Year: 2015
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Letter from Tom Mulcair
Nice letter from Thomas Mulcair, leader of the Official Opposition and the NDP. It is with regards to this. After having my loyalty questioned in the House of Commons last week, I am glad somebody in Ottawa appreciates what we did.
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China’s Inconvenient Truth
Photo: Residential buildings in Wuhan, Hubei Province. Darley Shen/Reuters. In late February, Under the Dome, a documentary by former television news anchor and investigative journalist Chai Jing, was released criticizing China’s environmental record. Her quiet, understated approach is charismatic. Armed with statistics, footage and interviews from a number of impressive sources, she flexed her investigative…
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More than computers — A recap of LinuxFest Northwest 2015
For me, this year’s LinuxFest Northwest 2015 was learning more about the politics of the Free Software movement. This track featured some excellent and eminent speakers, and I enjoyed it very much. Here is a short recap of each session: 1. Deb Nicholson, the Director of Community Outreach at the Open Invention Network gave an…
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Resources for Web and Mobile accessibility
Derek Wilson, a Career Development Practitioner with the Neil Squire Society, visited the Okanagan Developer’s Group yesterday to discuss with local devs accessibility online and on mobile. He gave us a demonstration of various assistive technologies such as VoiceOver and the Rotor on iPhone, and JAWS a popular (and expensive) screen reader application. It was…
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Undermining C-51
OpenMedia.ca organized an open letter about how C-51 will undermine Canada’s business climate: The challenge of being Canadian today is to uphold our values of openness, tolerance, and trust of others, while maintaining a very real understanding of the dangers of terrorism and the government’s need to protect us. But sometimes this balance is not…
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The long and the short of mobile messaging incompatibility
15 years ago in Japan, I thought it was pretty cool that I could send short messages via text to my friends. That wasn’t a thing yet in North America. I was living in the future! But it was complicated. There was “short mail” and “long mail.” Short mail could be sent at a steep…
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Bell rejiggers RAP, but will delete user data
The victories just keep piling up (see previous victory here). The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada ruled against Bell and it’s collection of personal data for targeted advertising under the Relevant Ads Program (RAP). The question then became: what is Bell’s next move? Well, there was a little back and forth here, so…
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Quarterly review: FY15Q1
Each quarter I do a quick roundup of the book and film reviews that I do on Goodreads and Letterboxd. These reviews are too short and too off-the-cuff to be included with the more in depth reviews I do on this site. Below are the highlights of the quarter. Books I am keeping 4 books…
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Technology is a symptom
As “software eats the world,” further intertwining with our daily lives, more and more discussions that are ostensibly about tech are at heart political discussions. What looks like technology criticism is actually political critique, and therefore cannot be countered by arguments resting entirely within the niche of technology. That is why I do not look…
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War in the East China Sea… or lack thereof
Foreign Affairs is being unnecessarily alarmist on China-Japan relations in the East China Sea. Take these quotes: A military conflict between China and Japan would have catastrophic consequences and would almost certainly involve the U.S. military. And: The cost of any military conflict between China and Japan would be immense, and neither side wants a…