Tom Kent falsely claims that, "The argument for lowercasing Internet is that is has become wholly generic, like electricity and the telephone." Here's a thought experiment: I'll create a few disconnected networks, interconnect them, but *not* to the Internet. By definition, any set of interconnected networks is an internet (but not *the* Internet). Then I'll sell a service that lets people access my internet... which lacks Google, Wikipedia, and many other things. I bet he'll suddenly find that "the Internet" is *NOT* generic - it is a *specific* set of interconnected networks, which has a proper name. Governments still routinely create interconnected networks that use TCP/IP, but do *NOT* connect to the Internet - especially when security is critical. AP may be unaware of this, but it's still true. Upper/lower casing in the end isn't THAT critical. The REAL problem is that too many reporters do not understand what they're reporting about, nor do they check their sources to find out. The difference between "Internet" and "internet" have been documented for decades. Failure to understand, and failure to check sources, is the REAL problem here.

I think a lot of Android users would like a phone that (1) gets security updates in a timely way, (2) has reasonably current features, (3) is generally trustworthy, and and (4) isn't force-loaded with lots of uninstallable crapware. Android is a nice OS, but a lot of the smartphone manufacturers seem to assume that users don't care about these things.

I think a great measure would be the percent (or number) of days in the year where there were no publicly-known unfixed vulnerabilities. Many phones still have Stagefright vulnerabilities - there were changes that fixed some Stagefright vulnerabilities, but NOT all of them, and thus the phones are still vulnerable.

Wake me up later when something important happens. The fine article says: "The non-binding treaty, approved in Paris in December after years of U.N. climate negotiations, aims to slow the rise of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, blamed for putting Earth on a dangerous warming path." A "non-binding treaty" doesn't actually do anything, other than create photo opportunities.

Speed reading is awesome, but there's more than one speed. There's at least "speed with full comprehension", and "skimming to get the gist". I strongly recommend training yourself, overtime, to increase both speeds. You CAN'T do this all at once, but you can train your brain to recognize words more quickly. I used a training device so that I could recognize individual words more quickly, and that really helps you to read more quickly with full comprehension. Basically, as brain gets faster recognizing individual words, you'll naturally read faster with full comprehension. (You should also know how to sound out unfamiliar words, but familiar words should be recognzied quickly.) When you're skimming to get the gist, it's more about strategy - figuring out what parts of the text you need to read first (in most technical documents you read the abstract carefully, then skim the conclusions, then skim the introduction if looks like it might be useful.

I also recommend training listening speed. I listen to lots of podcasts, and I've slowly increased my listening speed by +10% over time. I can now listen to podcasts, with full comprehension, at 2x through 2.5x (depending on the original speed of the speakers).

Your brain can be trained to do things more quickly, but you have to train it. It's worth it.

Redox is based on a microkernel: http://www.redox-os.org/book/b... They seem to be emphasizing a very small number of system calls, and making "everything a URL" (instead of everything a file): http://www.redox-os.org/book/b... I'm skeptical this will get very far, but let 'em try!

I think he has a point. Most people (especially non-technical people) primarily only post and interact with others using sites owned by strangers (typically big companies). Just look at the URLs - is the domain is owned by someone other than the poster? If it is, then that other organization decides what you can do or not do. I've long owned my own domain, and I can post what I please on my webiste. If I want to move sites, I can just move hosting organization - the URLs come with me, because I own the domain. I don't think the problem is the existence of big companies at all - the problem is the difficulty of exiting. I don't mind others hosting my material as long as I can leave. If you can't practically leave, then you're no longer in control. Currently it's impractical always own the domain, but even in those cases, it's worth considering the exit cost. For example, git makes it *easier* to move to other hosting organizations (though by no means trivial).

It's a good thing that computers can't make lifelike images and that no pictures of people are on the Internet. Oh, wait, those assumptions might not be true. Look, all authentication systems have weaknesses, but this one seems designed to be trivial to circumvent. Ugh.

That is an awesome summary. I just put that in slide set 1 of graduate class materials on developing secure software: http://www.dwheeler.com/secure...

because you people made it illegal for teachers to live in your area

Strawman. No one made it illegal to be a teacher (or fireman or whatever), and no one made anyone take that job either. If it's too expensive to live in SF as a teacher or fireman, then teachers and firemen start to disappear. If they are important, then their local salaries will get raised until they stop disappearing. That's how economics works.

Now clearly this causes lots of undesirable dislocations. But the fundamental problem here, as far as I can tell, is that SF's government appears to have discouraged building new housing, and been depending on mechanisms like rent controls which have KNOWN serious problems. You can pretend economics doesn't matter, but it does, and it causes lots of easily predictable effects. The SF city government appears to have let a problem fester, with (again) predictable consequences. It is entirely appropriate to be sympathetic to the many people harmed by the SF government's bad policies. Yes, they need help, and I think they SHOULD get help. But part of that help needs to be acknowledging that ignoring economics doesn't work.

We're talking past each other; let me try again. No one is saying, "you may not live in SF". Anyone can live in SF, as long as you can pay for it. The problem is that SF housing costs more than many can afford. There's no human right to $500/month rents in SF. You may believe that it's good policy, and that's a different question. I suspect that SF has a long history of pretending that economics don't apply to its housing, based on the little I've read about it.

No. There's no fundamental human right to live in San Francisco. It would be a problem if people weren't allowed to leave San Francisco, but that is not the problem in this case.

My heart goes out to those evicted, or fearing eviction. To my untrained eye, the problems seem like an obvious result of supply-and-demand. SF has limited land, hasn't built much in the way of housing for a long time, and is in high demand. Of course the housing prices will go way up. The only solutions are to make it less desirable (lower demand), or increase housing (increase supply). Here's an interesting article: https://medium.com/@Scott_Wien...

Other cities have done this, e.g., DC has aggressively added new units.

There's no need for a formal legal letter developed by a lawyer. This is straightforward. Send an email to your boss and say, "May I please release these code improvements to this open source software under their respective licenses?" If he says yes, then keep the email - and perhaps better, post it publicly somewhere. Your boss can change his mind, but that doesn't change anything. If you buy a car, and a year later say "hey, I've changed my mind", you don't suddenly get your money back. As long as there's no initial deceptions, or something illegal about an agreement, then agreements stay that way. If he says no, well, that's that. Sometimes organizations to silly things, but it's their legal right to do silly things. Caveat: I'm not a lawyer. But I don't see why this needs to be complicated.