On April 8, Consumer Reports published an exposé showing that over 30 infant deaths had been linked to the popular Rock ‘n Play Sleeper, including some babies who had asphyxiated. Wirecutter has recommended a version of the Rock ‘n Play in its guide to baby bouncers and rockers since 2017. Though our top pick is the more durable, versatile, and elegant BabyBjörn Bouncer, we suggested a model of the Rock ‘n Play with vibrations and automated rocking for “tired, exasperated parents who want more options to try to soothe their baby.” With its miles-long track record of glowing reviews from parents, the Rock ‘n Play was hard to ignore.
Following a joint warning by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and Fisher-Price last week, we updated our guide to reflect their warning that babies should always be restrained while in the Rock ‘n Play and updated guidelines to stop using it once babies start to roll over, or by 3 months of age at the latest.
A day later, the American Academy of Pediatrics urged a total recall of the device, calling it “deadly.” We faced a more difficult decision. Should we remove our recommendation for the Rock ‘n Play entirely, even if it’s used correctly?
The statement by the AAP, which we consider the foremost authority on children’s health, was weighty. At the same time, we knew that millions of parents, including at least 10 on our staff, had used the Rock ‘n Play without incident and that for many it felt like a “lifesaver” during the early, exhausting days of babyhood. To a parent with a wailing, flailing newborn, immutable safe-sleep dictums can feel far removed from reality.
Ultimately, we concluded that even if used perfectly—only for soothing or for short periods of sleep, always with the harness buckled and always supervised—the Rock ‘n Play was no longer a good value for parents. Baby gear necessarily has a short lifespan of usefulness. But a product that could be used safely for only the first 90 days of life, and possibly for much shorter, depending on when the baby starts rolling over, isn’t worth it. We updated the guide again, removing our recommendation of the Rock ‘n Play and Fisher-Price’s instructions for proper use. Three days later, the CPSC and Fisher-Price announced they were voluntarily recalling all Rock ‘n Play sleepers. (If you have owned a Rock ‘n Play for fewer than six months, you may receive a cash reimbursement by following these directions.)
Following AAP guidelines, we cautioned from the outset in our guide that despite its name, the Rock ‘n Play Sleeper (and other inclined bouncers, rockers, and swings, as well as carseats) should not be used for unsupervised or long periods of sleep. For nearly two decades, the AAP and other organizations, backed by years of scientific evidence, have stated that infants should sleep on their backs, unrestrained, on a flat, firm surface, with only a tightly fitted sheet, in a crib, bassinet, play yard, bedside sleeper, or other device that meets CPSC safety standards.
Since its introduction in 2009, Fisher-Price has sold some 4.7 million Rock ‘n Plays—more than one for every 10 babies born in the US during the past decade. As baby gear goes, the Rock ‘n Play ticked many boxes: it was relatively cheap (basic models cost less than $50), foldable, compact, and lightweight, and easy to move or even travel with. Best of all, babies seemed to love the Rock ‘n Play: its inclined sleep surface supposedly helped babies suffering from reflux to sleep more comfortably and soundly. Receiving a hand-me-down Rock ‘n Play became a rite of passage for new parents.
Through a regulatory exemption, Fisher-Price was allowed to market the Rock ‘n Play for “all-night sleep,” even though it did not meet the AAP’s guidelines or the CPSC’s standards for cribs, bassinets, and other flat infant sleep products.
“It does not conform in any way, shape or form to everything we know about safe sleep,” Dr. Benjamin Hoffman, a Portland-based pediatrician and the chair of the AAP’s Council on Injury, Violence and Poison Prevention, told us after the recall. “We’ve been rattling the cages for a number of years about these products,” he said. There is no evidence that babies—even those who have diagnosed reflux—sleep better on an incline, Hoffman said. Hoffman acknowledged that some babies do sleep well in the Rock ‘n Play, but this doesn’t justify the risk. “Sleeping in a Rock ‘n Play may make them happy, but it’s not going to make them safe,” Hoffman said.
The Rock ‘n Play saga is one part of a complicated world of baby sleep products and practices, from thousand-dollar automated cradles to baby boxes. Infant car seat and stroller makers market travel systems that allow parents to move babies from home to car to stroller to destination and back without waking a sleeping infant—even though the AAP and other organizations say babies shouldn’t sleep in car seats or other inclined products for long periods of time. At Wirecutter, we aim to help parents and caregivers navigate these choices, recognizing both the clear safety dictates and also the complex, competing web of concerns that inform how a parent chooses to put their baby to bed—especially when operating on little to no sleep themselves.
Hoffman acknowledged parents’ motivation—and often desperation—for a product like the Rock ‘n Play. “Sleep is really, really, really hard,” Hoffman said. “There’s this whole class of products that are being sold with the promise of solving a problem that already has a pretty reasonable solution. It’s just really hard.”
Two years ago a colleague let their dog swim in a lake without paying attention to the information signs. It turned out the water was infested with a type of algae that caused the dog irritation. Since then my colleague thought it would be great if you could somehow subscribe to notifications of when the quality of status of some nearby surface water changes.
Recently this colleague took a look at the provincial external communications concerning swimming waters. A provincial government has specific public tasks in designating swimming waters and monitoring its quality. It turns out there are six (6) public information or data sources from the particular province my colleague lives in concerning swimming waters.
My colleague compared those 6 datasets on a number of criteria: factual correctness, comparability based on an administrative index or key, and comparability on spatial / geographic aspects. Factual correctness here means whether the right objects have been represented in the data sets. Are the names, geographic location, status (safe, caution, unsafe) correct? Are details such as available amenities represented correctly everywhere?
A lake (photo by facemepls, license CC-BY)
As it turns out each of the 6 public data sets contains a different number of objects. The 6 data sets cannot be connected based on a unique key or ID. Slightly more than half of the swimming waters can be correlated across the 6 data sets by name, but a spatial/geographic connection isn’t always possible. 30% of swimming waters have the wrong status (safe/caution/unsafe) on the provincial website! And 13% of swimming waters are wrongly represented geometrically, meaning they end up in completely wrong locations and even municipalities on the map.
Every year at the start of the year the provincial government takes a decision which designates the public swimming waters. Yet the decision from this province cannot be found online (even though it was taken last February, and publication is mandatory). Only a draft decision can be found on the website of one of the municipalities concerned.
The differences in the 6 data sets are more or less reflective of the internal division of tasks of the province. Every department keeps its own files, and dataset. One is responsible for designating public swimming waters, another for monitoring swimming water quality. Yet another for making sure those swimming waters are represented in overall public planning / environmental plans. Another for the placement and location of information signs about the water quality, and still another for placing that same information on the website of the province. Every unit has their own task and keeps their own data set for it.
Which ultimately means large inconsistencies internally, and a confusing mix of information being presented to the public.
Ireland was streets ahead of the UK when it came to planning for Britain’s exit
The Irish government started planning for Brexit in 2014, a full 2 years before the UK referendum, and lobbied both EU and Cameron to secure a yes vote. In contrast it seems the UK started debating the impact of Brexit on the Irish border in earnest about two weeks before the 29 March cliff-edge. “Easiest deal in history” and all that.
Facebook asked for users’ email passwords, then “unintentionally uploaded” people’s contact lists without asking for separate permission, according to Business Insider. Stop trying to explain these violations one at a time. A pattern is increasingly obvious. To that end: here are the fundamental laws of Facebook, which will explain not just this violation but all … Continued
Let’s take this offline, my colleague writes to me in Slack. She means that we should look up from our laptops two meters apart in our open plan office and go and talk in the kitchen while we make coffee instead. Later the same day, a project manager will interrupt a weekly retrospective that has derailed into an extended conversation on a minor topic to suggest that we take that, too, offline. Of course, as we stand in the conference room, iPhones in hand with the weak spring sunshine streaming through our windows, we are both online and off. But that doesn’t seem to matter. At my Berlin start-up and others like it, we can’t stop talking about taking things offline, which is mostly ironic, because even when we are standing next to each other, we are all online all the time.
“Online,” to our project manager, is where important conversations take place and decisions are reached; “offline,” by contrast, is your business
“Let’s take this offline” suggests two meanings — the literal and the metaphorical — but it has splintered into many more, often contradictory significations. The most obvious, literal definition of the phrase is let’s talk about this in person: a shorthand for the fact that communicating over text is not always as easy as talking voice-to-voice. Discussing something aloud, with the possibility of trading questions back and forth or interrupting at an early stage to question the whole premise of your conversation, is often simpler. My colleague is bored of typing; fine. Our project manager, however, means something more like take this outside. “Online,” in her usage, means on-the-clock, alert. “Online,” in this formulation, is where important conversations take place and decisions are reached; “offline,” by contrast, is your business.
The phrase doesn’t really refer to the internet; it refers to a place, but not one that exists in any substantive way, concretely or even conceptually. Instead, it uses “offline” as a metaphor for a place that is simply Not Here. The beauty and grotesqueness of the metaphor is in this space-making, space-creating potential. It establishes a binary set of locations — Here and Not Here — which, in a corporate setting, correlate with work and non-work. The metaphor is incoherent, but it helps as a sort of linguistic organizer.
The phrase doesn’t really refer to the internet; it refers to a place
Let’s take this offline posits a fantasy space where people really communicate, and things really get done; as opposed to the space you’re in, where the opposite is happening, be it online or off. This fantasy space is a realm in which you are productive and focused; hard, brilliant work is attainable, distractions are few. When a Slack channel is too cluttered with minutiae, and scrolling back takes too long, “offline” signifies a clean slate, while also providing a catch-all that allows one to blame technology for the annoying tendencies of its users. It’s not your coworkers clogging up the workspace with gossip and in-jokes; it’s the internet itself that clogs up our potential for greatness and efficiency.
“Offline” can also suggest the opposite: a dumping ground for all the human slack — gossip, in-jokes — that interferes with productivity. It might be necessary or even positive in the long run (everyone needs a time out, so that they can return to work better), but it needs a boundary, if not quarantining. Note that my project manager used the phrase at a time when we were gathered in person in a tangible space; being more offline than not, “online” — the place where we sort of weren’t — took on the connotations of work-readiness.
The real implication of let’s take this offline is that, online or offline, you are always already in the wrong place. If the metaphor seems incoherent, even contradictory, that’s because it reflects the contradictory demands of the workplace: Our bosses want us to really work and not just mess around on Slack; they also want us to be reachable via Slack at any hour of the day. They want us to enjoy ourselves at work and think of our colleagues as family, just as long as the only thing we’re connecting about is getting the job done. These contradictory imperatives have long breached the world outside the office: Think of the many smug “NO WI-FI — TALK TO EACH OTHER” signs at the sort of indie cafés patronized by freelancers who are there because they have work to do, but no office to do it in.
If the metaphor seems incoherent, even contradictory, that’s because it reflects the contradictory demands of the workplace
Project manager aside, most metaphorical uses of “offline” skew positive, finding their roots in the same technophobia that assumes that the internet is somehow separate, and worse, than “real life.” Face-to-face discussions are just more meaningful, more intimate. But while it’s certainly nicer to hang out with my family in person than it is over our group chat, at my start-up and others like it, where you can attend upwards of five meetings a day, it’s unclear that the quality of conversation has much to do with the medium.
There’s a sense that “offline space” is free and unencumbered by distractions or protocols — places where we can speak openly and get to the heart of things in a way that isn’t documented or monitored as it is over social platforms. This is a comforting idea, but it rests on a misunderstanding of the internet itself, which is where we live our lives, whether we’re sitting two meters across from each other or separated by an ocean. Let’s take this offline, more than anything else, expresses a longing for binaries that don’t really exist, or the capacity to switch at will from unproductive (and peaceful) to focused (and happy). Both states are cheery and entirely isolated from each other; it’s no real surprise that neither really exists.
“Let’s take this offline,” my manager says, as we walk up the stairs after lunch. I don’t respond; I’m checking Twitter. I think, for fuck’s sake, where do you want me to go?
When I started reading MacStories, the site had already shifted its focus from the Mac to the iPad – and that's what drew me in.
I've been an Apple admirer for as long as I can remember, but in my younger years the company's products were simply outside my budget. It wasn't until the age of 18 that I owned my first Apple device, an iPod, which was followed a couple years later by a second-hand MacBook. In both of these cases, it was the surprisingly short lifespans of my previous non-Apple MP3 player and laptop that led me to finally splurge and pay the Apple premium. I quickly discovered that, for me at least, it was well worth it.
Despite loving my iPod and MacBook, I didn't start diving deeper into the Apple ecosystem until after the iPad's release in 2010. At that point the iPhone had been around for a few years, but in frugality I had stuck with a cheap flip phone and evaded the smartphone era as long as I could. After the iPad, though, things quickly changed.
Shortly following the launch of Apple's tablet, my boss at the time purchased that very first iPad for me, which was the gateway that led to an iPhone 4 later that year, a MacBook Pro the year after that, and many more Apple products since then. The iPad catalyzed my deepening interest in Apple, and it was the iPad that also, several years later, led to my discovery of MacStories.
From 2010 on, the iPad was a regular part of my life and work, as evidenced by how often I bought a new one: I moved from the original iPad to the iPad 2, then the iPad 3, iPad mini, and by mid-2015 I had settled on the iPad mini 2. I used the device primarily for taking notes, for reading, holding reference points during meetings, and a few other things that tablets are uniquely best at. I never considered making the iPad my primary computer, but it was a great complementary device to my Mac and iPhone.
Then I heard about Federico Viticci.
I began listening to Connected in 2015, where Federico regularly made reference to using the iPad as his primary computer. Exposure to that concept naturally led to my discovery of MacStories, and Federico's written work on the subject. I devoured all the stories I could find in which he documented his iPad journey, and much of his iPad affinity resonated with me.
My primary frustrations with the Mac at that time were twofold. First, I noticed myself feeling scatterbrained and distracted when I used it; I was intrigued by the prospect of the iPad providing a more focused environment for work than my Mac, where I would constantly have multiple windows on-screen. I could have willfully limited myself to one or two apps at a time on the Mac, but the iPad offered the benefit of being designed from birth for such limitations. Though today I occasionally wish the iPad's multitasking capabilities were more robust, for the most part I've ended up loving the device's simplicity.
The second, more significant reason for considering leaving the Mac behind is that I felt the Mac platform had long been neglected by Apple as iOS and the iPhone received the company's prime attention. Though the iPad may not have been Apple's priority either, it at least benefited from sharing the same OS and much of the same technology as its smaller sibling. Features like Touch ID, display advancements like Retina and True Tone, and of course new iOS features served to improve both the iPhone and iPad; the iPad also had a much more vibrant third-party app market than the Mac in 2015, which was important to me.
These factors, combined with seeing Federico's successful venture with the iPad, ultimately led me to adopt the iPad-first lifestyle – I sold my MacBook Air and bought the first iPad Pro on release day.
Despite Apple's own positioning of the iPad Pro as a different kind of iPad, I don't think I would have given the device a shot if it weren't for Federico. His example on MacStories and Connected provided a real-life case study proving that iPad-first computing could not only work, but it could be a great thing. If I had never encountered that example, I may still be using a Mac as my primary computer today, content with the iPad as a mere tablet for tablet-y tasks.
My following of MacStories for its iPad coverage went hand-in-hand with another strength of the site that drew me in: the MacStories team's approach to covering apps. I was impressed by how rich with detail so many MacStories reviews were. When Federico wrote about 2Do or Tweetbot 4, thanks to his in-depth analysis and plethora of screenshots, I gained a real sense for whether those apps would work well for me or not – and that practical benefit remained a consistent attribute of everything I read on MacStories. The site not only covered the basics about apps, it dove into the finer details that developers had crafted with care – details that matter a lot to me personally. Despite how vast the Internet is, and how big a market apps are on Apple platforms, it was hard to find another site with the same type of coverage as MacStories.
In 2016 when I started exploring turning my hobby of Apple interest into paid work, MacStories was the first and only site I reached out to. Federico graciously gave me the opportunity to join the team, and going on three years later, it's a privilege getting to celebrate MacStories' tenth anniversary as not only a reader, but also a part of the site's on-going story.
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Although I didn’t know Nigel well, our paths crossed many times over the years on matters journalistic, especially when Nigel became responsible for the paper’s website.
Watching the whole proceeding with a sense of irony was a fire-eating busker who gave her performance name of Ariane Pyromane, her last name being the French equivalent of pyromaniac or arsonist.
She just arrived on P.E.I. from Montreal Monday with her cat TouTou, her guitar, and her fire eating hoops and gear.
She was strumming a tune on a park bench in front of Confederation Centre when she heard a sort of explosion just meters away.
“The bus kind of lifted a little bit in the air and then all the gas started spilling everywhere,” said Ariane. “There was no fire, only a little bit of smoke.”
TouTou remained unimpressed and Ariane kept on busking as firefighters and police arrived on scene.
I came across the story again last year and I emailed Nigel to thank him for it; he replied:
I remember now that I came back to the office smiling and full of excitement to craft a good one with that good material.
And he did.
Nigel was one of the good ones, and the Island is greatly diminished by his death.
Who doesn’t like an unhappy monorail story – even with unhappy miking by a guy who does urban archeology …
A case study into the former Sydney Monorail system, including a history of the system, and an analysis into why it closed down, touching upon local industry and politics.
Warning: This week’s issue talks about sexual harassment at DataCamp.
DataCamp noindex
DataCamp, a platform for learning data science online, posted a note about a sexual harassment incident that occurred a couple of years ago at a company offsite:
Specifically, in October 2017, at an informal employee gathering at a bar after a week-long company offsite, one of DataCamp’s executives danced inappropriately and made uninvited physical contact with another employee while on the dance floor. The employee raised a concern with a manager a few months later about the executive’s behavior that night, at which time the executive apologized to the employee. DataCamp immediately and thoroughly investigated the incident. The investigation was conducted by a third party not involved in DataCamp’s day-to-day business with guidance from outside legal counsel. It included discussions with the employee, the executive, and other employees who were present during the incident. Its findings determined how we describe what happened and how we responded.
Okay. Oddly delayed timing, but okay.
Quickly, more about how DataCamp actually responded came to light.
As outlined by Dhavide Aruliah, a day before the post, a letter signed by a hundred DataCamp course instructors and employees demanded transparency about the incident. In 2018, Aruliah used to work for DataCamp until he voiced his concerns about the incident. He was fired three days later.
Greg Wilson, another former employee, voiced similar concerns. Wilson was also fired.
Soon after the DataCamp announcement, Kara Woo revealed that she was the unnamed employee referred to in the DataCamp note:
This story is out in the open now, so I guess I might as well say that the unnamed employee in the DataCamp post was me.
I haven’t talked publicly about this experience before. That’s been a complicated decision, but for me it’s been the best way to try to move on with my life.
I didn’t know they were going to publish this post, but now that it’s out I appreciate everyone who has responded to say that what happened is not okay.
What happened to me is all too common, and it is not ok. If anyone else is struggling with similar situation: you deserve better, and you have my support.
Woo doesn’t work at DataCamp anymore. The executive still does. Inaction and trying to sweep things under the rug seems to be the recurring theme.
For several months prior, instructors tried to negotiate with DataCamp for more transparency, but there was nothing until the signed letter arrived. From Julia Silge, one of the negotiating instructors and one of the authors of the letter:
I was one of the signers of the letter, and in fact was one of the writers of the letter as well as one of the folks who helped organize this group action. This letter came after many months of instructors like me attempting to engage with DataCamp in productive discussion. It did not threaten to go public or call for the executive’s firing, but it did bring up how the growing rumors and uncertainty around misconduct at DataCamp have been a problem for the personal reputations of instructors. For example, I have had people I don’t know come up to me at conferences and say things like, “I heard something bad happened at DataCamp. What’s up?”
Last week, Bob Rudis highlighted how the DataCamp post contains a meta tag in the HTML that tells search engines not to index. It’s still there. It’s not there for other blog posts.
The inaction and silence continues to add fuel to the fire.
We are very disappointed by the way DataCamp handled the sexual assault of an employee by a C-level executive. We strongly support the target who is a member of our community and condemn DataCamp for their lack of accountability and transparency around this issue.
They recommend canceling subscriptions, removing any links to the site, and basically scrubbing away DataCamp altogether until further action is taken.
In light of the recently disclosed incident of sexual harassment at DataCamp and their response to it, including the attempt to conceal their public acknowledgement from search engines, we want to share the steps that we have taken:
We have removed all links to DataCamp from our websites and have requested that DataCamp stop using our instructors’ names and likenesses on their website.
We have indefinitely suspended discussions with DataCamp for a new content license agreement to replace our existing agreement, which is set to expire shortly and is not being renewed.
We are unequivocally opposed to harassment or assault of any kind, in or out of the workplace. We want #rstats to be a welcoming and inclusive community, and that cannot occur without first ensuring that everyone is safe.
I’ve done the same on FlowingData. They sponsored FD back in 2015, which just feels sour now.
The instructors who led the effort were patient, despite months of frustrating conversations with DataCamp. They kept the matter private to avoid dragging the target of the incident into the fray. They kept the focus on DataCamp leadership and policy to avoid putting other employees in an awkward place. They gave DataCamp every opportunity to explain themselves, change course, and own the public narrative. A company should count itself lucky to have such constructive critics.
It’s clear that without enormous public pressure, DataCamp will not take sufficient disciplinary action against the executive.
[…]
My course on DataCamp is Nonlinear Modeling in R with GAMs. It’s about Generalized Additive Models, tools I find quite handy and that I’d love to teach you more about. My contract with DataCamp gives them license to keep using it. Please don’t take my course. Don’t give DataCamp your money and send the message that sexual misconduct doesn’t have consequences.
And more news keeps coming in. More instructors are telling people to boycott DataCamp. The more I read, the more disconcerting it gets, so I’ll just press pause here.
I hope DataCamp can figure out what the heck is going on in their higher ranks. It does seem like DataCamp provides a useful service for many, but they don’t seem to care about much outside selling their product. That just doesn’t work.
If any good came of this, it is comforting to see the wider data community show their support. The welcoming nature was one of the main reasons why I switched to Statistics many years ago. Let’s keep it that way.
Thank you for supporting FlowingData as a member. If you have any comments, feedback, or questions, please feel free to reply to this email. Otherwise, see you next week.
This curious and unique situation sprung from the culmination of events begun several weeks before the election date of May 30, 1966. Unknown to anyone at the time, the first link in this chain of events was formed when one of the Liberal candidates in the electoral district of First King’s died in the interval between the official date for nominations and the appointed day for the provincial election. Under the provisions of the electoral legislation, the death of any duly-appointed candidate prior to the polling date necessitated a postponement of the balloting in that constituency. Because of this, the voting for both seats in the riding was deferred until July 11. Little did the public realize, until after the ballots were counted on May 30, that this unexpected event was to concentrate attention on the eastern tip of Prince Edward Island for six weeks of intense political activity.
As the polling results poured in on that bright spring evening, it soon became obvious that neither party was going to sweep easily into office. The tallies teetered up and down on the television tote boards all evening. When darkness descended over the Island, even the most apathetic electors had begun to realize they were witnessing a contest with more surprise and thrills than the average race. The initial results indicated a slim victory for the Liberals with sixteen of the thirty contested seats. A total of four recounts reduced the party standings to a deadlock of fifteen members apiece, when the unofficial two-vote margin for Liberal Horace Willis in Second Queen’s was reconsidered and became a majority of three ballots for Conservative Lloyd MacPhail. The future role for both parties in the next four years rested on the outcome of the deferred elected in the First King’s district. The politicians in all parts of the province accepted the challenge with an earnest dedication that gave the earlier provincial polling the appearance of being merely a dress rehearsal.
A singular moment in this election-after-the-election was captured by CBC News just before second-polling-day that July: Liberal leader Alex Campbell was being interviewed on Main Street in Souris when Conservative leader, Premier Walter Shaw drove by in his car and stopped for a chat, taking the opportunity to related that he was at the “the apex of confidence” in a Conservative victory:
Clark continues:
The ensuing six weeks resembled the staging of a theatrical farce. The Shaw government, which remained in power until the deferred election decided its fate, presented the first act with transparent disguise. The Minister of Public Works and Highways, Philip Matheson, resigned his portfolio. Although he had been defeated in the May balloting, his move was not duplicated by any of his three cabinet colleagues who had suffered similar losses at the hands of the voters. The Public Works and Highways department, an important key to political patronage, was placed under the jurisdiction of a First King’s Candidate. The new minister has never been a member of the Legislative Assembly, so it was undoubtedly coincidence that he merited this executive post at the very time when he was seeking election in the First King’s contest! Political balance seemed to be achieved when a leading Liberal, a resident of First Kings, was elevated to a vacant Senate post.
For the benefit of any voters who missed the significance of these ploys the parties had other gimmicks on hand to attract attention and favour. Some observers estimated that the crucial constituency received thirty miles of paving in the midst of the pre-election fever. One local citizen with a sense of humor was moved to erect a prominent sign which read: “PLEASE DON’T PAVE; THIS IS MY ONLY PASTURE.” It was widely reported that the government was adopting the slogan: “If it moves, give it a pension; if not, pave it.” The party organizations threw away their purse strings, with the price tag on votes reputed to be averaging $100 for anyone on the official lists who wanted it. Those who had more specific preferences requested gifts: a new bathroom replaced the outdoor variety for some, while paved driveways were a popular addition to the residences of the more affluent. Elsewhere in the province. Islanders looked at First King’s with envy and jokingly expressed wonder that the eastern tip did not sink under the weight of road machinery. The final day of the campaign drew near amidst a current of rumors throughout the province: some residents even claimed to have witnessed long processions of trucks travelling towards Souris in the middle of the night, their cargoes composed of many cases of the finest liquor.
The parties were organized to a height of efficiency never before witnessed in any Island campaign. Lists of electors were combed and re-combed. Voters were visited and revisited. A small army of politicians and supporters from other parts of the province camped in the constituency. Both parties fully realized that every single vote counted and that each individual with the power of casting a ballot mattered, for the fate of the government rested solely on the collective wishes of less than 3,000 people. Three eligible voters had moved to the constituency of Second King’s after the writ of election was issued. One Liberal party worker in that electoral district was assigned to each of these electors. Their instructions were to provide transportation to the polls in First King’s. To ensure that there was no difficulty in adhering to these orders, one worker indicated that he watched the sun’s appearance while parked in the driveway of the voter assigned to him. Think of the chaos that could have been injected into the deferred election had multiple voting continued to be a feature of Island politics!
All the paving and cash, however, was for nought:
After the fever pitch of the campaign was replaced by the tense waiting before the ballots were counted, it seemed almost anticlimactic to learn that the Liberals had won both seats and had consequently defeated the Shaw government.
Fifty-three years on we’re on the edge of an election that has all the ingredients to top 1966 in terms of excitement and atlas of possibilities.
Pedro Marques@MetroManTO
Here’s a real problem with the current design of King Street. Drivers lined up behind a streetcar don’t see the sig… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Hi there! I am Defne, a journalist from Deutsche Welle’s traineeship programme. I am spending this month with the Datawrapper team to learn more about creating simple and effective charts.
This week, I am imitating John Snow. And nope. Not that John Snow, dear Game of Thrones fans. I am talking about someone else. He is the man who created one of the most celebrated examples of data visualization at London in 1854. Yet, apparently, his life revolved around death almost as much as that John Snow:
John Snow mapped the locations of the deaths caused by Cholera disease and water pumps in Soho, London. He didn’t know that the pumps were connected to the disease. But his map made it clear: Most of the death cases were clustered around one specific waterpump on Broad street (now Broadwick). This pump was contaminated and therefore deadly!
John Snow’s original Cholera outbreak map, found on Wikimedia Commons, a little bit chopped. The black circles show the pumps and the stacked black rectangles show the deaths at each address.
Chart creation
As a journalist, I was intrigued to replicate a map that is considered as one of the most inspirational examples of data journalism. So I wanted to give it a try and map an alternative version with Datawrapper. Thanks to Robin Wilson’s digitization, the Cholera map data is available online.
Thanks to Elana’s and Lisa’s feedback, I first calculated the distances between every death cases and every water pumps on Snow’s map[1]. Now I could figure out which water pump was surrounded with the highest number of deaths. With Elana’s suggestion, I measured the area where the closest 50 deaths happened around each water pump and marked those areas on a locator map. It’s not possible to create GeoJSON circles directly within locator maps and not even with online tools like geojson.io, so Hans (who built the Datawrapper locator maps) and his patience helped me to navigate through the QGIS software. We used it to calculate the circles with the correct radiuses for each pump and uploaded these circles to Datawrapper as markers. They all cover 50 deaths around each pump. (I decided to make the most important pump the least transparent, to make it stand out more.)
A map as a chart
Then I went one step further. I wanted to show a different view on the data – a chart that disintegrates the information on the map. The chart shows how many people died every 5 meters within 100 meters around each pump. Out of 8 pumps, only 5 are surrounded with Cholera deaths within the reach of 100 meters. And the closer other pumps were to Pump No.1, the more people died within their periphery.
Again, it is so visible: Most people died around Pump No.1.
I hope you enjoyed this new take on some old map. If you have any questions or feedback, you can find me on Twitter at @AltiokDefne or via email (defne.altiok@dw.com). You will hear from me again next week for my second Weekly Chart. See you then!
Here is the sweet little formula to calculate distances between GPS positions on Excel: =ACOS(COS(RADIANS(90-Lat1)) *COS(RADIANS(90-Lat2)) +SIN(RADIANS(90-Lat1)) *SIN(RADIANS(90-Lat2)) *COS(RADIANS(Long1-Long2))) *6371. I found it in this old blog post, but please don’t ask me to explain it. ↩
Last week at the WAN-IFRA India 2018 conference, I said the marriage of convenience that has existed between journalism and advertising has been broken.
I want to go into a little more detail about that.
Much of what I am going to say here may seem elementary and will come as no surprise to senior managers, but journalists (who are rightfully focused on journalism and not on the business side) may learn a few things.
Amazon and Google Announce Official YouTube Apps to Launch on Fire TV; Prime Video App Coming to Chromecast and Android TV.
The official YouTube apps will be available on Fire TV in the coming months, giving users seamless access to a world of entertainment including music videos, their favorite creators, movies, shows, news, live sports and more.
Prime members streaming to Chromecast and on Android TV devices will have unlimited access, in the coming months, to thousands of titles and Amazon Originals.
Using a smartphone mount while biking is a boon for anyone who wants easy access to their device. But with phone price tags approaching—and topping—the $1,000 mark, you want to be sure your device will stay firmly attached. After riding with 23 smartphone bike mounts over 90 miles’ worth of smooth and rough roads, we conclude that the Quad Lock mounts are the ones we’d use for our own phones.
If you’re one of the few people out there clinging to BlackBerry’s once prominent BBM messaging service, you’re about to be disappointed.
Back in 2016 BlackBerry partnered with Indonesia-based Emtek in an effort to expand BBM’s consumer business. BlackBerry maintained control of its BBM Enterprise platform, but Emtek took over the reins of the consumer side of BBM.
Now, in a surprise move, Emtek announced that it plans to end its BBM consumer service on May 31st, 2019.
Below is a full statement regarding the closure from BlackBerry and Emtek:
Today we’re announcing that we will be closing BBM consumer service on 31 May 2019. Three years ago, we set out to reinvigorate BBM consumer service, one of the most loved instant messaging applications, as a cross-platform service where users can not only chat and share life experiences, but also consume content and use payment services.
We poured our hearts into making this a reality, and we are proud of what we have built to date. The technology industry however, is very fluid, and in spite of our substantial efforts, users have moved on to other platforms, while new users proved difficult to sign on.
Though we are sad to say goodbye, the time has come to sunset the BBM consumer service, and for us to move on. We are grateful for your support and wish to thank everyone, especially our users, partners, and employees, for being part of the BBM consumer service journey. We hope you will cherish many fond memories of BBM consumer service that helped shape messenger platforms to become what they are today.
That said, there’s still a glimmer of hope for those adverse to using a modern messaging platform. BlackBerry revealed a plan that will result in the enterprise-version of BBM being available to general consumers.
BBM Enterprise (BBMe) is now available through the Google Play Store and iOS App Store. The service is free for a year and then goes up to $2.49 USD (roughly $3.33 CAD) for a six-month subscription. BlackBerry’s Enterprise version of BBM still includes popular features like group chats and voice and video calls, as well as the all-important ability to edit and retract messages.
Though BBM, originally released back in 2005, was once a dominant messaging platform in the smartphone space it has since been eclipsed by modern apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Apple’s Messages platform. In the mid-to-late 2000s, BBM was one of the main selling points for BlackBerry smartphones.
While Emtek’s partnership with BlackBerry was an effort by the company to bring BBM to more people and to generate additional revenues, it seems the plan simply did not work.
It looks like Apple’s 2019 iPhone lineup could feature improved selfie camera performance, according to a new report from often-reliable TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
The tech giant is rumoured to move from using a 7-megapixel selfie shooter to a 12-megapixel camera, all while still maintaining the same pixel size, according to MacRumors, which was of the first publications to publish a story about Kuo’s note. This megapixel increase also brings the selfie shooter in-line with the cameras featured in the rear of the iPhone.
Other new selfie camera features include slightly faster lens performance, which could, in theory, improve the smartphone’s low-light capabilities.
Kuo’s report goes on to say that Apple also plans to use a black coating of some sort on the 2019 iPhone lineup’s lenses so they more closely blend in with the exterior of the smartphone. To be clear, Samsung already does this with the front-facing cameras in many of its devices.
Along with front camera improvements, all of Apple’s 2019 iPhone models are expected to receive rear shooter upgrades as well. First, the next version of Apple’s iPhone XR will feature dual rear cameras thanks to the addition of a telephoto lens. The iPhone’s standard wide-angle rear camera will also get larger pixels in its sensor, according to Kuo’s report.
Kuo also goes on to corroborate earlier rumours regarding the next version of the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max featuring a third super-wide angle camera. Given that a number of high-end Android smartphones, including Samsung’s Galaxy S10+ and Huawei’s P30 Pro, already feature three rear cameras, it’s not surprising Apple is also following suit with the iPhone.
The federal government announced $7.2 million CAD in funding for a company creating a Wi-Fi based security device, at a Waterloo event on Thursday.
Using the radio frequencies of Wi-Fi, Cognitive Systems’ WiFi Motion technology utilizes radio frequency waves like those produced by your Wi-Fi router to track the movement of people in your home. It also uses AI and predictive analysis to enable IoT and smart home features.
The federal government is preparing for a future where artificial intelligence and quantum technology will have a significant impact on industries like security and health. It announced another $33.8 million in funding for two more Waterloo-based companies and a non-profit at the same event.
“Simply put, quantum mechanics allows us to do things that are impossible under classical rules,” said former RIM founder and co-founder of the Quantum Valley Investments Mike Lazaridis in a statement. He hopes the attraction of top talent will mean the success of Canadian business ventures in the field.
The quantum field of physics is the study of the extremely small subatomic level of matter. Proposed applications include computers that can potentially crack today’s encryption technology, and offer new ways to construct even smaller electronics.
The Quantum Valley Ideas Lab is slated to receive $20 million from FedDev Ontario to help companies in the quantum field scale and grow in the Waterloo region. It’s a non-profit that plans on developing a team of experts in the field from backgrounds including engineering, computing and research.
It leverages local support systems like the Lazaridis Institute and the Perimeter Institute to foster innovative approaches to the technology.
Additionally, quantum security company ISARA will get $7.2 million to create communication encryption technology that aims to be resilient against future quantum attacks. Heath tech company High Q Technologies is set to receive $6.5 million to develop medical equipment enabled by advances in quantum technology.
Google is already teasing the incoming launch of its next pair of smartphones, the Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL, but that’s not going to stop the rumor mill from releasing new info ahead of their arrival.
Continue reading →
This morning Tim gave me a tour of all the work he has been doing to automate Reclaim Video over the last week or so—it is pretty impressive. The first 15 minutes of the discussion is of my face given the live broadcast was locked on me for a bit, but that gets resolved and you can hear us go through the various pieces that will essentially allow anyone to effectively run Reclaim Video remotely using Reclaim the Robot. The video is about 45 minutes long, and I am a realist so it might make sense to highlight some of the advances:
Voice activated light switch using Wemo (or Wireless EMO lightswtich)
Voice activated power that when directed turn on the Pac-man machine, the Reclaim Video digital signage ( the TV, raspberry pi, and stereo are all left on)
24-hour live stream using a Nest camera so one can check-in on what is happening at Reclaim Video
And that stream would be boring without video, so Tim figured out how to both rip and upload VHS and laserdisc to a Plex Media Server that can be voice activated to play a specific film from our library (obviously we will be start ripping and adding movies as we go, there are 3 thus far)
A Reclaim Video Twitter bot that is able to send information about the current movie playing at Reclaim Video (ds106radiobot anyone?)
Shot from the Nest camera
Plex also allows you to synch videos playing in Reclaim Video with your home TV, which is crazy, and you can also use Plex on your phone to control what’s playing, so there is a lot of exploration still to come there. One thing Tim noted we need to explore is how to adjust volume on the 80s Fisher stereo, it was low when him and Tim Clarke were watching The Fly (1986), and it was impossible to adjust. The other issue to figure out is how we stream the audio online cleanly via something like ds106radio so that we can synchronously listen while watching video through the Nest camera using something like Twitter or some other space to discuss on films playing in Reclaim Video.
Tim working the counter at Reclaim Video as Reclaim the Robot
So, that is a quick list, and we are all for ideas, I am really excited about the potential of this space for playing, and as we noted in the video, it’s like we finally got our incubator classroom at Reclaim Hosting
Though this is less of a completely new feature and more of a user interface change, Samsung’s Galaxy S10 and S10+ now feature a dedicated night shooting mode.
The South Korean tech giant has turned ‘Bright Night,’ a low-light optimized shot the S10 was capable of detecting on its own when the camera is set to auto, into its own feature called ‘Night Mode,’ according to SamMobile.
As a result, S10 and S10+ owners can now activate this feature whenever they want instead of the phone deciding when to use it. While Bright Night and now subsequently Night Mode works fine, it tends to produce noisy, often blurry images. The Pixel 3’s Night Mode remains far superior to Samsung’s offering.
For what it’s worth, the update hasn’t yet arrived on my S10+ but I expect that it will show up at some point in the next few days.
In order to check if the update has made its way to your device, navigate to ‘Settings,’ then ‘Software Update’ and finally “Download and Install.’
The Surface Studio 2 is Microsoft’s beautiful all-singing, all-dancing, all-in-one desktop computer that is quite unlike anything else on the market. But then it should be with prices starting at more than £3,500.
Straight out of the box it’s obvious that the Surface Studio 2 is no ordinary computer. Its gorgeous, pixel-dense 28in screen appears to float, held effortlessly by two chrome articulated arms that are invisible when you’re sitting directly in front of it. The small grey pedestal below looks like a weighted stand, but contains the full workings of the PC.
It’s the kind of computer you see in near-future science fiction and demands to be placed on some exquisite minimalist desk.
The screen is super crisp, bright and truly beautiful, rivalling the very best in the business, which is currently on the latest iteration of Apple’s 5K iMac. But it also hides a trick up its sleeve. Pull gently on the bottom edge of the screen and it tilts towards you, gliding down and able to hold itself anywhere from leaning over you all the way down converting into a drafting board. Unclip the Surface Pen from the side and you suddenly see why – the Surface Studio is one giant drawing tablet.
This is not a computer for the mass market. Starting at £3,549 it is a premium computer built for a couple of reasons. The first is to be Microsoft’s hero product, a beacon for its fans and an example of what the company can do if it pulls out all the stops. Look at it, want it, but then buy a Surface Go, Surface Laptop 2, Surface Pro 6 or Surface Book 2, because they’re practically affordable by comparison.
The second is to challenge Apple in its own backyard. For decades creatives have flocked to Apple’s Mac OS computers, with the 27in 5K iMac and iMac Pro the current favourites. The Surface Studio 2 is Microsoft’s iMac-plus – a workstation with a dedicated graphics chip and a massive touchscreen which allows you to do more with finger, pen and even Surface Dial support. No need for a separate drawing tablet. This is the minimalist-loving artist’s friend.
Connectivity: wifi ac, Bluetooth 4.1, 4x USB 3.0, 1x USB-C, SD, Ethernet, 3.5mm headphones
Display dimensions: 637.4 x 438.9 x 12.5 mm
Base dimensions: 50 x 220 x 32.2 mm
Weight: 9.6kg
On paper
Under the hood you have either 16 or 32GB of RAM, 1 or 2TB of SSD storage, and either an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 or 1070 graphics card. There’s only one choice of processor, a seventh-generation quad core Intel Core i7-7820HQ, when Intel’s ninth generation is already available. That’s disappointing, particularly for the price.
None of the components are poor, but the graphics chips are one generation behind. Worse still, the processor is mobile-grade and two generations behind. Apple recently launched its updated iMac with options for eight or ninth-generation desktop-class Intel Core processors, which have up to eight cores, double the cores of the old seventh-generation mobile chips in the Surface Studio 2.
It also lacks Thunderbolt 3 and only has one USB-C port. Specs-wise the Surface Studio 2 doesn’t quite stack up. These shortcomings may not make any difference now; it can still handle the most intense image or video editing tasks, play top-end games on relatively high detail settings and power any VR headset you might want to attach. For a general computer user it is far more powerful than necessary.
But this is a computer built for demanding users who are likely to use that power and run out of it in a year or so when the latest and greatest piece of software demands more. For a £3,500-plus computer you’d be right to expect more. Even Microsoft’s cheaper portable computers use eighth-generation Intel chips. The lack of Thunderbolt 3, which is used for high-speed external storage for video among other things, is particularly vexing.
Microsoft says the chips weren’t ready when it was building the Surface Studio 2. When it was announced in October last year, that may well have been understandable, but it’s delayed release in the UK meant it was outdated before it went on sale.
Experience
Specifications aside, the Surface Studio 2 runs Windows 10 Pro and is an extremely accomplished computer. Simply put, it is a joy to use.
It comes with the excellent Surface Keyboard, providing what I consider one of the best typing experiences money can buy right now, and the not-so-excellent Surface Mouse, which is fine but is not very ergonomic. It also comes with the outstanding Surface Pen, which magnetically clips to the top, middle or bottom of either the left or right side of the screen when not in use.
Fire it up and you’re staring at the desktop in mere seconds, with Microsoft’s slick Windows Hello facial recognition camera logging you straight in.
In fact, all round the Surface Studio 2 provides a snappy, slick and speedy experience. It’s clear this is both a powerful and well optimised PC, as it should be given Microsoft makes both the hardware and the software. It’s also runs very quietly, with the fans inaudible in an office until the computer was pushed very hard, and even then it was masked by the general hubbub of an open-plan office.
With keyboard and mouse the beautiful 28in screen makes multitasking a breeze. Its 3:2 aspect ratio means you can see more of a site, spreadsheet or graphics editing window compared to wider screens. By default the screen is set to a vivid colour setting, which makes everything pop, but you can quickly switch to DCI-P3 or sRGB with a quick settings tile for more accurate colour work, which is useful when editing images or video.
The only disappointment here is the lack of true HDR support, which is increasingly becoming an industry standard both in creating and viewing video.
Surface Pen and Dial
With a keyboard and mouse the Surface Studio 2 behaves like any other Windows 10 all-in-one. But fold it down into drafting mode and break out the Surface Pen and Dial (a £75 accessory) and it becomes a very different animal.
The combination of large screen, 10-point multitouch, lag-free pen and radial dial support makes for a tremendous package. Suddenly you can directly interact with an image in Affinity Photo, move it around by hand, pinch to zoom, draw in fine edits with the pen and quickly adjust things like brush size, flow, hardness and many other things with the dial. From sketching and painting, video editing and photo manipulation, the Surface Studio 2 offers something rivals simply cannot.
For artists it provides an unparalleled, flexible and powerful experience, with a plethora of apps ready to support touch, pen and dial input. Only something like Wacom’s Cintiq Pro comes close and that costs £2,400 for the 24in screen or £3,500 if you want the 32in version. Then you have to add a computer.
Observations
All the ports are on the back of the machine, which make them harder than it needs to be to reach them
Heat is ejected out of the right-side of the base, which can cook anything you place next to it when the computer is pushed hard
The 2.1 stereo speakers pack a fairly powerful punch given they’re hidden away
Xbox wireless connectivity is built in so you don’t need a dongle or Bluetooth to connect an Xbox controller
Price
The Microsoft Surface Studio 2 starts at £3,549 with a GTX 1060, 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. Upgrading to a GTX 1070 and 32GB of RAM costs £4,249 or £4,749 with 2TB of storage.
For comparison, Apple’s 27in Retina 5K iMac starts at £1,749 and the iMac Pro starts at £4,899. Microsoft’s Surface Book 2 starts at £1,999 with a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 GPU.
Verdict
The Surface Studio 2 is a beautiful, amazing computer in a class all of its own. It’s one of those machines that makes you envious when you see it on other people’s desks, a true hero product.
For consumers the Surface Studio 2 is a hard sell, simply because of its asking price. It is the luxury sports car of Microsoft’s Surface computer world.
For artists and creative professionals the advantages are clear – the Surface Studio 2 provides a unique new way to use a computer with a giant articulated touchscreen that becomes a drafting board complete with pen and radial input support.
Industrial design and input capability aside, the problem is the Surface Studio 2 is built with processors, graphics chips and ports that lag behind the competition. It’s true that specifications aren’t everything, but for a professional computer worth this much money, it’s disappointing.
The Surface Studio 2 is therefore the pin-up, the poster boy, the computer you want, but will probably never buy. But if you do, you’ll probably absolutely love it.
Pros: beautiful industrial design, huge and gorgeous screen, Surface Pen and Dial support, snappy performance, full-size SD card slot, USB-C, Windows Hello
Cons: super expensive, only seventh gen Intel mobile chips, older graphics processor, no Thunderbolt 3, no HDR support, not upgradable
Other reviews
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I was featured this week on Mother Mag, a site I greatly admire. I still can’t believe I was included in their Motherhood series, which I read religiously. Amy of Modern Nest Photography came to our home (all the way from Calgary!) to photograph me and the kids (Trevor was off the hook this time) at home. The behind the scenes was me frantically cleaning the house until it was spotless and then tidying behind the kids as they played, while also simultaneously trying to look calm, happy and not sweaty. Basically Amy is magic.
Then I disappeared to the coffee shop a few times over the next weekend to pour my heart into the questionnaire sent over from Mother Mag. I don’t think I’ve ever had to answer such in depth questions about my life or motherhood. It was an exercise like no other. I was really nervous the night before it was published as I felt I had laid it all out there for people to judge. I have been overwhelmed by the response. This is truly a beautiful community of kind and uplifting women (and a few men! 7% to be precise, ha). Thanks so much to new readers and old. People who DM me regularly with encouragement or just to share in what ways our lives and struggles and joys are similar.
Inspired Small and Minimal Living
I missed a couple things that I wanted to mention here. I forgot to mention @brownkids and @elim_chu and @scandinavianstylist as inspirational small living/minimal/less is more accounts on Instagram that I love. I’m sure I’m forgetting more and I will share as they come to me.
Addressing Criticism and the Housing Market
Secondly, I am very lucky that I don’t get a lot of negative comments or trolls but the negative comments I get, usually have something to do with the housing market/crisis in Vancouver and whether I address it sufficiently. Housing in Vancouver is difficult and I don’t deny that it is challenging for most. It is challenging for us too and I know we are in a privileged position of owning property (albeit small property). But the housing market is out of my control and influence. What is in my control is how I feel about it and what I do for myself and my family. We are making the best of what could be seen as a difficult situation - 4 people in a one bedroom, who can’t necessarily afford a larger place. And we have found unexpected joy and contentment in living small in the city. We can choose to stay in this city or we could move to a more affordable city or a more rural location. If we stay I have to accept the circumstances that are out of my control. Being angry about it isn’t going to change it. And I don’t think spreading anger or discontent is going to help anyone else feel better about the housing market or their particular living situation. So I’m probably not going to address it again here. But I will continue to share our story, as I know feel confident that it helps others feel proud for living small, editing their possessions or buying less.
With that out of the way…. if you would like to read the article I’ve linked to it below and if you are new here because of it, thanks for being here!
Jeff Geerling @geerlingguy
Nicole Fenton @nicoleslaw
Pedro Marques @MetroManTO
John Snow’s original Cholera outbreak map, found on Wikimedia Commons, a little bit chopped. The black circles show the pumps and the stacked black rectangles show the deaths at each address.
Google is already teasing the incoming launch of its next pair of smartphones, the Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL, but that’s not going to stop the rumor mill from releasing new info ahead of their arrival.
Continue reading →
The Guardian.
