Working at Amazon · Some­times when we’re try­ing to hire a se­nior em­ploy­ee, I get asked to do a “sell call”, tell them what it’s like to work here. Since I’m com­ing up on three years and haven’t quit, I guess the sup­po­si­tion is that I’ll be pos­i­tive. Since these can­di­dates are out­siders and some of them don’t come to work for us, noth­ing I can say can be a se­cret. So why don’t I tell ev­ery­one? ...
[3 comments]  
Live Metal is Better · Re­cent­ly I went out for a live met­al triple-bill, with En­don and SUMAC open­ing for Boris, whom I’ve cov­ered here be­fore (with groovy pix). More pix to­day, with words on the his­to­ry and mean­ing of met­al, and how to pho­to­graph it ...
[5 comments]  
Macro Trends · In The bub­ble with­out any fizz, The Economist ad­dress­es the fact that financial-asset prices (s­tock­s, bond­s, and the like) keep drift­ing up and up in a world where in­fla­tion doesn’t; are we in a mega-bubble? What’s re­al­ly go­ing on? Looks ob­vi­ous to me, but then I’m a left-winger. I think it’s all a straight­for­ward con­se­quence of eco­nom­ic ef­fi­cien­cy and class war­fare ...
[3 comments]  
Refresh Is Sacred · There are two kinds of client ap­pli­ca­tion­s: The first kind has a “refresh” or “reload” but­ton to make sure your app’s in sync with its server’s view of the world. The sec­ond kind is bro­ken ...
[8 comments]  
You Might Be Evil · Or at least, your em­ploy­er might be. Over the years we in the tech sec­tor have got­ten used to be­ing well-regarded. After al­l, we make people’s lives bet­ter, on bal­ance. That’s chang­ing. At the mo­ment it’s rum­blings from thought lead­er­s, not per­va­sive pop­u­lar anger. The oth­er thing that’s new is that they’re thought lead­ers who are pro­gres­sives and lib­er­al­s; just like most of us in the tech pro­fes­sion­s. It no­tably in­volves the M-word and those of us on the in­side need to be think­ing about it ...
[8 comments]  
Photos of the Sky · I mean No Man’s Sky the game, which I’ve been play­ing again late­ly. It’s been ac­cused of be­ing most­ly a plat­form for gen­er­at­ing cheesy sci-fi book cov­er­s, but that’s not true, and al­so I love cheesy sci-fi book cov­er­s, so this is most­ly to show you some. With a few words on the game ...
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Canadian Tax Wrangling · Our me­di­a, pro and so­cial, echo with blasts of self-righteous anger over pro­posed leg­is­la­tion which would elim­i­nate a few pop­u­lar tax dodges. Weird­ly, I see no-one ar­gu­ing the oth­er side; that the tax pro­pos­als are rea­son­able. I think I’m qual­i­fied to make that ar­gu­men­t, so I will. [If you’re not Cana­di­an, you can prob­a­bly stop read­ing here.] ...
[5 comments]  
Murder at Adolf’s Cottage · I re­cent­ly read Prus­sian Blue by Philip Kerr. It’s good  —  a Fifties-Iron-Curtain spy thriller grace­ful­ly mashed up with a pre-war mur­der mys­tery set in Hitler’s Bavar­i­an coun­try get­away, Berghof. It’s a re­peat ap­pear­ance for Kerr’s Bernie Gun­ther, an ap­peal­ing­ly hard-boiled vet­er­an so­cial­ist cop who finds him­self work­ing for Na­tion­al So­cial­ist man­age­men­t ...
 
Large Companies Considered Harmful · There’s a plau­si­ble case that cap­i­tal­ism per se isn’t the prob­lem. Con­cen­tra­tion is: Vari­a­tions range from “too big to fail” to good old-fashioned monopoly. It’s painful­ly ob­vi­ous that the ac­qui­si­tion of one mon­ster tele­com or bank or air­line by an­oth­er does nei­ther their cus­tomers nor the econ­o­my as a whole any good. It’s tough to write anti-monopoly law, be­cause how do you quan­ti­fy mar­ket pow­er? How­ev­er, you can quan­ti­fy size. So let’s use that as a club to bash away at the prob­lem ...
[13 comments]  
Enlightenment Technology · Around 1500, the lev­els of tech­nol­o­gy and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in Europe and Asia were not dra­mat­i­cal­ly dif­fer­en­t. But by 1700, Europe had leaped ahead and, by the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, most­ly come to dom­i­nate the world; the la­bels “Enlightenment” and “Industrial Revolution” are com­mon­ly ap­plied. A Cul­ture of Growth: The Ori­gins of the Modern Econ­o­my, a 2016 book by Joel Mokyr asks “Why?” and tries to an­swer ...
[11 comments]  
Olympus TG-5 “Tough” Waterproof · I found my­self vacation-bound to Queens­land (that’s the top right cor­ner of Aus­trali­a) and the itinerary in­clud­ed beach­es and coral, specif­i­cal­ly the Great Bar­ri­er Reef, which is dy­ing. I like to pho­to­graph the places I vis­it, and the Olym­pus TG-5 is get­ting lots of buzz in waterproof-cam cir­cles, so I got one ...
[10 comments]  
TLS Wiretap Fear · There is a hot lengthy ar­gu­ment go­ing on in the IETF’s TLS Work­ing Group which has been mak­ing me un­com­fort­able. It’s be­ing al­leged that there is an at­tempt to weak­en Web se­cu­ri­ty in a deep fun­da­men­tal way, which if true is ob­vi­ous­ly a Big Deal ...
[1 comment]  
Android Auto · I just had my first ex­pe­ri­ence with An­droid Au­to and I sup­pose there are lots of oth­er peo­ple who haven’t been there yet, so a few words might be use­ful. Short for­m: Rough around the edges, but super-helpful ...
[3 comments]  
On Password Managers · It has come to my at­ten­tion that peo­ple are Wrong On The In­ter­net about pass­word man­ager­s. This mat­ter­s, be­cause al­most ev­ery­body should be us­ing one. Here­with back­ground, opin­ion­s, and a de­scrip­tion of my own se­tup, which is rea­son­ably se­cure ...
[25 comments]  
Bye, Rune · She was a pure­bred (Ben­gal) ac­tu­al­ly, with a for­mal name: Bell­san­gels Rune, and a pedi­gree. Born March 23, 1998, de­part­ed this life June 23rd, 2017, ae­tat 19 years and 3 month­s. She pre­dat­ed our chil­dren and dig­i­tal cam­eras and this is the on­ly obit she’ll get, so it’ll be length­y. But not un­a­mus­ing I hope, full of sto­ries, and book­end­ed by base­bal­l ...
[11 comments]  
Map Review Fear · My daugh­ter had a swollen in­fect­ed face on a hol­i­day morn­ing, so I looked up near­by walk-in clin­ics on Google Map­s. The one I picked was de­sert­ed, ef­fi­cien­t, and kind. After­ward, with­out even think­ing about it, I tapped a good re­view in­to the map. Then I won­dered if I might be part of a re­al­ly big prob­lem ...
[5 comments]  
Phone Obsession · On a re­cent Satur­day night, a fam­i­ly con­nec­tion got in­to trou­ble that took me on a res­cue mis­sion to a par­ty gone wrong, then Emer­gen­cy. Then it echoed in­to night­mare ...
[7 comments]  
Games with Girls · Weird­ly enough, for the first time in my life I’ve been spend­ing videogame time with mem­bers of the op­po­site gen­der; specif­i­cal­ly, my wife and daugh­ter. Which is an ex­cuse for re­flec­tions on (and groovy pic­tures from) No Man’s Sky ...
[3 comments]  
Pie Pride · I apol­o­gize in ad­vance for brag­ging, some­thing I do here on­ly rarely. But my Mom taught me to make pie and now I make pies. It’s a beau­ti­ful thing, and there are lessons to be had ...
[6 comments]  
Gareth and Rune · He’s leav­ing and she’s dy­ing. Stil­l, these are hap­py pic­tures ...
[2 comments]  
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