Rolandt

Earlier this week I was invited to take part in a round table discussion hosted by TES and Jisc at the University of Glasgow. This was a very small event, there were 10  of us and it was a sort of pre-conference event before the official start of the THE Teaching Excellence Summit

I’m not quite sure how I got invited but I suspect it was a combination of being a ‘kent’  face to Jisc, being local and being female. It probably comes as no surprise that I was one of only two women in the group, and that everyone in the room was over 40 and white . . .

It was an interesting, free flowing discussion which is being written up for a future TES article.  Nothing earth shatteringly new discussed. We made no major breakthroughs.  I may have ranted a bit . . . well I kind of felt I had to as I was the only person at the table from a university lower than DPVC level.

We didn’t really talk about AI as such that much but we did talk about data; how to get it, how to use it, who owns it, and a little bit about what it could do for learning and teaching.   This inevitably brought us to retention, predictive analytics and ethics. It was heartening, dear reader,  to see the agreement in the room about just exactly how data can help or not with this, and the need for much more research around what data is actually meaningful to collect and how to then make (and resource) effective interventions.  I also made sure I got in the point that data not being neutral and the bias inherent in AI. I possibly couldn’t resist using the analogy of the make up of the group sitting at the table having the discussion. . .

We did have quite a bit of discussion about the role of edtech companies, the seemingly never ending issues of (lack of) interoperability in university systems, and just what is it we are trying to do with data. Nothing particularly new really seemed to be the consensus. But still we are being told that the “business” of education must be able to be improved with data, AI, machine learning.  I may have ranted a bit more about the current political climate, the danger of the promise of “personalisation” and the reality of  increasing homogenization. 

There was a throw away remark about “feeding the beast” in relation to all the data/data exhausts that could be “consumed” and “industrialised”. At that point, David Bowie popped into my head. Well not literally but the lines “scary monsters, super creeps” , except this time I was changing the words in my head to “data monsters, (neoliberal) super creeps.”

I do think there is potential for data and some elements of AI within education and wider society. I also think that just now I think it’s really, really important that we in education are leading critically informed discussions with our students, the rest of society about how “it” all actually works, who is in control, who is programming the AI , who owns data. If we don’t do it, then we will just be consumed by the edtech super creeps.  They will inevitably sell our data back to us, in workflows they think are appropriate for an efficient (ergo effective), dashboarded to the max student journey but actually might not be that great a learning or teaching experience.

I didn’t take that many notes, and I’m looking forward to reading the TES article if/when it appears and I can maybe write a more considered reflection then. In the meantime I’ll leave you with a bit of David’s scary monsters.

 

 

 

I’ve always loved baseball. But it’s gotten slow and boring, and young people are losing interest. It’s time for some radical changes. Veteran sportswriter Dan Shaughnessy summed up the problem in the Boston Globe. It’s an average of 3 minutes and 45 seconds between balls put in play. There are interminable waits between innings and … Continued

The post How to fix baseball appeared first on without bullshit.

Installiert. Funktioniert. Aber ich kriege langsam einen Knoten in den Kopf.

• Eine Playlist von Spotifiy kann ich auf alle Sonos Player bringen, in dem ich sie mit Spotify Connect anspreche. Oder ich wähle die Playlist im Sonos-Controller aus. Oder ich sage Alexa, wo sie das abspielen soll. Wenn ich das mit dem Sonos Controller mache, dann kann ich in einem anderen Raum auch was anderes spielen. Nicht aber, wenn ich das mit Spotifiy Connect mache, weil das als zwei User zählt.
• Ich kann auch den Spotify Client nehmen und per Airplay auf alle Homepods, aber nicht auf alle Sonos-Player abspielen. Es sei denn, ich gruppiere die im Sonos Controller. Ich befürchte aber, dass das wegen der Protokollkonvertierung nicht so präzise läuft, wie ich das gewohnt bin. Siri kann ich nicht nach Spotify fragen, weil sie das weder auf den Homepods noch auf dem iPhone oder dem Mac kennt. Da gibt es viel zu testen.

Ich blicke da mit etwas nachdenken noch durch. Aber viele werden da aussteigen.

Regardless of the proposed changes in height and form decided by City of Vancouver council yesterday, or the desires of those who would like to keep Chinatown economically and culturally close to its historic character, the district is going to change — dramatically.

As I said to a few media outlets earlier in the week, change is inevitable, especially in this neighbourhood:

Especially with a new hospital in the works next door.

That’s the new replacement for St. Paul’s. When a hospital goes in, the whole ecology makes it one of the most powerful economic generators in the region. On the other side, there’s going to be whole new neighborhoods. That absolutely guarantees that Chinatown is going to go into a new phase.

It’s certainly more than the hospital, as big an impact as that will have.  Before it even opens its myriad doors, there will be other developments — the major ones illustrated here (Click to enlarge for details):

Neighbourhoods are impacted by surrounding destinations, especially those that can be reached by moving through them.  And Chinatown will be both an attractive destination itself, and a corridor for the tens of thousands of new residents and workers in the millions of square feet to come.

Indeed, a major part of its appeal will be the fact that it is historic, with a different scale and character from all the the new stuff that will surround it.  Pender, Keefer, Main and Georgia will become ‘high streets,’ providing food and entertainment, services and cultural venues, history and novelty to serve these huge new anchors and neighbourhoods.

But Chinatown will not be able to keep its current cultural authenticity and economic values, no matter how well the physical fabric of the community is preserved or replicated. No zoning bylaw can keep intact an aging population and those business which serve it.  No public policy can prevent others from exploiting increased land values and new market opportunities, at least not without expropriation and a very heavy hand.

Chinatown as a ‘Chinese’ place still has a future by expressing its past. The existing cultural facilities are significant and can, with commitments, be enhanced. Its importance to new generations of immigrants, those with roots and the community as a whole will be more important than ever.

But the Chinatown of today and generations past, beyond built form and memory — that’s over.

Relying on the zoning bylaw to defer economic and demographic change is rather like building a weir to stop a tsunami.

 

Here’s a surprising fact: It costs money to watch video online, even on free sites like YouTube. That’s because about 4 in 5 videos on the web today rely on a patented technology called the H.264 video codec.

A codec is a piece of software that shrinks large media files so they can travel quickly over the internet. In browsers, codecs decode video files so we can play them on our phones, tablets, computers, and TVs. As web users, we take this performance for granted. But the truth is, companies pay millions of dollars each year to bring us free video – and the bills are only going to get bigger.

Today most video files can play on most devices, thanks to the ubiquity of H.264. How might this situation change? Let’s start with some facts and factors that govern the big business of web video.

Streaming video costs (a lot of) money. A lot of companies pay a lot of money to use H.264. They include software and networking companies; content creators and distributors like Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube; and chip manufacturers like ARM. Where does the money go? To MPEG-LA, which represents  tech innovators in the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Germany, France, and Holland.

Newer codecs are twice as efficient.  In the business world, efficiency equals money. Better compression opens the door to two key business benefits: better video quality and lower bandwidth costs. Companies like Cisco, YouTube, and Netflix pay massive networking bills to send video files to your browser. Today,  more than 70% of all internet traffic is video, and that percentage is predicted to top 80% in the next few years.

New codecs may cost ten times more. MPEG-LA’s next-generation HEVC/H.265 is more efficient than H.264. The downside is, it carries 23 patents and remarkably confusing terms, originally created for DVD players. Early estimates show licensing fees for H.265 could cost ten times more than today’s H.264. Who will absorb those costs? How much will companies like Netflix have to pass on in fee hikes to stay profitable?

With H.264, small players get a free ride. To help build momentum for the H.264 codec, Cisco announced in 2013 it would open-source H.264. Cisco offered H.264 binaries to developers free of charge, so small shops could add streaming functionality to their applications. Mozilla uses Cisco’s OpenH264 in Firefox. If not for Cisco’s generosity, Mozilla would be paying estimated licensing fees of $9.75 million a year. Now the question is: Will Cisco cover licensing fees for HEVC/H.265 as well? If not, what impact will royalties have on web development? How will startups, hobbyists, and open source projects get access to this crucial web technology?

A drive to create royalty-free codecs

Mozilla is driven by a mission to make the web platform more capable, safe, and performant for all users. With that in mind, the company has been supporting work at the Xiph.org Foundation to create royalty-free codecs that anyone can use to compress and decode media files in hardware, software, and web pages.

But when it comes to video codecs, Xiph.org Foundation isn’t the only game in town.

Over the last decade, several companies started building viable alternatives to patented video codecs. Mozilla worked on the Daala Project, Google released VP9, and Cisco created Thor for low-complexity videoconferencing. All these efforts had the same goal: to create a next-generation video compression technology that would make sharing high-quality video over the internet faster, more reliable, and less expensive.

In 2015, Mozilla, Google, Cisco, and others joined with Amazon and Netflix and hardware vendors AMD, ARM, Intel, and NVIDIA to form AOMedia. As AOMedia grew, efforts to create an open video format coalesced around a new codec: AV1. AV1 is based largely on Google’s VP9 code and incorporates tools and technologies from Daala, Thor, and VP10.

Why Mozilla loves AV1

Mozilla loves AV1 for two reasons: AV1 is royalty-free, so anyone can use it free of charge. Software companies can use it to build video streaming into their applications. Web developers can build their own video players for their sites. It can open up business opportunities, and remove barriers to entry for entrepreneurs, artists, and regular people. Most importantly, a royalty-free codec can help keep high-quality video affordable for everyone.

The second reason we love AV1 is that it delivers better compression technology than even high-efficiency codecs – about 30% better, according to a Moscow State University study and testing at Facebook. For companies, that translates to smaller video files that are faster and cheaper to transmit and take up less storage space in their data centers. For the rest of us, we’ll have access to gorgeous, high-definition video through the sites and services we already know and love.

Open source, all the way down

AV1 is well on its way to becoming a viable alternative to patented video codecs. As of June 2018, the AV1 1.0 specification is stable and available for public use on a royalty-free basis. Looking for a deep dive into the specific technologies that made the leap from Daala to AV1? Check out our Hacks post, AV1: next generation video – The Constrained Directional Enhancement Filter.

The post An Invisible Tax on the Web: Video Codecs appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

Nearly one year ago, Serif released Affinity Photo for the iPad as a full-featured photo editing powerhouse. Unlike what companies such as Adobe do, where a Mac app like Photoshop is broken down into less powerful versions on iOS, Affinity Photo was brought to the iPad with no compromises whatsoever. Today, that same philosophy is bringing us Serif's second major iPad app: Affinity Designer.

Where Affinity Photo focuses on photo editing, Affinity Designer is a vector-based illustration tool. And with full support for the Apple Pencil, iOS 11's drag and drop, and system technologies like Metal, the app looks like the ultimate portable design studio.

For a limited time, Affinity Designer is available at a launch price of $13.99, 30% off the regular price of $19.99. If this kind of app in any way interests you, it looks like a steal at this price. One important note is that, similar to Affinity Photo, due to the power demanded by Affinity Designer, it's only available on a select number of iPad models: all iPad Pros, plus the iPad Air 2, and the 5th and 6th generation iPad.

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Most people still shouldn’t buy a virtual reality headset yet. But after carrying the Oculus Quest in a purse across Manhattan and witnessing everyone at a house party jostling to get a turn to play, I’m convinced it is the best standalone VR headset—and the easiest and cheapest path to a compelling VR experience. Full-fledged games like Beat Saber, convincing hand tracking, and a cord-free design make it a breeze to set up and a pleasure to use.

After spending 20 hours testing 22 USB-C hubs and five USB-C docks, we think Vava’s VA-UC006 USB-C Hub is the best option for connecting older peripherals and external storage devices to a new laptop or MacBook. It has an ideal range of ports that all transfer data at full speed, it’s sturdily built, it’s small and light enough to throw in a bag, and it’s reasonably priced.

We are very happy to announce the results of the 2018H1 Mozilla Research Grants. This was an extremely competitive process, with over 115 applicants. We selected a total of eight proposals, ranging from tools to fight online harassment to systems for generating speech. All these projects support Mozilla’s mission to make the Internet safer, more empowering, and more accessible.

The Mozilla Research Grants program is part of Mozilla’s Emerging Technologies commitment to being a world-class example of inclusive innovation and impact culture-and reflects Mozilla’s commitment to open innovation, continuously exploring new possibilities with and for diverse communities. We will open the 2018H2 round in Fall of 2018: see our Research Grant webpage for more details and to sign up to be notified when applications open.

 

Principal Investigator	Institution	Department	Title
Jeff Huang	Texas A&M University	Department of Computer Science and Engineering	Predictively Detecting and Debugging Multi-threaded Use-After-Free Vulnerabilities in Firefox
Eduardo Vicente Gonçalves	Open Knowledge Foundation, Brazil	Data Science for Civic Innovation Programme	A Brazilian bot to read government gazettes and bills: Using NLP to empower citizens and civic movements
Leah Findlater	University of Washington	Human Centered Design and Engineering	Task-Appropriate Synthesized Speech
Laura James	University of Cambridge	Trustworthy Technologies Initiative	Trust and Technology: building shared understanding around trust and distrust
Libby Hemphill	University of Michigan	School of Information and Institute for Social Research	Learning and Automating De-escalation Strategies in Online Discussions
Pamela Wisniewski	University of Central Florida	Department of Computer Science	A Community-based Approach to Co-Managing Privacy and Security for Mozilla’s Web of Things
Munmun De Choudhury	Georgia Institute of Technology	School of Interactive Computing	Combating Professional Harassment Online via Participatory Algorithmic and Data-Driven Research
David Joyner	Georgia Institute of Technology	College of Computing	Virtual Reality for Classrooms-at-a-Distance in Online Education

 

Many thanks to all our applicants in this very competitive and high-quality round.

The post Mozilla Funds Top Research Projects appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

This will be a living document until we figured it all out.

Sonos:

• You can build a stereo pair with two Play:1, Play:3, Play:5 (both generations), One. You cannot mix different speakers in a stereo pair, not even Play:1 and One.
• You can add a pair of Play:1, Play:3, Play:5 (2nd gen), One as Rear Channels to three home theater speakers: Playbar, Playbase, Beam. A Connect:Amp with two shelf speakers can also be set up as Rear Channel, but you won't be able to use TruePlay Tuning.
• You can add a SUB to any Sonos speaker.
• You can group and ungroup any of these players and combinations.
• If music is playing on any Sonos player, you can group/ungroup a different Sonos player by pressing and holding the play/pause button.

Alexa and Sonos:

• You can speak to two Sonos speakers: One and Beam.
• If you create a stereo pair with two One, you can speak to both of them. Reminders and timers are controlled on a per-device basis. You may want to mute one of the microphones.
• If a pair of Sonos One is configured as Rear Channels to Playbar or Playbase, you can still speak to them.

Airplay 2 and Sonos:

• You can send sound via AirPlay 2 to four Sonos speakers: Play:5 (2nd gen), PlayBase, One, Beam.
• You can group/ungroup other Sonos player in your household with a Sonos player that is currently receiving sound via AirPlay.
• Your Airplay-compatible speakers show up on Apple devices as Airplay targets without further configuration.
• A stereo pair of Play:5 (2nd gen) or One will show up as a single Airplay target.
• Play:5 (2nd gen) or One configured as Rear Channels to a home theatre speaker disappear from Airplay. They do not make a Playbar into an Airplay target.

Siri and Sonos:

• You cannot speak to Siri on any Sonos player.
• You can tell Siri on Apple devices to direct sound to the AirPlay-compatible Sonos players: Play:5 (2nd gen), PlayBase, One, Beam
• Your Airplay-compatible speakers have to be added to your Apple Home, so that they become available to Siri.

There was a Press Conference held at City Hall at lunchtime today, while the rest of the world was watching a football match. I did not speak on camera but I am hoping that I will be able to link to both the CBC coverage and Jen St Den of the Vancouver Star Metro in due course.

This week I came across an interesting blog post about the Urban Design Panel’s take on the proposed development.   Frustratingly the link on that page to sources just takes you to the city’s page on the development  which is silent about the UDP. To find that I had to do some digging but I did eventually find the minutes of the UDP meeting on February 26 2018 . You have to click on the link that gives you a pdf file: the Arbutus proposal is the first item. I am going to quote from that

1. Address: 2221-2223 Main Street
Permit No. DP-2017-01206
Description: The proposed amendment to the existing CD-1 (642) is to permit an increase in the maximum allowable floor area across Block C and D, from 67,065 sq. m (721,881 Sq. ft) to 77,611 sq. m (835,400 sq. ft.); and an increase to the maximum building height on Block C from 57 m (187 ft.) to 60 m (197 ft.), and on Block D from 57 m (187 ft.) to 72 m (236 ft.). The proposal is being considered under the Arbutus Centre Policy Statement.

Zoning: CD-1 Amendment
Application Status: Rezoning Application
Review: Second (First as Amendment)
Architect: Brett Hotson, DIALOG
Norm Hotson, DIALOG
Owner: Wendy LeBreton, LARCO
Delegation: Margot Long, Landscape Architect, PWL
Peter Joyce, BUNT
Staff: John Chapman, Tim Potter & Grace Jiang
EVALUATION: SUPPORT with Recommendations

 

So the interesting bit for me are the recommendations: recall first that this UDP meeting came after the Open House (February 13). The Policy Report considered by Council on June 19 states

The application was reviewed by the Urban Design Panel on February 26, 2018, and was supported with recommendations (see Appendix C). Staff conclude that further refinements are required to the design as conditions of the rezoning amendment as noted in Appendix B. A reduction of density on Block D is anticipated through design development. The applicant has proposed to replace this floor area by adding a penthouse storey onto the eastern wing of Block A through a Development Permit amendment.

So now I have two documents, essentially saying the same thing. The project was reviewed and a number of concerns identified.

Panel’s Consensus on Key Aspects Needing Improvement: Having reviewed the project it was moved by Ms. Avini Besharat and seconded by Mr. Sharma and was the decision of the Urban Design Panel:

THAT the Panel Support the project with the following recommendations to be reviewed by City Staff:

• Balance distribution of density between the two parcels; the density may need to be reduced to achieve appropriate massing and to mitigate the overshadowing.

• Reduce the shadowing of the Public Square, street, and private courtyard on parcel D;

• Reduce shadowing of the park;

• Further design development on the architectural expression in order to simplify and calm down expression of the building;

• Further design development to the view analysis to include roof top structures and mechanical RTUs and to review how they impact the view. The height may need to be reduced to preserve the view of the North Shore Mountains.

Related Commentary: There was a panel consensus that the original concept was the preferred choice. The second concept was a big change from the original. The original application was a better fit and blended in smoother. The current concept is too bulky especially with building D.

Then panel agreed there was a very significant addition of height and density being absorbed mostly on the western parcels which created a misbalance. The original concept was lost because the additional density has been dropped on one block, and should have been better distributed. A consequence was a large parcel created that is out of context.

A panelist noted there were fundamental issues with planning and massing of the entire space. If massing is properly planned in the first phase there would be better relation. There is a loss in transition down to the lower scale units. A panelist noted the site is in a real bowl which could be to the applicant’s advantage.

Moving forward with the architectural expression the strong parti concept has been diluted as well. In the earlier models the parti was cleaner and simpler. A panel member suggested looking at the elevations to determine if they want to be closer or completely different from what is across the street. The elevations should be revisited to be a lot cleaner without losing elevation and height.

7 to 12 storeys created significant shadowing on the park, open space, and street. Yew Street will be completely shaded in the afternoon. The impacts are also significant on the view. Viewpoint is important and cannot be ignored. A big bulky building has a lot of negative effects on the neighborhood; in this case Main Street is too over shadowed. There are intrusions to public views in the City of Vancouver all the time however these issues are on the whole block.

Building C, on the west façade has so many different fenestrations and proportions. In general a calmer and boulder contemporary expression would be more successful. A panelist noted public views can be better distributed back to building C.

Just to be clear “parti concept” refers to the idea that this development has to fit into its surroundings.

” The parti is a simplified version of the plan, and it describes the overall configuration or organization of the building.” is one of the definitions offered.

It seems to be inconsistent to approve a building – but with the observation that it does not fit into its surroundings. If planning is supposed to achieve anything at all cannot it be at least based on a simple concept – does it fit in?

 

This illustration shows most clearly what has changed since the original proposal was approved. This building is much too big for this site.

And this table shows the figures for dwelling units over all four parts  – which I am afraid got a bit confused during the press conference but are in fact not confusing at all. Council policy was recently changed to require 30% social housing units in large scale developments, but Larco are still only offering 20%. And just in case you were wondering what “affordable rental units” might cost I have replaced (July 17) what was here with something more reliable.

In the case of the 2109 West 35^th Avenue development, Baker said that renters must have an annual income of $150,000 to be able to manage paying the rent for a three-bedroom unit at $3,702 per month, based on the 30 percent affordability threshold.

So don’t go confusing “affordable” with “social housing” – they are quite different and should NOT be added together.

Even so, staff are still recommending adoption, because of the $2m now being offered towards the Arbutus Greenway.

As was pointed out in discussion today, there are plenty of examples of developers being required to meet different specifications as a condition of approval, who manage to complete their projects and casually ignore these requirements with no penalty.

It really seems odd to me that staff would recommend approval of a project which raises so many concerns. A much safer approach would be to deny the application for expansion, but suggest to the proponent that this proposal needs to revised and then resubmitted once these concerns have been dealt with to the satisfaction of staff. However, the concerns of building height and massing are such that they cannot be reasonably accommodated just within areas C and D, and A & B are now under construction so that the only changes could be made there would be on the allocation of units between the market/rental/social/affordable classes.

No building recently approved along Arbutus Street is over 6 stories: not the Ridge (at 16th Avenue) nor the recently completed block at 49th and West Boulevard. Approving a 12 storey building sets a new standard which will undoubtedly be embraced by  developers on the half dozen or so sites around Arbutus Village which are either already acquired or on the point of being so. We accept that there is a need for more housing on the West Side in general, but dumping all of it on Arbutus Village seems a bit much.

 

The pie ride is a weekly informal ride put on by the Vancouver Bicycle Club. From their website:

Wednesday Night Pie Rides

The ride: We zip around the edges of Vancouver. Starting from Canada Place we climb to Prospect Point in Stanley Park, then along Beach to Science World, across to Kits, and out to UBC and back home along the bike routes of Kits. A fast, but friendly ride with several stops to collect everyone.

Meet: EVERY Wednesday at 4:30 PM at Canada Place (west side). (Ride depends on the weather.)

Distance: About 20 to 50 km, depending on how far you ride.

Pace: Multi-paced – please wait at pre-determined spots for others.

I went down to the start point at Canada Place, not knowing quite what to expect.  After accosting several people who were not part of the club, I finally meet up with these fine people.

I was told that my Brompton was the first six wheeled bike to appear on the pie ride.

Lots of car traffic on Georgia approaching the Lion’s Gate Bridge.

Entering Stanley Park, I see a Haul a Day in the wild.

Circling the perimeter of the park, I was pleasantly surprised with the lack of car traffic at this time of day. I was told that ramps to the Bridge are closed and so cars don’t take this route at this time of day.

First regroup was at Prospect Point.

After circling the park, we ride out along Beach Blvd, and along Pacific Ave, eventually going onto the multiuse path to Science World.

The second official regroup point is just after Science World.

At this point, several other riders who live in the east end peeled off, and it was down to Henry and I to head towards UBC along the Seaside route.

I was told that the last regroup point is at the top of the hill leading up from Spanish Bank, right by the Chan Centre.

The ride tonight was relatively fast paced, but with regroup points, and also various people peeling off to head home. Overall it was very enjoyable, and also nice to meet a few local cyclists.

 

 

 

Goldie Blumenstyk, Chronicle of Higher Education, Jul 11, 2018

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I welcome the addition of another entrant into the field of education-focused newsletters. From the Chronicle: "It’s written by Goldie Blumenstyk, a longtime reporter here, who is known for her expertise on innovation in and around academe. Goldie’s reporting brings her close to many of the institutions, organizations, and companies that increasingly wield influence over the direction of higher education, and the Re:Learning newsletter is our way of sharing what she’s hearing with you." This newsletter joins the Teaching Newsletter, devoted to, um, teaching. "This issue was put together by Beckie." Who I guess doesn't have a last name (it's probably Beckie Supiano).

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Nelson Sivalingam, Training Journal, Jul 11, 2018

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"It’s time to make learning fun again," says this article. " The LMS might have got content online, but it hasn’t improved how or the way we learn, it simply moved content from a textbook to a computer screen." I think the LMS has done a bit more than that, though to judge by some of the page-turners I've been subjected to, it hasn't done much more. But this isn't the solution: "companies can create engaging content that can be personalised to fit with an individual’s learning needs, and accessible to anyone at any time across the globe." Yes, relevant content is helpful, but a page-turner is a page-turner. Learning needs to be usable and interactive as well. But we've known this for a long time.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Jack Lenox, CSS-Tricks, Jul 11, 2018

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This article focuses on "obese websites" that take up too much energy to function. It's an issue I've faced in my move to Reclaim as I jumped from a dedicated bare-metal server to a shared hosting environment. It has taught me some lessons about gRSShopper - there are some pretty clear areas for improvement. Now the headline refers to getting the load of the homepage down to 7KB of data transfer. I'm more focused on the CPU cycles operating the PLE costs. Either way, the lesson should be this: we should be designing for fast, efficient and low-overhead services. As devces get smaller and energy gets more expensive, this will become all the more important.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Yevgeniy Brikman, O'Reilly, Jul 11, 2018

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This is a long, detailed, and in many respects very orthodox treatment of the subject of designing a product at the startup stage. Though this isn't something most of us will do, the lessons are more widely applicable to the development of any new service including a course or a program). The focus here is on iterative and user-centered design. You don't build a Great Work of Art and then launch it. You do a bit at a time and interact with your audience. Also, "the second question, 'What are they trying to accomplish?', still trips many people up." It's difficult to get past 'how' something will be done to look seriously at 'what' should be done. There's a lot more in this, and if you want to get a good sense of the design process in 2018, have a look.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Most established communities have gone through a kill zone.

The kill zone is the time between when the community is so young, cheap, and full of potential it’s not worth killing and when it’s proven itself indispensable. It’s typically when the community grows from a cost of less than $500 per day to more than $1k per day.

Once the community gets serious investment, it needs to show clear impact. The time it takes to show impact is the kill zone.

The more time a community spends in the kill zone, the more likely the business will suffer a downturn, a new CFO will arrive, or priorities shift. This makes the community a logical target to cut costs.

You can’t avoid the kill zone, but you can reduce the time you spend inside it. You reduce the time when you make the results of the community as tangible as possible.

This means sharing case studies from the community, clearly showing the products features improved because of the community, bringing big lists of community-generated sales leads to the next meeting, showing the number of calls deflected etc..

The kill zone isn’t the time to talk about the community’s potential or it’s connection to the organization’s mission. It’s the time to show tangible, indisputable, results.

The irony is your community’s most dangerous time is immediately after you’ve got the resources you’ve wanted for so long.

Why would I run a HomePod next to a Playbase? Just to find out what works and what doesn't. So you don't have to. :-)

With Sonos 9 the 2nd gen Play:5, Playbase, One and Beam have now been Airplay-enabled. You have a number of ways to use that:

1. Select one Sonos player from the AirPlay menu on your iPhone. Group the rest of the players through your Sonos controller.
2. Select one or more Sonos players in the AirPlay menu on your iPhone.
3. Select one or more Sonos players as well as other players like the HomePod on your iPhone.

The first option works best. You will still get dropouts when your iPhone is in a spot with weak Wifi signal, but at least everything stays perfectly in sync. With option three I get some noticeable reverb. Option 2 is on/off. Sometimes it works well, other times not so much.

I noticed some strange behavior while testing. If you put your iPhone in Airplane mode, it will not sever the Wifi connection while Airplay is going on. You have to hit that button as well. The music will eventually stop when the players run dry. And the Sonos players stop way before the HomePods do. Most likely HomePod maintains a much larger buffer.

If you use AirPlay multiroom with HomePods only, you will get better results than you get if you mix HomePods and Sonos players. My current theory is that they are better equipped to handle the AirPlay protocol through their larger buffers. It's also possible that Sonos may be able to improve AirPlay performance once they get more telemetry from actual users. When HomePod plays directly from the cloud, as it does with Apple Music, you once again get better results. The stream does not have to bounce over your network between router, iPhone and HomePod.

My current recommendation is to wait before you mix Sonos and HomePod. It is just not smooth enough yet. You will be better off if you stay completely on Sonos or you commit yourself completely to Apple. If you don't have an AirPlay-compatible Sonos player, don't sweat it. If you have one, start playing with it. You just need a single one in your household to play on any other player by simply grouping it.

Using OpenStreetMap data, Geoff Boeing charted the orientation distributions of major cities:

Each of the cities above is represented by a polar histogram (aka rose diagram) depicting how its streets orient. Each bar’s direction represents the compass bearings of the streets (in that histogram bin) and its length represents the relative frequency of streets with those bearings.

So you can easily spot the gridded street networks, and then there’s Boston and Charlotte that are a bit nutty. Check out Boeing’s other chart for orientation of major non-US cities.

See also Stephen Von Worley’s color-coded maps and Seth Kadish’s charts from 2014 that showed the same thing but used Census data instead of OpenStreetMap.

Tags: directions, streets

Ask award-winning chef Lanshu Chen why she decided to close one of Asia’s top restaurants and her answer is plaintive and illuminating: “I started to feel I’m not very good at playing this game.”By that she means the constant whirl of marketing that comes with winning a string of awards for her French fine-dining restaurant Le Moût in Taichung, Taiwan, and coping with the social media age in which every diner considers themself a food critic.“I need a break, but what I tried to say is that I’m…

Hit battle royale multiplayer game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is now available in beta on Android.

The beta complements the full version of PUBG Mobile, which launched in Canada on Android and iOS in March.

Unlike many mobile game betas, you don’t have to have completed any pre-registration or received an invitation to participate in PUBG Mobile testing. Instead, any Android user can simply download the PUBG Mobile right from the Google Play Store.

The beta features Erangel and Miramar, PUBG‘s first and second maps, as well as all of the weapons, vehicles and other items regularly available on them. PUBG‘s newest weapon, the SLR sniper rifle, is also useable in the beta, as is a new ‘Portable Closet’ system to let players change their outfits during combat.

Finally, Android users can test a new game mode called ‘Arcade Mode – War,’ a “faster-paced” version of the current Arcade Mode that reduces starting player counts and safe areas.

Given that this is a beta release intended for testing purposes, you won’t be able to log in with your regular PUBG account info. You’ll instead have to create a new character under a guest account, which also means in-game purchases are not available in this version.

Still, the PUBG Mobile beta gives Android users a way to try out new content coming to the game, just as PC and Xbox One players are able to do.

Via: Android Police

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Former Apple employee Xiaolang Zhang has been charged for stealing blueprints related to the Cupertino computing giant’s as-of-yet undisclosed autonomous vehicle project.

According to a report from Reuters, Zhang downloaded blueprints for a self-driving vehicle circuit board, before booking a flight to China.

Authorities apprehended Zhang on Saturday, July 7th, 2018 at Mineta San Jose International Airport before he was able to board his Hainan Airlines flight, according to the Mercury News.

Reuters reported that Zhang has previously disclosed plans to work for Chinese electric vehicle startup XMotors.

While Zhang has yet to be arraigned, the charges filed in U.S. federal court revealed scant details on Apple’s secretive autonomous vehicle project.

To begin with, approximately 5,000 employees were authorized to access information about the project. Of that number, 2,700 employees had access to “secret databases,” according to Reuters.

Zhang was reportedly shown a proprietary chip developed by Apple, and he designed circuit boards to analyze sensor data. As such, it can be inferred that not only is Apple designing its own chips for the project — rather than relying on hardware developed by other companies — the company might be working on building technologies that are able to intake information from multiple sensors simultaneously.

Apple secrecy

Rumours of Apple’s autonomous vehicle project have swirled since 2015, when a report by The Guardian suggested that the company was building a team of designers, engineers and battery experts to work on a car-related project.

Since that time, rumours suggested that Apple was working on its autonomous vehicle project in Ottawa, while Apple’s hiring of former Waymo engineer Jamie Waydo in June 2018 suggested that the company’s project is still under development.

It’s worth noting that a report obtained by AppleInsider in March 2018 suggested that Apple will need to make up its mind about participating in the self-driving vehicle market within the next two years.

Source: Reuters, Mercury News

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Sonos has announced that its speakers now work with Apple’s AirPlay 2 wireless audio protocol.

This means that music or sound from any iOS app that supports AirPlay 2 and is running on an iOS device, can now be streamed directly to Sonos’ supported speakers, including content like music, podcasts, audiobooks and more.

Sonos says that the update is currently rolling out now to supported speakers, including the Sonos Beam, the Sonos One and the Playbase, as well as the second-generation Play:5 speakers. It’s also possible to group an older Sonos speaker with an AirPlay compatible Sonos speaker in order to take advantage of AirPlay 2.

Sonos’ speakers currently support Amazon’s Alexa and will be updated in the future to include Google Assistant support as well, according to the company. This means that you’ll be able to use Alexa to pause, skip tracks or ask what content is currently playing on the speaker, even with Apple Music.

That said, you won’t be able to ask Siri to play Apple Music specific content through a Sonos speaker. It’s also now possible to pair Apple’s HomePod with the Sonos One. If you have a multi-room set up that, for example, features two HomePods and two Sonos One speakers, you could use Siri (via the HomePod) to play music across all connected audio devices.

We’ll have more on AirPlay 2 in the coming weeks, including a guide outlining how to connect the HomePod and Sonos One speakers for simultaneously playback.

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China has strict rules when it comes to the country’s denial of Taiwan as a sovereign nation, some of which affect how smartphones are used in the country.

In an effort to appease the Chinese government, Apple seems to have inadvertently included a bug in a previous version of its mobile operating system, according to a new report from a security researcher.

Patrick Wardle, the chief security researcher at Digita Security, has reported that OS 11.3 and earlier includes a bug that causes some iPhone users’ devices to crash when the word ‘Taiwan,’ or the Taiwanese flag emoji is written. This glitch occurred in any app running on the smartphone, according to Wardle.

While Wardle isn’t exactly clear how the bug works, according to his blog post, he says that specific language and region settings returned a ‘null code’ that caused the smartphone to crash whenever Taiwan was referenced.

The bug has since been fixed with the release of iOS 11.4.1. The glitch also didn’t occur consistently, unlike past Apple text bugs.

It was also even possible to fix the issue by switching the smartphone’s region from China to another area of the world.

Source: Objective-See Via: Axios 

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Telsa has finally started taking regular orders for the Model 3.

Consumers can now go to the Tesla website and customize their very own Model 3 variant and it will start shipping in about two to five months, depending on trim options. Until now, buyers had to reserve a car with a $1,000 down payment and they were given no clear indication when their car would ship.

When Tesla first introduced the Model 3  in July of 2017, company CEO Elon Musk stated that a $35,000 USD version would come to market soon. Tesla still has yet to manufacture a Model 3 at that price point and it looks like the cheaper battery and engine combination is still six to nine months away.

The company has been working to fill out these orders and rising its Model 3 production threshold since then.  The main goal has been working to reach Musk’s 5,000 Model 3s per week production goal.

The goal was finally met on July 1st, so now the company is able to move forward and start selling the car to everyone.

Currently, the cheapest Model 3 that can be bought costs $64,000 CAD so it looks like the manufacturer still has a ways to go towards making the Model 3 affordable, but it has also came a long way in making the car more accessible.

Source: Engadget

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Microsoft’s new Surface Mobile mouse is available in Canada starting Wednesday.

The new mouse, announced alongside the Surface Go Monday, is available for pre-order on the Microsoft store.

Additionally, the mouse comes in three colours: Burgundy, Platinum and Cobalt Blue.

The Surface Mobile mouse is slim and light weighing in at 78 grams including the two AAA batteries it needs to run.

Furthermore, the mouse utilizes Bluetooth 4.2 Low Energy meaning you won’t need a dongle to connect it. Also, thanks to Microsoft’s proprietary BlueTrack technology, the mouse is capable of tracking speeds of up to 30 inches per second.

The Surface mouse features the typical left and right click buttons as well as a wheel button. The scroll wheel is metal as well.

Finally, if you have Windows 10 April 2018 release or later, the mouse will be able to utilize Swift Pair. Swift Pair makes it easy to connect a device to a Windows machine. When you put the Bluetooth peripheral in pairing mode, Windows will notify you that a nearby device is is ready to pair. You can click ‘Connect’ to pair the devices.

The mouse is available for $49.99. Students, teachers and parents can get the mouse for a reduced $47.49 price if they’re eligible.

You can order the Surface Mobile mouse here.

Microsoft also brought a new Surface accessory to Canada in June. The Surface Connect to USB-C adapter is available as well and may be crucial for Surface Go users who want to make use of USB-C.

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Mozilla announced Wednesday that it is expanding its Test Pilot experiments to mobile devices.

The Test Pilot program allows users to enable experimental features in their Firefox browsers and test them out. It serves as a great way for developers to test out new things and Mozilla to see what people like.

The Test Pilot program launched in May and has had a number of experiments, including two successful desktop experiments so far. Accordingly, Mozilla is bringing the feature to mobile with two experiments for smartphone users.

Lockbox and Notes

The first experiment is for iPhone only. Called Lockbox, the app syncs with your Firefox account and makes all your saved logins available on your iPhone. That means you can use saved logins from Firefox to seamlessly login to apps like Twitter or Instagram.

Furthermore, Lockbox utilizes Touch and Face ID to secure the app.

Along with Lockbox, Firefox Test Pilot has a treat for Android users. Called Notes by Firefox, its a Google Keep-like app that allows you to save quick and simple notes. While nothing too fancy, the strength comes from its synchronization with Firefox.

Uniquely, Firefox allows Notes to run beside the website you’re viewing in Firefox on Desktop. It’s a handy feature that allows you to take notes on a webpage without having to change tabs or switch apps to use your notes. Unfortunately Notes on Android doesn’t benefit from this. Instead Firefox siphoned it off into a standalone app.

Additionally, Firefox boasts end-to-end encryption for it’s Notes app, making it quite secure.

If you’re interested in either of these features, you can go to Firefox’s Test Pilot website to learn more about them and install them.

Alternatively, you can go to the App Store to download Lockbox and the Google Play Store to download Notes for Firefox.

Additionally, the Firefox team has been working hard to develop new experimental features for desktop as well. They recently released a popular tool that lets users customize the colours of their Firefox browser.

Source: Mozilla

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Amazon Prime Video Canada is now streaming Canadian television show Degrassi: The Next Generation. By happenstance the addition of the series to the platform goes alongside the release of Drake’s new album Scorpion. The Canadian pop star originally made his name on the show as character Jimmy Brooks.

Degrassi: The Next Generation originally aired in 2001 and ran until 2015, though Netflix has picked up a new version of the show called Degrassi: Next Class. The series focuses on a group of teenagers growing up and living their lives as they attend Degrassi junior high school. The series’ cast includes Charlotte Arnold, Jahmil French, Drake (Aubrey Graham) and Stefan Brogren, who has appeared in more than 400 episodes of Degrassi across the original show, Next Generation and Next Class.

Prime Video is only streaming the first five seasons of the iconic Canadian television show’s 14 seasons.

Amazon Prime is priced at $79 CAD per year with a 30-day trial period. For those located in Quebec, there’s no trial but the price is $79 for a 13-month subscription.

Amazon Prime Video is available on Android, iOS, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, Google TV, PlayStation, Xbox and a variety of other platforms.

Source: Amazon Canada

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For at least one more generation, Samsung’s Note series smartphone will feature a headphone jack.

On Thursday morning, frequent Samsung device leaker Ice Universe shared an image of a promotional poster for the upcoming device. It shows the bottom of the Note 9, with the headphone jack clearly in view, as well as the fingerprint scanner in a more sensible location.

“The new super powerful Note,” says the poster’s tagline.

Galaxy Note9/S Pen pic.twitter.com/uAqOpZY2VC

— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) July 12, 2018

Perhaps more interesting, however, is the bright gold S Pen stylus placed on top of the Note 9. It very distinctly contrasts with the smartphone. The new S Pen is rumoured to include Bluetooth connectivity, which will allow Samsung to expand its functionality to enable features like media playback control.

Samsung will officially announce the Galaxy Note 9 on August 9th at its upcoming ‘Unpacked‘ event in New York City. Until then, more details are sure to leak.

Source: Twitter Via: 9to5Google

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