Rolandt

It’s been a harrowing couple of weeks as a bunch of work-related stuff unraveled and needed to be put back in its appointed place, but I managed to find some time to tinker around this weekend and get some personal stuff done, including upgrading this website from the ground up (beginning with the usual seamless Ubuntu upgrade to 18.04, which I’ve been testing for a couple of months¹).

Runtime Changes (Not Hy Anymore)

Most notably, this site is now running on “pure” Python 3 instead of Hy.

I still like Hy (and LISPs in general) and am keeping track of it, but I’ve been wanting to move away from Python 2 and take full advantage of asyncio for a long while now, and there was no way to do that easily in Hy–but it served me extremely well, and the current codebase owes a lot to it.

Even though the bulk of the code was re-written months ago, I had to wait until a bunch of other stuff fell into place:

• I wanted to make sure the new codebase could: a) be used to (eventually) move to a fully static setup and b) last me at least as long as the old one (Hy served me well for over two years, but the previous codebase lasted nearly a decade)
• I needed to tweak piku (my homegrown PaaS) to use Python 3 by default and fix a few things (and have been working on improving its runtime support)
• I wanted to wait until Python 3.6 became the norm (hence my waiting until Ubuntu 18.04 rolled out)

This also meant upgrading all the dependencies and doing a considerable amount of testing, which wasn’t easy given the amount of free time I have these days.

Minor Detours

Along the way, I also tried:

• Moving some of my stuff to Cython for slight speedups (I’m keeping those on a separate branch for now)
• Tinkering with Python on Azure App Service, which is still a sub-optimal development and deployment experience and which I would very much like to make a one-click operation.
• Tinkering with Kubernetes (which also worked fine, but is overkill for a plain blog)
• Implementing a few of the core bits in C#, largely because I needed a few test API endpoints for Azure Functions² and it was actually saner to switch languages altogether than trying to get Python 3.6 to run in Functions at the time³.

All of those little detours inlfuenced the final Python code in some ways (with a few nice speedups, too), and I will be updating the GitHub repo as soon as I am positive most of the bugs are ironed out (I’ve instrumented the production environment with Application Insights, and will be collecting data over the next week or so).

For now, I’m just doing my usual profiling stuff, especially where it concerns content indexing and rendering:

Next Steps

There are a couple of bugs with indexing and search that only showed up in production (likely due to differences in sqlite full-text indexing in Ubuntu packages), but I expect those to be sorted out by next week.

With luck, I’ll get started on adding a (long overdue) photo gallery and a decent blog archive section as well.

A couple of years ago I turned on AMP rendering of pages here, a sop for Google, which was pushing this as a way of improving the browsing experience for mobile users.

While this was a relatively benign change, and one easy to implement with Drupal Accelerated Mobile Pages module, it never completely felt right, and so today I’ve turned it off.

To do this, I:

1. Disabled the AMP module in Drupal.
2. Added a 301 redirect for the AMP pages to the canonical non-AMP version:

  # Redirect AMP pages to canonical version
  RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} amp
  RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301,QSD]

As a result of this, if you visit this site, via a Google search result, on a mobile device, you’ll see the site as I intend, not in a pared-down AMP view.

A couple of days ago I suddenly had strange intermittent problems to connect to my services at home. It worked one minute and the servers were not found the next. At first I thought it must be a DSL problem but I quickly figured out that this was not the case at all when I checked the DNS resolution for my domains. Here’s the response of two DNS queries which were one minute apart.

$ ping www.some-domain.com
PING www.some-domain.com (217.253.68.195) 56(84) bytes of data.
[...]
$ ping www.some-domain.com
PING www.some-domain.com (79.216.56.147) 56(84) bytes of data.

What should have been the same IP address suddenly oscillated between two entirely different IP addresses. What’s more is that this happened for several of my domain names via the local DNS resolvers, over Google’s 8.8.8.8 DNS server and also over two VPN tunnels over which yet other DNS resolvers were used.

While most of the time I got the correct IP address, every now and then I got a second, invalid IP address, which would not lead to my servers at home. I soon realized that the invalid IP address was the IP address I previously had before my DSL router re-synchronized the day before. But why was I still getting this IP address when making DNS requests and only sometimes?

While working on the issue, things returned back to normal, so I can’t be 100% sure what happened. But I strongly suspect one of the authoritative DNS servers for my domains was acting up. In case you have no idea which DNS servers supply the ultimate truth for your domains, you can find out as follows:

$ dig NS +short some-domain.com
ns5.inwx.net.
ns4.inwx.com.
ns2.inwx.de.
ns.inwx.de.
ns3.inwx.eu.

This is the result I got as my domains are hosted at inwx. With a  ‘short’ bash command I then queried all servers directly instead of going through the DNS chain and got the following result:

$ dig www.some-domain.com @ns.inwx.de +short; \
dig www.some-domain.com @ns2.inwx.de +short; \
dig www.some-domain.com @ns3.inwx.eu +short; \
dig www.some-domain.com @ns4.inwx.com +short; \
dig www.some-domain.com @ns5.inwx.net +short

79.216.56.147
79.216.56.147
79.216.56.147
no answer
79.216.56.147

This was the result I got by the time things went back to normal. I suspect that the 4th DNS server that was taken offline once my DNS hoster realized that it was serving corrupted data. After a while that name server came online again and returned the correct IP address for my domain names as well. Things have been stable since then but I decided to run a DNS query once a minute and log the results anyway.

$ while true; do dig www.some-domain.com +short; sleep 61; done

Just to make sure…

This makes one realize just how dependent one is on the the DNS servers working correctly. And in case you wonder about the creative title for this post, it was inspired by this.

TL;DR: When you consider adding new products/offerings, ask which ones move you closer to your goals.

Planning a new offering for your business, is exciting. This is one of those “grass is greener” things. You already know the parts of your business that suck; but, someone else’s business looks easy. (It never is.)

Expanding your offering is risky. Pick the wrong addition, and you’ll confuse customers—or damage your core business. Take on too much, and you’ll get worn thin.

I’m going to use a (rather flimsy) metaphor, to tell this story. As you read it, you’ll think “this is rather flimsy.” Oh well. It generally works, and… I told you so.

One destination

Let’s pretend you own a train and it can take you anywhere. (Lucky you.) In this scenario you can choose any destination, but can only go to one at a time. Your business is that train.

A lot of people think they can travel to two destinations at the same time. They figure they can do that other thing “on the side”. What they soon realize is that each offering comes with a heavy load. By this, I mean new infrastructure, expertise, and systems. Plus, they lose their focus while trying to juggle all of these competing interests.

Here’s a quick example: At some point, David’s Tea introduced tea-infused beauty products to their line. In one way, this probably seemed sensible, as it’s tea-based. That said, tea and beauty represent two separate destinations. The train can’t go to both at the same time¹. As I write this, most of the beauty products on their website are on sale (my bet is that they’re dropping them).

Adding train cars

Both trains and businesses can carry more—so long as what they carry points in the same direction. That said, as the load gets heavier, you start to run into problems.

I’ll use our own company as an example of this.² In 2010, we figured we could better service customers—and pursue new business—by being full service. So, we started planning campaigns, buying media, and producing video content.

These offerings pointed in the same direction. And, we pulled off a few decent projects. That said, the load was too great. The costs of equipment were high. Our expertise was thin. We pushed our people too hard. In time, we dropped those offerings and went back to what we knew and did well.

Increasing horsepower

There is one way to add to your offering, and move your company further. This is to strap another engine (or another few engines) to it. This, too, is difficult—especially if you’re light on fuel (time). But, it can work out.

Indie Hackers is a good example of this. Courtland Allen’s interviews with independent startup founders started showing up on Hacker News, a few years ago. I didn’t pay them much attention, at first, but he kept posting. Later, he created a podcast³ (in which he interviews independent startup founders). Then, he created a community around (you guessed it): independent startup founders. Now, he’s adding product profiles, meet-ups, and other offerings for independent startup founders.

Courtland didn’t start with an audience or notable influence. He played small gigs and kept moving toward one destination. As he did, he added new products/offerings that helped propel his efforts. Note that each addition he made focused on the same audience and value proposition.

Homework

Summarize your destination with two sentences. The first says what you’re making. The second identifies the value it affords. (I’ll use our new product as an example: Emetti is an SMS notifications system. It will help companies engage and reward loyal customers.) Once you’ve done this, itemize all the other things you’re currently doing. Now, remove each one that doesn’t move you closer to your destination.⁴

—

1. You could argue, “What about Virgin, which includes mobile carriers, music, weddings, et cetera, et cetera?” Virgin is a branded house. Their offering isn’t only the thing they sell; it’s in the way they sell it. So, theirs is a bit of a different story. (For the record, many of Virgin’s line extensions have failed.)
2. I’m bad at attempting to do too many things at one time. At this moment, Eric Shelkie and I operate a design studio, peer mentorship network, campground reservation cancellation tracker, and customer engagement tool. (This says little of the many other projects we’ve launched along the way.) That’s part of why I talk about destinations. I’m tired of attempting to move in many directions at once. So: Learn from my pain.
3. Courtland’s podcast is worth any business owner’s time—even if you don’t consider your company a startup. The people he interviews share all kinds of ideas and advice you can apply to what you are doing.
4. Sometimes you’re forced to work on something else (i.e., freelancing or a services company) to earn enough money to propel to your new thing. This work is necessary, and doesn’t represent another destination—unless you are trying to grow your freelancing/services company.

The post Destinations appeared first on Eric Karjaluoto.

Your most precious asset is your time. You can start and adopt the following set of habits right now to give yourself hours of your life back. Equally important, these habits will substantively increase the quality of your time by reducing stress, increasing focus, and ultimately improving the quality of the things you build with your hands.

Some of these practices pay immediate time-saving dividends. Some require small consistent investment over time to achieve the desired effect. All require discipline. Some feel destructive. Many require working counter to the intent of the apps and services you use every day because the collective goals of those apps and services goals can diverge from your goals.

You will have a strong negative and opinionated reaction to at least one or more of these bullets. Your strong negative and opinionated reactions are a clear sign you care about how you spend your time, so keep reading even if you’re mad.

Browser

• Make a copy of your bookmarks somewhere safe. Now delete all your current bookmarks. Wiggle uncomfortably in your chair a bit. Breathe deeply.
• Start rebuilding your bookmarks from memory a bit at a time. No hurry. Links to your web-based tools and critical documents belong in your browser bar. News, blogs, and other daily consumables belong in your feed reader because a browser is designed to browse, not read.
• No feed reader? Configure and pay for Feedly. Learn the keystrokes for Feedly.¹
• Install an ad blocker. Be generous about unblocking the sites you regularly visit because while it’s not a fair trade, yet, it’s the best we got right now.
• Pin (Safari Chrome) your must have browser tools (candidates include email, calendar, feed reader, or others) to your favorite browser. This will keep them handily anchored in a familiar, accessible place. Pin no more than five. Unpin if you haven’t used that tool in a week. I’ve held steady at four for over a year: internal email, calendar, external email, and Feedly.
• Use tabs in your favorite browser. Learn the keystrokes to create new tabs, navigate through them, and close them.
• Strive to have one browser window open at a time. Strive to have 10 or fewer browsers tabs open at any given moment. Fail at both of these objectives frequently, don’t beat yourself up, but understand that each window and tab open creates additive distracting undetectable stress.
• Put your bookmarks in the cloud so that they are the same on your phone’s browser.

A win condition: The ability to “scrub” all your consumables in less than 10 minutes. The absence of a long tail of cluttered bookmarks that distract you unnecessarily.

Phone

• If your phone allows it, flag VIPs on your phone (iOS Android). If your VIP list is greater than seven, you’re not identifying VIPs, you’re identifying another set of essential humans.
• Turn on any episode of the second season of The Office, sit somewhere comfortable, and turn off all non-critical notifications on your phone. Critical notifications are calls from people you know and VIP notifications. Continue to ignore the voice that tells you need these non-critical notifications.
• Purchase and install Robokiller and configure it to block all spam calls to your phone and set-up the RoboRadio feature. Appreciate the payback.
• Return to your comfortable place, turn on any episode of Season 2 of Parks and Recreation, and delete any app you haven’t recently used on your phone. Ignore the voice in your head that says, “I’m going to need this at some point!” Remind that voice, “Deleting the app from my phone doesn’t delete this app from the universe.” Repeat this phrase over and over.

A win condition: When you have three free minutes, you don’t instinctively reach for your phone.

Email

• Read your inbox with the following scrubbing protocol:
  • If it’s a mail you want to read, read it. Enjoy.
  • If the mail is from an external (non-work) source and you don’t want it, do one of the following without fail:
    1. If the option exists, unsubscribe from the mail. This works about as well as you would expect.
    2. If an unsubscribe option does not exist and you’re sure you’ve already attempted to unsubscribe, or you are just fed up with this mail, mark the mail as SPAM. Tell yourself this is fun.
  • If the mail is from a work source and it’s generated by robots (calendar notifications, code check-ins, system notifications, etc.), spend a morning learning how to filter these notifications automatically out of your inbox into a useful place (Apple Mail Gmail).
  • If you haven’t already, learn the keystrokes for your favorite email application.

A win condition: Using the above protocol, both my work and personal inboxes are at inbox zero. Every day. It took months of filter tweaking and unapologetic religious spam flagging, but for the first time in in years my inbox is mostly high signal mails I need with little filtering fuss. Yes, I work at Slack, and my work inbox has much less work email than your average work inbox, but I continue to get hundreds of emails per day.

Life

I am often asked how I prioritize my time because there is a perception that I do a lot of work.² First and obviously, I have precisely the same number of minutes of the day that you have. Second, I am ruthless about spending my time appropriately. An individual practice above might only save me 10 seconds, but that’s 10 seconds multiplied by completing that action a thousand times in the next month. That’s around 160 minutes. That’s just under three hours of my life.

In three hours, I can ride 40 miles and climb 3,000 feet. I can read a sizable chunk of my current book.³ In three hours, I can write the first draft of this article. It will take another two hours to finish. I don’t know when that time will arrive, but I know because I care about each minute that it will be here shortly.

Vancouver’s Arbutus Greenway is already a well-used and beloved part of the city.  Despite its evolving state, and even as the main design is heading for city council approval and funding at the July 11 meeting (starting at 0930), people are using it for lots of reasons.

A research team called INTERACT (@TeamInteractCA), 44 people strong, is turning its attention to the Greenway —among other places in other cities — from the health point of view.

The question they’re asking: what is the health impact of real world urban forms?  The team hopes to provide big-data research to advance the science of building healthy cities.

I ran into this team from INTERACT yesterday, out recruiting volunteers for the study.

You can join this work, and INTERACT with the researchers. Some conditions apply — you need to be over 18 and live within 3 km of the Greenway (Main St. to Dunbar, roughly).  And you’ll be asked to complete surveys over time, and to collect data via a smartphone or other device.

Among several major questions that are driving the research:

Is increased exposure to active transportation infrastructure associated with greater use of active transportation? Are changes in exposure to active transportation infrastructure associated with more physical activity, transport-related and overall?

How are urban form environments associated with well-being? How do individuals experience urban environments, and how does this relate to well-being? How do active transportation trips relate to feelings of well-being?

By way of testing out my Webmention module for Drupal, I took the 256 posts I’ve written here this year, ferreted out all the external links, discovered their Webmention endpoints, and sent a Webmention.

Those 256 posts contained 840 links in total; of those links, 149 were to a target that supported Webmention.

This seemed like a lot until I realized that I link to myself a lot–to posts written earlier–and as my site supports incoming Webmentions, those get counted; of the 149 eligible targets, 105 were here on ruk.ca and 44 were on other websites.

Of those 44 targets supporting Webmention, the site-by-site breakdown is this:

• Ton Zijlstra: 26
• Frank Meeuwsen: 4
• IndieWeb.org: 4
• Webmention.io: 4
• Steven Garrity: 2
• Brad Enslen: 1
• Olle Jonsson: 1
• Aaron Parecki: 1
• Sven Knebel: 1

Of those 44 targets, the HTTP status code sent back in response to the Webmention was:

• 200 — 19
• 201 — 9
• 202 — 5
• 400 — 11

The 200, 201 and 202 response codes are variations of “ok, we got it,” meaning a total of 33 Webmentions, or 75%, were successful.

Those 11 attempts that returned a 400 (error) were for two reasons:

• 9 returned “Target is not a valid post” — these were instances where I’d link to a home page, or a taxonomy page, or an about page, rather than a post.
• 1 was a malformed link, which was my fault
• 1 returned “Pings are disabled for this post.”

Discovering that I refer back to earlier posts as often as I do makes me wish I had a way of visualizing the interconnections between my posts; now that I have the building blocks for this, I’ll see what I can do about this.

I’m in Vancouver doing some last minute tuning up of the Brompton, with less than a week to go before STP. This is analogous to my post about the Tikit from two years ago.

This was also the first time I’ve suitcased the Brompton.

Unpacking it was a breeze.

I ended up removing the saddle, which made packing a lot easier. Unpacking: I put on the pedals and saddle, and readjusted the handlebar and bar end positions (which I had to alter to reduce the total width of the folded bike). Much less work compared to either my tikit or PBW.

I’ve figured out a position for my Garmin mount that still allows the bike to be folded.

The water bottle holder is from Randi Jo fabrications, works great, and does not affect the fold. I tried the Monkii cage, but it does not allow the bottle to be removed and reinserted on the fly.

I also took a brief ride out to JV bike to get an extra tube for my Brompton. They are the Brompton dealer for Vancouver, and they also specialize in other folders such as Dahon. I got there by riding across the Cambie bridge for the first time.

Here is the nice bike offramp.

You have to see it in person to understand what is going on, but it actually loops around in order for bikes to get around an offramp for cars.

Here is the entrance to JV Bike which is right by the north end of the Cambie bridge.

An extensive stock of Dahons.

Bromptons

including this special edition.

The other thing that caught my eye was this updated version of the Opus Rambler, a 24″ bike that both my daughters loved. This version has a large front basket that is probably more useful than the rear rack on the old version.

Heading back across the bridge, I realized that I was probably on the wrong side of the bridge headed south, as indicated by the wrong way sign.

This morning I went out for my last long ride before STP, about 80 km. Since it was relatively cool, I wore my wool jersey (from Portland), but sadly I will probably not be wearing it on STP as the forecast is for temps above 30°C.

Crossing the Burrard bridge, I see that both directions have a bike lane on the roadway now, whereas previous bikes headed into downtown were on the sidewalk, and pedestrians had to use the walk on the west side only.

At Pacific street I see that they’ve removed the right turn lane for cars to reduce bike/car conflict.  Also the short stretch on Pacific before Hornby was now a separated bike lane.

At Hornby, there is what looks like 1/4 of a fully protected intersection. The design is appropriate for the fact that the Hornby bike lane is bidirectional.

This is how Vancouver routes a bike lane around a condo construction site.

During my ride, I saw many packs of riders that looked like racing teams or racing clubs. The only group ride that I saw that looked like I would want to join was this one, with a goodly mix of different people and types of bikes. Very little Lycra in evidence as well.

From my Strava stats, it looks like I’m just as fast on the Brompton than the Tikit two years ago, so it looks like the clipless pedals and the faster tires help. However, it may have been a bad move to not bring one of my old saddles along. We can see this coming weekend.

Once a brand community starts to really grow, the number of high-quality interactions shrinks.

Newcomers with less experience, passion, or commitment sign up in droves. They skew the questions towards newcomer issues. This results in top members leaving, followed by the next bunch and so forth.

This is sometimes known as the evaporative-cooling effect.

Over the long term, most organizations find themselves with large communities filled with members asking average-level questions and getting average-level responses.

You might have a few experts, perhaps those incentivized by some unique access or rewards, but most people have moved on.

This is the natural result of trying to grow as big as possible. It’s also the best argument against it.

To attract the most people, you need to cater to the average member. But to attract and keep the smartest members, you need to cater to the smartest members. Top members in almost every field usually want the same things:

1) A private area. They want a private place where they can interact and engage with others at their level. Today this largely happens in WhatsApp groups no-one else can see or find. Newcomers can join only by the invitation of an existing member.

2) Impress their peers. Top members want to impress other top members. This means raising the standards for content so getting an accepted submission is a badge of honour (many journals do this today).

3) Identify new opportunities. They want access to unique opportunities (especially work opportunities) which others don’t have access to. This can also include invites to events hosted by the brand etc…

This doesn’t have to be a completely binary choice. Big doesn’t have to be bad. However, if you want top experts to stick around, you need to cater to their needs more than the average member.

You need to enforce tougher moderation standards, make having an article or post accepted as a badge of honour, and provide support for them to have private meetings and discussions.

It’s harsh to tell average members their contributions weren’t good enough, but it’s what keeps the signal to noise ratio high enough for top experts to stay.

SF writer David Brin talks about ultimate beneficial ownership (UBO), the concept at the heart of the Panama Papers investigative journalism two years ago. He extrapolates the notion of UBO:

“Elsewhere, I’ve long been pushing the concept of a worldwide treaty for transparency of ownership. Basically, “If I own something, I must state publicly that I own it.”

Oh, sure, It would be a pain to list all you own… and then to look at others’ lists to denounce unmerited claims. Computers could zero in on any overlap and yes, lawyers would have a few very good years. But what would be the chief effects?”

Brin posits,
1) a widening tax base and thus lower taxes as all the hidden stuff comes within scope.
2) a flood of unclaimed property as the current owners will not want to own up that could wipe out half the public debt of the world’s nations (this reminds me of what I read about the period after the black death, where the surviving population suddenly had access to a large surplus of material, fields and livestock)
3) a similar impact on accountability and liability, as negative consequences of ownership (leaking tankers e.g.) could not be externalised and escaped any longer.

Interesting thought experiment.

OmniFocus 3 for iOS is a fresh, major update to the app that’s been the trusted gold-standard to-do app for 10 years – since the very first day of the App Store. It’s the best OmniFocus ever!

Download it for free. Put it through its paces with a 14-day free trial, and then buy the Standard or Pro edition. Users of earlier versions of OmniFocus for iOS get a 50% discount.

Tags – new in OmniFocus 3 – add a powerful organizing tool. Create tags for person, energy level, priority, location, and more.

The Forecast view now shows your tasks and calendar events in order, so you can better see what’s coming up in your day and adjust if needed. With the Pro version you can also set a special tag so that items always show up today.

Enhanced repeating tasks are easier than ever to set up – and they work with real-world examples such as the first weekday of the month.

Batch editing, a feature we brought over from the Mac, lets you set due dates, tags, and other data for multiple tasks all at once.

Flexible inspectors now allow you to show only the features you use, and reorder them so your favorites are where you want them.

Get the most out of OmniFocus by reading our ever-growing list of articles and customer stories on Inside OmniFocus. And if you ever need help, contact our world-class support team via email – or even just call. We’re here to help you.

Download OmniFocus 3 today and accomplish more every day.

Our thanks to OmniFocus 3 for sponsoring MacStories this week.

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Things have a way of repeating themselves, and it can be useful to highlight these patterns in data. Read More

Colleen MacDonald has published a guide book to Metro Vancouver bike rides for “. . . families and people who like to stop and smell the roses”.

Click to enlarge

“Let’s Go Biking” contains detailed maps of 84 routes in Metro Vancouver.

Let’s Go Biking ~ Book Launch & Bike Ride
Arbutus Greenway
Sunday July 29, 2018 •10am
RSVP colleen@letsgobiking.net
details to follow

Colleen has biked every route. As well she has a team of 50 “proof riders” who have also cycled the routes, suggesting tweaks and changes before a route was added to the book.

While the routes are designed for cyclists of all ages and abilities, from flat scenic trails to city greenways to quiet country roads, they are categorized as easy, moderate or adventurous.

Easy routes are generally shorter in distance on trails, quiet country roads and side streets. Moderate routes are longer on more challenging trails or roads — may have hills or some shared road sections. And adventurous rides have more complex routes, longer distances or hills, and shared road sections.

With thanks to Jessica Kerr in the Vancouver Courier.

Pro Tip:  there are a few truly excellent photos in the book.

Something odd going on since the theme-switch: postings without a title are now posted with their post number as title to the RSS-feed and micro.blog/ton This means their content isn’t actually visible at micro.blog/ton and the numbered titles show up for those using a feedreader as well.

Vancouver is a city with a world-wide reputation for rising mode share for transportation by bicycle and by walking.

More people continue to realize that walking or taking a bike is the easiest and best choice for some of their trips. The person and the city get major health improvement as strong side effects, and this weighs in political decisions.  And Greenways are part of the plan.

Vancouver’s Seaside Greenway (click to enlarge)

Here’s a proposal for the East Van City Greenway, which will join infrastructure like the Central Valley Greenway, 10th Avenue, Union/Adanac and others.  However, it will focus on north-east Vancouver, extending the reach of Greenway infrastructure to yet another part of the city.

The proposal is in the form of a motion sponsored by Mayor Robertson and Councillor Reimer, now on the agenda for the July 10 council meeting, starting at 0930.

The north-east part of Vancouver currently has cycling mode share of 8-13%, and walking 17-29%, despite infrastructure being limited. A Greenway would likely increase mode share for both, and promote healthy living through active transportation and increased opportunity for social interaction.

The eighth Thai boy was rescued from the flooded cave recently. Great news. The South China Morning Post has a series of graphics to explain the rescue path and strategy.

Tags: rescue, South China Morning Post, Thailand

Council: Vote Down the Arbutus Mall Rezoning Amendment

We, the undersigned residents of Vancouver, call on City Council to respect due process and community input, and to reject the rezoning amendment for 2133 Nanton Avenue (Arbutus Centre), which goes to public hearing on July 18th, at 6:00pm.

The application seeks to add 127 new units to the development and to increase the maximum height from 8 storeys to 12!

The developer’s stated rationale for their application is to provide more housing in the midst of Vancouver’s housing crisis, but even with the new proposed social housing and below-market units in the amendment, the majority of the development will still to be out of reach for lower and middle-income residents.

If Council approves the amendment, they will be backtracking on a 2011 rezoning agreement based on years of community consultation in exchange for a negligible contribution to affordable housing.

In order for residents to be able to trust the city and its planning process, Council should vote NO to the Arbutus Mall rezoning!

Contact Octavian Cadabeschi for more info at 604-813-2105, or
ocadabeschi (at) unitehere.org

Note the email address has been munged to reduce the impact of robot scrapers

This petition can also be submitted online

You could also print off the text above and add signatures, names and addresses below and send to City Hall.

The Ford Motor Company wants to become a major player in the electric vehicle market.

Ford surprised the world in April when it announced that it would no longer be selling any cars besides the Mustang in North America. It will continue to sell vehicles but they will mainly be trucks and SUVs.

The company’s current plan is to bring an electric SUV with a 300-mile range and a Mustang-inspired car to the world in 2020. Following the launch of that car, which is codenamed Mach 1, the legacy automaker plans to introduce 40 electrified vehicles with 16 of those being completely electric by 2022.

Ford wants to change how customer perceive it, with greener vehicles and a renewed focus on creating awesome features that will start to make people notice the carmaker again.

“Let’s make them awesome. Let’s amplify what’s best about that for that user group and really make awesome vehicles,” said Ted Cannis, Ford’s global director of battery electric vehicles in an interview with Engadget.

To help make this happen the company is trying to position itself to move quicker and more like a startup. The entire enterprise is moving towards a single goal of bringing electrified vehicles to the masses, according to Engadget

Source: Engadget

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Knowing how to speak multiple languages fluently is useful, especially if you enjoy traveling. However, learning how to speak another language can be difficult if you don’t have a native speaker to coach you.

Unfortunately, we can’t just access a native speaker for any language of our choosing just like that. You would need to enroll in classes, which also requires time and money. Mondly aims to change that with a conversation-focused curriculum that you can study from your phone; you can subscribe to Mondly today for as low as $52.52 CAD [$39.99 USD].

Mondly’s courses will teach you how to converse in everyday situations such as interacting with restaurant staff and shop assistants. It uses speech recognition technology to identify key words and phrases in your speech and rewards you when you speak correctly. Additionally, you can converse with native speakers to learn pronunciation.

Mondly has lifetime subscriptions to one, three, and five languages for $315.33 CAD[$239.95 USD], $946.07 CAD [$719.85 USD], and $1,576.72 CAD [$1,199.75 USD] respectively. However, you can find a 5-language subscription in our store for $92.02 CAD [$69.99 USD], or 94% off. That’s less than the price of a single language subscription.

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Facebook has announced that it plans to open its Translate Facebook app to Inuktut speakers to help translate the social network.

Facebook is partnering with Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated (NTI), the legal representative of the Inuit in Nunavut. Additionally, the social network partnered with language authority Inuit Uqausinginnik Taiguusiliuqtiit (IUT).

Furthermore, Monday is Nunavut Day, and Facebook is marking the occasion by opening Inuktut translation on the app.

Starting today, Inuktut speakers will be able to access the Translate Facebook app through desktop or mobile.

When accessing the app, users can propose translations for strings of words and phrases used on Facebook. Other users in the community can vote on proposed translations. If a translation receives enough votes, it becomes the official proposed translation for that phrase or string.

Depending on the volume of community feedback, Facebook expects to make Inuktuk available on the network in 2019.

“Facebook’s recognition of their role in the promotion and use of Inuktut is very much welcomed,” said Aluki Kotierk, president of NTI.

Translate Facebook was created in 2007 to help communities translate the social network into different languages.

The social network is now available in more than 100 languages. Additionally, more than one billion people use Facebook in languages other than English.

“This is a good example of a company playing a positive leadership role in promoting the use of Inuktut,” said David Joanasie, Nunavut’s minister of languages.

“I applaud this initiative which will help improve access to technologies for our unilingual Inuit Elders and help them remain connected with their children and grandchildren living in other communities.”

It’s good to see Facebook providing these tools to help people translate Facebook. Community is incredibly important, and the social network is an essential communication tool. The ability to communicate in one’s native language is important.

The tool also provides agency to language speakers. Instead of having a computer or a person not familiar with the language complete the translation, speakers can have a say regarding the translation.

Users can access the Translate Facebook app here.

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As one of the rare people that uses a Surface Book as a daily driver, I get a fair few questions about my laptop of choice.

Friends and colleagues often ask me if they should make the switch from their Apple MacBooks. I also get the occasional interrogation on the laptop’s various features and benefits from strangers in coffee shops.

But the questions never seem to add up to much. In all the time I’ve spent over the last two years evangelizing what I deem the perfect laptop for work and home, only one colleague has ultimately made the purchase upon my recommendation, the rest have all opted to stay in Apple’s ecosystem.

Sometimes they cite ease, other times they explain that past negative experiences with a first-generation Surface Book or other Windows laptop warded them off the buy.

Still, the curiosity remains, so I thought I’d provide a definitive list of reasons, for future reference, of why I use a 15-inch Surface Book 2 as my laptop of choice over a MacBook (probably the 15-inch Pro) — which would be my second choice.

It’s like the Pixel of Windows

There’s a smooth, speedy performance to the Surface Book that can only be achieved by a company that builds both software and hardware in-house (see also the Pixel, the iPhone, the MacBook).

Creating hardware and software in a closely collaborative process simply makes for a better overall product, with features and applications that run better and with less overall system redundancies. It’s a large part of why I’d go for a MacBook after a Surface Book.

Battery life is dope

I’ve mentioned before in my Surface Book reviews: I am always, without fail, able to work longer without a charge at press events than my colleagues, most of whom have MacBooks, and often the newest versions.

Surface Book battery life is impressive. I’ve been generally able to get six to seven hours of intensive mixed use including Photoshop, web browsing, video streaming, gaming and Office apps — or several hours longer with casual use.

Windows users have more fun (or at least more options)

Above: Surface Book (2016) and Surface Book 2, both 13.5-inch

Comparing Windows to macOS is difficult, but I’m a firm believer that there are some major benefits to the former that are worth considering.

First off, because of its relative ubiquity, Windows has a vastly larger software library than macOS computers. It also has gradually taken the edge in updates over Apple’s macOS, with a biannual schedule versus macOS’ yearly update — which makes things more exciting. It’s cool to consistently see Microsoft add new and exciting features to the platform

Of course, macOS has always taken the edge on privacy and security, and I don’t think that’s changed much over the past few years, but there are trade-offs when it comes to macOS being a more limited environment overall.

That’s not to mention the embarrassing security flaw flagged in macOS High Sierra that let anyone with physical access to a Mac gain admin access without a password — which was immediately flagged as one of the largest vulnerabilities to hit a major OS ever.

Two other specific bonuses for Windows — its super cool facial recognition login feature, Windows Hello, which is quick, accurate and very futuristic, and Cortana, a far more advanced AI than Siri.

You can play some graphically-intensive games with no issue

Depending on the model, the Surface Book 2 makes a surprisingly good gaming laptop.

The 15-inch Surface Book 2 I’m using has an Intel Core i7 processor, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 discrete GPU w/2GB GDDR5 graphics memory, 16GB RAM and supports the connection of Xbox controllers through Bluetooth. The price for the discrete graphics card is a bit dear, but it brings the Surface Book 2 to another level of power.

While the laptops gets a bit hot and does run down the battery quickly if not plugged in, I can play games like Witcher 3 for a good hour with no problem and a ~55fps framerate on one of the lower power settings.

Plus, even outside of gaming, the graphics card boosts overall performance and will help with other, more practical programs, like video editing apps.

In comparison to the MacBook Pro’s AMD Radeon Pro 560, the GeForce GTX 1050 is older, but generally more well-rated by gamers.

It looks cool

The Surface Book 2 in silver is a MacBook look-a-like, except more boxy, with a more prominent hinge and a shiny, simple Windows logo squarely on the rear.

I realize being a copy is not a bonus for some buyers, but honestly — it’s a good look, and overall a smart move. It stands apart from other Windows laptops, while appearing different enough from MacBooks that it makes Apple fans do a double-take. Aesthetically, it defines its potential: an alternative to MacBooks that shares some of the same simplistic, minimal ethos.

The 3240 x 2160 pixel resolution display is vibrant and crisp, as well, with a middle-of-the-road 3:2 aspect ratio that makes a lot of sense when it comes to things like reading and multi-tasking (side-by-side windows).

It feels good

The Surface Book 2’s keyboard is backlit, cushy and comfortable. That may sound like a small thing, but typing comfort is important when it comes to a laptop.

This is in contrast to the new MacBook Pros’ Butterfly Keyboard issues which include repeating characters and sticky keys, something that Apple’s recently acknowledged.

The build quality is good, despite past missteps

The first Surface Book I used was the 2016 update to the original Surface Book, so I skipped out on a number of issues. According to many people I know who used the first-generation Surface Book, they had issues ranging from a shaky screen to top-heaviness to a poor trackpad.

The Surface Book has become substantially better over time, however. The laptop never tips over or out of my lap due to top-heaviness, though I’ll admit the screen is much thicker than on the average laptop (more on this later). That’s partially because the base is substantial, but also because the hinge is quite sturdy on the Surface Book 2 — which means the screen doesn’t shake as much as it did on the original version.

Improving on the 2016 Surface Book, the screen is also more flexible now, and can be pushed further back, but not far enough to really throw off the balance of the machine.

As for trackpad, in day-to-day use it’s exactly as responsive and precise as you’d want it to be, though I’ve experienced some glitches that require a quick reboot (nothing too frustrating, though).

It has sensible ports

The Surface Book 2 has a solid array of useful ports — it’s got two USB-A ports, an SD card port, a USB-C port, a Surface charging connector port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The port offerings are a nice mix of legacy and modern offerings, unlike the present generation of MacBooks, which force users to live the dongle life.

Some downsides

Having said all this, there are some downsides to consider. Namely, it’s a bit bulky and it can turn into a tablet.

To the first point, I will admit that the Surface Book’s size is not a bonus — the 15-inch version is 4.2 pounds and 15mm to 23mm thick — but I believe it more than makes up for that fact with its processing power and amazing battery life. Besides, the 15-inc MacBook Pro isn’t much different at 4.02 pounds and an approximately 15mm thickness.

Why is the tablet aspect not a selling point? The market has already made the decision that it does not like massive, hefty tablets. Nowhere does that become more apparent to me than with my Surface Books. I have never, ever wanted to use a Surface Book in tablet mode, and whenever I’ve accidentally ejected the tablet and entered tablet mode, I’ve immediately regretted the mistake, mainly because it’s obscenely difficult to get in and out of that mode.

So why not use the Surface Laptop, which is all one piece? It’s true that it’s an excellent choice, but it simply doesn’t provide the battery or power I desire — especially considering I don’t use more than one computer in my daily life. Taking that into account, the fact that it’s capable of becoming tablet isn’t much of a downside.

Ultimately, though, the Surface Laptop could make more sense depending on the customer’s particular needs, but I tend towards recommending the Surface Book 2 to anyone who uses heavy-processing applications like Photoshop, or might possibly need to in the future.

It’s not only a valid alternative to a MacBook, it’s a great alternative.

The post Why I chose a Surface Book and not a MacBook appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Google has started rolling out its updated Google Pay web client to users in Canada.

The redesigned website brings the client in line with the company’s new Material Design look. In short, expect a lot of white space and ample use of Google’s new Product Sans typeface.

The desktop client allows users to browse their recent transaction history, manage any subscriptions they may have active, as well as review and edit their credit card and address information. In the U.S., it’s also possible to use Google Pay to send and receive peer-to-peer money transfers.

As with Google’s past rollouts, it looks like this one is staggered, so be patient if you don’t see the new client immediately.

Via: Android Police

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Scorpion, Drake’s latest album, has been smashing streaming records since it was released on June 29th. Now it’s the first album to reach 1 billion streams in a week.

The Canadian artist uniquely positioned himself to break these records, but nevertheless, the record has still been set.

Scorpion has broken another record with 745.92 million streams in the United States alone during its first week.

New era. New platinum. Thank you a billion times over (a billion plus).

A post shared by champagnepapi (@champagnepapi) on Jul 7, 2018 at 8:32am PDT

Until Scorpion dropped beerbongs & bentleys by Post Malone held the most streams in a single week with 431 million, according to The Verge.

So far Drake’s album has had the biggest debut week in music this year. All of these streams turn into 732,000 album equivalent units, which look like they’ll keep the star at number one in the charts for a while longer.

Source:  The Verge

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Google may be ending support for Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) in Android P.

The Wi-Fi Alliance introduced the WPS standard in 2006 as simpler method of connecting a new device to a network. While a good idea in theory, WPS makes for a less secure Wi-Fi network overall.

These security concerns may be part of the reason why Google removed support for WPS in Android P. With previous versions of Android, users could initiate a WPS connection manually. However, the ability to do so is gone on Android P.

Furthermore, some users on the Google Issue Tracker noticed that code strings related to WPS were deprecated (no longer supported). This has lead to speculation that Google won’t bring back WPS in the official release.

A Googler responded to the issue tracker thread, saying that the development team would look into it and provide further clarification. However, the main issue in the thread was that Google deprecated the code without documenting it. For developers that utilized WPS, it meant some things stopped working with no explanation why.

What makes WPS insecure

Whatever the development team turns up, its likely that WPS won’t come back. Many newer routers are abandoning WPS because of the security issues surrounding the standard.

WPS can work one of two ways. The first way is arguably secure as it requires physical access to your router. Some routers have a button that you can push to connect a device. This initiates a connection point that only lasts a few minutes, leaving a narrow window of time for malicious attackers to gain access to your network. Additionally, it means an attacker would need physical access to your router in order to initiate the connection.

The second method is much less secure and is mandated by the WPS standard. The method, which uses an eight-digit PIN, leaves your router constantly exposed to attack. Because the WPS standard requires PIN, even if your routers uses the more secure push-button method, it has a PIN as well.

The PIN method isn’t secure because of the way routers check the PIN. When verifying the eight digit PIN, the router checks the first four digits followed by the second four. The PIN is susceptible to a ‘brute force’ attack, which basically tries every possible combination until it locates the right one. Computers perform these attacks, which means a large volume of guesses can be processed incredibly quickly.

Guide to iOS estimated passcode cracking times (assumes random decimal passcode + an exploit that breaks SEP throttling):

4 digits: ~13min worst (~6.5avg)
6 digits: ~22.2hrs worst (~11.1avg)
8 digits: ~92.5days worst (~46avg)
10 digits: ~9259days worst (~4629avg)

— Matthew Green (@matthew_d_green) April 16, 2018

Matthew Green, an assistant professor and cryptographer at the John Hopkins Information Security Institute, did some math and posted the results on Twitter earlier this year. While the tweet was about the time it took new software called GrayKey to break a PIN code on iOS, the numbers give you an idea why PIN isn’t secure for WPS either. The times for cracking a four digit pin differ based on software, but overall a four digit pin will be significantly easier to crack than a six or eight digit pin.

WPS uses an eight-digit PIN, but it checks the first four and second four individually. This means that instead of taking over a month to crack the PIN, software could probably do it in less than a day, maybe even in a few hours. An attacker would have to brute force the first four digits and then could move onto the second set of four. Most routers don’t time out after receiving an incorrect PIN, allowing attackers to submit guesses over and over again.

Unfortunately this is what makes WPS so insecure. Because PIN is available all the time, attackers can perform brute force attacks at will and break into your network easily.

It’s good to see router manufacturers moving away from the standard. With Google ending support for it in Android P, it likely means an end to the standard as well — and victory for secure Wi-Fi everywhere.

Source: Google Issue Tracker Via: Android Police

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Apple is releasing a batch of minor updates to some of its consumer-facing operating systems.

The latest versions of iOS, watchOS and tvOS are all rolling out now.

The company is updating iOS to version 11.4.1. The update focuses on bug fixes but Mail, Contacts and Notes are receiving updates to work with Exchange accounts. Apple has also boosted the software side of the Find My AirPods function to make it more reliable.

The iOS update also adds Apple’s new USB Restricted Mode to the iPad and iPhone. This mode will only let users transfer data from their phone to a computer via a wired connection for one hour before the user needs to re-enter their passcode. To turn on this feature, navigate to the phone’s settings, then either FaceID or TouchID depending on what iPhone you’re using.

This feature stops third parties such as law enforcement from connecting an iPhone to a PC and gathering information off of it using tools like GrayShift, according to Motherboard.

In Apple’s wearable category, the company is updating watchOS to version 4.3.2. All that’s know about this update is that it includes bug fixes and overall improvements.

On the big screen, the company is sending out a new update of tvOS to bring it to version 11.4.1. According to MacRumors, this is mainly a performance update that’s getting the device ready for tvOS 12 in the fall.

According to 9to5Mac the HomePod is also getting updated to 11.4.1 as well, but all that has been shared about the update so far includes general improvements for stability and quality.

Also HomePod owners don’t have to update their device. As long as it’s connected to Wi-Fi it simply updates itself.

Via: 9to5Mac

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With the phone still more than six months away from being revealed, the Samsung Galaxy S10+ has been attracting a significant amount of attention, with the most recent rumour revealing that the phone features five cameras. The report comes from South Korean publican The Bell, which states the phone will offer two front-facing cameras, similar to the Galaxy A8.

Meanwhile, leaks from last week indicate the phone will sport three rear-facing cameras. 

The report points to Samsung using the second front-facing camera to improve its face scanning technology. This makes sense considering previous rumours indicating that Samsung will get rid of its iris scanning technology in favour of 3D face sensing technology that’s more akin to Apple’s Face ID. 

Other rumours point to the Samsung Galaxy S10+ featuring a 6.44-inch display with an in-display fingerprint scanner.

LG’s V40 is also rumoured to feature five cameras, two front-facing and the remainder of the shooters on the rear.

Currently, the only phone in the market with three rear-facing cameras is the Huawei P20 Pro.

Source: The Bell, Via:  9to5Google

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HomePod OS version 11.4.1, the third version of the HomePod’s operating system, features stability and sound quality improvements, according to Apple.

Apple most recently added AirPlay 2 functionality to the HomePod with the release of iOS 11.3. Release notes for HomePod OS 11.4.1 state that the update features “general improvements for stability and quality.” That said, it’s unclear specifically what Apple has improved with the latest version of its smart speaker operating system.

HomePod software updates are downloaded and installed automatically. If you want to prompt Apple’s smart speaker to download and install the update, head over to the iOS Home app and force touch on your HomePod. Next, look for the iOS 11.4.1 update at the top of the page and select ‘Download and Install.’

Because accessing the HomePod’s setting is accomplished through Apple’s Home app, it’s actually possible to prompt the update even if you’re on a different Wi-Fi network.

Apple’s HomePod finally made its way to Canada on June 18th, 2018.

While I was impressed with the HomePod’s sound quality, Siri’s lack of functionality, when compared to Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant, resulted in the smart speaker lagging behind Apple’s competition in space.

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