"Yet it has been an eventful hundred days. We won’t delve into every executive order and diplomatic shift, but the beginning of the Trump administration has had a profound impact on technology, science, and the future course of the planet. Media, politics, and so much else seems to have entered a new era, and it’s a surreal one. Even more than before he took office, Trump permeates the culture: news, television, music, even things that aren’t direct responses to Trump get pulled into his gravitational field. Rollbacks of environmental regulations and aggressive tweeting about North Korea mean we can now worry about two apocalypses at once: nuclear winter and climate change. (The fact that tweets can raise the specter of nuclear war is new, too.) The wall may end up being more of a fence or maybe just a metaphor, but metaphors have power, and hostile rhetoric coupled with aggressive deportations means the future looks more isolated and less connected than ever. Meanwhile, one of the primary drivers of interconnection, the internet, is being divvied up by corporations."
What Trump’s first 100 days have meant for tech, science, and the future
Saturday, April 29, 2017
Friday, April 28, 2017
Thursday, April 27, 2017
Cassini Craft Beams Closest Images Ever Taken Of Saturn : The Two-Way : NPR
"No spacecraft has ever been this close to Saturn before. We could only rely on predictions, based on our experience with Saturn's other rings, of what we thought this gap between the rings and Saturn would be like," said Cassini Project Manager Earl Maize of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
All went according to the plan, Maize said, adding that after its dive, the craft that has now been in space for nearly 20 years "has come out the other side in excellent shape."
As we reported Wednesday, Cassini has now begun what NASA calls its Grand Finale, as it weaves its way between Saturn and its rings in a series of 22 dives that will culminate in what the agency describes as "a science-rich plunge into Saturn's atmosphere on Sept. 15."
Cassini Craft Beams Closest Images Ever Taken Of Saturn : The Two-Way : NPR
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Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Internet providers are thrilled with the FCC’s plan for weaker regulations - The Verge
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"FCC chairman Ajit Pai announced today that he’s proposing to do away with the regulatory classification his predecessor used to enact tough net neutrality rules.
Instead of classifying internet providers as “common carriers” under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, they’ll instead be classified as “information services” under Title I. That’ll subject them to much more lenient oversight — and naturally, internet providers are happy to hear it.
Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Charter, and Sprint all spoke out in support of the change after Pai announced it."
Internet providers are thrilled with the FCC’s plan for weaker regulations - The Verge
FCC chairman begins assault on net neutrality rules - CNET
"Federal Communications Chairman Ajit Pai has started to roll back Obama-era net neutrality regulation, setting up a showdown between tech companies and broadband providers.
In a speech in Washington on Wednesday, Pai outlined his plan for eliminating the utility style regulatory framework the FCC adopted in 2015, while still keeping principles to prevent broadband and wireless providers from favoring their own services over competitors'.
"When the FCC rammed through the Title II Order two years ago ... I voiced my confidence that the Title II Order's days were already numbered," he said during his speech. Pai said this is the first step in making that prediction a reality. "Make no mistake about it: this is a fight that we intend to wage and it is a fight that we are going to win."
Pai began circulating the proposal among the FCC commissioners today and will release it to the public on Thursday. The FCC will vote to formally open the proposal for public comment at the May 18 meeting. Pai expects the FCC to vote on a new set of rules that will return broadband to its "light touch" regulatory framework by the end of the year.
Under his proposal the FCC will throw out the legal underpinnings of the net neutrality order, which reclassified broadband as a so-called Title II utility service under the Communications Act. This means companies, like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, will no longer be subject to stricter regulation.
The agency will also abandon the general conduct rule, which allowed the FCC to look into the business practices of internet service providers on case-by-case basis to ensure they weren't harming competitors or consumers."
FCC chairman begins assault on net neutrality rules - CNET
In a speech in Washington on Wednesday, Pai outlined his plan for eliminating the utility style regulatory framework the FCC adopted in 2015, while still keeping principles to prevent broadband and wireless providers from favoring their own services over competitors'.
"When the FCC rammed through the Title II Order two years ago ... I voiced my confidence that the Title II Order's days were already numbered," he said during his speech. Pai said this is the first step in making that prediction a reality. "Make no mistake about it: this is a fight that we intend to wage and it is a fight that we are going to win."
Pai began circulating the proposal among the FCC commissioners today and will release it to the public on Thursday. The FCC will vote to formally open the proposal for public comment at the May 18 meeting. Pai expects the FCC to vote on a new set of rules that will return broadband to its "light touch" regulatory framework by the end of the year.
Under his proposal the FCC will throw out the legal underpinnings of the net neutrality order, which reclassified broadband as a so-called Title II utility service under the Communications Act. This means companies, like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, will no longer be subject to stricter regulation.
The agency will also abandon the general conduct rule, which allowed the FCC to look into the business practices of internet service providers on case-by-case basis to ensure they weren't harming competitors or consumers."
FCC chairman begins assault on net neutrality rules - CNET
Tuesday, April 25, 2017
Monday, April 24, 2017
Coding on a Chromebook – headmelted
Crouton
"Crouton is quite a creative way to utilize the developer shell on Chromebooks to provide a Debian chroot that can launch Linux apps on Chrome OS effectively side-by-side. It does this by broadcasting a framebuffer into a new window or tab, so that the user is interacting with the X11 application as if it were a Chrome window.
NOTE: Crouton is also what my Visual Studio Code for Chromebook builds and scripts are using under-the-covers to create the side-by-side scenario you see there, as I believe it currently offers the best trade-off for flexibility, compatibility and performance."
Coding on a Chromebook – headmelted
Sunday, April 23, 2017
Apple threatened to boot Uber from the App Store when it tracked users who deleted the app - The Verge
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"Apple CEO Tim Cook threatened to have Uber’s iPhone app removed from the App Store in 2015, when it learned that the ride-sharing company had secretly found a way to identify individual iPhones, even once the app was deleted from the phone, according to The New York Times.
The article is a wide-ranging profile of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, describing him as a leader who is willing to break and bend rules to get his way, even if it means running afoul of one of the world’s largest tech firms. The attitude has led to Uber’s rapid rise, but has caused the company to run into numerous crises. The article describes how Uber faced problems with account fraud while it was trying to expand into China, and devised a way to identify an individual iPhone, even after its app had been deleted from the phone, or if the phone had been reset."
Apple threatened to boot Uber from the App Store when it tracked users who deleted the app - The Verge
March for Science puts Earth Day focus on global opposition to Trump | Environment | The Guardian
"Hundreds of thousands of climate researchers, oceanographers, bird watchers and other supporters of science rallied in marches around the world on Saturday, in an attempt to bolster scientists’ increasingly precarious status with politicians.
Bill Nye the Science Guy on Trump: 'We are in a dangerous place'
The main March for Science event was held in Washington DC, where organizers made plans for up to 150,000 people to flock to the national mall, although somewhat fewer than that figure braved the rain to attend. Marchers held a range of signs. Some attacked Donald Trump, depicting the president as an ostrich with his head in the sand or bearing the words: “What do Trump and atoms have in common? They make up everything.”
More than 600 marches took place around the world, on every continent bar Antarctica, in events that coincided with Earth Day."
March for Science puts Earth Day focus on global opposition to Trump | Environment | The Guardian
March for Science puts Earth Day focus on global opposition to Trump | Environment | The Guardian
"Hundreds of thousands of climate researchers, oceanographers, bird watchers and other supporters of science rallied in marches around the world on Saturday, in an attempt to bolster scientists’ increasingly precarious status with politicians.
Bill Nye the Science Guy on Trump: 'We are in a dangerous place'
The main March for Science event was held in Washington DC, where organizers made plans for up to 150,000 people to flock to the national mall, although somewhat fewer than that figure braved the rain to attend. Marchers held a range of signs. Some attacked Donald Trump, depicting the president as an ostrich with his head in the sand or bearing the words: “What do Trump and atoms have in common? They make up everything.”
More than 600 marches took place around the world, on every continent bar Antarctica, in events that coincided with Earth Day."
March for Science puts Earth Day focus on global opposition to Trump | Environment | The Guardian
Is It Time to Break Up Google? - The New York Times
"This is a complex issue for which I see no easy answer. This is one area where I am a little leary of government regulation stifling innovation but on the other hand these giants can stifle innovation by new entrants into their respective industries.
"...We are going to have to decide fairly soon whether Google, Facebook and Amazon are the kinds of natural monopolies that need to be regulated, or whether we allow the status quo to continue, pretending that unfettered monoliths don’t inflict damage on our privacy and democracy.
It is impossible to deny that Facebook, Google and Amazon have stymied innovation on a broad scale. To begin with, the platforms of Google and Facebook are the point of access to all media for the majority of Americans. While profits at Google, Facebook and Amazon have soared, revenues in media businesses like newspaper publishing or the music business have, since 2001, fallen by 70 percent...."
Is It Time to Break Up Google? - The New York Times
Dumb, dumber and just plain stupid. Tech is one industry, especially software development, where America dominates the world. Ignorant Trump wants to cut off America's nose to spite it's face. Where would Google, Apple and Microsoft be without immigrants. Easy guess, virtually nowhere. Trump Signs Order That Could Lead to Curbs on Foreign Workers - The New York Times
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