The Tyranny of the -1

2014-08-05

I'm sure someone else has already written about this far better than me but this has really been bugging me lately. That is, that +1s or Likes or even more specifically −1s seem like they're squashing discussion.

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We should NOT celebrate Columbus Day

2013-10-13

Reference: Columbus Day

Jill: "TIL Columbus didn't discover America nor did he or anyone else at the time think the world was flat. He was an awful awful man. He tortured people, raped and sold little girls, and directed the killing of thousands of people."

John: "So?"

Jill: "So we should probably stop celebrating Columbus Day and maybe consider renaming Columbus Avenue in San Francisco back to Montgomery Street."

John: "But it's tradition. I remember learning 'In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue'"

Jill: "Actually the holiday is only from 1930s and the street had its name changed in 1909"

John: "Seems silly to rename them now"

Jill: "What if it they were Hilter Day and Hitler Avenue?"

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Season 5 of Breaking Bad Sucks

2013-10-10

I wasn't the huge fan of Breaking Bad. I watched but had issues with it. Jessie's repeated bad luck rubbed me as unbelievable for example. The airplane accident had no point. Tons of things happened because people didn't talk which is a huge cliché

But, overall, it was fun to watch and seemed to make internal sense. That is until Season 5.

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Stockhom Subways

2013-08-19

Being from California I don't have a lot of experience with subways I suppose but I have used Tokyo's subways for 7 years and so when trying to use the subways in Stockholm it's obvious I'm going to compare them.

Sweden is supposedly known for design but apparently that's only visual design and not functional design because the subways are sorely lacking in functional design.

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The Slow Death of non-English Languages by Navigation Software

2013-07-12

Ok, that title is a little off. What I really want to do with this post is help to make it a priority for companies that make navigation and or text to speech software a little less English specific (or whatever language it's built for). What am I talking about?

Lots of people use GPS navigation services either built into their car or on their phone. Those navigation services almost always read out the directions. "In 300 feet, turn left at main street" for example.

The problem is that text to speech software doesn't understand pronunciation and so arguably it's slowly killing off the correct pronunciation by teaching everyone, especially children, the wrong way to pronounce things.

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Match.com Needs to Update!!!

2013-07-12

I know no one will read this, especially from Match.com but... Match.com is probably the oldest and claim to be the biggest internet dating service. Whether or not that's true I don't know. I've been on it since they started. So long I have a free account from when they first offered accounts. ⭐️

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A World with very little Privacy

2013-06-04

There's a lot of interest in the surveillance society. People don't like it. Or I should probably say some vocal people don't like it. There might be plenty of people on the "I've got nothing to hide so I think it's good" side of the aisle though I'm not sure I know many. This usually comes up in discussion of video cameras placed outdoors. It also comes up in discussion of police having drones. Lately it's come up in discussion of Google Glass.

I'd like the try to consider what the possible positives are rather than the negatives.

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Digital Camera Makers Deserve to Die

2013-03-21

Sony (and probably the other camera makers) deserve to go bankrupt. They've had years to work on digital cameras and yet they still don't have a clue what software is about.

Case in point, how well iPhone takes pictures. Sure the sensor is tiny so at some level the quality of input has to be lower but so much software is being applied to make take the data from the sensor and make a great picture.

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emoji (絵文字) Picture Characters

2013-02-25

Emoji (pronounced eh−moh−jee) are iconic characters first introduced in Japanese cell phones in the early 2000s. At first different carriers each made up their own set of icons. NTT started off with a few. Then if I remember correctly J−Phone added many more than NTT to try to entice users to their system. Japanese, especially young Japanese women love using emoji and love to send messages to their friends full of them.

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A World With No Privacy

2013-01-23

It annoys the crap out of me when someone tells me I can't take a picture. Examples: I go into a department store. I want to take a picture of some cool merchandise that I want to show some friends. The clerk comes up and says "no pictures". I'm at a festival. Someone is selling some cool art/t−shirts whatever. I want to take a picture but am told "no pictures". In Customs there are signs everywhere, "No photography".

Well, if you've seen Google's Project Glass or things like Looxcie you can see a glimpse of the future. Those devices are always recording and while that might be the next generation of gadget, the one after that is something actually embedded in your eye or head or maybe even just contact lens that have a camera in them.

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