Fortune Cookies for Android
Fortune is now available on Google Play. It's an Android version of the UNIX fortune program and will send a random fortune cookie to your notification area at 8ish every morning.
Fortune is now available on Google Play. It's an Android version of the UNIX fortune program and will send a random fortune cookie to your notification area at 8ish every morning.
I've used the ZoneInfo (PublicDomain.ZoneInfo) project from CodePlex for quite a few years, especially in Catfood Earth. The project had rusted a little so I emailed the author (Mark Rodrigues) and he was kind enough to add me as a developer. I've just updated ZoneInfo with some of the local changes I'd made and a variety of patches from the CodePlex community. It now works with the latest IANA tzdata file, at least for the test cases I can run. Let me know if I missed something (and thanks Mark for letting me contribute back to this very helpful project).
It has been brought to my attention that I've been whinging too much recently.
So I'd like to take a break from that and say how much I'm enjoying feedly. It's a wonderfully well designed RSS reader. I use the Chrome Extension version and the Android app. It preserves the Google Reader keyboard shortcuts so I can sail through my subscriptions and it brings back social sharing.
I looked at feedly once before and didn't really get it. I thought it was just one of those algorithmic recommendation news manglers that tries to guess what you want to read. It might do that on the home page but the 'All' view is a perfect replacement for Google Reader.
I love it. I want to pay for it to make sure it stays around. Thank you feedly.
5/5
Stonking police procedural set in the months leading up to a global catastrophe.
5/5
Excellent techno-thriller. A little more serious and focused than Daemon and Freedom (TM). It's about a worst case drone scenario, ants, extra-special forces and some smart birds. Very good.
Windows 8, Users 0? http://t.co/966Cuwjz
Bill Nye declares Todd Akin "fucking idiot"; issues debate challenge http://t.co/AZ3k55Y4 #fb
ITHCWY: Fight Facebook with Email: I was a little saddened to read today that Diaspora is transitioning over to… http://t.co/2G0pDdu0
Diaspora Founders To Move On, Handing Over Decentralized Social Network ‘To The Community’ http://t.co/KQGb2kpv -- sad, but not the future
RT @MargaretAtwood: Just used http://t.co/Nhna2CGO for gruesome printer problem: excellent, done in 10 mins! Tks to S H E F I N. Website ...
Check out Catfood Earth Live Wallpaper on Google Play! https://t.co/NTJQ1sYL
ITHCWY: Twenty-Four Hours with Twilio: I've wanted to play with Twilio's voice and SMS service for a while and… http://t.co/KOK0PG2M
Tuesdays http://t.co/BLNiCP3H
Twitter Cuts Off Tumblr's Ability to Find Friends http://t.co/1g3ZcClf
5 of 5 stars to The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters http://t.co/9NF2nviH
XML: http://t.co/VadVt321 #rofl
Windows 8 Is Now Available For Developers (And For Everybody Else, There’s A 90-Day Free Trial, Too) http://t.co/iu1li6BV
Gotye's YouTube orchestra remix of "Somebody That I Used to Know" http://t.co/OUEXXltQ
ITHCWY: City by the Bay: View from Bernal Hill this afternoon. http://t.co/11cI3ctk
Nice panorama! Curiosity rover: Martian solar day 2 #360pano http://t.co/w1H2ocUm via @360cities
ITHCWY: Share a picture in MonoDroid: Here’s how to share a picture to Facebook, Twitter and so forth from… http://t.co/pByzvjmx
5 of 5 stars to Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez http://t.co/TKgUMNW0
BBC News - Mars rover makes first colour panorama http://t.co/fZ7u8smZ
How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking http://t.co/BDmRAbm3
Via KQED Guides: Guide to Bay Area Tidepools: Where to Explore Amazing Marine Life | http://t.co/TDBRDnTD #todo @myEN
ITHCWY: Catfood: WebCams for Android: I’ve just released a WebCam app for Android. It’s based on WebCamSaver but… http://t.co/azZUwkkz
Pay for a new social network with no ads? https://t.co/2tox3c2y Anyone I know going to be on there? #fb
Curiosity http://t.co/D2cyWE66
BBC News - Photo shows Mars rover descent http://t.co/KfOv1qOF
Catfood WebCams for Android - Catfood Software http://t.co/VzeySq90 via @CatfoodSoftware
Check out Catfood WebCams on Google Play! https://t.co/VTU8YiBd
ITHCWY: Not a Private Key: When jarsigner says "Key Associated with [alias] not a private key" it almost certainly… http://t.co/3sk89ENV
ITHCWY: Sending email via GMail in C#/.NET using SmtpClient: I’ve stubbed my toe on this a couple of times, so here… http://t.co/QJ7YjcjI
Help end patent litigation insanity and tell your congress person to back SHIELD. http://t.co/27anadBt
ITHCWY: Support SHIELD–a small measure of patent sanity: A friend pointed me at the SHIELD (PDF) act today. This… http://t.co/ArXHgZ0e
ITHCWY: Thank you for choosing HSA Bank!: No, thank you HSA Bank for not giving me a choice and then cheekily… http://t.co/9torSXCq
Bill would force patent trolls to pay defendants’ legal bills | Ars Technica http://t.co/poB3zzlX +1, via @sr00t
What a happy coincidence. As well as #IPAday it's also goof off at work day: http://t.co/7AItItWq
Apparently it's #IPADay - luckily there's some @21stAmendment in the fridge. http://t.co/jyYPSePC
No book reviews this month.
#boarding SFO http://t.co/YLDFpmwF
Penn Jillette's rant against Obama's drug policy http://t.co/Ri5HAqxH
Congratulations @SpaceX -- Dragon arrives at space station in historic 1st http://t.co/91suk4ZV via @sfgate
Why your camera's GPS won't work in China (maybe) http://t.co/FQIFN8wI
Sigh, obvious, invalid, bullshit -- BBC News - Microsoft wins patent fight with Google's Motorola unit http://t.co/0PENWTCV
BBC News the secret links between Star Wars and Wales http://t.co/T8yEulCu (is there any tenuous link with Wales you won't publish?)
:) Hot weather to continue next week http://t.co/izAc2yA1
Not Skip's Tavern any more... http://t.co/dPx1NIj8
Reality rocks in San Francisco earthquake exhibit http://t.co/yo82B38b (Looking forward to this!)
BBC News - In pictures: Annular eclipse http://t.co/YA5F6or2 (Check out the Lemurs checking out the eclipse)
ITHCWY: Annular Eclipse at SFO: The only solar observatory outside the international terminal at SFO (some… http://t.co/ZqMXm8Ec
Beer was near, sadly earlier. http://t.co/2BeMAJZj
America's great divergence - American History - http://t.co/zQcVJIcQ http://t.co/fSdtXSvl
"Why won't you answer me?" - Parenting - http://t.co/zQcVJIcQ http://t.co/Ljzg6vpG (I should stop telling Kate about her 'milk head')
1906 earthquake refugee cottage at The Presidio. http://t.co/pof5LotA
+1 Judge suspends US law that provided for indefinite detention without trial - Boing Boing http://t.co/xsBuLyYb via @BoingBoing
Daniel Raven-Ellison, Guerrilla Geographer Information, Facts, News, Photos -- National Geographic http://t.co/DjgJdvMJ via @NatGeo
ITHCWY: Gopher Snake: Bernal Heights Park http://t.co/OoHYDU0y
Turned out nice... http://t.co/G2pHtgbd
RT @CatfoodSoftware: Blog: Catfood Software on Google+ and a Hangout Pledge: Catfood is now on Google+. Once 50… http://t.co/ZC84h8AN
ITHCWY: Open Immigration: I'm increasingly in favor of opening up immigration. Partly it's a general sense that a… http://t.co/cBLQT2rI
ITHCWY: Snake rests on Toad: At the California Academy of Sciences. http://t.co/YTQh682A
New Golden Gate Visitor center - lots of tat, no food :( http://t.co/vXmZn099
Obama sighting on morning dog walk. #fb http://t.co/wZdwN2Mj
President Obama: 'I Think Same-Sex Couples Should Be Able to Get Married'; http://t.co/CtC6k2A8 (shameful that it has taken this long)
Gaia revisited: http://t.co/sHSeFph7 - I'm still in the extreme camp: http://t.co/6dzIjBy7
Post Doyle Drive detour quite pleasant on the way home tonight. http://t.co/fSK8e4v9
THINKWALKS: http://t.co/ToOZo3KQ #todo in San Francisco @myEN
ITHCWY: Bottled Water: A company called Evive launched this week to battle the evil of bottled water with reusable… http://t.co/5X9e3emO
ITHCWY: Pelicans http://t.co/0xoup7z5
It's @KQED pledge yet again. Throw them a bone public radio freeloaders: http://t.co/00UvTamT
Illegal dumping can now be voted to fix at http://t.co/SsliF12n #bernal-heights!
Yet Another Awful Dumping Incident on Bernal Hill http://t.co/35kLDRdn via @bernalwood
+1 AllClear ID Rolls Out First-Ever Social Security Number Blocking Service For Children's IDs http://t.co/wnRILNzQ via @techcrunch
Rejected and controversial New Yorker cover art (the mentos one is very good) http://t.co/afo9AxZd via @BoingBoing #fb
Marcus du Sautoy, writing on BBC News, brings up Searle's Chinese Room in Can computers have true artificial intelligence?
Searle's argument is that someone who speaks no Chinese exchanges notes with a native speaker through a system that informs him which note to respond with. The Chinese speaker think's he's having a conversation but the subject of the experiment doesn't understand a word of it. It's a variant of the Turing Test and while the 'room' passes the test the lack of understanding on the part of the subject means that Artificial Intelligence is impossible. The BBC even put together a three part illustration to help you understand.
I learned about the room at university and I didn't fall for it then. Du Sautoy, to be fair, expresses some skepticism but it makes up about a third of an article on AI, which is unforgivable.
In determining if Searle's room is intelligent or not you must consider the entire system, including the note passing mechanism. The person operating the room might not understand Chinese but the room as a whole does. The Chinese room is like saying a person isn't intelligent if their elbow fails to get a joke. It's the AI equivalent of Maxwell's demon, a 19th century attempt to circumvent the second law of thermodynamics.
Every time you get a Deep Thought or a Watson the debate about the possibility of strong AI (as in just I) resurfaces. It's not a technical question, it's a religious one. If you believe we're intelligent for supernatural reasons then it's valid to wonder if AI is possible (and you might want to stop reading now). If not then the fact that we exist means that AI might be difficult, but it's not impossible and almost certainly inevitable.
The problem is that teams at IBM and Google cook up very clever solutions in a limited domain and them people get excited that a chess computer or a trivia computer can eventually 'beat' a human at one tiny thing.
Human intelligence wasn't carefully designed, it's the slow accretion of many tiny hacks, lucky accidents that made us slowly smarter over time. If we want this type of intelligence it's highly likely that we're going to have to grow it rather than invent it. And when true AI finally arrives I'll bet that we won't understand it any better than the organic kind.
Previously: At the CHM...
Photo Credit: Stuck in Customs cc
California just canceled a 2 billion dollar project to link 58 courts having spent over half a billion. In the UK half a billion pounds was wasted failing to develop software for the emergency services. A recent although controversial study estimates global IT failures cost 6 trillion dollars a year.
I've thought about this before but perhaps the time is right. It's a software system that analyzes the chances of success for any major IT project. In California in particular we could pass a ballot measure to mandate that this system is used accept or reject any software project that would cost the state more than, say, $50k. The core of the system has already been written and looks like this:
All it needs is a nice interface that allows you to upload documents and then show a progress bar while the in-depth 'analysis' takes place. I'd be willing to do this work for the state for no more than $200 million, plus costs and change orders. Shouldn't take more than a decade either.
Governor Brown, call me.
Image Credit: Images_of_Money cc
2/5
Two huge problems with this book. It's short and very repetitive so the information content is about a couple of blog posts. The 'rules' are highly subjective, and much of the book is pushing the author's WRML 'standard' which I've never seen in the wild. The only real positive is that it's a comprehensive survey of the issues you need to think about when designing a REST API: just don't take the rules as gospel and research best practice from major APIs so you understand the context.
What are the 1865 stickers on Bernal Hill about? http://t.co/0CGOmRYe
ITHCWY: Congress: instead of breaking the Internet how about fixing child identity theft?: According the the… http://t.co/4eBrdCPI
Penn Jillette: An Atheist's Guide to the 2012 Election - Boing Boing http://t.co/oA8XEYzP via @BoingBoing
Shouldn't hackers be _taking over_ a network of satellites? http://t.co/QmOcn8oy
ITHCWY: Shiti: Citigroup sent me a nice notice saying they are going to share my information in about four thousand… http://t.co/DQLR5DlV
The coming war on general computation http://t.co/yl9vNJHc (Cory Doctorow)
Zeno's Advent Calendar: http://t.co/EyGf4vBY #fb
“we couldn’t as a company be in a position of acknowledging ... hidden people.” - http://t.co/K7aSceFm
Check this video out -- IDEX: Connecting You to Grassroots Solutions to Poverty http://t.co/kiq32ThR via @IDEX
Catfood Software Blog | Winter Solstice 2011 in Catfood Earth http://t.co/O0x5TngH via @CatfoodSoftware
For Christmas, Your Government Will Explain Why It's Legal to Kill You: http://t.co/rrMIrELV
Arch druid ... said it was a "good omen for the year ahead" that the sun had come up after the ceremony. http://t.co/UxK0BQlf
Looking forward to: Build better web applications with "Get Some REST" http://t.co/DGxCp9uN via @getsomerestbook
Why is @VisualStudio so busy? http://t.co/y9TLULLk
Sphero http://t.co/VCM5rvhK #todo @myEN
HTTP status cats by GirlieMac: classic server error codes, now with cats: http://t.co/1bJc3tgt
Land of the free taken nearly taken care of: http://t.co/uNlYAzoJ just need to do something about home of the brave. #fb
Trillion-frame-per-second video: http://t.co/JLsK5GDm
ITHCWY: Reviews and Links for November 2011: Reamde by Neal Stephenson 5/5 Intelligent and humorous if highly… http://t.co/ysKotKbY
Yet more on http://t.co/Dk1bJ0Ve: http://t.co/OTViMYQW (BoingBoing)
Check this video out -- Cello Wars (Star Wars Parody) Lightsaber Duel - Steven Sharp Nelson http://t.co/8xzzZh6E via @youtube
Stop marketers from being able to call your cellphone! http://t.co/wJd12VzP @CREDOMobile #p2
More on http://t.co/p0AhRSIl hijacking shareware to install crap: http://t.co/lDsXNB2g #fail
RT @justanswer: Want to know how old Santa is or what he gets Mrs. Claus for Xmas? Ask Santa your questions for free! http://t.co/i9WIce ...
You're doing it wrong: on toast, with butter: http://t.co/sTHvdHY6 (Sandwich Monday: The Marmite Sandwich)
Too hot? Switch Google off: http://t.co/ZRLIpH12
2 of 5 stars to REST API Design Rulebook by Mark Masse http://t.co/U6A4yQNk
Aliens on Ice: http://t.co/FmLdlfZ3
There, we fixed it: http://t.co/gEhPi3Z8 (The woman... must marry her rapist as a condition of the release.)
5/5
Intelligent and humorous if highly contrived thriller set loosely around an MMORPG. Loved it.
4/5
Highly original tale of colonists cohabiting with some very unusual aliens with a very unusual language. It reads like J.G. Ballard and Nicholson Baker decided to collaborate on some SciFi.
3/5
Not bad, returns to when Reacher was in uniform and tells the story of how he left the Army (the answer may surprise you). As with the last few in the series it all comes a little too easily and you wish there was at least one worthy opponent. I'm hooked though so as long as Child keeps writing them I'll keep reading.
3/5
Solid foundation and covers the platform you need to target to reach the majority of Android devices.
RE: Feel free to use the code, no attribution required. http://t.co/IJTcOz3p
BBC News - 7 questions on computer programmes http://t.co/XKylU7WT (more of a history / pop culture quiz)
Scooby-Doo and Secular Humanism: http://t.co/4h8M8kkK
4 of 5 stars to Embassytown by China Miéville http://t.co/kPwIrmDF
ITHCWY: Occupy Intellectual Ventures: Send them a troll. Now. http://t.co/VorWmZpz
Wow, My Flout score is -7 on @floutdotme! Get yours at http://t.co/1Sl8ei72
troll the troll! send a troll doll to intellectual ventures. http://t.co/S09ML14T via @nathtone
Walking through doorways causes forgetting, new research shows: http://t.co/JBbJXAaD
+1: Why Software Projects are Terrible and How Not To Fix Them: http://t.co/kE7WWix5
Hilarious, I had to Google how to power off Windows 8. Didn't figure it our until the third link: http://t.co/X1wrkh7R #fail
Building a Useful Task Board: http://t.co/icc8y4cU - only this should be a large monitor and an #API
#API Design Webinar http://t.co/rbDwus37 from @theamiableapi - some very valuable nuggets
Wow. Going to have to get this as a poster just to fully grok it: http://t.co/Z6iie3K5
ITHCWY: PolyLineM support in Catfood.Shapefile: I’ve just updated Catfood.Shapefile, my ESRI Shapefile parser for… http://t.co/ll50wcEi
Cal band at justanswer http://t.co/QOLcbe7e (missed this while at lunch)
Citogenesis: http://t.co/EH5K2xLg
Extensive document dump on Microsoft's shallow anti-Android bullying: http://t.co/tdEhMNLh #patents from @groklaw
Toast sandwich is UK's 'cheapest meal' http://t.co/0LG9zNOl (can't possibly be true - not factoring in cost of electricity!)
Analysis: The Darwin Economy: http://t.co/pSDkxupL
So True: What Your Favorite Map Projection Says About You: http://t.co/dW8pl2uK
Bootstrapped Company Behind iDrive, iBackup Is Fed Up With Patent Trolls: http://t.co/DP6KFLxH
The Real Cost of Patent Trolls: http://t.co/1Cu4C6cV via @bfeld
Flying rhinoceros: http://t.co/MIhWtT3L
Cool: 1% Of Nothing Launches To Get Startups Donating Equity: http://t.co/ZNy7HcZl
3 of 5 stars to Professional Android 2 Application De... by Reto Meier http://t.co/UqCtaJ3Z
'Have the people who designed this protocol really never made the twenty mile drive to San Francisco?' - http://t.co/wWk77ZpQ
Explaining 'Jobs' to Rudy Giuliani: http://t.co/ek78XEe9
ITHCWY: Catfood: Klout and Follower: Klout is building PageRank for people. You get a score between 0-100 based on… http://t.co/rGyYkY9q
Catfood Follower 1.40: http://t.co/79xDac4F via @CatfoodSoftware
Old friends... No CDTV though! At #CHM http://t.co/WGw6VOOL
How much did I used to want one of these! http://t.co/lHhnY0AG
At #CHM for Norvig v Horvitz. Will punch anyone who mentions Searle's Room. http://t.co/wPRO8tYa
Don't do it, like defining π as 4: BBC News - Changes to the world's time scale debated http://t.co/hFkrZi4g
RESTful API Design, Second Edition http://t.co/uZthmj9c #API from @landlessness
Rudy wishes I hadn't just shown him: "Saber-toothed squirrel" from the dinosaur days - Boing Boing http://t.co/Wf7Y0ttH
Marked as to-read: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries http://t.co/MC9M0Iti
Ex-Google Reader Product Manager Posts Scathing Review Of Reader Redesign | TechCrunch http://t.co/DscEAHTw
Google indexing via POST: http://t.co/oM2JmHqI (P.S. may not grok your robots.txt, suggests bending over)
Writing helpful API documentation « The Amiable API http://t.co/rx9QdKyk #API
Oakland PD confused: An Open Letter to the Citizens of Oakland From the Oakland Police Officers Association http://t.co/W5LIBY7D (me too)!
Study: why parents help their underage kids pretend to be 13 in order to use Internet sites - Boing Boing http://t.co/aoUSw5wu
4/5
It's Mary Roach, so no surprise that her book on space focused on how hard it is to take a crap (in space), how much engineering goes into disposing of crap (in space), and practical uses for crap on a Mars mission (including making it into radiation shielding tiles and reprocessing it into crap burgers). You'd think this book would be NASA's worst nightmare, but it's actually humanizing as well as fascinating. If you're a Roach fan you'll love it. If you haven't had the pleasure then this is a great place to start.
2/5
This sequel to The Lion's Game is disappointingly flat - Corey and Assad are fated to meet for a final confrontation and they do but after an initial sky diving sequence nothing really happens. There's very little tension, no plot, no struggles or setbacks for the hero or villain. DeMille really phoned this one in.
3/5
The second and third books could be just one (very) long book. Nest kicks off where Fire ended and slows the tempo down a bit, although not to the glacial pace of Tattoo. It's a fitting ending to the tale of Salandar, if a bit drawn out in the final sequence. Of course, a must read if you've ploughed through the first two.
- What do new passports say about the UK? from BBC News - Home (At least it still "requires" other countries to let us pass without let or hindrance, unlike the less forceful US passport...).
- General Motors in huge share sale from BBC News - Home (It really doesn't seem quite right to call it an 'initial' public offering.).
- Why We Need To Abolish Software Patents from TechCrunch (+1).
- Wikipedia’s Lamest Edit Wars from Information Is Beautiful (must click through!).
- Record broken for number of 'pirates' in one place from BBC News - Home (Um, is that just because the Guinness people are afraid of going to Somalia?).
- Ghosts of WWII: Sergey Larenkov's Photoshopped historic photos blend past with present from Boing Boing (Impressed.).
- Sandwich Monday: 'The Breakfast Club' Edition from NPR Blogs: Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me! (Sandwich Monday is now funnier than the actual show.).
Visualizing Coronavirus Cases and Deaths by Country and US County
Sending email via GMail in C#/.NET using SmtpClient
Export Google Fit Daily Steps, Weight and Distance to a Google Sheet
Is it safe to open securedoc.html (Cisco Registered Envelope)?
Full Outlook Web Access on Chromebook
Enable GZIP compression for Amazon S3 hosted website in CloudFront
Scanning from the ADF using WIA in C#
Automate Google PageSpeed Insights with Apps Script
Reading and Writing Office 365 Excel from a Console app using the Microsoft.Graph C# Client API