Category: Geek stuff

If it involves physics, math, computer science, electronics or has general geek cachet, this is the place for it.

Jacobs of the sharp pen

There is a wistful myth that if only we had enough money to spend – the figure is usually put at a hundred billion dollars – we could wipe out all our slums in ten years, reverse decay in the great, dull, gray belts that were yesterday’s and day-before-yesterday’s suburbs, anchor the wandering middle class and its wandering tax money, and perhaps even solve the traffic problem.

But look what we have built with the first several billions: Low-income projects that become worse centers of deliquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace. Middle-income housing projects which are truly marvels of dullness and regimentation, sealed against any buoyancy or vitality of city life. Luxury housing projects that mitigate their inanity, or try to, with a vapid vulgarity. Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums, who have fewer choices of loitering place than others. Commercial centers that are lacklustre imitations of standardized suburban chain-store shopping. Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.

Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. 1961. p. 4 (hardcover)

SSL glitches

I recently updated the SSL certificate used to provide encrypted access to this site via HTTPS. Chances are, nothing sensitive is passing between my server and your computer. Running the site this way by default does, however, increase the overall volume of encrypted traffic on the web, which may hamper some ubiquitous surveillance efforts.

In any case, if you see warnings from your browser about this site’s encryption, let me know. I am hoping they will clear on their own as various caches update.

Elected to the Toronto350 board

Tonight I was elected to the first board of Toronto350.org, which is in the process of incorporating as a non-profit.

Does anyone have experience being on the boards of non-profit organizations? I would be grateful if people could direct me toward some useful sources of information on how boards work and the responsibilities of directors. We also need to finalize our bylaws, so guidance along those lines would also be appreciated.

P.S. Toronto350.org has an ongoing donation drive. Donations will go toward our campaign work, which is all volunteer-driven.

Concept for improving email: StampMail.com

Often, email feels like an impossible torrent of mostly-unwanted information.

For a while, I have felt like one way to improve it would be to require refundable stamps for messages. In order to send you an email, a person might pay $0.50 or $1.00 for a virtual ‘stamp’. When you receive the message, you get to choose whether to refund the sender (perhaps minus a set fee for the email provider), or keep the value of the stamp yourself (again, minus a $0.05 or $0.10 cut).

If emails cost $1 each to send, there would be a lot fewer trivial ones. I doubt many people would totally replace their normal email with StampMail, but a lot might set up a parallel account for higher-priority messages.

Some spam will be profitable enough to make sending emails with stamps worthwhile. There are two responses to this. First, StampMail could be a lot more aggressive than existing email providers about banning accounts that are sending spam. Second, any spam you receive is more tolerable when it comes with a $0.90 to $0.95 payment.

Fry on language

The brilliant Stephen Fry on the balance between rule-following and tiresome pedantry in language use:

I admit that if you want to communicate well for the sake of passing an exam or job interview, then it is obvious that wildly original and excessively heterodox language could land you in the soup. I think what offends examiners and employers when confronted with extremely informal, unpunctuated and haywire language is the implication of not caring that underlies it. You slip into a suit for an interview and you dress your language up too. You can wear what you like linguistically or sartorially when you’re at home or with friends, but most people accept the need to smarten up under some circumstances – it’s only considerate. But that is an issue of fitness, of suitability, it has nothing to do with correctness. There no right language or wrong language any more than are right or wrong clothes. Context, convention and circumstance are all.

The latest nuclear fusion enthusiasm

I have written about nuclear fusion as an energy source before:

Periodically, however, there are news stories about supposed breakthroughs in fusion technology with the potential to be rapidly and affordably deployed, potentially curbing climate change.

I have seen enough of these stories in my life to be pretty skeptical, but this can be a thread for keeping track of and discussing them.

Here’s the latest: Lockheed says makes breakthrough on fusion energy project