This and that for your Thursday reading. – Alex Boutilier discusses the glaring gap between hype and reality when it comes to tech sector jobs. And Virgina Eubanks writes about the futility of expecting miracles from algorithms in allocating grossly insufficient funding for social programs. – Meanwhile, Dean Baker argues
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Politics and its Discontents: A Little Lighter Fare
For Luddites and nostalgia buffs everywhere: Recommend this Post
Continue readingThings Are Good: Using Machine Learning and Traffic Cameras to Replace Cops
Mass surveillance is everywhere in modern cities. Cameras are on every corner monitoring all sorts of activities, which led one person to think about using them to see if traffic cameras can be used to replace traffic cops. The short answers is yes. Personally, I don’t see mass surveillance as
Continue readingThings Are Good: Don’t Give up on Desalination
How we manage local water sources drastically alters how we grow crops and get drinking water. Cape Town is currently experience a water crisis that was in the making for decades because of poor water use policies. Desalination plants can help coastal cities provide water to their populace by separating
Continue readingThings Are Good: EU Launches Urban Mining Project
The European Union’s newest mining project focuses on urban areas throughout the continent. Their ProSUM project built a database of metals, chemicals, and materials brought into the EU market over the last ten plus years; the idea is that the produced goods can be “mined” again. It’s a really novel
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Why I Won’t Use A Cellphone – Philip Reed
On the level folks, I do use a cellphone – a smart phone even. But I’m not sure I like it. I most certainly enjoy the GPS that comes with it, as finding those schools tucked away in suburban hell can be very tricky, even at the best of times.
Continue readingThings Are Good: Copernicus Satellite Constellation Shares Big Climate Data
To some people space missions seem like a waste of resources, yet, thanks to many space missions we get scientific benefits. Launched by the European Union, the constellation of satirists known as Copernicus are constantly doing weather observations. Copernicus’ six families of satellites are scanning the planet to help understand
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Autonomous Vehicles
The dour feminist in me would like to point out that women are still struggling toward full autonomy in society after some 2000 years of ‘civilization’ ( :/ ), but the hot topic of self driving vehicles has crossed my desk and merits a comment or two with
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Just A Friendly Reminder – Fight for Net Neutrality
The fight to maintain Net Neutrality has been raging. You have not heard about it because it is not in the big companies interests for you to know about it. Think it isn’t a big deal? Please partake in the observed behaviour of said companies and remind yourself that these
Continue readingThings Are Good: Why Net Neutrality is Important
The current federal administration in the USA is really challenging norms in American society, the most recent attack is on net neutrality. Earlier this year the Trump administration tried to prop-up the profits of a handful corporations at the cost of internet freedom and failed because of actions taken by
Continue readingThings Are Good: NASA Designs Plane Modifications to Save Fuel
A seemingly simple change to airplane design can make a huge difference in fuel efficiency: add another engine. Yes, as counterintuitive as it sounds, NASA has figured out that by adding an engine to the rear of the plane the airflow of the plane itself can provide more thrust. Airplanes
Continue readingThings Are Good: Use a Browser Tab to Raise Funds for Charity
Donating money, time, or resources to charities makes the world a better place, but what if you don’t have any of those things to spare? If you’re using the internet via a web browser maybe you can donate some spare CPU cycles though. A new site called Donate Your Tab
Continue readingThings Are Good: Using a Blockchain for a Smarter Energy Grid
Blockchain technology stems from Bitcoin and provides a platform for change greater than Bitcoin itself. Researchers in the renewable energy industry have realized that blockchains can be used to replace outdated billing and tracking. Presently when a company produces energy it requires verification form other companies and each step eats
Continue readingThings Are Good: More People can Help the Blind: Be My Eyes Now on Android
Be My Eyes is an app designed to help people with low vision to get help from thousands of people around the world. It works by connecting people with vision problems to those with good vision. For example, a blind person might need to know which object is red so
Continue readingThings Are Good: Parkinson’s Research Using Massive Data Collected from 23andMe
23andMe hopes to find a cure for Parkinson’s through data mining. Parkinson’s is a degenerative neurological disorder that affects millions of people, and a cure is hard to find. The company collects gene samples from people who want to know their genetic lineage, which it then stores and uses for
Continue readingThings Are Good: Improved Air Conditioner Beams Heat Into Space
Air conditioner suck up a lot of energy in hotter months by dumping heat from inside buildings to the outside, ironically heating up neighbouring locations. A Stanford research team developed a more efficient cooling system for AC by pre-cooling water that circulates through the machine. It cools water during the
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Helping Hand for Shaky Mice
Your browser does not support the video tag. Almost everybody uses a computer daily, even those with involuntary muscle movements. The inability to effectively use a mouse as a result of a lack of muscle control bothered one programmer enough to create a solution. SteadyMouse is a Windows-only piece of
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Plight of the Millennials
Further explanation here. First, a bit about statistical norms and the normal distribution. In social sciences, for something to be considered a statistically significant characteristic of a group, it just needs to be present in about 68% of the population, or one standard deviation from the norm. There’s tons of
Continue readingThings Are Good: eBird App is Helping us Understand Birds
eBird is a mobile app that has been around for a few years and used around the world. As a result the app has been used to collect a rich dataset of bird sightings which provides enough data for researchers to have a very accurate understanding of some bird species.
Continue readingPostArctica: Ellis D. Kropotechev and Zeus, This marvelous time-sharing system. 1967
Stumbled on to this interesting little 16mm film made by a couple of Standford grad students in 1967. Some computer history and plenty of innuendo. Enjoy!
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