Welcome to my personal website.
Web startups are made out of two things: people and code. The people make the code, and the code makes the people rich. Code is like a poem; it has to follow certain structural requirements, and yet out of that structure can come art. But code is art that does something. It is the assembly of something brand new from nothing but an idea.
In an exclusive article, Gizmodo penned a powerful exposé about how Yahoo has bludgeoned Flickr. The title conveys the brutal reality of how the internet giant slowly ruined one of its best web properties. Eric Jackson frequently writes about Yahoo! and offers ideas on how it can turn the ship away […]
Source: Why Has Yahoo Killed Flickr? 5 Alternatives For Photo Sharing – Forbes
I want to congratulate Yahoo on a fine job of destroying an asset that was once something really great. I have two accounts with Flickr, my old Pro account which I have been paying for many years and a free account with the new 1TB limit. The option to purchase pro accounts is gone. One of the features in the pro account that was worth paying for was photo stats. In fact this was one of the few reasons I paid for a Flickr account. This feature is removed from all new accounts. And the community is worried that it will be retired from current accounts down the road. Additionally it seems the information from the stats is no longer accurate anyways. So with no reason for me to continue to use Flickr I might as well save my photos on Facebook. Again I want to congratulate Yahoos fine management of Flickr. Some might call it inept or incompetent but clearly those people fail to see Yahoo just wants to kill the service off.
It is getting harder and harder to justify the expense of using Brita water filtration. Looking for evidence and sources that conclude it makes any real difference on the quality of drinking water is non existent outside of company sources. Further more, I live in a city with some of, if not, the cleanest tape water in the world. I have decided to yank out the inner portion of the container which houses the filter and use just straight tap water. Doing it this way nets a lot more water to in the container. I have never had a problem with the taste of tap water in metro Vancouver. I do like very cold water. And suspending water in the fridge helps kill off what little chlorine is left from the water. What I do find amazing is how much information about how bad water is but from sources that all sell water filtration systems. I can’t help but notice the incredible biased point of view of these companies that claim
tap water is bad while selling products to “clean” tap water. Lastly I was totally disgusted with the bottom of the water container. I have not been tearing it apart cleaning it often enough. I suspect many people neglect that being its not easy to take apart the inner section that holds the filter. And may wrongly assume its just filtered water so you don’t have to clean it often. What ended up on the sponge was disgusting…. I can’t believe I have been drinking from that container with that kind of gross buildup of whatever it was. I only have myself to blame for not cleaning it more often. But still, I think I am going to just stick to tap water for now, save money and the environment because honestly those filters is just another consumable and disposable product that is added to waste disposal when we really don’t need to use it at all, at least not here.
Additional
There is some valid evidence that depending on age and construction of a building the water quality can suffer due to the pipes. In such cases maybe a filtration system can make a difference. Reverse osmosis would be my first choice in such a case. I still see little value in Brita which the basic filters only removes chlorine. I also live in a rather new building so the pipes are not a concern for me at this point either.
This is a good article on the issues of data privacy and the issues companies face protecting it. The good is that most companies really do want to protect personal data. The bad is most don’t have any ideas how to do it effectively
Article: A Deep Dive into Data Privacy: It’s Not Just Big Companies, Folks
Randy Bachman, the well-known Canadian musician, found himself embroiled in a public fight with Prime Minister Stephen Harper last year when Harper used his song “Takin’ Care of Business” as a theme song for a major speech. Bachman said he probably would not have granted permission to use the song, since “I don’t think he’s taking care of business for the right people or the right reasons.” Bachman was singing a different tune yesterday as the government released its budget and apparently took care of the right people – record companies. Despite no study, no public demands, and the potential cost to the public of millions of dollars, the government announced that it will extend the term of copyright for sound recordings and performances from 50 to 70 years. For that giveaway, Bachman was quoted as saying “thanks for the term extension PM Harper, you really are taking care of business.”While the government lined up industry supporters to praise the term extension, the decision is unexpected and unnecessary (it also announced that it will accede to the Marrakesh copyright treaty for the blind, but that should not require significant domestic reforms). The music industry did not raise term extension as a key concern during either the 2012 copyright reform bill or the 2014 Canadian Heritage committee study on the industry. Experience elsewhere suggests that the extension is a windfall for record companies, with little benefit to artists or the public. In fact, many countries that have implemented the extension have been forced to do so through trade or political agreements, while signalling their opposition along the way.Canada will extend term without any public discussion or consultation, yet other studies have found that retroactive extension does not lead to increased creation and that the optimal term length should enable performers and record labels to recoup their investment, not extend into near-unlimited terms to the detriment of the public. For Canadian consumers, the extension could cost millions of dollars as works that were scheduled to come into the public domain will now remain locked down for decades.