Rolandt

OK, as I'm sure you've guessed, there's some fine print involved in my claim, which I'll explain later. But this journey began, as many good things do, in Venice. 

While I was on my three-month European trip last year, I had more free time than usual since I had so few responsibilities. I was a lying on a couch in our Castello apartment when an appealing art course appeared on my Insta feed, It was Postwar Abstract Painting and it was offered by the MOMA through Coursera. Since I had the time, I signed up. To be honest, Venice does that to me. There's so much exquisite ancient art that I get itchy for something more current.

The course is eight weeks long, with each lesson focusing on one artist. There are videos, readings, quizzes, and to my surprise: studio exercises.

The studio exercises proved very interesting. The instructor, Corey D'Augustine, demonstrates on video how artists like Ad Reinhard and Yayoi Kusama created their works. (Not Rothko of course, his luminous colour techniques remain a  mystery even though Corey tries.) I couldn't begin the painting part until I got back to my studio, but I was eager to try. And studio exercises were a revelation. Technical details connected my own art practice to those of artists I admire. For homework, we were supposed to create "copies" as an exercise, but the more inspiring part is realizing how each artist struggled to communicate theory and ideas through their work.

Ad Reinhard tried to create completely black paintings by stripping away everything but pigment from his paints. Before, his blank black canvases were the kind of painting I would pass by, but now I can hardly wait to see his work in person.

I'm a huge proponent of continuous learning, but it's not always possible to find the courses you want to take in your city. However with online learning, the options are endless. I was surprised that a free art course with no feedback could be so fulfilling, but this one definitely was. The MOMA continues to notify me when new videos related to the class are posted, and recently they invited all the students to submit for a show about the course. The artwork will be the exercises we created during the class. I submitted my Mark Rothko exercise. Believe me, I respect his painting even more now that I've tried to recreate his luminous colour through thin layers of paint. And I was happy to find out my art was selected for the exhibition.

Which brings us to the fine print. The show I'm in is at the MOMA's Education and Research building. The featured artwork will be projected on four screens the show runs for most of January. There's even an opening on January 8th. A New York opening? I wish I could be there, but apparently there's a ton of snow right now.

If you're interested in taking the class and someday being in the MOMA yourself, check out this link on Coursera. Then you  too could be exhibiting at the MOMA someday.

Mike Lydon @MikeLydon
More essential reporting from the @nytimes. “Before the subway, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that New Y… twitter.com/i/web/status/9…

After news reports revealed that Apple was slowing down older iPhones with worn-out batteries, the company posted a public message to explain itself. It also offered to replace your battery for $29. This statement is clearer and more transparent than most corporate statements after missteps, but not up to Apple’s usual standards. Apple attempts to … Continued

The post What Apple should have said about slowing down iPhones when the batteries wear out appeared first on without bullshit.

It has been an interesting few days. Intel has already gone on record with a notably weak PR statement, cloud providers are effectively force-rebooting their entire fleets, and it seems that variants of these also affect AMD and ARM CPUs, so there goes Moore’s Law (again).

Fortunately, it seems that macOS and iOS already include (at least partial) mitigation of these, although truth be told that my expectations towards a complete fix are nil–my bias against Apple’s QA record notwithstanding, the underlying issues are simply not easily fixable.

UPDATE: Friday, January 5 19:07 PST

As of 13:30 PST, AWS completed their patch deployment addressing tenant isolation threats. AWS reports they have restored the expected multi-tenancy protections similar to dedicated hardware, which leaves Heroku to address the kernel vulnerabilities in runtime host operating systems.

Heroku Performance, Private, and Shield dynos feature varying degrees of isolation from potentially hostile neighbors. However, the shared Common Runtime carries our highest priority for Meltdown (variant 3) mitigation work due to the nature of its shared infrastructure.

The ideal fix is to deploy the updated kernel from Canonical prior to the release of functional proof-of-concept exploit code for this vulnerability. As this patch is not yet available, the Heroku Security team has opted for a more rapid response.

Over the last 24 hours, Heroku Engineering has prepared our own upstream kernel deployment as an aggressive measure to protect the shared Common Runtime. We began deploying this update as soon as possible, beginning on Friday morning.

Heroku has now fully deployed this update to the US and EU shared Common Runtime, which will be replaced when the official Canonical update is made available.

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On January 3, researchers disclosed a security vulnerability affecting side-channel analysis of speculative execution on modern computer processors (CVE-2017-5715, CVE-2017-5753, and CVE-2017-5754).

Heroku’s Product Security team follows emerging trends, and partners closely with the research community. We invest heavily in facilitating conversations regarding vulnerabilities and keeping our customers safe via community partnerships.

In the case of emerging and recently-announced vulnerabilities (including those embargoed or leaked to the press), we have a proven methodology for ingesting, processing, and prioritizing mitigation work. Our team utilizes these methods to address these vulnerabilities as material or actionable information is made available.

Our Security and Platform teams are working closely with AWS and Canonical (makers of the Ubuntu Linux operating system) to investigate and patch any affected systems related to the Meltdown and Spectre announcements. If customer impact or coordination is required, we will post additional information via Heroku Status, DevCenter ChangeLog, or provide instructions and context via maintenance notification emails.

Over a million workers in Ontario just got a big raise thanks to tireless, bottom-up orgainizing, but if you look to the media it’s a bad news story. The same, tired headlines are back. Yesterday, the CBC ran a story titled, “Minimum wage hikes could cost Canada’s economy 60,000 jobs by 2019”. Today, the Toronto Star’s front page blared, “Wage hike could cost 60,000 jobs, Bank of Canada says”.

Reading either of these headlines or the stories that follow, you could be forgiven for not knowing that the cited Bank of Canada research note had a positive conclusion about the effect of minimum wage increases on workers. A major claim of the Bank’s note is that, for workers, the benefits of increasing the minimum wage outweigh the costs in terms of labour income. First of all, the Bank is not predicting 60,000 pink slips but merely a slowdown in continued job growth. The 60,000 figure is a national, annual one and represents just 0.3% of total employment. Monthly job growth has at times exceeded this number.

More importantly, the Bank found that the costs of projected (remember these are still only projections) lower employment are outweighed by the benefits from higher economy-wide wage income stemming directly from the minimum wage increase. The authors write, “On net, however, real labour income should be higher following the implementation of these measures relative to otherwise. This is because the 0.7 per cent increase in the level of aggregate real wages more than offsets the 0.3 per cent decrease in total hours worked.”

(The claim is only moderated by some further assumptions. The Bank’s model predicts economy-wide consumption decreasing due to higher interest rates,  a knock-on effect of higher inflation caused by minimum wage hikes. I personally am skeptical that interest rates would rise automatically due to a tiny 0.1% increase in inflation, especially one coming after years of largely below-target inflation.)

This analysis would have had a very different reception if these stories had an alternate headline like “Bank of Canada finds raising the minimum wage will benefit workers.”

This is not the first time the media have gotten worked up about the wrong numbers. As I pointed out at the time, reporting on an analysis issued in September by the Ontario Financial Accountability Office received similarly skewed coverage, ignoring the finding of net benefits and zeroing in on projected job losses. This isn’t a single case, but a recurring pattern of business-friendly bias.

And beyond the overall positive conclusion, there are several reasons to look critically at the Bank of Canada research note.

First, the note uses a structural general equilibrium model, a class of models that has come under increased scrutiny since the financial crisis because of their over-reliance on rather unrealistic assumptions and the sensitivity of their conclusions to changes in assumptions. For example, new research from Marshall Steinbaum at the Roosevelt Institute suggests labour markets may have a higher degree of what economists call monopsony than previously thought, something that runs counter to standard assumptions about how job markets work. Whereas monopoly is a situation where sellers are few and have disproportionate market power (in the extreme case, one seller with the power to set prices), monopsony is the flip side: a situation where a market has a few large buyers who have disproportionate power. In a labour market, this means businesses can set wages below where they “should” be and can make up for poor performance by having low wages rather than cutting into profits. Steinbaum’s finding challenges standard assumptions about competitive labour markets and the simplistic Economics 101 story about higher wages costing jobs—a story that features heavily in media reporting on the minimum wage.

Second, the Bank of Canada note also relies heavily on older models, so called “two-way fixed-effects”, for their estimates of how aggregate employment reacts to changes in the minimum wage (economists call this an elasticity). These models have been shown to downwardly bias estimates of the relationship, suggesting greater job loss. Once the same and newer data that have been subjected to more advanced statistical methods that are better able to isolate the impacts of the minimum wage from everything else happening in the economy at the same time, they have generally shown negligible to statistically insignificant job and hours reductions. I’ve recounted this newer literature in previous posts. In a similar vein, the Bank makes references to known academic critics of raising the minimum wage, like Morley Gunderson and David Neumark; well-known academic economists who have used updated statistical methods to paint a more sympathetic picture, such as Arin Dube or Michael Reich or UBC’s David Green don’t figure at all.

Coverage like this from the CBC or the Star (nevermind venues like the National Post or the Toronto Sun) begs the question about why don’t we hear about the negative impacts on jobs and growth of things like commercial rent increases or rising CEO salaries. For instance, the salaries of Canada’s top 100 CEOs rose by a whopping 8 percent last year! When the redistribution happens from workers to the top or from one sector of the business world to another (as in the case of commercial rents), things are as they should be. It is only when even a modest amount of redistribution flows in the other direction, as with much-needed minimum wage increases, that we hear tales of imminent mass unemployment or economic collapse.

Luckily, not everyone in the business world has lost their sense of perspective or critical faculties. To their credit, in the same piece warning about mass job loss due to rising minimum wages, the CBC asked Brett House, deputy chief economist at Scotiabank, for his opinion. He’s absolutely right:

The ongoing debate over minimum wages is so important because it speaks to issues of income inequality, House said.

Because over the past decade and a half, he said, any Canadians who own stocks or real estate have done very well, financially speaking. “The recovery has mainly benefited you,” he said. But that’s not true of a huge percentage of the population who depend on their pay cheques as a sole source of income. “If you rely on wages only, you haven’t had a real wage increase in any substantial way in 10 to 15 years.”

That’s why House is among those who thinks the positives of wage increases will outweigh the negatives.

Asus has announced AiMesh, a new router software feature that allows users to create their own mesh network. AiMesh utilizes existing Asus routers, allowing them to switch into ‘Mesh Mode,’ also called ‘Node Mode.’

AiMesh allows users to create a whole-home Wi-Fi system, offering central management and control with the Asus Router mobile app and an AsusWRT web interface.

For those who already own an Asus router, AiMesh is a completely free firmware update. Further, the AiMesh network can be added to older routers, allowing users to mix and match both newer and older routers to create a budget friendly mesh network, according to Asus.

Asus AiMesh network can feature speeds up to 5300Mbps. Users can also create a Wi-Fi network with singular or multiple SSIDs.

Asus has released a list of supported routers that can be found here. The company also mentions that more routers will join the list throughout 2018.

For those who don’t know, a mesh network allows users to utilize multiple physical routers in order to combine and create a stronger and more reliable Wi-Fi signal throughout their entire home.

Google recently released its own mesh network router called Google Wi-Fi. Other companies like Linksys, Asus and a variety of other router manufacturers are also moving into the mesh router space.

Image Credit: MaxPixel

The post AiMesh adds ‘Mesh Mode’ to many standard Asus routers appeared first on MobileSyrup.

I have been in situations where I was carefully composing a photo with manual control and somebody else was coming from behind, quickly pointed his iPhone at the subject and snapped a photo that was probably better than mine. And still, there are those who like to shoot first and edit later. Halide gives them all the controls they need and stores the image as RAW so they can be tweaked in numerous ways later without losing any information.

More >

Morten Rand-Hendriksen's talk and demo on Gutenberg from WordCamp US is an excellent overview of where it is, where it could go, and some VR stuff thrown in there for fun. Definitely worth the watch.

In a support article, Apple has acknowledged that the recently-disclosed Meltdown and Spectre exploits, which affect virtually every CPU in computers, mobile devices, and other platforms, also impact every Mac and iOS device. Although there are no known exploits of the vulnerabilities, Apple advises that users proceed with caution and download apps from trusted sources only.

Mitigations to defend against Meltdown have already been shipped by Apple in iOS 11.2, macOS 10.13.2, and tvOS 11.2. watchOS is unaffected by Meltdown. Development of mitigations for both exploits is ongoing and new defenses will be released to each Apple OS as they become available.

The support article published by Apple provides a high-level explanation of how each exploit works. If there’s any good news to be found in the widespread concern caused by these exploits it’s that Apple says the recently-released mitigations have no measurable impact on performance:

Our testing with public benchmarks has shown that the changes in the December 2017 updates resulted in no measurable reduction in the performance of macOS and iOS as measured by the GeekBench 4 benchmark, or in common Web browsing benchmarks such as Speedometer, JetStream, and ARES-6.

Apple’s support document also reveals that Spectre can be exploited in web browsers, including Safari, using JavaScript. Apple is working to address the problem with an update to Safari that will be released in the coming days. Apple says that:

Our current testing indicates that the upcoming Safari mitigations will have no measurable impact on the Speedometer and ARES-6 tests and an impact of less than 2.5% on the JetStream benchmark.

The gravity of the exploits, which affect virtually all computing platforms, cannot be understated, but it’s reassuring that the initial mitigations released and those coming in the days ahead should have little or no impact on performance. It’s also worth noting that this is probably not the last we’ll hear about Meltdown and Spectre. As Apple notes:

We continue to develop and test further mitigations within the operating system for the Spectre techniques, and will release them in upcoming updates of iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS. 

→ Source: support.apple.com

mkalus shared this story from Techmoan's YouTube Videos.

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So far, the only emerging upside of Brexit is to have a new-in-my-lifetime-but-old-in-others coloured passport. So in order to help out, I thought I’d throw my own design into the mix.

This is the third in the facepalm thinkery series, following this and then this. Given the current state of things, I’m sure there’ll be many more to come…

The post A post-brexit passport appeared first on Visual Thinkery.

Hey, it’s still the first week in January. That means there’s still time for me to pontificate on my favorite listens of last year. I’ll include the list at the end, with links to the album or artist’s Bandcamp site where possible. Another unexpected delight this year: I found myself buying more music from that […]

2017 was confusing, maddening, wonderful, and bittersweet. It was a year that challenged me to be more conscious – that we must still fight for democracy, equality, and even the idea of a collective, hopeful future. It was a year where I came face to face with my white, educated, Canadian, middle-class privilege. I learned when to speak out when it was necessary, and when it was important to hold back and to let others speak for themselves. It was a year to acknowledge and listen to other voices. I... Read More

The post On Making 2018 Count appeared first on Leanne Prain.

Originally published on the DTA Blog.

One of the many great elements of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is the film’s eye-poppingly gorgeous visual design.

With that in mind, super fan Quentin Lengele took it upon himself to recreate an explorable version of protagonist Rick Deckard’s apartment. The PC game, called ‘Blade Runner 9732’ (named after his unit number), is also fully playable with an HTC Vive virtual reality headset.

The virtual apartment sports everything from Deckard’s ESPER photo analysis machine to his armchairs, kitchen appliances and rain-covered balcony.

A free beta version is currently available on Google Drive, while the full version is set to hit Steam on January 7th. It’s worth noting that this is an unofficial and unsanctioned project, so it’s subject to being removed at some point in the future.

In the meantime, though, Lengele says he plans to add more features to the apartment, including Deckard’s flame Rachael.

Hopefully the project can live on and Lengele can create more Blade Runner-related content — wouldn’t it be neat to see Roy Batty’s beautiful “tears in the rain” monologue in VR?

Image credit: IMDB

Via: Engadget

The post ‘Blade Runner 9732’ lets you explore Rick Deckard’s apartment in VR appeared first on MobileSyrup.

The Vizio SB46514-F6 is our pick for the best soundbar because it comes the closest to re-creating a truly immersive, high-quality surround-sound experience while still offering the ease of use and convenient form that you want in a soundbar. The SB46514-F6 sounds great with both movies and music, and it has just about every feature and connection option you could want.

While yesterday’s Intel, AMD and ARM CPU vulnerabilities suggested that an entire generation of devices have been open to serious attack, it seems that companies have known about the flaws for some time.

Case in point, Google’s Project Zero security analysis team published a report on January 3rd, 2018 outlining the team’s efforts to mitigate CPU risks to Google products. What’s interesting to note is that the Project Zero team purports to have first learned about these security flaws “last year.”

“The Project Zero researcher, Jann Horn, demonstrated that malicious actors could take advantage of speculative execution to read system memory that should have been inaccessible,” reads an excerpt from a January 3rd, 2018 media release.

Google has also published a full list of products affected by the CPU security flaws, including Android, Google Apps, G Suite, the Google Chrome Browser, Google Chrome OS and a variety of Google Cloud Platform Products and Services.

“As this is a new class of attack, our patch status refers to our mitigation in many products (or wasn’t a vulnerability in the first place),” reads another excerpt from the same January release. “In some instances, users and customers may need to take additional steps to ensure they’re using a protected version of a product.”

The Project Zero team also said that its discovered three specific methods of attack, “which are effective under different conditions.”

“There is no single fix for all three attack variants; each requires protection independently,” reads another excerpt. “Many vendors have patches available for one of more of these attacks.”

Source: Google Security Blog

The post Google issues statement about CPU vulnerability, says it discovered the flaws ‘last year’ appeared first on MobileSyrup.

After months of waiting Samsung has finally unveiled its upcoming Exynos processor: the 9810.

We first found out about the upcoming chipset in November when the South Korean company announced it as a CES 2018 Innovation Award recipient.

According to Samsung, its Exynos 9810 processor is built on Samsung’s second generation 10 nanometer FinFET process and includes a third-generation CPU, a faster gigabit LTE modem and performs better image processing with deep learning-based software.

To break it down further, the processor features an eight-core CPU, four of which are third-generation custom cores which Samsung says can reach 2.9GHz while the other four optimize efficiency. In comparison, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 uses four cores to reach up to 2.8GHz.

One of the new functionalities Samsung is boasting about with the 9810 is its ability to accurately recognize people or items in photos for fast image searching and categorization. The processor also allows Samsung devices to scan faces in 3D hybrid detection which allows for more realistic face-tracking filters as well as stronger security when it comes to unlock devices with its face recognition — somewhat akin to the iPhone’s Face ID. However, Samsung notes it plans on keeping its iris and fingerprint scanners for added security.

The Exynos 9810’s LTE modem makes it easier to broadcast or stream videos at up to UHD resolution and stream in new formats, like 360-degree video.

Similar to the Huawei’s Kirin 970 and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845, Samsung’s chipset features a 1.2Gbps LTE modem, with a Cat.18 LTE modem to support up to 6x carrier aggregation for 1.2Gbps downlink and 200 megabits per second uplink speed.

Additionally the Exynos 9810 processor is faster and more immersive, according to Samsung, due to its dedicated image processing and upgraded multi-format code (MFC). It also uses more efficient image and visual processing and will demonstrate real-time out-of-focus photography in high resolution and brighter pictures in low light with reduced motion and blur.

Meanwhile, it supports video recording and playback at up to UHD resolution at 120 frames per second.

Samsung will feature its Exynos 9810 in its upcoming flagship smartphones, however, it’s currently unknown if the Galaxy S9 or Note 9 will feature the Exynos 9810 or Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 in Canada.

Source: Samsung

The post Samsung unveils Exynos 9810 chipset with iPhone X-like features appeared first on MobileSyrup.

mkalus shared this story from TorrentFreak.

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Since the advent of the first truly mass-market videogames consoles, people have dreamed about removing the protection mechanisms that prevent users from tinkering with their machines.

These modifications – which are software, hardware, or combination of the two – facilitate the running of third-party or “homebrew” code. On this front, a notable mention must go to XBMC (now known as Kodi) which ran on the original Xbox after its copy protection mechanisms had been removed.

However, these same modifications regularly open the door to mass-market piracy too, with mod-chips (hardware devices) or soft-mods (software solutions) opening up machines so that consumers can run games obtained from the Internet or elsewhere.

For the Nintendo Switch, that prospect edged closer at the end of December when Wololo reported that hackers Plutoo, Derrek, and Naehrwert had given a long presentation (video) at the 34C3 hacking conference in Germany, revealing their kernel hack for the Nintendo Switch.

While this in itself is an exciting development, fresh news from a veteran hacking group suggests that Nintendo could be in big trouble on the piracy front in the not-too-distant future.

“In the light of a recent presentation at the Chaos Communication Congress in Germany we’ve decided to come out of the woodwork and tease you all a bit with our latest upcoming product,” the legendary Team-Xecutor just announced.

While the hack announced in December requires Switch firmware 3.0 (and a copy of Pokken Tournament DX), Team-Xecutor say that their product will be universal, something which tends to suggest a fundamental flaw in the Switch system.

“This solution will work on ANY Nintendo Switch console regardless of the currently installed firmware, and will be completely future proof,” the team explain.

Xecutor say that their solution opens up the possibility of custom firmware (CFW) on Nintendo’s console. In layman’s terms, this means that those with the technical ability will be able to dictate, at least to a point, how the console functions.

“We want to move the community forward and provide a persistent, stable and fast method of running your own code and custom firmware patches on Nintendo’s latest flagship product. And we think we’ve succeeded!” the team add.

The console-modding community thrives on rumors, with various parties claiming to have made progress here and there, on this console and that, so it’s natural for people to greet this kind of announcement with a degree of skepticism. That being said, Team-Xecutor is no regular group.

With a long history of console-based meddling, Team-Xecutor’s efforts include hardware solutions for the original Playstation and Playstation 2, an array of hacks for the original Xbox (Enigmah and various Xecuter-branded solutions), plus close involvement in prominent Xbox360 mods. Their pedigree is definitely not up for debate.

For now, the team isn’t releasing any more details on the nature of the hack but they have revealed when the public can expect to get their hands on it.

“Spring 2018 or there around,” they conclude.

Team-Xecutor demo

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons

Each year, Facebook’s co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg issues himself a personal challenge. 2018 is no different, and this year, Zuckerberg said that he plans on focusing on fixing some of the “important issues” that are caused by his company’s global dominance.

“The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot of work to do — whether it’s protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent,” wrote Zuckerberg, in a January 4th, 2018 Facebook post. “My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues.”

Zuckerberg further stated that he recognizes that his 2018 challenge might not seem like a deeply personal one, but that he believes he’ll “learn more by focusing intensely on these issues than I would by doing something completely separate.”

“These issues touch on questions of history, civics, political philosophy, media, government and, of course, technology,” said Zuckerberg. “I’m looking forward to bringing groups of experts together to discuss and help work through these topics.”

Zuckerberg’s latest post comes in the wake of major criticism lobbed at one of the world’s largest social networks.

Facebook’s former vice president for user growth Chamath Palihapitiya publicly told Stanford University business students that he believes that the social network created “tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.”

Additionally, the company spent much of 2017 addressing criticism that it didn’t do enough to mitigate foreign interference during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The company even went so far as to promise Canadians that it would help maintain the integrity of upcoming Canadian elections.

Facebook also teamed up with Ryerson University to launch the ‘Digital News Innovation Challenge,’ aimed at fostering journalism innovation in Canada.

Zuckerberg’s January 4th post further addressed the fact that “many people have lost faith” in Facebook’s promise to give people the power.

“With the rise of a small number of big tech companies — and governments using technology to watch their citizens — many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it,” said Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg concluded his post by stating “this will be a serious year of self-improvement and I’m looking forward to learning from working to fix our issues together.”

Source: Facebook

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What was  The Toronto Sun  thinking in running  a piece written by Doug Ford? Kudos to Ben Spurr who took to Twitter to say  “Postmedia publishes Doug Ford op-ed that falsely describes King St as a “car exclusion zone,” and falsely claims “millions” of drivers have been affected”.  Price Tags has previously written about the success of this demonstration project.

On the last day of 2017 the Toronto Sun published an opinion piece by City of Toronto Councillor Doug Ford that has more holes in it than a rusty carburetor in an Edsel. While the rest of the world has watched with fascination when Toronto found that you could actually take the majority of cars off Toronto’s downtown King Street and efficiently move more people faster and more safely in street cars,  Doug Ford got on board with his own set of truths. Very much like his late brother Rob Ford’s simplistic take on how to improve urban transportation (get rid of street cars, more money for roads) much of the information is based upon conjecture, not statistics.

“What I have heard and seen from small business owners is that sales have sunk to an all-time low, traffic has been driven away from the area and the neighbourhood has become less vibrant.Gridlock has become unbearable on neighboring streets, businesses are suffering devastating consequences and drivers are getting fined during the holidays…Where did Tory (the mayor of Toronto)  think the millions of motorists were supposed to go? How did he think that businesses could survive a 50% decrease in revenues? Why did he think it would be fair to hand out Tory Tickets of $110 and two demerit points? Is all of this worth a couple of minutes saved on the streetcar?…

The city is reviewing the project, but one of my biggest concerns is that the facts will be glossed over. To say that businesses aren’t hurting, or that travel times on neighbouring streets have only increased marginally is scandalous. A City Hall journalist conducted a test drive and results showed travel times on adjacent streets more than doubled — and that was outside of rush hour….If congestion on neighbouring streets does not go down, and if business revenues are still sagging, and if the streetcar travel times do not decrease beyond a couple of minutes, then Tory needs to wake up, stop using commuters as pawns and scrap this ridiculous King car and business exclusion zone.”

Despite the fake facts and the calling out on the unsubstantiated claims by a reputable member of the Toronto press, the editorial is still on-line in its original form. Twentieth century concepts of motordom still reign supreme in Toronto. You can view a video with Doug Ford on King Street here.

Tesla has delivered more than 100,00 vehicles in 2017.

The American electric automaker announced it delivered 101,312 Model S and Model X vehicles in 2017, a 33 percent increase over 2016 figures.

Tesla’s fourth quarter report shows it delivered 29,870 cars within the quarter. 15,200 of the cars were Model S, 13,120 were Model X and 1,550 were Model 3s.

In Tesla’s news release, the company said 2,425 Model 3s were made within the fourth quarter, which is about ten times as many as produced within the third quarter at the company’s Fremont, California facility.

Further, Model S and Model X production went down in the fourth quarter to make room for the Model 3. Meanwhile, the company announced it’ll have a slower-than-planned production for the Model 3 within the first quarter, with hopes of producing 2,500 per week within that period, with an even stronger goal of 5,000 per week in the second quarter.

“As a result of the significant growth in our production rate, we made as many Model 3s since December 9 as we did in the more than four months of Model 3 production up to that point,” the company said. “This is why we were not able to deliver many of these cars during the holiday season, just before the quarter ended.”

Tesla only counts a delivery if it is transferred to the customer and final paper work is completed.

Source: Tesla

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mkalus shared this story from heise online News.

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From my colleague in Australia Greg Vann  comes this article from the World Economic Forum on trees. We all know that trees are wonderful. They eat carbon dioxide. They give off oxygen. They change the way we psychologically feel, and there’s evidence showing that being surrounded by trees is very good for your mental and physical health. So which city has the most trees?

Trust the MIT’s Senseable Lab partnership with the World Economic Forum to come out with “Treepedia”. Using Google Street View a “Green View Index” was created with “a rating that quantifies each city’s percentage of canopy coverage based on aerial images. ”  You can take a look at the Treepedia index here.

And below are the top-ranking cities for trees, with the percentages expressing the amount of tree coverage:

15. Tel Aviv, Israel — 17.5%

14. Boston, Massachusetts — 18.2%

13. Miami, Florida — 19.4%

12. Toronto, Canada — 19.5%

11. Seattle, Washington — 20%

10. Amsterdam, Netherlands — 20.6%

9. Geneva, Switzerland — 21.4%

8. Frankfurt, Germany — 21.5%

7. Sacramento, California — 23.6%

6. Johannesburg, South Africa — 23.6%

5. Durban, South Africa — 23.7%

4. Cambridge, Massachusetts — 25.3%

3. Vancouver, Canada — 25.9%

2. Sydney, Australia — 25.9%

1. Singapore — 29.3%

 

 

You can learn more about Treepedia from one of its developers, Juan Pocaterra on this YouTube video.

 

 

In a pretty dramatic move to halt air pollution, The New York Times reports on China boldly ceasing the production of car models in China that do not meet fuel economy standards for the country. They stopped over 500 different car models effective January the 1st. This suspension impacted both domestic and foreign  automobile ventures, including partnerships with Volkswagen and Benz.

China produced 28 million vehicles in 2016 and also has scores of smaller-scale car factories. While there is some credence that this new policy  centralizes and consolidates the car industry,  “the measure pointed to a mounting willingness by China to test forceful antipollution policies and assume a leading role in the fight against climate change. The country, which for years prioritized economic growth over environmental protection and now produces more than a quarter of the world’s human-caused greenhouse gases, has emerged as an unlikely bastion of climate action after President Trump’s rejection of the Paris climate agreement.”

China is also providing incentives for power companies to operate more cleanly by creating the largest carbon market. While the Chinese government currently has bonuses to produce “clean energy” vehicles, these will be replaced by quotas for clean energy vehicles in 2020. When you have the biggest consumer demand for cars in the world, global automobile manufacturers  respond in a relatively positive way.  As Michelle Krebs an AutoTrader Group analyst observed ” “The simple fact that China is the biggest market means automakers will be accommodating“. China is now leading the way in auto emission policy, unlike the United States which is looking at relaxing tailpipe emission standards.

This YouTube video from CGTN from January 2017 shows that at that time only one in fifty cars in China were electric, and unfortunately portrays electric vehicles as “cheaper than taking transit”. It does illustrate how remarkable China’s new policy is in demanding the adaptation from automakers to clean energy vehicles in a relatively short time frame.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfuck Your Habitat @TeamUfYH
I agree with so much of this, mainly that being “lazy” or “messy” doesn’t define who you are as a person. They’re t… twitter.com/i/web/status/9…

In the category of the Gordie Award for  Work with Biggest Planning Impact, Price Tags Vancouver unanimously chose the ambitious New Ten Year Housing Strategy as announced by the City of Vancouver.

In a city where the meteoric rise of the price of housing has completely outstripped the salary ability  of Vancouver workers,  Chief Planner Gil Kelley has brought forward a plan to build 72,000 new homes with housing going to families making 80,000 dollars or less and single person households making less than 50,000 dollars. Forty per cent of housing will be for families and 65 per cent of all housing will be for renters.

This ambitious housing plan was created after 14 months of dialogue and research. Development processes will also be streamlined to expedite the housing work. In a city where the gap between what people make and what they can rent or buy is so proportionately inequitable, this is a much-needed intervention to provide housing for everyone.

 

 

 

 

 

Say what you will about Dell’s XPS 13 2-in-1 convertible laptop, but the company’s original XPS 13 device remains one of the best — if not the best — Windows laptop currently available.

The XPS 13 is slim, it’s beautiful, it’s powerful, and, most importantly, it’s quite well-priced for the parts it packs.

Now, it looks like U.S.-based hardware manufacturer Dell is ready to introduce a welcome update to its XPS 13 computer. Dubbed the ‘New XPS 13,’ Dell’s latest laptop retains a familiar look and feel, while introducing a computer with brand new colour schemes, new materials, a refined InfinityEdge display, as well as Intel’s latest eighth-generation chips.The base model New XPS 13 starts at $1,399.99 CAD. It comes with an eight-generation Intel i5 processor, Windows 10 Home, 4GB of RAM, 128GB of solid state storage and a 52WHr battery that Dell purports can deliver an insane 20 hours of battery life (which will absolutely need to be tested). The device’s 13.3-inch display is also a Full HD 1920 x 1080 panel.

Additionally, the laptop ships with two Thunderbolt 3 ports, a DisplayPort, one USB-C 3.1 port, an SD card reader, a headphone jack and a Noble lock slot. Users can also log into the New XPS 13 using a fingerprint sensor embedded within the laptop’s power button

The latest Dell laptop comes in two new colour options — rose gold and white. However, Dell says that its white model New XPS 13 doesn’t simply introduce a new colour scheme — it’s almost a brand new computer entirely.According to Dell, “when turning our XPS white, we strived to achieve elegance and invested more than a dozen people, 11,520 hours and 50 trials to create a new system that was as stunning inside and out.”

“The Dell design team didn’t want to simply paint a system white — they wanted to use authentic materials and make sure the system looked as beautiful on day 1,000 as it does on day one,” reads an excerpt from a Dell media release.

While the black New XPS 13 retains the original’s carbon fibre accoutrements, the white version introduced a new crystalline silica material “with the white colour literally woven in, like a fabric, in nine composite layers.”

The new white model is supposed to be as “durable as it is beautiful” and also features titanium oxide and UV and stain-resistant coatings in order to avoid staining.

“In fact, if you get a pen mark or other stain on the white interior, you can just wipe it off,” reads another excerpt. “And with a heat resistance superior to metal, woven glass fiber also stays cooler to facilitate longer performance.”In addition to these new materials, Dell also boasts that the New XPS 13 features an InfinityEdge display that is 30 percent thinner than the previous model. The New XPS 13 is also a mere 2.7 pounds.

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