The Offline Report

Tuesday April 10, 2018 Debris flow prevention will be tough this year in Mendocino.    newsmakerswithjr.com A programmer does a podcast to describe no-code servlerss software, faas functions as a service.    packetpushers.net A mortgage program in Atlanta misleads mortgate payers into thinking they'll own the home.    theatlantic.com A writer asserts case there was a housing shortage during the 2008 crash.    mercatus.org Monday April 9, 2018 New York city started composting last year with special chew-resistant waste cans and raccoon-proof lids.    nytimes.com Ongoing story we never post links to: war in Syria. Devastating chemical attack last weekend.  A rag-picker's life on 1881-era Mulberry Street.    ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com Sunday April 8, 2018 A Twitter user in Pakistan declared April 1 "April Cool's Day" encouraging friends to plant trees, which absorb CO2, to "make April cool!" (Can we mov...

Toronto journalist David Sax authored in 2016 " Revenge of the Analog ." Sax, while a youthful tech investor himself when his book went to press, was not convinced by that day's conventional wisdom paper was going away or vinyl records were stodgy relics of sound. The reader travels well-researched passages from London-based Cereal magazine editors to sources in New York and other western hot spots. After energetic chapters "Revenge of Film" "Revenge of Retail", Sax visits Silicon Valley to interview programmers and designers who "gushed about the unrivaled superiority of whiteboards, Post-it notes, and paper to take ideas from the mind into a tangible place." His varied impressions after visiting offices of companies including Twitter, Adobe, Google, Dropbox and Pinterest hew to theme. The author's focus pulls slightly off subject after visiting Facebook. First Sax covers Facebook's delayed embrace of analog: In late 2010, w...

Because I'm a programmer I never entered my exact birthdate into Facebook's system. I was working in ad tech at the time Facebook grew in popularity. Our ad tech company, a startup later acquired by a larger tech company known more within the industry than the public at large, strove *not* to store names or ages or ethnicities or addresses of people we profiled for ad-retargeting. We only stored certain shopping events - they buy baby clothes, the system (an ad-auctioning system, one run then by Yahoo a competing one by Google, that processes which ad to fill in which spaces as your browser loads a webpage) produces a related ad for, say, branded laundry detergent. I knew Facebook didn't need my birthdate, and I was uneasy they were forcing it from users to to proceed through registration. At some point Facebook had become so popular, several friends were no longer responding to my emails and phone calls. The few occasions I ran into them "IRL," in real lif...

Schneier on Security says  security is : Prevention  Detection  Response  1 - Prevent mistakes. 2 - Detect mistakes that poke through system #1. 3 - Respond to mistakes detected in system #2. (Prevention detection response, Schneier on Security:  https://www.schneier.com/news/archives/2013/01/bruce_schneier_it_is.html .) An Honest Ads Act for digital platforms would have to: PREVENT dishonest ad uploads (without "I'm 'Keith Kandidate' and I approve this message" or "Paid for by 'Robotic Rights Foundation'".) Minimum technology: a policy statement on the ad uploading screen. Provide users who DETECT dishonest ads means to flag them for review. Minimum technology: the upper right corner menu "this ad appears to violate Honest Ads Act" item. Require users flagging ad to jump through hoops (series of screens with questions, form fields to fill,) to cut false positive reports queue from growing too long.  RESPOND. A law must ...

Saturday April 7, 2018 California's iconoclast governor, Jerry Brown, turns 80 years old today. Seniors tell a radio reporter advice to pass to him for enjoying his golden years.    kqed.org NPR show RadioLab examines the ethics of new digital technology that edits and inserts video and audio with fabricated content.    radiolab.org Friday April 6, 2018 Thursday April 5, 2018 Some are calling for a Facebook replacement to start up.    nytimes.com How about the open web. A Computer security expert who hacked voting machines used in Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Florida and Pennsylvania, recommends paper ballots.    nytimes.com Wednesday April 4, 2018 An article or a flattering press release saying Google purchased and used only clean energy last year. What energy sources they used and how it was stored, the article does not say.    datacenterknowledge.com Youtube shooter's fathe...

Experienced drivers know "cruise control" has been a setting offered in various cars beginning in the 1980's, that drivers use on long stretches of straight highways or roads. Cruise control is a primitive form of autopilot , and today with both the Tesla Model X and self-driving cars on California roads , it's a reasonable time to review and extend common usability terms. I. Cruise Control II. Tesla's Autopilot Crash A. Steering Autopilot B. Chain of Command - Passive or Active Autopilot Deactivation C. Communicating Chain of Command D. Communicating Chain of Command - Speed & Steering "My Landcraft" "Your Landcraft" E. Ghost Cars I. Cruise Control The usability is incredibly simple . To set it, you keep your foot on the gas until the speedometer shows the speed you want the car to sustain, then you manually press that car's "cruise control" activation button on the car's dashboard or steering mount. W...

Of the 50 companies testing driverless car technology right now, the subset that applied -- and it's unclear from news reports how many did apply -- for a California permit may be able to legally "test" cars with no backup driver  in the car on all California roads beginning today April 2. These companies have been testing driverless cars by allowing them on roads with backup drivers. Starting today, they could "test" the cars without the backup driver in the car. The process of getting a permit includes few requirements, but two are  agreeing to notify "cities" before driving the cars within their bounds, and "providing a plan to interact with law enforcement" in case of an accident? It's not clear from news reports what the plan to interact with law enforcement must specify. Not required to get a permit to release a car with no driver onto public roads, is a plan to exchange phone numbers with another car's driver in the cas...

April 3, 2018 Notre Dame's Arike Ogunbowale's "buzzer beater" won the game. She has the best jump shots around.    youtube.com In a blog post, Tesla published its side of the Tesla Model X crash that killed 38-year-old father of two Walter Huang last Friday in Mountain View. The National Transportation Board, which will take a few months to complete an investigation then issue a report on the accident, is "unhappy" with Tesla for their disclosures.    cnbc.com In a move critics say could silence dissent, Malaysia passed a law banning fake news, punishable up to ten years in prison, before a presidential election.    apnews.com Sierra Pacific Industries accused of clear-cutting 20-mile tracts for saplings to start new tree farms.    sfchronicle.com April 2, 2018 Unlike public-sector surveillance Big Brother, private-sector surveillance Big Sister is "public enemy No. 1 of democracy," this OpEd says, she "watches you at home, listeni...

Greetings virtual friends. We made it to this website's final March 2018 episode of the DrawDown bookclub, meeting #4. Should we keep going? I. Review II. Microgrids, page 5 III. Industrial Recycling, page 160 IV. Next Week: Spring Break Should we bother? Meeting #1 began with reading the essay on page 52 of the DrawDown book, an essay also available at this no-paywall link: " Why Bother? "  And really, why bother hosting a club to discuss a textbook that talks about drawing carbon down - it's hopeless, right? Climate change, assault weapons, war, widening inequality, housing shortages, disruption, disaster capitalism, the dark web, corruption, the Panama Papers, ID thieves, cynicism, shouldn't we put down the textbook and party? Dinosaurs roamed the earth for so much longer than we've walked upright. And yet we could wrap this life on earth gig right quick. Foresters and geologists tell us we were due for another ice age beginning around 1960. Bu...

March 31, 2018 The Apple engineer who died in Tesla crash had complained about Autopilot:    abc7news.com Tesla says driver's hands were not on wheel at time of crash.    bloomberg.com Irish Pubs Open on Good Friday for 1st Time in 90 Years:     apnews.com March 30, 2018 Despite tensions over a border wall and immigration, AP reports the U.S., Mexico and Columbia are teaming up to fight smugglers at sea.    sfchronicle.com Recently fired director of Veterans Affairs says pro-privatization interests created political storm that led to his ouster.    stripes.com Fifty companies are testing driverless cars. A second editorial ran today urging caution when granting permits beginning April 2 in State must tap breaks:     sfchronicle.com offline Saba Mahmood - UC Berkeley scholar traced intersection of femnism and Islam.    sfchronicle.com March 29, 2018 An editorial urges state motor vehicle authoriti...