I’m enjoying Henrietta Dugdale‘s utopian SF, A Few Hours in a Far-Off Age. Millions of years in the future, we and the disembodied narrator follow along as highly evolved humans discourse on education and the history of the Christian Blood Age. Australia sank into the sea and a new continent, Alethia, rose, though Melbourne is rising again and has this giant museum/school exhibit hall built on it with what sound like fancy study carrels next to elaborate dioramas of “torture instruments” ie corsets, low necked dresses, and high heels; or just like, men being sexist while drinking the Demon Alcohol and denying women a right to education whilst cheering on their various wars and not doing any of the housework.

The evolved teenagers (2 per family) gratifyingly listen to the smiling lectures of their evolved moms, then we weirdly follow one of them, Veritée, to her private study where she divests herself of our rational dress outer garments (loose trousers with a tunic and a short jacket, none of which are constraining in any way) to reveal her silk undergarments (similar to the top ones), does calisthenics, studies next to her giant pet tiger-dog, has some vegetarian food (delivered by the one family servant who is educated, evolved, and only works till noon after which she goes off for recreation and philosophizing, and who emerges bearing the trays of fruit and bread from a weird mirrored pillar with a spiral staircase). Veritée then has a bath (slightly creepily we see her beauteous form in the bath – better than any Blood Era statue of beauty since unconstrained by Torture Instruments and well calisthenicked.)

Some of the teenagers then fly off in an aircar (run by some sort of power plus kept safe by the Repelling Engine) to the beaches of the West Coast at 80 miles per hour. They frolic, have a picnic, and probably discuss Evolution some more. In one interlude we are treated to a description of the inventresses of the Repelling Engine (inspired by the corpses which used to rain down from aircar crashes!) They go on a test flight and then are welcomed by parades, honors, costly gifts, job offers (which they refuse unless they both get the job together) as the cheering crowds celebrate the new age of safer air travel.

Space travel is mentioned as a possible future but not really given much thought.

Henrietta does not seem to like church or the organized religion of her time, or the “myth-men” who run it, much.

I have returned to our earth. Oh, what cruel disorder here reigns! Truth crashed and persecuted! “Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible, except to God alone,” flaunting in every myth temple! howling in every community! checking progress at every avenue.

Fools and rogues! You who profess so much love and reverence for your skeletons. I tell you it is all useless that you noisily rattle their offensive bones before my vision. That bright light of truth from the far-off age shines to me through your blackest screens! Go, hug your loathsome relics of a loathsome era in privacy—if you can—and say not again to my ears what you dare not utter to the Infinite in your solitude.

Ha! I see I “obey” and do the “work” that was commanded, for the light shines more brightly!

A dream? What is dreaming? Some explain most learnedly how it is caused by certain conditions of the body. May not some dreams cause those certain conditions?

Dream, or what else it has been, I see always the beautiful light bright with truth and hope. No one can extinguish it!

Some functions have identities, which are values that tell you where to start calculating. In this episode, we look at what identities are, some examples of them, and how you can use them in your own code.

Transcript

Eric Normand: Is a function’s identity? By the end of this episode, you’ll know what an identity is and how to use them in your code. My name is Eric Normand. I help people thrive with functional programming.

This is an important topic because many common operations, operations we use every day, have identities. You might not know that term, but you’ve definitely used them. It’s a fundamental idea from algebra, and it tells us where to start an operation.

Basically, it’s the value you start with. When you’re counting, you’re going to start at zero. You don’t start at one. Before you start counting, you’re at zero, then the first thing you count down when it gets to one.

Counting is just adding one each time. Zero is the identity value of addition. Multiplication also has an identity value, it’s one. If you multiply one times anything, you get that number. Same thing with adding zero. If you add zero to anything, you get the number back. That’s what an identity means.

There’s other identities all around. If you’re adding letters to the end of a string, you’re going to start with an empty string. If you’re adding elements to an array, you’re going to start with an empty array.

The same property holds, if you stake a string and you concatenate on an empty string to the end, you get the same string out. The same thing if you take an empty array and you concatenate them, you’re going to get the original array out.

You can look at all sorts of operations and try to find if they have an identity. The ones that have an identity tend to be the more algebra feeling ones. I’m talking about hash map merge.

If you merge two hash maps, basically copying the keys and values from one into the other, the identity is the empty map. Another property of the identity is it has to work in both sides.

With addition, you can say, 10 plus 0 or 0 plus 10. The identity works in both positions. Same with hash map merge. If I have an empty hash map and I merge on a non-empty hash map, I get that non-empty hash map out. If I reverse the direction, and I start with a non-empty hash map and I merge in an empty hash map, I get the non-empty hash map out.

Another way to look at identities is that they are the empty value. That’s the empty array, the empty hash map, zero empty string. Whatever kinds of data structures you’re looking at, there’s going to be some empty version of it.

It’s important to remember that the identity is a property of the operation. It’s not a property of the data type. I said data types have their empty version of the data type, but the identity is a property of the function, the operation on it.

That’s why it’s not part of the data type. That’s why with addition, you have a different identity from multiplication. It’s about the property. Additions identity is zero, and multiplications identity is one. It’s not a property of numbers or integers or anything like that.

What’s cool about this is when you’re coding, making new functions, you can make an identity value. You could either start with an existing data structure that already has an identity and reuse that, or you can make a value that represents this place to start.

When I say, “Start,” that’s what you would initialize your variables to start at. Just like you usually initialize a number to zero or you initialize an array to an empty array, you would initialize your new type that you’re making to this identity value.

The reason you might want to do that is, if you’re trying to come up with some kind of algebra, you want to have some empty version that’s a neutral value that you can start from.

One example, if you’re making a graphics application, you could have the empty image. You haven’t added any layers in yet, but you have an empty image that’s ready to receive layers.

Or if you’re making a video editing software, you would have a type that represents or a value that represents a video without any frames in it, without any video in it. It’s just the empty video that doesn’t have any image. It’s not going to play. It’s zero length, but it’s ready to receive more.

The nice thing about this is you start to get some kind of algebraic ideas. You could say, “Well, if I have a video and this empty video, I can concatenate them and I have that original video out.”

Just a nice little algebraic idea. When you’re concatenating videos, and you say, “OK, take this one and paste it at the end of this one,” you needed to find what it’s like if you don’t have any video yet in that type. You don’t want to have that corner case.

Then, you’ll notice that “Wow. This kind of empty one bubbles through and has a lot of interesting properties to it.”

I’m going to leave it at that. I’ll recap. The identity is a value that is a property of certain operations. These operations might have an identity value, and it’s got that property that if you apply the operation to the identity value and a non-identity value, you get that non-identity value back no matter what argument position it’s in.

If you’re counting, you’re going to start at zero. If you’re adding letters to a string, you’re going to start with an empty string, etc. It can be considered the place where you start that the neutral value that doesn’t have any affect like if you add zero it has no affect. Or, it can be considered the empty value, ready to be added to.

Just remember, it’s a property of the operation not of the type. You can have two different operations on the same type that have different identities. It’s rare, but like with multiplication and addition, it happens.

You can make your own identity values. Your identity value in some might be null if you’re using a language with null. Or, it could be some new value that you’ve created that’s like, start, something like that. That doesn’t mean anything, what it means, “I haven’t done anything yet.”

Do yourselves a favor, look over some of the existing functions. Not functions that you wrote but from libraries, your standard library, and try to find the identities in them.

I think it’s one of the simpler properties that really shows that someone has put a lot of thought into their design if they have an identity. If they don’t have an identity, it could be they haven’t thought about making it into a nice algebra.

Please do me a favor, if you like this more algebraic notion in functional programming, please subscribe because there’s going to be more like this. I’ve already done many algebraic property episodes and there’s more coming.

If you have any questions, if you have comments, I’m always open for discussions via email, I’m eric@lispcast.com. You can also talk to me on Twitter, I’m @ericnormand with a D. You can find me on LinkedIn.

See you later.

The post What is a function’s identity? appeared first on LispCast.

Bruce Nugent 🇨🇦 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @BruceNugent68
@VictorFedeli @fordnation But gas went way up last week.....way more than 4.5 cents. How come you didn't tell us t… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Various authors, Hacker Noon, Apr 01, 2019

I've written in the past that employees of the future will be selected based on their portfolio of actual work rather than based on proxies like degrees and certificates. Artificial intelligence will make this a lot easier, as employers will rely on software to pick the most likely candidates. The many different ways of creating portfolios will also help. This set of articles looks at the practice of creating software design and development portfolios. Obviously not everyone will build their own portfolios from scratch the way a full-stack developer would. But this set of articles covers a lot of ground and with a little imagination you can see the sort of portfolio everyone might be using in the not-too-distant future. Image: Clint Hamada.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Angry members make angry posts.

If a member is angry when they visit the community, you can’t stop them from making an angry post. But remember it’s the previous touchpoints (frustration with product, customer support etc…) which made them angry, it’s not the community.

But you can address and resolve their anger.

You can make members feel listened to, understood, and respected. You can give them a sense of influence and control over the outcome. You can make them less angry and less likely to spur on others with negative, snarky, comments.

A few tips here.

1. Respond to each negative post. You can’t always give the answer members want, but you can ensure they know they were listened to and their comments were understood. Be sure to ask for extra clarifying information and questions. Ask members what they would like to see and explain what the options are.

2. Be honest. Don’t announce when the problem will be resolved if you don’t know. Once members mark you as a liar, it’s game over. Avoid the temptation to tell members what they want to hear instead of what’s possible.

3. Pin a topic that’s the source of most negative criticism. It’s better to have a single thread (most members can ignore) pinned to the top than hundreds on the same topic. This ensures minority opinions aren’t treated as majority opinions others will go along with.

4. Have an ‘I have this problem too’ feature on each topic post. If people can register how they feel without having to post, you will get less snarky comments and better quantifiable feedback.

5. Schedule webinars with product engineers/leadership to tackle the biggest frustrations. You might not be able to solve them, but you can show members you’re taking their issues seriously and get recommendations from people with influence.

And follow up on previous discussions to check they were resolved. You can’t stop members from making their first angry post, but you should be able to stop them from making a second angry post.

April Fools!

We still have open bugs, but we’d like your help to close them!

We are grateful to have a very active set of users who generate a lot of bug reports and we are requesting your help in sorting them, an activity called bug triage. We’re holding “Bug Days” on April 8th (all day, EU and US timezones) and April 13th (EU and US timezones until 4pm EDT). During these bug days we will log on and work as a community to triage as many bugs as possible. All you’ll need is a Bugzilla account, Thunderbird Daily, and we’ll teach you the rest! With several of us working at the same time we can help each other in real time – answering questions, sharing ideas ideas, and enjoying being with like-minded people.

No coding or special skills are required, and you don’t need to be an expert or long term user of Thunderbird.

Some things you’ll be doing if you participate:

• Help other users by checking their bug reports to see if you can reproduce the behavior of their reported problem.
• Get advice about your own bug report(s).
• Learn the basics about Thunderbird troubleshooting and how to contribute.

We’re calling this the “Game of Bugs”, named after the popular show Game of Thrones – where we will try to “slay” all the bugs. Those who participate fully in the event will get a Thunderbird Game of Bugs t-shirt for their participation (with the design below).

Sorry for the joke! But we hope you’ll join us on the 8th or the 13th via #tb-qa on Mozilla’s IRC so that we can put these bugs in their place which helps make Thunderbird even better. If you have any questions feel free to email ryan@thunderbird.net.

P.S. If you are unable to participate in bug day you can still help by checking out our Get Involved page on the website and contributing in the way you’d like!

BMO currently supports five—count ’em, five—ways to search for bugs. Whenever you have five different ways to perform a similar function, you can be pretty sure the core problem is not well understood. Search has been rated, for good reason, one of the least compelling features of Bugzilla, so the BMO team want to dig in there and make some serious improvements. At our Portland get-together a couple weeks ago, we talked about putting together a vision for BMO.

Travellers walk past stopped cars to try to make their flight.

The April fool’s day joke on Berlin this year is a full-on BVG strike, shutting down the U-Bahn, tram, and bus systems in the city. The resulting rush for taxis left my friend without a way to get to the airport this morning, so I drove her there. At least I attempted to. It’s usually a twenty-minute drive to Tegal. After almost an hour, however, we got stuck on a highway offramp for a half hour just a kilometer away from the terminal.

Totally stuck. We maybe moved 50 meters.

People started getting out of their cars and walking to the airport. At first by ones and twos and then as a flood. At some point, my friend said, “Ok, I’m out.” She hopped out, grabbed her bag and joined the hikers, and rushed to make her flight. Me, I stayed on that overpass for more than another half hour watching people stream by.

Nur eins von diesen AirPods wird auf dem Fatboy induktiv geladen. Und den gibt es immer noch für 10 Euro, inklusive Netzteil. Von diesem 5W Qi-Lader kann man eigentlich gar nicht genug haben. iPhone drauf ablegen, immer voll. Oder eben die neuen AirPods mit dem Wireless Charging Case.

Man erkennt das Case nur anhand der LED auf der Vorderseite, die kurz angeht, wenn der Ladevorgang beginnt. Die neuen AirPods der zweiten Generation erkennt man übrigens gar nicht. Sie sehen absolut gleich aus wie die der ersten.

Erster Eindruck: Sie sind lauter. Gegenprobe mit den alten AirPods: Stimmt nicht. Ich kann sie nicht auseinander halten. Drei Dinge sollen die neuen AirPods durch einen neuen Chipset haben: Sprechzeit 3 Stunden statt 2, schnelleren Verbindungsaufbau, Hey Siri ohne antippen. Meine alten AirPods habe ich heute morgen in 50 Minuten leer gequatscht. Allerdings hatte ich vorher schon zwei Stunden Musik gehört. Ich bin gespannt, ob die neuen länger durchhalten.

Siri ist spürbar besser geworden. Die Stimme ist klarer, der Aufruf von "Hey Siri" funktioniert, auch gegen die Konkurrenz eines HomePods im selben Raum. Der blinkt zwar kurz auf, aber Siri im AirPod übernimmt das Kommando. Die bessere Sprachqualität spricht dafür, dass die AirPods nun einen anderen Codec bei der Verbindung zum iPhone nutzen. Und das sollte sich auf bei Telefongesprächen nützlich machen.

Ich habe die AirPods nun so konfiguriert, dass der Doppeltap links einen Titel zurückspringt und der recht einen vorwärts. Bisher hatte ich links Siri, aber das brauche ich jetzt nicht mehr. Ich werde auch ausprobieren, ob die AirPods spürbar länger durchhalten, wenn sie nicht auf "Hey Siri" warten. Theoretisch sollte das so sein, die Praxis wird vielleicht zeigen, dass das keine Rolle spielt.

Die wesentliche Siri-Verbesserung ist aber nicht, dass man Siri besser versteht oder dass Siri ohne Fingertipp anspringt. Bisher musste man stets auf den Siri-Ton warten, bevor man sprechen kann. Jetzt kann man einfach ohne Pause weiterquatschen. "Hey Siri lauter" wird sofort verstanden. Damit ist das viel besser zu verwenden.

Everyone’s story is a little different. Alyssa Fowers tracked her long-distance relationship in the context of the temperature between two locations and the travel to and from.

Tags: relationships, temperature

We're proud to introduce the new XXXXXXXXL Handlebar Bag specifically designed for the Neutrino and folks who are ridiculously tall.

Vor zwei Monaten habe ich mich bitterböse beschwert, dass ich beim Apple Support nicht durchkomme. First Level versuchte immer, meinen Fehler zu beheben. Es ging darum, dass Find My Friends entgegen der Doku nicht den Ort meiner Apple Watch, sondern den meines iPhones anzeigte. Und das seit gut einem Jahr. Dazu habe ich auch noch einen Beitrag im Forum geschrieben, bei dem sehr viele Leute bestätigten, das gleiche Problem zu haben. Interessanterweise sagte aber eine Antwort, dass bei einem User alles funktioniert.

Vor genau zwei Wochen dann ein Anruf von Brad vom Second Level Support. Der stellte ganz viele Fragen und dokumentierte genau Apple-ID, Seriennummern, Release-Stände bis runter auf die Build Nummer. Am nächsten Tag kam er mit weiteren Fragen und einer Case Number: 100783680008. Ob ich vielleicht das Problem noch mal nachstellen könne. Dann habe ich zwei Szenarien durchgespielt, und jeweils die widersprüchlichen Angaben von Find My Friends und Find My iPhone dokumentiert. Brad blieb dran und bedankte sich schließlich für die Testdaten. Er werde den Case jetzt weiter eskalieren.

Heute dann bekam ich eine Mail vom Kollegen Leo Becker von Mac&i. Ein Leser habe ihm geschrieben, der Fehler sei mit dem letzten Provider-Update für Telekom.de behoben. Ich bin sofort mit Frau Brandlinger losgeschossen und kann bestätigen: Halleluja, der Fehler ist behoben!

So schnell kann das gehen, wenn man erst mal im Second Level ist und ordentliche Testdaten liefert. Danke, Brad.

“A ghetto can be improved in one way only. Out of existence.” - | James Baldwin

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I know you know this, but sometimes the most expensive, hyped thing isn’t the best tool for the job. I learned this once again in our new guide to pizza stones and steels, written by Lesley Stockton. I first heard about baking steels when they came out about seven years ago, during the ascent of science-y cooking writing and Kickstarter. Pizza obsessives raved.

I’m always attracted to the shiny, new, harder-to-get option—won’t it last longer and be better?

Not always. I’m glad I read through Lesley’s guide before getting one. No question, the baking steel excels at pizza. But I make a lot more bread than I do pizza, and for the right versatility-to-excellence ratio, I’m going with her pick, the FibraMent-D Home Oven Baking Stone (which can be cut to fit in my little oven).

Lesley was surprised to learn that, besides the stone’s thickness, it was the stone’s surface texture that seemed to improve browning. And the proprietary ceramic mix of the FibraMent was rougher than the more standard cordierite ceramic. “FibraMent isn’t cordierite, and they won’t say exactly what it is,” she said.

She compared ceramic stones with The Original Baking Steel, ⅜-inch (still an also-great pick). If you are an avid pizzaiolo, steel will give you the charred, puffy crust you find at serious pizza places with roaring wood fires. But, as our kitchen editor Marguerite Preston told me, it’s a one-trick pony. That intense heat will blacken the bottoms of bread loaves and pastries. Also, this thing is 23 pounds! Moving it from shelf to shelf would add more wear and tear on my arms than I want for a dish I rarely cook.

Finally, three tips:
1. All pizza dough recipes (registration required) have pretty much the same few ingredients, but Lesley told me that the secret to puffier and chewier pizzas is diastatic malt powder; that is the oomph I’ve been missing in homemade dough.
2. Get your dough to room temp, maybe even warmer, for a stretching that stays put.
3. If you want to impress people, make the Franny’s clam pizza recipe—a total stunner and easy-peasy, despite how complex it tastes. (RIP Franny’s, formerly my favorite pizza restaurant in Brooklyn; at least we still have its cookbook.)

New this week

The Best Pizza Stone and Baking Steel
Published March 25

The Apple Card Is Here. Is It Worth Getting?
Published March 25

List: How to Sleep Well (or at Least Better) While Traveling
Published March 25

The Best Rain Boots for Men and Women
Updated March 25

The Best Travel Car Seats
Published March 26

This Couple Has 8 Credit Cards. Here’s How They Juggle Them.
Published March 26

The Best Comforter
Updated March 26

The Best Bug Repellents
Updated March 26

Lessons From the Asus Hack: How to Keep Your Computer Safe
Published March 26

The Best Refrigerators
Updated March 27

List: Urban Gardening Starter Kit
Published March 27

The Best Workout Headphones
Updated March 27

Americans Are Terrible at Saving Money. Can They Trick Themselves Into Doing Better?
Published March 27

The Best Smartwatch for Android Phones
Updated March 28

The Best Plug-In Smart Outlet
Updated March 29

List: Gear to Organize Closets
Published March 29

Why You Should Tip at Priority Pass Restaurants and Lounges
Updated March 29

Things we’ve been enjoying lately

Some good listening, watching, and reading you may like

The Sometimes Catastrophic, but Mostly Just Embarrassing Consequences of Screen Sharing at Work [The New York Times]

“We’ve all been in that meeting, either as host or reluctant participant, when suddenly a racy notification pops up, or everyone’s eyes are focused on an interesting tab name. Screen sharing is dangerous.”

—Medea Giordano, assistant updates editor

The Group Getting Queer People Outside Together [Outside]

“Hiking has traditionally been a very white and cis activity—but groups like The Venture Out Project are working to get more diverse people interested in the outdoors, by leading LGBTQ+ hiking groups.”

—Tim Barribeau, editor

The Last Kingdom [Netflix]

“The series exploring the conflict between the Danes and the Saxons is addictive with its charming cast of characters, especially the hero named Uhtred of Bebbanburg.”

—Rozette Rago, photo editor

The post Huawei P30 Pro Camera Hands-on: Rewriting all the rules? appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Late last week, Rogers revealed plans to update the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 to Android Pie on April 1st. The carrier wasn’t joking.

We’ve received tips from several readers that the software update to Android OS 9.0 is now available from most Canadian carriers, including Freedom, Bell, Virgin Mobile, and Rogers.

The update is just over 1621MB and brings Samsung’s new One UI Android skin to the smartphone.

The OTA should automatically start downloading. However, you can also get it going by navigation to ‘Menu’ > ‘Settings’ > ‘About Device’ > ‘Software Update’ > ‘Update.’

Let us know if you have the update and which carrier you are on.

(Thanks, Vineet!)

The post Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Android Pie update now available to download in Canada appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Boris Mann @bmann
@cgst @jmagnuss my biggest win has been in documenting work, links, and tips and growing my own store of informatio… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Boris Mann @bmann
@cgst @jmagnuss blogging ;) I’ll be at 20 years next year! So, more broadly, a domain I own and HTML. Also Git. Ho… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

(somebody tell me why this doesn't work)

Step 1: Adopt a GDPR Everywhere policy. This is obviously good. Show me a company in the IT business that hasn't decided to go GDPR Everywhere, and I'll show you a company that hasn't finished writing out all the user stories for how to handle it when some users or partners are covered by GDPR and others aren't. Or what happens when you have been giving a user the creepy second-class privacy policy for a while and then they go get married to a European, or go work for a European company, or something. Basically every IT company is going to either go GDPR Everywhere or sign up for years of intricate, expensive legal work and arguments that they'll eventually give up on.

Step 2: Have products and services interact with open source, and collaborate and test upstream. This is also obviously good. Pull open-source Git repositories and run integration testing and metrics and whatever on them. We shouldn't just sit there and pull whatever comes out at the end of the development process, help with the QA, publish peer-reviewed research, whatever.

Step 3: Congratulations, we're now a data controller under Article 14 of the GDPR. Git repositories are full of PII. Every commit includes the developer name and email address.

Oh, no, PII! Does that mean we can't work with open source?

Of course not. Open source is still legal. But we have to comply with our data subject rights obligations under Article 14. We have to contact everyone whose PII we hold, and notify them clearly of what we're doing with their data.

And what are we doing with it? We're using it to do open source QA that feeds into making our product better. And we have to explain what we're doing in our Article 14 notification. So the European Union basically just told us not just that we can send our elevator pitch to a bunch of software developers unsolicited, but that we have to.

Right?

Bonus links

Elizabeth Warren Calls for a National Right-to-Repair Law for Tractors

Why Microsoft is backing a major tax hike on itself … and Amazon

Android users’ security and privacy at risk from shadowy ecosystem of pre-installed software, study warns

Beginner’s Guide to Buying Traffic

Lin Clark: Standardizing WASI: A system interface to run WebAssembly outside the web

Thank EU for the music – not the grasping tech giants | Björn Ulvaeus

(from 2010) Defeating the Cookie Monster: How Firefox can Improve Online Privacy

As a musician I’m shocked there’s opposition to a new EU copyright law | Debbie Harry

Canada is becoming a tech hub. Thanks, Donald Trump!

Auction Theory Ph.D.s Share Five Things Buyers And Sellers Should Keep In Mind For First-Price Auctions

Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

Instagram Is the Internet’s New Home for Hate

It Took 10 Seconds for Instagram to Push me Into an Anti-Vaxx Rabbit Hole

Digiday Research: 52 percent of publishers haven’t started preparing for the California Consumer Privacy Act

Today I thought I write down some thoughts on a book I noticed when I was at the Living Computer Museum and Labs (LCM+L) in Seattle last year: ‘Atypical Geek Girl’ by Katherine Hitchcock. In her memoirs, Katherine describe her 30 year tech career in IBM that began in the 1960s.

No, Katherine has not won a Nobel prize, her memoirs are about being ‘just a normal’ geek starting in the very early days of commercial computing. Early on, she mentions the IBM 1401 mainframe that the Computing History Museum in California still has a running one and which is really alien in construction from today’s point of view. This gives you an idea of where the story starts. What fascinated me most about the book was to read how technology evolved, how things have started in the first place and how so many things we take for granted today were not foreseeable at the time. A good example is her description of how writing academic papers worked in the 1970s, i.e. IBM researchers writing articles by hand and then giving the manuscript to (female) typists who struggled with the scientific notation that printers and word processing programs had their difficulties with during that time. Draft versions to be returned to the scientists were printed on IBM Selectric typewriters. Scientific formulas interrupted the printing process so the typists could exchange the type-wheel for one that could produce subscript and superscript letters. Imagine how often the type-wheel needed to have been changed in a text full of formulas. It must have been a hell of a job then. But things got better with the projects she worked on from dot matrix printers to laser printers and word processing programs that could deal with superscript and subscript text, albeit in a very different form as you might imagine. Also, I learned a lot about things that were invented in IBM over the decades such as SQL that we still use more or less like 40 years ago. And I got one very good advice that everyone should take to heart when dealing with management: ‘Tell them about your problems but at the same time offer potential solutions’. Very good advice if you ask me!

	sillygwailo shared this story from TORONTO STAR:
	Part of The Toronto Star’s “Tree of the Week” series.

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A white oak tree growing on the edge of Stone Church Rd. W. in Hamilton has been a touchstone in the lives of those lucky enough to know it.

mkalus shared this story from Science-Based Medicine.

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Valve is launching a brand new virtual reality (VR) headset in May, according to a teaser website.

Dubbed the Valve Index, it appears the headset is of the company’s own making, and not one made by longtime VR partner HTC.

Beyond a darkened image of the headset, a tagline that reads “Upgrade your experience,” and the date May 2019, there’s no other information on the page.

However, the image itself does give a fair bit away. The Index has as many as four wide-angle cameras, which suggests the headset will feature inside-out tracking like the Oculus Quest and other second-gen VR headsets.

Inside-out tracking allows players to move around a room without the need for base stations or external tracking cameras.

It also has an adjustment slider, likely for interpupillary distance (IPD), which allows the headset to accommodate people with eyes set closer or farther apart than average.

Unfortunately, there aren’t any details regarding specs or peripherals. There’s also no indication if the Valve Index is a standalone headset or if a high-end PC will power it.

Previous rumours suggested that Valve was working on a headset with a wider, 135-degree field of view. Rumour had it the company was working on a set of ‘knuckles’ motion controllers as well.

However, the future of the rumoured headset was in question after Valve reportedly laid off a significant portion of its VR division.

Regardless, the headset does exist, and we’ll likely learn more about it in May.

Source: Valve: Via: The Verge

The post Valve teases new VR headset coming in May, HTC nowhere to be found appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Prince Edward Island has moved to a system of having driver’s licenses produced by an off-Island company (historically they were produced in-house at the Access PEI site, while you waited).

The change has resulted in a bizarre new effect that the clerk at Access PEI referred to as “everybody looks like they have a beard.”

Here’s my last driver’s license photo, on the license that expires next week:

Here’s my new driver’s license photo, on the license that arrived by mail last week:

Not only does the new photo indeed make me look like I have a beard, but it also makes me look pale and, dare I say, cadaverous.

Which, according to Access PEI, is perfect acceptable.

In an Orwellian move earlier this year, the government, under the aegis of its “Climate Action Plan,” made driver’s licenses free for Islanders. I have been unable to square how making it more affordable to drive relates to climate change action.

It was a lovely day yesterday and the cycle-paths of Drenthe were calling so I decided to make the journey to the Dwingelderveld to eat my lunch next to the somewhat famous radio telescope. Why there in particular ? I'm currently reading Harry Mulisch's "De Ontdekking van de Hemel" ("The Discovery of Heaven"). The author stayed in the area of the radio telescope during the time

A recent teardown of the Apple Music app on Android revealed that the iPhone-maker is working Chromecast support into its music streaming service.

As with all APK teardowns, it’s important to remember that uncovered features are often works-in-progress and may not be representative of the final product. Further, features may never see completion. With that said, let’s take a look.

Apple released Apple Music 2.8 at the beginning of the week with support for Chromebooks and a revamped ‘Browse’ tab that featured more editorial highlights. However, the company quickly released update 2.8.1 and 2.8.2 to fix a bug that caused the app to “unexpectedly close or fail after an upgrade for some users.”

9to5Google decompiled that latter APK, which rolled out on March 29th, and found four code strings related to Chromecast. These strings included two application IDs.

Developers receive these IDs when they register an application for Cast support with Google. Registering allows developers to add custom colours and branding on TV screens and smart displays. However, it’s odd that there are two different IDs.

This likely means users will be able to send music playing in the Android app to a Google Home speaker, smart display, Android TV or Chromecast. Further, depending on how Apple implements support, users should be able to control playback from Apple Music on their phone.

Earlier this year, Apple Music for Assistant briefly appeared in the Google Assistant settings page alongside YouTube Music, Google Play Music and Spotify. Google later removed Apple Music, noting the appearance was related to a software bug.

The upcoming Cast support could herald the future release of Assistant integration as well. While similar in purpose, the main difference between Cast support and Assistant integration is the latter doesn’t require the Apple Music app. Users can just ask Assistant to play a song from Apple Music.

Finally, version 2.8.2 of Apple Music does not include Cast support, just the beginnings of its integration. Users should expect that to come in a future release when Apple finishes it.

Source: 9to5Google

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One of a few articles I’ll write about accessibility. I’ve been working on accessibility here and at Observable, and have collected a few thoughts.

One of the most frequently cited accessibility tests is color contrast: whether text on a page contrasts enough with its background to be readable by people with different types of vision, including, for example, low vision or macular degeneration.

According to the automated test suites, many websites have insufficient color contrast. Color contrast failure is one of the key tests driving claims about the web being inaccessible.

Now, before I proceed, let me say what I’m not saying. I agree that the web has dramatic accessibility problems. The concerns raised by WebAIM are real, the lived experience of people browsing the web with screen reader software, braille displays, and all types of capabilities matters tremendously. There’s a preponderance of evidence that for everyday use websites are insufficiently accessible and web developers are unaware or uninterested in the problem.

Okay, so: automated color contrast testing tools, and perhaps the standards they test, are bad.

Why are they bad? Because they don’t correctly handle the difference between light text on dark backgrounds and require contrast high enough that placeholder text fails. Because massive websites like Apple.com fail it. Or Stripe, arguably the leader in tech-marketing web design. Or articles on web accessibility, like Ethan Marcotte’s “The Web We Broke” - the article itself doesn’t pass the color contrast test.

According to the WebAIM report, maybe 1% of sites pass the test.

Because automatically detectable errors constitute a small portion of all possible WCAG failures, this means that the actual WCAG 2 A/AA conformance level for the home pages for the most commonly accessed web sites is very low, perhaps below 1%.

Is this a failure of epic proportion, or a bad test? I think it’s a little of both. If the test reflected natural perception, then a designer or two should be able to pass it simply by using adequate contrast. As far as I can tell, that doesn’t happen: nobody ‘falls into success’ with this test – the only people passing color contrast tests are designing to the test. And even those designing to the test, as the experience at Shopify makes clear, end up having to compromise design or usability in exchange.

Here’s what should happen:

Number one: Be honest about uncertainty. Automated accessibility testing is imprecise. The tools regularly identify incorrect failures - like testing the color contrast between a dynamically-set colors, or incorrectly computing the color of stacked elements. They also identify incorrect successes - like the aforementioned ‘dark text on saturated background’. But there is only mention of uncertainty in the WebAIM report - in the Method section - is that there could be more failures than automatically identified.

Number two: Recalibrate color contrast rules. Contrast levels should be recalibrated to reflect human perception and, in short, be achievable. The idea that only 1% of the web is currently color-contrast accessible says a lot more about the arbitrary and overbearing nature of the test than about the web. In addition, the testing tools themselves should advertise their own limitations.

Number three: Aim for A first. The WebAIM study writes about A/AA color compliance - with AA being the should, and A being the must requirements. Compliance with A should be the first step. Of course, better is better, but as the supposed 1% pass rate implies, we’re a little desperate for some wins.

In short: color contrast tests should be achievable, should accurately reflect vision, and the tooling for them should be clear about what it can and cannot find.

So I don't have an original bone in my body, as proven by this blatant rip-off of Ken Bauer's post of the same title and theme.

Three Decade Mark

I will turn 60 in April and so far things have turned out pretty well. I'm still here, which is an accomplishment in itself, I have a wonderful family and friends, wonderful cats, a good job that pays the bills, a house, a car, and, of course, wifi.

Of course, I'm getting on in years, there's some creak in these old bones, it takes longer to write, my memory isn't the razor-sharp steel trap it used to be. And sure, there are times I wish I could go back and change things, but life doesn't work that way. But these days I feel nothing other than privileged and grateful. I treasure each moment even if I'm doing nothing more than watching pro Bowling and eating pork rinds.(*)

Obligatory Video Clip

Because-Ken-Bauer-did-it-and-anyway-it's-a-great-song.


My first vinyl album was Trick of the Tail by Genesis. My first 8-track tape was Gord's Gold, by Gordon Lightfoot, and my first CD was Live Rust by Neil Young. My first cassette tape was something I made myself. My first MP3 was a dump of several hundred songs. My first rap song was Television - The Drug of a Nation, which I heard through the CJSR wall speaker at the Gauntlet, and mesmerized me. The younger me was idealist and activist, the product of literature and talk radio as much as of music and subculture. The older me is still all of that but with a wider range and digital technology thrown in.

A Call for Proposals

So like Ken I created this call for proposals: "What should Stephen focus on in the next 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years". Or months. Or whatever time I've got. I'll keep this call for proposals wide open - should I explore some topic, create a certain work, whatever?

• Probably the easiest thing is to comment on this post - I'll make sure the comments thing is working (note: it might not be - this is Blogger, after all).

• I can't imaging anyone would dedicate an entire blog post to this, but of you do please let me know. I have less faith in hashtags that Ken but you can try #StephensNext60

• Or Tweet it, or whatever. You still have a couple days to use Google+, or you can reach me via Mastodon. If it's on Facebook I won't see it, because I'm still fighting the power after all these years.

Thank You

I'm really not very good at maintaining relationships or even in being nice to other people. I try, but I've always been too wrapped up in my own mind - my hopes, fears, dreams, ideas, and all the rest. But I have two rules I try to follow (and, I think, mostly succeed at): I try to leave each person better off for having met me, and I am thankful for each person I've ever met.




(*) I don't actually watch pro bowling or eat pork rinds; it's a reference to a Simpson's episode, and in particular, one of that show's most insightful moments.

Tesla vehicles carry a veritable treasure trove of unencrypted personal data — data accessible to anyone who knows how to extract it, even if the car is wrecked.

According to a CNBC report, two researchers who described themselves as “white hat hackers” were able to extract unencrypted location, camera and other data from a wrecked Tesla Model 3.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a problem exclusive to Tesla vehicles, and the report stands as a reminder that newer cars can pose a significant security risk when sold or totalled.

The researchers say they purchased a wrecked Model 3 in late 2018. They were able to access the car’s computer and uncover the data. Much of it had come from other devices — a construction company owned the vehicle, and several different employees likely drove it and connected their phones, syncing data to the car’s computer.

The researchers found 11 driver or passenger phonebooks, complete with numbers, email addresses and calendar entries. Additionally, the researchers could access the last 73 locations entered into the car’s navigation system.

On top of that, the car’s computer also had footage from the Model 3’s cameras, including a forward-facing view of the crash that totalled the car and a previous crash that wasn’t as serious.

This isn’t isolated to the Model 3 either. One of the researchers told CNBC that he found similar data on other Tesla vehicles, including a Model S, Model X and other Model 3s.

A widespread problem

Many new vehicles have similar data retention issues. Tesla vehicles tend to collect more data thanks to the extra sensors and cameras used for features like Autopilot, but there many other, more severe problems.

For one, The Verge reported last May that a former Volkswagen owner could still access the location of her Jetta months after selling the car.

The problem also affects rental vehicles. CNBC noted in its report that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recommends users be cautious with their information when renting. Connecting a smartphone to a car could leave a significant digital footprint behind.

Vehicle manufacturers tend to shift the burden of privacy to consumers. In the case of the Jetta owner, Volkswagen puts the onus on the customer to wipe their data before a sale, even if that sale is to a dealership. In other words, consumers should treat vehicles like a smartphone and wipe it before selling it.

Most new vehicles do include options for wiping and factory resetting the computers used to power infotainment and navigation systems. However, users may not be able to access that option.

In cases like that of the Model 3 CNBC reported on, drivers likely aren’t worried about factory resetting their car after a collision. Worse, severe crashes could damage the car’s screen, making it impossible to factory reset it without additional hardware.

Ultimately, it’s a problem that needs more than just customers dealing with it. Vehicle manufacturers and regulators need to be conscious of the issue and think about how to protect data stored on vehicles.

Source: CNBC Via: The Verge

The post Researchers pulled unencrypted crash footage, personal data from Model 3 appeared first on MobileSyrup.

mkalus shared this story from ottocrat on Twitter.

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