Leon Atkinson's Blog, page 16

Bitcoin is rebellion

Bitcoin recently hit an all time high of $31.9, rebounding from the crash in 2011. Tyler Cowen points out this behavior of a currency is unusual outside war or rebellion. I’m outside my expertise on this, but I have to ask, isn’t Bitcoin an act of rebellion? Isn’t something of an act of war against all states?

Good or bad news for Bitcoin? (Marginal Revolution)

With apologies to Scott Sumner, I say Bitcoin is a bubble.  Outside of war and rebellion, do “normal” new currencies behave this way?

Firefox 22 may reject 3rd party cookies by default

If you click through to the bugzilla item Block cookies from sites I haven’t visited, there’s a debate going on about it. The change essentially makes FF behave like Safari. There is some worry that FF, representing roughly 10x the traffic compared to Safari, could upset many people with this change. Would that result in a drop in Firefox usage? Maybe there non-advertising usages for 3rd party cookies, but it seems unlikely that the would be to domains you’ve never visited. Chrome, naturally, will remain uber-friendly to anything advertising related, so this might be a differentiator for Firefox.

On an unrelated note, Mozilla still uses Bugzilla and Mailman.

» The New Firefox Cookie Policy Web Policy

The default Firefox cookie policy will, beginning with release 22, more closely reflect user privacy preferences. This mini-FAQ addresses some of the questions that I’ve received from Mozillans, web developers, and users.

Contentment in your 70s due to closeness with your father

Meditate on this idea. You’re a father of two boys. The time you spend now building your relationships with them is enjoyable in the moment and clearly the right thing to do, but it also means you are helping creating superior happiness for them far in the future, when they are perhaps 75 years old. Their joy amplifies and radiates. This is how we bring peace to the world.

What makes for a good life?

Vaillant concludes that a loving childhood is one of the best predictors of mid and late-life riches: “We found that contentment in the late seventies was not even suggestively associated with parental social class or even the man’s own income. What it was significantly associated with was warmth of childhood environment, and it was very significantly associated with a man’s closeness to his father.”

Indie booksellers beg for a bailout

Unless there’s some trick I’m missing, I can’t see this working at all. If you sling the DOJ at Goliath, you must have an ironclad pragmatic argument–some political gain to trade. Why would anyone at the DOJ want to hurt Amazon?

Indie Booksellers Sue Amazon, Big Six over E-book DRM

Three independent bookstores have filed an antitrust class action lawsuit against the big six houses and Amazon charging that by signing agreements that call for the use of DRM on e-books sold through the Kindle, the online retailer and the publishers have combined to restrict the sale of e-books.

3-D printing attracts the copyright vampires

Are we really going to have this fight all over again with physical objects? I guess this is what vampires do–rise from the dead to drain our blood, in this case the lifeblood of our culture.

As 3-D Printing Becomes More Accessible, Copyright Questions Arise

Many people think 3-D printing could help spark a manufacturing renaissance in the U.S. — even President Obama highlighted this technology in his State of the Union address last week.

But as 3-D printers and 3-D scanners get cheaper, this nascent industry could be roiled by battles over intellectual property.

Not so long ago, a good 3-D scanner that could create accurate digital models of objects in the real world cost more than $10,000. Then, Microsoft released the Kinect — the video game controller that allows you to play games by just waving your hands.

“But it turned out that the Kinect was actually much more than that — it was a 3-D camera but one-hundredth of the price,” says Nicolas Burrus, co-founder of manctl, a 3-D scanning company.

Canonical TeamFortress Server

English: Steam logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Steam appeared in the default Ubuntu repositories last week and Canonical is (was?) hosting a TF2 server.

Canonical Host Weekend ‘TeamFortress 2? Server

Calling all gamers: Canonical are hosting a TeamFortress 2 server this weekend to mark the arrival of Steam for Linux on the Ubuntu Software Center.

TeamFortress 2 is free to download and play, so if you fancy some free fragging fun with fellow Ubuntu gamers here’s how.

NASCAR 2013

Tomorrow is the Daytona 500. Today, I want to put a stake in the ground about who I’ll follow this season. This isn’t who I think will do best. It’s who I wish would do best. That’s the fun of watching sports–picking a target for your irrational hopes for success. I always have a few drivers I follow because if you only follow one guy and he wrecks early, the race becomes uninteresting. Also, some drivers I find interesting do not drive full schedules. I like drivers who are tough, drivers who don’t give in to asinine critics. My kind of driver gets booed as they take their victory lap. I also like drivers who drive well on all courses, especially road courses. My favorite drivers do well at Sonoma.

Kurt Busch

Kurt has been my favorite driver since I started watching NASCAR. I initially picked him on the arbitrary grounds that they drove the #97 car and I was married in 1997. (I did say the fun in watching sports is being willfully irrational, right?) But I do like that Kurt has his haters, that he’s a tough racer but never petty. I like that he’s tough on reporters who ask him stupid questions.

After changing teams and cars in the past few years, I’m hoping Kurt will be back to his 2004 form. He’s now driving the #26 Furniture Row car, and a technical alliance with RCR means he’s could be like a fourth member of that team. I don’t particularly like that because I like to root against Kevin Harvick. I’ll be looking for Kurt and Tony Stewart to work together, since Tony’s supported Kurt on and off the track.

Danica Patrick

It’s big news that Danica is the first woman to win the pole for the Daytona 500. I’ve liked Danica since her Indy days and I’m happy that she moved over to the Sprint Cup. I like that some people hate her apparently because she’s a woman. But let’s be honest, who would you rather see in an interview?

Danica drives the #10 for Stewart-Hass with GoDaddy as her main sponsor. She ought to benefit from her teammate in the #14 car. And like him, her experience with open wheel racing ought to help at Infineon and Watkins Glen.

Tony Stewart

Like all my favorites, Smoke is a tough competitor who’s driven in a variety of classes and has a bit of temper. My oldest son, Tre, latched onto Stewart back when he drove the Home Depot car. (Tre’s favorite color is orange). This year, Tony’s back in the #14 with Bass Pro Shops as his main sponsor.

Drivers on the bubble

Sadly, it looks like Robby Gordon won’t be racing in the Spring Cup this year. His participation has dwindled in recent years. I tried to be a Jeff Gordon fan, but that guy is too whiny. AJ Allmindinger gets a nod for being another local guy. Ryan Newman gets a nod for being a geek. Finally, I’m going to keep Brad Keselowski on my list again this year. Aside from winning it all last year, he drives the #2 and it’s a Ford.

 

College grads earn 15% less than in 2000

Go to college for four years and make $55K/year. Sound like a good deal? Alternatively, how about you apprentice with me, learn to write code and make twice that? When you’re done, you won’t have a diploma–just a published work.

Average earnings of young college graduates are still falling

The latest Census figures show real earnings for young college grads fell again in 2011. This makes the sixth straight year of declining real earnings for young college grads, defined as full-time workers aged 25-34 with a bachelor’s only. All told, real average earnings for young grads have fallen by over 15% since 2000, or by about $10,000 in constant 2011 dollars.

Copy, an alternative to Dropbox or Google Drive

Here’s an alternative to Dropbox and Google Drive that just appeared. Since I’m interested in moving PDFs and EPUBs around, I tried that out. Unfortunately, the Android app does not know what to do with EPUBs. You can ask the app to open the files as text, but none of my readers are available as a choice for opening the file. Same situation with PDFs, although PDFs are recognized as such and viewable inside the app.

Compare this to Google Drive. If I click on an EPUB from the Drive app, it just downloads and opens in Aldiko.

Copy

Copy is the easiest way to store, protect and share amazing things. It keeps your computers in sync and your files available from anywhere, even on your mobile devices. With Copy, you can also easily share files with anyone publicly or privately. Copy for companies extends the cloud storage and sharing benefits into corporate environments with user and group management and added control of proprietary company data..

Fat Wreck Chords signed Get Dead

Get Dead is a great band that does great live shows. I think I’ve listened to their first acoustic release about a million times.

Fat signs Get Dead

Fat Wreck Chords has signed Get Dead from San Francisco, CA. The largely acoustic band has a bunch of music on Bandcamp and are currently at Motor Cities working on their debut for a summer release.

You can also find more about the band on their Facebook Profile..