Category: Technology

Green Jobs

When the state said it was investing in green jobs they must have meant drone pilots:

Phantom Eye’s innovative and environmentally responsible liquid-hydrogen propulsion system will allow the aircraft to stay on station for up to four days while providing persistent monitoring over large areas at a ceiling of up to 65,000 feet, creating only water as a byproduct. The demonstrator, with its 150-foot wingspan, is capable of carrying a 450-pound payload.

At least the state will be more environmentally friendly while the’re spying on the citizenry and bombing people overseas.

Score One for Private Enterprise

They said it couldn’t be done, they said we needed the state in order to achieve space flight, they were wrong:

Dragon has been built by the California firm SpaceX and is carrying half a tonne of food and other stores for the ISS astronauts.

It is the first time a private sector company has attempted to deliver freight to the station.

The high-flying laboratory’s Canadarm2 is being controlled by US spaceman Don Petit.

He grabbed the capsule at 13:56 GMT (14:56 BST). “Houston, looks like we got us a Dragon by the tail,” he radioed to Nasa mission Control in Texas.

To all of you who claimed this couldn’t be done please feel free to shut your mouth next time you get the idea that the state is the only entity that can accomplish something. Heck, if it wasn’t for the state we may have been on Mars already.

How a Mechanical Watch Works

I’m one of those ever more rare individuals who always wears a wristwatch. While I could just reach for my cell phone every time I wanted to know the time that isn’t my idea of practical nor desirable. Even as a young kid I was always fascinated with wristwatches, especially mechanical ones (quartz ones may be more accurate and the watch I wear most often, my Tissot T-Touch, may be quartz but my heart has always been with mechanicals). It’s a feat of human ingenuity to get all those little gears, springs, and jewel bearings running together in such in a way that allows us to accurately tell the passage of time. If you’ve ever taken a mechanical movement apart you can’t help but appreciate the engineering that went into its design and construction.

With that said I also enjoy those old videos that explain how things work. Needless to say I came across this gem, an old video that has to be from the ’50’s or ’60’s explaining how mechanical watches work. It’s actually does a very good job of explaining the concept (it seems older videos were much more straight forward and expressed their point clearer than modern videos usually do so they’re often better in my opinion):

For those of you wondering why I’m posting content about watches on my blog realize this is my blog and I will post what I want. It’s always fun to drive off of the beaten path and post things that have nothing to do with my usual content of guns and libertarianism.

Kindle Touch 5.1.0 Firmware Released

Yes, I’m still madly in love with my Kindle. While I never actually got around to typing up a review of the Kindle Touch I can say it’s a great device with only a handful of caveats. One of the features that was removed from the Kindle Touch that was present in all previous models was landscape mode. Honestly, I never used it so I didn’t miss it but Amazon has finally added the feature back into the Kindle Touch in the new 5.1.0 firmware update:

  • Language Support: Customize your Kindle Touch with the language you prefer: English (US and UK), German, French, Spanish, Italian, or Brazilian Portuguese.
  • Landscape Mode: Switch between portrait and landscape orientation in books and PDFs to read maps, graphs, and tables more easily.
  • Instant Translations: Tap any word or highlight a section to instantly translate into other languages, including Spanish, Japanese, and more. Translations by Bing Translator.
  • Kindle Format 8: Formatting and layout improvements make Kindle books look even better.
  • Wi-Fi Enhancements: Connect your Kindle Touch to Wi-Fi with WPS and select WPA2 Enterprise networks.
  • Read-to-Me With Text-to-Speech: Have your Kindle Touch read English-language content out loud to you, now including summaries of newspaper and magazine articles when available from the publisher.
  • More Sharing Options: Tell others what you’re reading on Facebook or Twitter from anywhere within a book — just tap to share a link along with your comments.
  • Onscreen Keyboard Suggestions: Search and shop faster with automatic word suggestions as you type.

Landscape mode is accessibly in the menu, although I wish they would have placed it on the bottom menu bar that appears when you tap the menu button for consistency. Beyond the above mentioned changes the home screen has been updated a bit. The font used to display boots and collections appears to have changed a bit and the top now had three new combo boxes; one for filtering content that appears on the home screen, one for selecting how content on the home screen is sorted, and one for quickly jumping to a desired page on your home screen. Overall the home screen update is minor but welcomed.

The predictive text is a nice touch as well but I don’t type very often on my Kindle Touch so it’s really just a minor update for me. I will also have to play with the supposed WPA2 enterprise update just to fulfill my curiosity. Beyond those updates I doubt I’ll utilize any of the other new features, I mostly use my Kindle to read books and that’s really it.

Human Achievement Hour

March 30th is a day when we’re supposed to turn off all of our lights, forgo the use of electronic devices, and otherwise act like we’re in the fucking stone age for one hour. This idiotic idea has been going on for a few years and it’s called Earth Hour. During Earth Hour I always make it a point to turn on all of my lights, computers, and run my truck because I like celebrating the fact we’re not living in the stone age. Well this year I wasn’t alone because Earth Hour has been renamed Human Achievement Hour:

The Competitive Enterprise Institute plans to recognize “Human Achievement Hour” between 8:30pm and 9:30pm on March 28, 2009 to coincide with Earth Hour, a period of time during which governments, individuals, and corporations have agreed to dim or shut off lights in an effort to draw attention to climate change. Anyone not foregoing the use of electricity in that hour is, by default, celebrating the achievements of human beings.

We salute the people who keep the lights on and produce the energy that helps make human achievement possible.

Green and private conservation are fine. We have no problem with an individual (or group) that wants to sit naked in the dark without heat, clothing, or light. Additionally, we would have no problem with the group holding a pro-green technology rally. That is their choice. But when this group stages a “global election” with the express purpose of influencing “government policies to take action against global warming,” we have every right as individuals to express our vote for the opposite

Sadly Human Achievement Hour has already passed for the year but if I know my readers, and I believe I do, most of you likely had every light, computer, and red dot sight turned on. The achievements of the human race should not be looked down upon, they should be embraced and celebrated. How many lives have been saved by medical technologies made possible through the invention of electricity? How many man hours have been saved by these wonderful devices we call computers? How much more connected are we as a race with the invention of the Internet? All of these things, things many environmentalists decry as evil, are the products of human minds.

Whenever an enviro-Nazi (I would call them environmentalists but most of them don’t respect private property) tells you electricity is killing the planet remind them that they wouldn’t likely be alive without it since electricity makes many medical marvels possible. When they tell you automobiles are evil remind them that American cities are dependent on them, we couldn’t live in our cities as they’re currently designed without the invention of automobiles. Don’t let people get away with decrying the achievements of great minds, point out their idiocy so all can point and laugh at those who advocate we return to the stone age.

The New Apple iPad

Apple announced a new iPad. So what do I think? I’m glad you asked. Overall nothing surprising was announced but the new iPad does look like a suitable evolution of the iPad 2. The retina display is a welcomed addition as is LTE. Of course LTE isn’t available anywhere near me so it’s merely a nice idea (yes the world does revolve around me and therefore LTE is a meaningless feature until I have it).

Will I get one? I’m not sure yet. There are times that I find a tablet with a data plan appealing but then I stop and wonder if I would ever use such a device with any frequency.

Apple also released iOS 5.1, which supposedly fixes some battery life issues, I’ll let you know if I see a difference after running it for a couple of days (my hopes aren’t high since Apple has released several “fixes” that accomplished nothing).

Printer Manufacturers that Cooperate with the United States Government

In an attempt to grant a monopoly on counterfeiting to the Federal Reserve the United States government has been working with printer manufacturers. This cooperation, better known as corporatism, has lead to certain printer manufacturers equipping prints to place tiny dots on every page printed in order to trace what printer any document came from. No publicly available list of printer manufacturers who were implementing this system was publicly available until now. Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request we now know who these printer manufacturers are:

Canon
Brother
Casio
Hewlett-Packard
Konica
Minolta
Mita
Ricoh
Sharp
Xerox

Basically every major printer manufacturer. Still it’s nice to have a definitive list to reference.

Apple Announces OS X 10.8

I haven’t been posting much technology news as of later. Mostly this is because there hasn’t been much worth writing about and this really isn’t an exception. Apple quietly revealed the next version of OS X, named Mountain Lion.

With the exception of and iOS-esque notification center, nothing announced about 10.8 really grabs my attention. I guess that’s a good thing since my Mac Pro (1,1 model) won’t be officially supported anymore.

Fixing the iPhone’s Disappearing Personal Hotspot Setting

In Miami I was able to get online with the assistance of my wonderful iPhone 4. The iPhone, like Android and Windows Mobile phones, has the ability to be setup as a personal hotspot. All this entails is using the iPhone’s Wi-Fi interface as an access point that grants any connected device to use the phone’s cellular data connection. Unfortunately due to some cruel twist of fate the iPhone has a problem that sporadically appears: the setting to enable and disable the hotspot functionality disappears entirely. This happened to me and after getting it figured out I decided to write a little guide.

For me the fix was very simple. Open the Settings app and navigate to General->Reset. On this screen simply look for the button labeled “Reset Network Settings” and tap it. You’ll get a dialog box asking you to confirm this decision and after you do the phone will restart. After doing this my hotspot functionality returned much to my joy.

One thing to note is that every Wi-Fi network configuration you had previously saved on your phone will be gone so you’ll have to reenter the passkeys. Besides that the rest of your data will be preserved so this is a much less painful route to take than doing a complete reset of the phone.

We’ll Just Build Our Own Internet

While various world governments have been conspiring to censor the Internet groups of hackers have been hard at work finding mechanisms to bypass proposed censorship methods. Ultimately there is a limitation of what can be done because governments can force internet providers to comply with any demand so the only effective option is to setup an alternate Internet. Members of the Chaos Communications Congress have made an interesting proposal involved low-cost satellites:

The new plan calls for sending up home-made satellites into space as part of a Hackerspace Global Grid. The project includes low-cost ground stations to track and communicate with the satellites.

Anti-censorship activist Nick Farr, bothered by the world’s threats in blocking the free flow of information, started campaigning for contributions to the Grid earlier this year.

Launching communications satellites has been attempted in the past by some amateur groups but low-budget projects have not easily managed the task of tracking the devices.

According to reports, a few small satellites have gone into orbit but usually for brief periods only. Initiatives like space missions have required the big pockets of large public agencies and private companies, but Farr hopes his plan can work.

Farr and colleagues envision a grid of low-cost ground stations to track and communicate with the satellites. They are working with Constellation, which is a German aerospace research initiative. The initiative interlinks student projects.

Attempts to setup an alternative Internet have been proposed but none have succeeded. The main Achilles’ heel has been the hardware side of things. Unless an entirely independent architecture is setup government agencies still have control of the “kill switch” (that is the central points of control such as internet providers, root domain name system servers, etc.). The obvious solution involves wireless of some sort simply because running physical cable is very expensive and it’s unlikely independent entities will be able to get right of way agreements to perform such a task. While satellite communication has a high lag time it’s far better than nothing. You may not be able to play Call of Duty 11 on a satellite linkup but you can certainly communicate with other people in the world.