The End is Nigh, Part 2

16. June, 2013

A while ago, I asked whether wars on water, burning fossil fuel or air conditioning will kill us first.

Turns out it’s probably air conditioning.

Currently, we’re facing a couple of problems. We’re polluting the oceans with plastics, stressing many strands of the food chain and fish much more than we should. Sounds bad but we’ll run out of oil for plastics before we can poison everything and fishing fleets will quickly disappear with their prey – along with a few million people. So that sucks but it’s not a big problem in the sense that it’ll kill us – it will most likely resolve itself by becoming uneconomical.

Same goes for burning fossil fuels. We have a lot of them but the amount is finite and we’ll eventually run out of them. In a few years, the effect on the environment will put a lot of strain on the global economy. We’ll lose ships and planes in storms or they can’t even leave port. But again, as soon as this happens, the supply of fossil fuels will dry up since the platforms to make them available won’t be able to survive the weather we created.

Water? There will be wars over water but they will be pretty local. Israel, for example, will have to build many desalinating plants. And terrorists will love to blow them up. But water is on the radar since everyone involved is aware that access to water is so important.

AC is going to kill us? I must be kidding, right?

No.

First of all, no one believes that air conditioning is a problem. But think about it:

  1. Asia is mostly tropical. People are getting more rich and demand better living conditions.
  2. AC need a lot of electricity which comes from mostly from fossil fuel
  3. The coolants will heat up the planet much more efficiently than any other gas we produce as soon as it leaks and it will – most people in Asia know the concept of recycling but they dump their broken stuff in the forest just like we did a few years ago.
  4. Staying cool is essential to be productive and to be able to concentrate. It’s not (only) a luxury.

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Posted by digulla

Google Reader is Going Away

5. June, 2013

I’m looking for a replacement of Google Reader because it’s being shut down July 1, 2013. People don’t seem to be interested in the petition.

So far, I haven’t found a useful replacement.

Feedly has no bearable support for tagging (the tag editor is a joke, tags can’t be sorted with drag&drop, adding new tags is a pain, you have only a single tag per article and no tagging via the keyboard).

But the worst bug is that Feedly will randomly refresh the page. This means: You are reading an article and in the middle of it, Feedly will throw it away and replace it with some random, new article. To add insult to injury, there is no easy way to get the lost article back since it will now be in the “has been read” state. Even when you read articles in the headlines-only mode, you can lose an interesting article because Feedly sometimes refreshes the list before you can open it.

From the horde of online readers, Feedly was one of the best. The Old Reader? Great … if you don’t need tagging. I have five years worth of tags.

NewsBlur is … I don’t know. After half an hour, I still haven’t figured out how to add feeds, how to navigate them, let alone how to read articles.

Bloglovin. I need a RSS reader, not a fashion statement.

*sigh*

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Posted by digulla

Windows

28. May, 2013

It’s time again for a rant.

There are people out there who believe that Windows is a “professional” OS.

Okaaaayyyy …

Let’s not bother to discuss what “professional” might mean but I can guarantee you, Windows is anything but “professional.” The reason is quite simple: It’s an OS for everyone. For the average computer user. Professionals use professional tools. They know their stuff, they don’t play with average stuff. You think anything about, say, a Formula One car is average? Even the finish is optimized for weight. Average cars clog the streets, professional cars can haul 400 tons and each tire costs $35’000 alone.

I have a friend who works in a garage. He has a set of tool that costs more than I ever spent on tools my whole life. One day, he had to get nut off. It was already in bad shape from previous attempts by “enthusiastic amateurs”. So he took one of his metric hexagon nut sockets that was one number too small and a hammer and hammered it on the poor not. Afterwards, he screwed it loose, forced the nut out of it’s too tight housing and the tool was still intact – barely a scratch. That’s the difference between what local DIY sells you and “professional.”

Windows is optimized to run without complaints. Errors are deliberately hidden from the user since the average computer user simply can’t deal with them anyway.

I turned away from Windows almost 20 years ago and never looked back. Sure, not something that everyone could or should do. Linux still isn’t an OS for the average user (even though we have come a long way – I can almost always set up my twin-monitor system without having to grab a text editor). But then, I need professional tools.

My fellow students wrote 100 page master theses with Word. I remember them cursing all the time. And we were studying computer science. I did mine in LaTeX: 400 pages, 0 problems. Oh, and I had everything under version control. Not that I would recommend it for everyone. But maybe, just maybe you feel like Windows and other M$ products are wasting your time: Have a look at professional tools.

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Freak Angels Web Comic

27. May, 2013

Freak Angels is the story of 12 people with very special abilities – telepathy, telekinesis, healing, teleportation, going days without food and water. Six years ago, they were just 17. They were hunted. They were frightened. One was shot. They were scared. Angry.

They broke the world.

“This is what happened next.“

What I like: It’s a team effort, somewhat rough but fitting. The story is going slow but I found it so gripping that I read the whole six volumes in two days. Somehow, I found myself clicking and clicking and clicking. It’s addictive. Also, the artists aren’t afraid to show bloody violence when it’s necessary. But the violence is always a means to an end, not simply for the fun of it (as in a lot of the mainstream superhero comics these days).

The protagonists, 23 year old, have all developed ways to live with what they did, their guilt. This gives them wonderfully rough sides. They can be flippant in one moment and freak out the next. They struggle with their lives, with boredom, with what they are, what they could be. And all the time, life happens. Below everything is this typical British humor. Things go horribly wrong, lives are at stake and still, there is always this glimpse of hope.

Did you like Akira? Then this is for you.

And hey, it’s free. I paid money for comics that were a lot worse.

What I don’t like: I’m missing a donate button :-) I have too many comics already, I really don’t look forward to kill more trees just to give them some well deserved reward.

The navigation sucks. You can move easily between episodes (each 6 pages long) but there is no “next page” button. The buttons 1 to 6 to select the episode’s page are a bit small and at the bottom of the page, so I have to constantly scroll. Other web comics do that much better (Turbo Defiant, Cyantian Chronicles).

There is a quite lot of blood and gore. In a couple of scenes, you see people with their brains blown out, sometimes in more detail than you might like. As I said above, it makes sense but sometimes, I wished they’d tone it down a bit.

And lastly, a couple of small logic holes that made my wince. In a scene one of the Freak Angels takes a dive, comes back up and gets beaten over the head. The water was clear; how did he miss the second hull floating next to his own boat? Or the brains on it? It’s enemy territory after all, he should have been alert. But I didn’t get an explanation (and other noticed it as well), so it keeps bothering me.

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How Laws Against Child Pornography Protect Criminals

12. May, 2013

IMPORTANT: This article is about the short-term possession of images with naked children on them, not about the production, rape or abuse of children. It’s about the collateral damage created by founding legislation on (perceived) morality rather than evidence or common sense.

In his blog post “Three Reasons Possession Of Child Porn Must Be Re-Legalized In The Coming Decade” and the follow-up “Child porn laws aren’t as bad as you think. They’re much, much worse”, Rick Falkvinge offers his point of view why the current legislation regarding possession of child porn in many countries are hurting the victims and protecting the criminals. While I don’t share all his views, I agree with him that the current law hurts more than it helps.

Imagine you talk a walk in the park. You come around a corner and you see someone raping a child. What do you do? You could use your smart phone, make a picture (evidence) and call the police.

Bad idea. If you do this, you’ll go to jail. Why? Because you just produced and distributed child porn.

Let’s take this one step further. Imagine you wear Google Glasses. The moment you notice what’s in front of you, you’re already a criminal. The only way to avoid going to jail in this situation would be to delete all and any evidence that you have ever been there. Probably not what you want. Think about it: To avoid going to jail, you must not collect any evidence that could be used to convict the molester.

Why? Because in a mindless haste to close any loopholes in the laws, they were formulated in such a way that possession of pictures on which children are naked OR abused (whatever that actually means), no matter the circumstances, is punishable with at least a few years of prison. Translation: Even if the judge thinks that you’re 100% innocent, he still has to send you to prison because the law doesn’t give him any leeway.

You might be wondering why I don’t link to the second article by Rick. Simple: The article contains two images which are, under current law, child pornography. If you read the second article, you might commit a crime in some countries. I suggest to consult a lawyer before going there. Even by opening the article in your browser without ever reading it, you’re guilty of producing child porn because your browser downloaded a copy of the images onto your hard disk – that’s what the law says. Again, in some countries, the laws against child abuse do not give the judges any leeway in the verdict, no matter how silly, insane or stupid it would be to apply them in a certain situation.

Interesting situation, isn’t it? To know whether it’s legally safe to go a place on the web, you must not know anything that might there. Ignorance is no excuse in law. Moreover, even court lets you go, your reputation will be shot.

Rumor has it the second image is a very famous picture from the Vietnam war; it shows children fleeing after a Napalm bombing. You can probably buy a copy in your local poster shop. And yes, you have probably seen this image before. I saw it in school, I think. Today, it might get our teacher into jail for showing child pornography to minors. Wikipedia has an article under “Vietnam war” which also contains the image; don’t read that article or you might end up in jail – that’s why I didn’t add a link. On the COPINE Scale, this image would probably be a 10 meaning or a 5 on the SAP scale – if that was found on your computer, the punishment would be in the top range of what the law allows.

If you live in a country where there are strict laws against such images (see links below), you should make sure that your pre-adult children don’t make pictures of themselves in the nude. That’s production of child pornography. If they copy the images on their own mobile phone, computer, laptop, that’s distribution. If anyone ever finds out, they will go to jail for several years. Again, the laws have been formulated in such a way that common sense can’t interfere.

If you live in such a country (like the USA, Sweden or Germany), now would be a good time to make up your mind if that is actually what you wanted.

Related articles:

 

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Posted by digulla

Human Impact on Earth

10. May, 2013

Most of us know that human life has an enormous impact on Earth (and especially on the conditions that allow human life on this precious world) but it’s one thing to “know” and another to “see”.

Google has released a new service for the Earth Engine which offers a time-lapse of an area of Earth’s surface over the last 28 years, for example coal mining in Wyoming (those structures you see are about 10 km across).

Or Amazon Deforestation, Brazil. The image spans about 500 km.

Next time someone comes up “there is no scientific … global warming …”, you have something to show them.

And there is no scientist who doubts climate change. The only questions left are how much it will change, how much of that change is because of human greed and what the exact consequences will be.

 

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Posted by digulla

Growing Furniture

9. May, 2013

When Peter F. Hamilton wrote about the Edenists growing space stations out of asteroids by planting an artificial, genetic-engineered egg on it, it was science fiction.

Carl de Smet found a way to make foam form into a chair when heated in an oven. The next step in the design is to make the surface of the chair re-mold itself at body temperature - the chair will deform to adjust to the shape of the person sitting on it.

Related:

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Posted by digulla

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