of having it happen about you is very, very different.

The conclusion does say that women offensively direct the slurs at each other, and I believe it (there’s a lot of internalised misogyny lying around, although it’s not my job to critique it directly) - but there’s nothing in the actual body of the paper indicating the rate of that, or performing any fine-grained breakdown of men-vs-women tweeting patterns here.

It’s like one of those bad logic questions. “Half of all slurs come from women and 20% of all slurs are used as abuse, what percentage of abusive slurs come from women?” To which the answer is “I don’t know, you need more data than that to reach a conclusion”.

When you factor in all the author-admitted caveats to the study (and there are quite a few, because all studies have caveats, but it says good things about the scientists that they mentioned them because not everyone does), what the study actually shows is:

1. Men and women use those slurs in equal-ish amounts;
2. Well, men and women in the UK;
3. In early 2014;
4. Without any drawable conclusions about whether they use them in an abusive or harassing manner at the same rate;
5. And admitting that this is really a tiny microcosm of the forms that slur-driven online misogyny, let alone online misogyny generally, can take.

It’s a great paper for what it’s designed for, which is to look at language use as it relates to gender and media coverage. It’s a terrible paper for what the media seems to have decided to shoehorn it in for - the claim that half of online misogyny comes from women. But that’s not something where the paper draws deep conclusions, and so you probably shouldn’t cite it as an excuse to draw your own.

When I recently flew from Europe to India with Lufthansa I was quite happy to have Wifi on board. For 17 Euros I could get access to the Internet for the complete flight. Not cheap but if you take the ticket price into account it’s acceptable. Like on this flight earlier in the year, connectivity was somewhat slow and patchy but good enough for many things. In addition, this plane was also equipped with a GSM cell. What sounds cool at first turns out to be a massive money trap if your are not careful.

Outgoing voice calls are priced at €3.35 per minute and a single SMS costs €83 cents. I guess not too many people are willing to pay such prices so they surely don’t have a capacity issue on that cell. Unfortunately, the GSM cell is also activated for GPRS data service and if you have enabled data roaming on your device like many people have these days the device uses the connectivity without asking. Fortunately my network operator has a landing page that informed me of the prices and barred access until I confirmed usage. And those are hefty to say the least:

€16 per megabyte!

Yes, you’ve read correctly, €16 for a single megabyte. The person next to me was not so lucky as his home network operator did not have a landing page page and his iPhone was already hard at work to synchronize background data over the GPRS network for €16 per megabyte. You can imagine how quickly he deactivated data roaming once I told him how much he’s being charged for it. Quite frankly, I’m surprised nobody has sued the airline yet for this trap.

Michael Caulfield, e-Literate, May 19, 2016

---

I'm glad e-Literate asked Michael Caulfield to elaborate on his post, though it still feels  abridged  to me. Here's the traditional take on 'personalization': "You learn a certain set of things, you get tested, the personalization software finds knowledge gaps and runs you through the set of canned explanations that you need." But this isn't right, says Caulfield. "The biggest advantage of a tutor is not that they personalize the task, it’ s that they personalize the  explanation... students often have very  similar  skill gaps, but the remedy for each student may be radically different." There's a short list of what a truly personalized course would do - this is the part I wish were elaborated. (The  earlier version of the first half of this post  on Caulfield’ s Hapgood site).

[Link] [Comment]

From The Sun (May 14, 2016):

… the Pattullo Bridge rehabilitation project … means more revenue for the tolled Port Mann, which charges $3.15 per crossing for a small car and has struggled to lure drivers from free alternatives such as the Pattullo and Alex Fraser bridges.

Earlier this year, TI Corp. offered a $10 incentive to get drivers to sign up for electronic billing, following provincial budget estimates that showed the Port Mann had lost $86 million last year, with projected losses of $100 million in each of the next three years, pushing its total debt to $3.68 billion by 2018.

The losses are significantly higher than what was predicted in 2012-13, when the corporation forecast the net loss for 2014-15 would be $28.3 million. TI Corp. relies on the Port Mann tolls to pay off debt on the $3.3-billion bridge.

.

Here’s CTV’s coverage:

By Alex Marshall:

Not far from Jane Jacob’s famed home on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village, and the White Horse tavern, and her famous street ballet, lies the West Fourth subway stop at 6th Avenue and 4th Street. It’s a massive thing, one of the largest in the entire system, with eight tracks across four platforms on two levels. Seven subway lines—the A, B, C, D, E, F and M—connect there, and the station pumps thousands of people per hour onto the streets of the quaint village. This stop, and the trains and tunnels it leads to, are crucial to how Greenwich Village functions.

Yet Jacobs makes virtually no mention of this stop nor, amazingly enough, the New York City subway system in her masterpiece and most influential book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. This omission points to something Jacobs didn’t get, which was infrastructure: the big systems that make a city work. …

… let’s look at something she loved, density. How do you get density in an urban neighborhood? You have to make it possible for a lot of people to live well within a small amount of space. This means few or no cars. If people need cars, then they need parking spaces for their cars, and the parking eats up the land and the possibilities for density. So you need subways, streetcar lines and buses. Jacobs didn’t talk much about that in Death and Life, nor did she talk about the other big systems cities rely on. …

I suspect her tendency to not focus on big systems stemmed from her dislike of government, which is necessary to create big systems. Although she is viewed as a woman of the left, she shared with today’s right a deep suspicion of government, particularly big government.  … (But) there’s no escaping that if you love the Great American City, as Jacobs did, you have to love, or at least respect, the big systems that make them possible.

I am in the process of writing a fairly broad book on setting up a laboratory for cognitive technology / artificial intelligence. I don't find writing to be easy but I enjoy the process a lot. The main problem that I have is removing unnecessary materials and ideas, leaving just enough so readers can understand the core ideas and experiment with these core ideas using example programs. Unnecessary complexity makes understanding difficult and generally does not help a reader solve their specific problems.

If a reader understands the core ideas then they will know when to apply them. It is easy enough, when working on a project, to dig down as necessary to learn and solve problems but the difficult thing for most people is knowing what ideas and technologies might work.

In my field (artificial intelligence) the rate of progress has accelerated greatly, leading to much complexity and thus increasing difficulty just to "keep up" with new advances. I organize my thoughts by using a rough hierarchy of classes of useful technologies and form a taxonomy by mentally mapping problems / applications to the most appropriate class in this hierarchy. When I read a new paper or listen to a talk on YouTube, I try to place major themes or technologies into this hierarchy and when someone describes a new problem to me, I try to match the problem with the correct classification in my hierarchy of solutions / technologies. Vocabulary is important to me because I organize notes in small text files that might contain a synopsis of a web page with a URI, a business idea, interesting ideas from reading material, etc. Key vocabulary words are the search terms for finding relevant notes.

Tonight, actually.  That’s when Michael Geller goes before a public hearing at West Van Council:

 It is the District’s first Heritage Revitalization Agreement proposal involving an older house and infill. While the resulting FAR is less than 0.6, it represents an increase over the District’s 0.35 FAR. A number of neighbours will be appearing in opposition. They would prefer to see the older house go, and no zoning changes.

.

Details here on his blog.

Anne Dree Uh @andreathegiant
If you hate tracking time at work, this is an interesting read about tracking time in your off hours: nytimes.com/2016/05/15/opi…

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks
Retweet with comments forks the comment thread. The antipattern is @ threads not respecting blocked status. twitter.com/paulg/status/7…

Boris Mann @bmann
Made lomo saltado tonight (Peruvian stir fry) AND got around to documenting it projects.bmannconsulting.com/cookbookshelf/… #cookbookshelf

Alexis Brudnicki @baseballexis
I spent a day with the @BlueJays grounds crew & did a terrible job but learned a lot about the new all-dirt infield: canadianbaseballnetwork.com/canadian-baseb…

This isn't a major update to iOS, but it has one nice tweak – you can now use Low Power Mode and Night Shift simultaneously. In my experience with the betas, that's been perfect when it's 2 AM and I'm too lazy to get off the couch and get my iPhone's charger. Seems like a good reason to update.

→ Source: macrumors.com

Google announced a new app/service today to share media and links with friends. From their blog:

Group sharing isn’t easy. From book clubs to house hunts to weekend trips and more, getting friends into the same app can be challenging. Sharing things typically involves hopping between apps to copy and paste links. Group conversations often don’t stay on topic, and things get lost in endless threads that you can’t easily get back to when you need them.

We wanted to build a better group sharing experience, so we made a new app called Spaces that lets people get people together instantly to share around any topic.

With Spaces, it’s simple to find and share articles, videos and images without leaving the app, since Google Search, YouTube, and Chrome come built in.

I like how they're going to use it at Google I/O this week to connect developers with technical sessions, but I don't have a lot of faith when it comes to social apps from Google. Pretty clever to bring the smart search of Google Photos (which is amazing) to Spaces too, but I don't see how I could use this aside from occasional, topic-based events.

Google has a point that most group conversations are endless threads of stuff, but am I going to switch to Spaces just for better search/sharing? I doubt it.

I'll still be checking out Spaces when it launches later today on the App Store (the app isn't out yet, but it should be at this link eventually).

→ Source: googleblog.blogspot.it

This shift probably should have happened years ago.

Twitter will reportedly soon stop counting photos and links towards its 140-character tweet limit, according to Bloomberg’s sources. The shift will reportedly occur in the next two weeks causing publication and brand accounts, which often tweet out story links with an accompanying image, to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

Links currently take up 23 characters, even after the micro-blogging service shortens them. Bloomberg says it reached out to Twitter regarding their source’s claim, but the social media platform declined to comment on the report.

Back in January, newly returned Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stated that his company was looking for ways to shake up the platform’s traditional formula, particularly its 140-character limit. This restriction was originally adopted in order to send Tweets via mobile text message, the only way to send Tweets through the service when it initially launched in 2006, long before the widespread proliferation of smartphones we see today.

Earlier this year reports surfaced indicating Twitter was at one point considering shifting its 140-character limit to 10,000, though the backlash from this rumour likely encouraged the company to ditch these plans. Many Twitter users often cite the short, concise nature of Twitter as its main draw, as well as a differentiating factor that makes its stand out from other social media platforms.

Twitter recently launched an algorithmic that forces users to read the most noteworthy content first, rather than in traditional chronological order.

Google’s annual developer conference is just around the corner and just like last year, this year’s I/O is expected to be full of noteworthy announcements, many of them stemming from the virtual reality space, but also reveals related to Chrome OS and Android N.

Here is a lowdown on everything you should expect from Google’s latest developer press conference, set to go down in Mountain View, California from May 18th to the 20th.

More news about Android N

Google switched its typically release schedule and opted to debut Android N earlier this year, instead of waiting for I/O, so it’s unclear how much the company will actually have to discuss regarding its upcoming mobile operating system.

Instead, we’ll probably learn more about Chrome OS’s ability to run Android apps in the Google Play Store, a significant and much-needed addition to the Play Store that could encourage developers to begin supporting larger screen sizes when it comes to their apps.

On the Android N side of things, it’s possible we’ll get a look at a Google-developed alternative to 3D Touch. Furthermore, N will probably get a solid release date as well as a proper name, possibly the often-rumoured “Nutella.”

It looks like real Android multitasking is just around the corner.

Get ready for standalone Android VR

Possibly the most exciting reveal rumoured to come out of I/O is a full-fledged Google-developed VR headset that doesn’t require the use of an Android smartphone like Google Cardboard or Gear VR. Other than the fact that the headset likely exists, very little is known about it.

On the other side of the spectrum, various reputable publications, including The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, just to name a few, have reported that Google is working on yet another Gear VR style head that’s more advanced than Google Cardboard.

It’s also expected that Google will spend a significant portion of their presentation discussing how easy it is for developers to create VR experiences for its devices.

Chat bots and Android Auto

Since modern Google is such a multifaceted company, we’ll also likely learn more about Android Auto, as well as the company’s Google X self-driving car project. Though, it’s worth nothing that Alphabet, Google’s parent company, runs Android Auto, and that Alphabet isn’t technically spearheading I/O, so it’s unclear if any of this will actually be discussed at the developer conference later this week.

Just like almost every tech giant this year, Google is also expected to discuss chat bots, specifically a WhatsApp-like messenger app that’s tied to your phone number and lets you talk with both friends and chat bots, according to reports stemming from The Wall Street Journal earlier this year.

It’s unclear if this platform will be part of Google Hangouts, its new “Spaces” chat setup, or is a completely new initiative altogether. Rumours indicate that users will be able to post a message in the app and then have the correct chat bot source the answer.

Project Tango goes commercial

2016 is the year Google plans to take Project Tango, first announced at Google I/O 2014, mainstream.

Essentially an augmented reality solution that doesn’t require a dedicated headset, the technology has far reaching consequences when paired with Google’s Maps platform.

For the average Android user, the main takeaway is that the search giant is expected to share details on the first consumer-facing Project Tango device, a phablet-like smartphone made by Lenovo, this week. The new smartphone features a dual camera setup and more advanced depth sensors that allow it map interior spaces in 3D.

While Google may not talk about specifics like release date — Lenovo is set to talk about the device in-depth at one of its own events in June — the company will definitely talk about how the technology fits into its wider ecosystem.

Igor Bonifacic also contributed to this story.

Group sharing isn’t easy. From book clubs to house hunts to weekend trips and more, getting friends into the same app can be challenging. ... With Spaces, it’s simple to find and share articles, videos and images without leaving the app, since Google Search, YouTube, and Chrome come built in.

I can see a spring cleaning three years from now.

More >

Reply to this post

 

 

 

 

 

Not ready to do what it needs most.

• Google will hold its annual developer this week where it will show off its latest version of Android among its other ideas aimed to keep its ecosystem thriving.
• Unfortunately, I don’t think that Google is ready to do the one thing that it needs to fix most of its problems and its battles with the EU and Oracle will only complicate issues further.
• Google I/O runs from Wednesday 18^th May to Friday 20^th May where I expect the following to be announced in order of importance:
  • First: Project Chirp. This is Google’s answer to the Amazon Echo, and if it is done right, it could be a big success.
  • Amazon has prepared the market with a good product but I have long believed that Google’s should be far better (see here).
  • This is because machine learning and artificial intelligence are the back bone of making this proposition compelling.
  • These areas are Google’s bread and butter and the superiority of Google Now over the other personal digital assistants is testament to that fact.
  • I see this product as the most important announcement because it has the potential to begin to tie all of Google’s ther offerings together.
  • The artificial entity that will exist on Chirp should be able to come with the user on his smartphone (including iOS), his Android Auto car, his tablet, his PC through Chrome and so on.
  • This is one of the pieces that Google is really missing and Chirp could be the pin that begins to bring it all together.
  • Second: Virtual Reality. Google has been playing around with Cardboard for a few years but it seems likely that a full headset will be announced.
  • This could at last take Google into the very important gaming segment where it has been effectively absent for a long time.
  • This is very likely to be based on Android immediately opening it up to the huge developer community giving it an advantage over its rivals Occulus Rift and Vive.
  • However, it will still have to contend with Sony which already has the largest installed base of high end gamers.
  • Gaming on mobile devices is the last Digital Life service without a dominant player on mobile and, like Facebook, Google could be moving to enter it via VR.
  • Third: Android N. This is likely to be more of a housekeeping update rather than a whole host of cool new features.
  • Regardless of what is announced, I believe that the release of Android N is almost irrelevant.
  • This is because Google remains unable to update the OS on the devices that run its services.
  • This means that it will be around 4 years before Android N will be on the majority of its devices.
  • In contrast it usually takes Apple about 2 weeks from launch to be on the majority of its ecosystem devices.
  • 4 years is more than enough time for its rivals to download the developer source code, copy the innovations and get them to market long before Google does.
  • Consequently, I think that Android does very little to improve the health of the Google ecosystem and in many cases, it impedes its progress.
• The issues that are very unlikely to be addressed are the endemic fragmentation that hampers the user experience of Android, its awful security (see here) and Google’s seeming inability to do anything about it.
• This is why, I have long believed that Google must take complete control of Android and ensure its ecosystem run its own closed source version of Android.
• This will fix many of these problems and its ongoing struggle with Oracle has given it the perfect excuse to do so (see here).
• However, I don’t think that Google is yet in a position to take this huge step and still expect this to happen in 2017.
• Alphabet has rallied strongly this year and is already reflecting the good year that it has in front of it.
• Consequently, I still prefer Microsoft or Samsung for capital appreciation and Apple for long term value.

Time horizons are funny things. For example, I don’t know about you, but I like to plan a few months ahead. However, there’s a couple of times of year when this feels more difficult. The most obvious of these is Christmas; in December I still find it hard to make plans for January of the next year!

Another of these times is thinking about beyond the ‘summer holidays’ This is partly because I’ve been conditioned all my life to think in terms of the academic year. This year, we’re planning to go away as a family for a good chunk of the summer, but as a consultant I obviously need to think about business continuity and paid work that I’m going to be coming back to afterwards.

Hence this post! I like to think out loud and show my work.

Since setting up by myself, as well as shorter-term work for other clients, I’ve had a steady stream of work with City & Guilds. That’s tapered off from initially working on a full-time basis with them, down to two days at the moment. It’s been great and, as all good teachers do, I’ve greatly enjoyed making myself progressively redundant. So from the end of August I’ll be working with City & Guilds on a per-project basis.

This, of course, means I’m looking for ways to make myself useful to other organisations. I’ve got a few things scheduled but, right now, lots more availability from September onwards than I’ve had previously. Given that so far all of my consultancy work has been ‘inbound’ (i.e. people and organisations have approached me, instead of me approaching them) I’m thinking about ways of packaging up what I do in ways that make immediate sense to people.

One such way that I’ve highlighted before is an approach developed by Bryan Mathers and the good people at wapisasa: the Thinkathon.

Ordinarily, Thinkathons last from 10am until about 4pm, with a break for lunch. The facilitators will have done some preparation beforehand, then on the day they meet with three or four people from the organisation who has requested the Thinkathon. Afterwards, the facilitators package up what was captured during the day into actionable next steps.

The great thing about Thinkathons is that they’re simultaneously ‘off-the-shelf’ (i.e. they’re a fixed price, you know the format of the day, and there’s an output) and bespoke (i.e. what we discuss and sort out is entirely dependent on your organisation and context). They’re also a great way to provide value in a ‘bounded’ way. The Thinkathon by itself could be all that’s needed, or it lead to further work. It’s up to the organisation.

As I’ve mentioned before, we’re currently revving-up weareopen.coop, a co-operative consortium of limited companies including mine and those controlled by John Bevan, Laura Hilliger, and Bryan Mathers. The deal is that anything we do individually goes through our respective businesses, but anything we do that requires more than one of us goes through the co-op. That means Thinkathons are something you should approach the co-op about: thinkathons@nullweareopen.coop.

For the avoidance of doubt, the things you’re likely to hire me individually for as Dynamic Skillset are things relating to education, technology, and productivity. For example:

• Digital skills/literacies keynotes, workshops, and curriculum development
• Open Badges keynotes, workshops, and system design
• Productivity and workflow analysis, coaching, and report-writing
• Critical Friend services
• Analysis (desk research and in-person) around use of technology in learning and training contexts.
• Desk research, synthesis, and report-writing relating to anything I tend to talk about here or elsewhere.

In terms of weareopen.coop, it’s a case of ‘watch this space’ to some extent as our first planning meeting is next week). However, as our name indicates, we’re interested in all elements of openness, including Open Badges, but also helping organisations work more openly and transparently.

There’s plenty of other things I want to start offering as well as the above. One of these is a short email-based course based on my ebook The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies. This would be a paid addition to the ebook, which (in line with my ‘OpenBeta’ approach) will decrease in price next month to ‘pay what you want’. Do let me know if you’d be willing to be a guinea pig for that. I’d like to do some testing before it goes live for everyone.

Another thing I’d like to offer is the kind of five-day sprint as outlined in the recent book from Google Ventures entitled Sprint: how to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days. This would be an a large undertaking for an organisation, but likely to be hugely valuable. I’d be willing to do this at a 50% for my first one, in return for detailed feedback.

And finally (although I’ve got plenty more ideas in my notebook) I’m wondering if it might be worthwhile to build an extremely lightweight badging platform. I’ve had this idea with the codename ‘Self-Badger’ which would provide a much-needed antidote to some of the unimaginative approaches to Open Badges I’ve seen recently. I’ll may need some funding for that, however…

In terms of upcoming speaking engagements, I was supposed to be in South Africa this week speaking about badges and blockchain at the Groningen Declaration conference. However, having withdrawn from the BadgeChain group I felt that my presence there would have been somewhat disingenuous. Instead, I’m planning to use my Badge Summit keynote next month in Aurora, Colorado to ask some hard questions about all of this.

• 24th June – Badge Summit keynote
• 25th June – Pre-ISTE conference workshop (with Noah Geisel, Nate Otto)
• 26th June – Attending ISTE conference
• 28th June – Speaking at, and facilitating, DigitalMe badges and employment event (TBC)
• 7th/8th July – Speaking, and running workhops at, the Festival of Skills

So, if you think I can help you and your organisation, get in touch! I respond to emails sent to hello@nulldynamicskillset.com within 24 hours, and I have a discounted rate for charities, non-profits, and educational institutions.

Images CC BY-ND Bryan Mathers (originally developed for the Community Alignment model)

---

Doug is a very creative, motivated and talented individual, who inspires others around him to think from different angles and to challenge constructively. — Patrick Bellis (Deputy Director, Jisc group customer services)

Always quick with a witty riposte—usually in animated gif form—or willing to dive into a philosophical conversation, Doug excels at his work. — Carla Casilli (Consultant & former Mozilla colleague)

Doug’s deep expertise in digital technologies for learning, productivity, change and teamwork together with his ability to coach and challenge, has really helped us develop as an education organisation. — Sarah Horrocks (Director, London CLC)

The hype around 3D printing has created a lot believers in a ‘new industrial revolution’ where everyone can make their own products, from cars to action figures.

Though consumer-facing 3D printers can make some pretty cool stuff nowadays, CES Asia’s talks on 3D printing last Friday made it clear that the future of 3D printing technology belongs to companies.

“Last year, 3D printing was a very popular topic,” said Richard Lu, the Director of Autodesk Consumer and 3D Printing Group, at CES Asia 2016 last Friday. “In mainstream magazines, people talk about 3D printing – even Obama talked about 3D printing – [and] how 3D printing will come to every household in the future, like the desktop.”

“Do you think it’s realistic? Will [3D printing] be a necessity for every household? I don’t think so,” he said.

This year, industry experts at CES Asia focused on industrial 3D printing instead, touching on applications in B2B and B2C products such as customized medical devices and lighter airplanes. For example, using 3D metal printers, companies like Arcam have been able to create hip implants that look like titanium cups of foam, porous enough for tissue to grow into. Last December, Autodesk partnered with aircraft manufacturer Airbus, to design 3D printed airplane parts that would reduce the weight of Airbus’ airplanes and save fuel.

“Previously, [General Electric’s fuel injection nozzle] was assembled with eighteen components. Now it can be done in one step,” said Jane Yu, the Executive Director at Recycling Times Media, which covers the 3D printing industry. “The weight was reduced by 25% and the life cycle is the five times of the previous one.”

3D printing technology has been around for several decades, but its popularity in mainstream media only took off recently, coinciding with a larger, worldwide movement around “makers,” or everyday people who are empowered to create things on their own.

In 2012, Chris Anderson, the former editor-in-chief at Wired Magazine and author of Makers: The New Industrial Revolution, said that 3D printing would be “bigger than the Web.” For consumers, that might be an exaggeration, but for industry players, such as automobile and aircraft manufacturers, 3D printing has the enormous potential to reduce costs and offer customization at scale.

“Every person is different, every person’s feet is different, every person’s walk is different,” said Mr. Van de Perre.

By analyzing a person’s foot shape and the distribution of pressure across their feet while walking and running, RSPrint’s software makes design suggestions, which sports specialists can adapt manually if needed. Materialise has also worked with Phonak, a hearing aid company, to cut down its design process for customized hearing aids from “two days…to two minutes”, according to Mr. Van de Perre.

Autodesk, which is best known for its 3D modeling software, AutoCAD, has also focused on improving the design process for 3D printing and product designers. Specifically, the company is looking at ‘generative design,’ where cloud-based software can automatically create a product design based on user requirements.

“You just have to tell the computer what you want, what you want it to do, and you can also provide some parameters on limitations, [like] a certain weight, the strength of the materials,” said Mr. Lu.

He showed an example of a load-bearing engine block that was automatically designed using Autodesk Within, a set of generative design software solutions for engineers in automotive, aerospace, industrial equipment and medical implant industries.

“The structure is very elegant and the heat exchange efficiency is even better than traditional ones,” he said. “This is a feature of 3D design. It looks like very elegant, but with a traditional CNC or forging or casting, it is very difficult to make. But for 3D printing, it’s not difficult at all.”

However, in addition to touting the potential of 3D printing technology, both Mr. Lu and Mr. Van de Perre addressed the flaws and trade-offs of 3D printing, such as limitations on speed and printing quality. In particular, both speakers reacted against the ubiquity of consumer-facing 3D printers and the overall hype around 3D printing tehnology.

“You [need] to first figure out why you need to use 3D printing,” said Mr. Van de Perre. “For example, if you want to make a pen and sell millions of pens, it does not make any sense to use 3D printing.”

“I want to avoid [the situation] where people say, ‘3D printing is very cool, let’s buy a machine!…What shall I print?’,” he said.

Image credit: Arcam, Autodesk, Airbus.

Frequent public speakers know that there are five stages of readiness for giving a speech. The trick is not to reach stage 3 and then imagine that you’re done. Stage 1: The idea What you have: A concept of what you what you want to say, and in what order. Some stories to tell. A theme. … Continue reading The five stages of speech preparation →

The post The five stages of speech preparation appeared first on without bullshit.

Items on the frenzied Vancouver real-estate market … just over this weekend.

.

 

 *  *  *

 *  *  *

 

 *  *  *

 *  *  *

 

This is not a stable situation.  Some signs:

As we approach the 1 year anniversary of the #DontHave1Million events, things have only gotten worse. In response, Gen Squeeze is launching the Code Red Campaign.

We believe all Canadians deserve a decent shot at affording a suitable home (renting or owning). And we’ll be campaigning on the principle of Homes, First (the idea that the housing market should be designed primarily to provide homes for community members to live in, over housing as investment vehicles or places to park money).

This event is sold out.

 *  *  *

An open petition asking the Government of Canada to take actions to potentially curb foreign ownership of property has been tabled by a Burnaby resident concerned about runaway real estate prices in Metro Vancouver

NDP MP Kennedy Stewart has sponsored Raymond Wong’s petition calling on the federal government to collect reliable data on offshore investment in Canada’s real estate market.

As part of a five-point demand, Wong is also asking Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to investigate suspicious transactions flagged by the Financial Transactions and Report Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) that are related to real estate, demand that non-residents register with the government in order to buy a home, and consider restricting such ownership arrangements.

Wong also wants the Canadian government to follow in the footsteps of countries such as Australia, USA, Hong Kong, England, Singapore and New Zealand, which have — to differing levels — placed restrictions on foreign home ownership.

 

WhatsApp has been recently aggressively rolling out new features to its messaging service. This includes support for document sharing, end-to-end encryption, desktop clients for Windows and Mac, and more. Now, the team behind WhatsApp seems set to release the next big feature for their messaging service: video calling. Continue reading →

In a post on the Chromium-dev Google group, plans were announced to further phase out Flash in the Chrome browser by the fourth quarter of this year. Inspired by the “maturity of HTML5 and its ability to deliver an excellent user experience,” the browser wants to block any notice of Flash on a website if HTML5 can be used instead. Only if a website truly requires Flash will the browser display an option to allow it to run.

The post also states that the browser will give the top ten Flash-heavy websites a temporary reprieve from the changes for one year. One the list of those websites Google’s own YouTube comes in first, followed by Facebook and Yahoo.

Chromium, it should be noted, is the open-source web browser from which Chrome draws its source code. Chromium is a project,  and Chrome is the official stable release. This means that while these changes are not officially guaranteed, they are highly likely — especially given the fact that Flash has been languishing for years.

“While Flash historically has been critical for rich media on the web,” says the post, “today in many cases HTML5 provides a more integrated media experience with faster load times and lower power consumption.”

It also notes that Chrome will work closely with Adobe (Flash’s creator) to “keep moving the web platform forward, in particularly paying close attention to web gaming.”

There isn’t likely to be much contention when it comes to these changes, however, as Adobe has begun to distance itself from its once-popular technology, even going so far as to encourage developers to build with newer web standards this past December.

Related reading: Adobe rebrands Flash as Adobe Animate CC conceding to the popularity of HTML5

 

 

 

 

 

You know this location-this garden is north of City Hall,  on the west side of  the former East Wing Annex located on Yukon Street in Vancouver.

From the 1970’s to 2013 most of the city departments were nestled in two buildings-the tall Art Deco/Moderne transitional style building built in 1937 by Townley and Matheson, and the annex-sometimes called the “box City Hall came in” an oblong concrete confection located at 2675 Yukon. The annex opened by Prince Philip in 1969. (The annex was declared an earthquake hazard and decommissioned in 2013. The top floors will be demolished this year. They have a permit. I checked.)

There is an internal pathway at ground level between the two buildings, and a huge concrete planter box outside of the annex on the pathway. This had been cheerfully filled with rhododendrons and other shrubs in the 1970’s and had completely overgrown to the point that no “bones” of a garden were visible. Even though this was a major pathway used to access Vancouver City Hall east of Cambie Street, it was not very walkable, or inviting to visitors or staff.

 

The concrete “planter box” outside of the City Hall Annex before photo

 

To celebrate the eighty years of diplomacy between Canada and Japan, the city’s protocol officer Sven Buemann wanted to  transform this space into a Japanese garden celebrating the relationship between these two countries.   Mindful landscaping of this concrete box could become a focal point at City Hall, and also provide citizens and city  staffers with an introduction to classical Japanese gardening. I worked as a team leader with master Japanese gardeners from the Vancouver Japanese Gardeners Association (VJGA), and experienced Engineering Works Yards staff  to create a new public space to walk to, enjoy and view for all Vancouver citizens and visitors.

 

 

These professional gardeners  from  the VJGA  who were already working six days a week volunteered their time and talent to design and create a most extraordinary space. In the design, there are two rivers of stone, one symbolizing Canada, surrounded by plants native to Canada, and one symbolizing Japan, surrounded by traditional elements including a stone fountain and a black pine. The two rivers meet in the front of the design, symbolizing harmony and peace. The Vancouver Japanese Gardeners Association website  still features an image of the gardeners standing in front of the stone lantern at the city hall Japanese Garden.

And this garden is to be viewed from the public pathway, not walked in. That is the way it has been designed.

 

 

It was a very exciting thing to work with these Japanese professional gardeners. The design of the outline of the garden was roughly drawn up. The concept and the layout of the garden included coring out a section of the concrete planter box wall, so that viewers could “see” into the mingling parts of the river bed. The site preparation was done by City crews, who came in on the weekend to do the work. The Japanese gardeners took over the ordering of all the materials, including tons of basalt rock. The basalt rock included “one man” “two man” and “three man” basalt uprights that were installed by the gardeners with the assistance of the City crews and a hoist. The gardeners travelled up to Huckleberry Quarry near Squamish and hand picked each and every piece of basalt for its shape, size and function. Using the hoist, the Japanese Gardeners carefully placed every rock, with an inner vision so profound that no rock needed to be readjusted or placed differently. The Japanese gardeners’  experience and knowledge of Japanese Garden technique translated into this innate ability to “see” the rocks placed just once, every time seated correctly in the designated position.

There is a section of bamboo that has been carefully knotted as a screen behind the water fountain. The craftsman that worked on this screen spent days getting the meticulous pattern of knots just right. The fountain basin that is in the back of the garden was designed by one of the few people in North America that has this skill.

The plants and trees in this garden are placed with similar care and attention. There is a Black Pine bonsai that bows over the dry river-this is a gift to the City, and was grown by one of the Japanese Gardeners from seeds he carried to Canada in his pocket when he immigrated nearly fifty years ago. It is an enduring gift of kindness and tribute to this country.

The City of Vancouver Japanese Garden was opened in 2009 by the Mayor and Council in concert with the Japanese Ambassador to Canada and the Vancouver Japanese Consul. The photos below are of the members of the Vancouver Japanese Gardeners Association who designed and built the garden,  with City of Vancouver Engineering staff from the Yards.

 

These are my favourite images of this remarkable undertaking.

 

 

The garden is now maintained by the City and will be kept in perpetuity, celebrating the unique and enduring relationship between Japan and Canada.

Taiko Drummers opened the ceremony held in the Fall of 2009.

Members of the Vancouver Japanese Gardeners Association stand with the Vancouver Japanese Consul and Consul Assistant at the dedication.

 

 

Hot on Holborn’s heels (at Little Mountain), here are two more fancy-schmancy bike facilities in new buildings.

First, from Portland, where news of Vancouver’s surge in bike riding is making their presumed N.A. cycling mode share supremacy a point of debate.

Michael Anderson at BikePortland.org tells us about the Lloyd Circle Station in the Lloyd 700 Building, which will be open to anyone who ponies up the fee. Open 24 hours, with 600 bike parking spaces, mechanics, lockers, showers, repair stands, bike wash, and a short-term valet parking service, it’s solid bragging rights competition to the upcoming Holborn facility.

Portland’s biggest, baddest bike parking facility is about to open

Though the Cycle Station obviously won’t be for everyone, it’s worth taking a moment to savor this milestone: one of the country’s best bike parking facilities is opening to the public in Portland and operating more or less as a business, planning to make money by giving hundreds of people a place to park their bicycles.

Governments can mandate bike lanes, bike parking and even bike programming. But when private businesses get in on the bike game, biking isn’t just an aspiration or an ideology. It’s a reality.

.

It looks as though an entire Portland district (Lloyd) is behind this kind of offering, through a unique transportation-focussed organization called “Go Lloyd“. Biking is only one of the modes they support.

Go Lloyd was founded in 1994 as the Lloyd District Transportation Management Association (TMA). TMAs are public/private partnerships formed so that employers, developers, building owners, and government entities can work collectively to establish policies, programs, and services to address local transportation issues and foster economic development. TMAs are established within a limited geographic area to address the specific needs of their members. . . .

. . . . Go Lloyd creates a thriving environment for business and community by building partnerships, delivering targeted transportation programs, and fostering economic vitality.

.

Next, from Fastcoexist, news of an office tower in Oslo, Norway, designed by Code Architecture. The building, scheduled for 2020 completion, will have 8,300 sq. m. of solar panels, and significant attention paid to sustainability.  See this PDF for more detail than normal.

The building (Oslo Solar) will feature a large ramp for people on bikes to get to a spiffy parking facility.  Note the cool cargo bike in the illustration. But car parking is limited to a few electric car charging stations.

When it’s completed, Oslo Solar will produce more energy than it uses—and possibly more than any other building in Europe. . .

. . . The design is meant to encourage anyone coming to the building to get there on a bike instead of driving. “There are several trends pointing in that direction,” says Anders Solaas, executive vice president for letting and development at Entra, the building’s developer. “The political leadership in Oslo is crystal clear on [its] large ambitions for increased use of bicycles. Employees are making commuting their daily workout through cycling.”  [Ed. The site is apparently surrounded by public transport, and a major bike route]

.

Many thanks to Ron Richings and Tom Trottier for the links.

 

 

Sumo has a long history that goes back centuries. Unlike most things that old though, there are detailed records of tournaments and wrestlers, which allows a comparison over the years. Matthew Conlen for FiveThirtyEight charted them all in an interactive. Go through the explainer, and then use the last chart to look at the data by various dimensions.

See also the full article on sumo.

Tags: FiveThirtyEight, sumo

When we launched Raspberry Pi Zero last November, it’s fair to say we were blindsided by the level of demand. We immediately sold every copy of MagPi issue 40 and every Zero in stock at our distributors; and every time a new batch of Zeros came through from the factory they’d sell out in minutes. To complicate matters, Zero then had to compete for factory space with Raspberry Pi 3, which was ramping for launch at the end of February.

Happily, Mike was able to take advantage of the resulting production hiatus to add the most frequently demanded “missing” feature to Zero: a camera connector. Through dumb luck, the same fine-pitch FPC connector that we use on the Compute Module Development Kit just fits onto the right hand side of the board, as you can see here.

To connect the camera to the Zero, we offer a custom six-inch adapter cable. This converts from the fine-pitch connector format to the coarser pitch used by the camera board. Liz has a great picture of Mooncake, the official Raspberry Pi cat, attempting to eat the camera cable. She won’t let me use it in this post so that you aren’t distracted from the pictures of the new Zero itself. I’ve a feeling she’ll be tweeting it later today.

To celebrate our having designed the perfect high altitude ballooning (HAB) controller, Dave Akerman will be launching a Zero, a camera and the new GPS+RTTY+LoRa radio board that he designed with Anthony Stirk, from a field in the Welsh Marches later today. You can follow along here and here, and in the meantime marvel at the Jony Ive-quality aesthetics of today’s payload.

You can buy Raspberry Pi Zero in Europe from our friends at The Pi Hut and Pimoroni, and in the US from Adafruit and in-store at your local branch of Micro Center. There are roughly 30,000 new Zeros out there today, and we’ll be making thousands more each day until demand is met.

The post Zero grows a camera connector appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

I love taking photos during the final hour of sunset aka the magic hour as the light always looks amazing. I tried something new by cloning out the mirror’s reflection in Photoshop so that it appeared to be a window through my body. It was a fun learning experience and I’m happy with the result.

To recap: On Sunday, May 8th, I completed Cycle 17 Week 1. I have Multiple Myeloma and anemia, a rare blood cancer. It is incurable, but treatable. From February to November 2013, I received Velcade chemo through weekly in-hospital injections as an outpatient. Since February 9th 2015, I have been on Pomalyst and dexamethasone chemo treatment (Pom/dex).

Weekly chemo-inspired self-portraits can be viewed in my flickr album.

June 2014: English Bay

The post Week 65 chemo complete: What lies beyond? appeared first on Fade to Play.

More understanding from your boss and colleagues, more opportunities to demonstrate what you’re capable of, more training to become the best at what you do, more freedom to pursue the tasks that most fascinate you….

You deserve a lot more from your workplace than you’re getting today.

And if you’re responsible for a workplace, you need to offer more.

Today most of our work comes not from organisations looking to build communities for their new vacuum cleaner, but from organisations who realise they need their employees to collaborate better, to feel more connected, and to be better at sharing the right information with the right people at the right time.

At 10am Eastern today, I’m hosting a webinar with Ron Friedman, author of The Best Place To Work, my favourite book of the past year.

Sign up here: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4439499572157766914.

Ron Friedman (who has a Ph.D in social psychology) uses the latest research from the fields of motivation, creativity, behavioral economics, neuroscience, and management to reveal what really makes us successful at work.

We’re going to cover broad workplace principles, collaboration etiquette, and more much.

P.S. If you’re looking for tactics to boost community engagement, visit our webinar with Salesforce here.