The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Category: technology

  • FB Recap: Social Media and the Body Politic

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    mongreldogs
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    Here’s the thing. This week we’ve learned about massive breaches of trust and the evils that the superconnected Internet can bring. But we’ve also seen truly inspiring and uplifting photos that speak to real change — and not only would we never have seen these pictures without social media, the protests and rallies would never…

  • Facetious blueprint

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    mongreldogs
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    An AI researcher (Kai-Fu Lee) has written an article (“A Blueprint for Coexistence with Artificial Intelligence“) that fails at its own goal, spectacularly.  He assures us we need not end up in the dystopias so common in movies and literature.  And I wanted to his assurances to be convincing, because I happen to feel the…

  • Looking for hive mind help on a course

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    mongreldogs
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    Actually, on two courses.  The school I’m at (Newark Academy) ends the year with a nine-day “June Term”, wherein students take one class for six hours a day.  June Term classes are supposed to be experiential and rigorous, and maybe a bit weird.  All teachers are supposed to suggest courses; I made three idea proposals and…

  • Review: Agents of SHIELD season finale

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    mongreldogs
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    I caught up on the end of the season for Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD.  (Yes, it’s that time of summer when I get to catch up on the shows I missed.)  The first season ended with the fallout from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, when the entire Marvel universe was scrambled.  Could Season Two match it? Short…

  • Miracles and Wonder

    Miracles and Wonder

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    mongreldogs
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    I just received the Kingston 64 GB USB flash drive shown above.  It holds (duh) 64 gigabytes of data.  I’ve included a US quarter for size comparisons. My first computer was a Commodore-64, for which I had the venerable C1541 floppy disk drive. That used 5.25″ floppy disks — which were actually floppy, you could…

  • The buzz about the loop

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    mongreldogs
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    So Elon Musk has revealed his great new intercity transit idea, the HyperLoop.    It would seem the emphasis should be on the first syllable — to wit, HYPE — but I’ll leave engineering analyses to those far more qualified than I.  My impression is that Musk offers vaporware that over-promises and under-delivers, that will…

  • Tron: Legacy — soundtrack

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    mongreldogs
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    Being a geek of a certain age, I of course went out to see Tron: Legacy as soon as it opened in the theaters. And being a geek of a certain type, and having listened to Wendy Carlos‘ ethereal soundtrack to the original Tron, I also purchased the soundtrack to this one as soon as…

  • I like programmers with a sense of humor…

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    mongreldogs
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    dropbox is one of my favorite “cloud” utilities.  It keeps a directory synchronized across many computers, allowing remote access and automatic backup.  Whenever you set up dropbox on a new computer, all of the files need to be copied across.  As you might imagine, this can take some time.  Usually, dropbox pops up a little…

  • Review: Metatropolis

    Review: Metatropolis

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    mongreldogs
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    Metatropolis Edited by Jack Scalzi Rating on an arbitrary 5-point scale: 4 out of 5 Metatropolis is a science fiction anthology exploring, as it claims, the “future of cities”.  That’s not strictly accurate. It’s really a collection of stories that explore the question: If we as a species are going to survive the mistakes of…

  • Why I have no respect for design behaviors at Microsoft

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    mongreldogs
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    I’ve received my new laptop and am working on getting it outfitted and up to speed.  (This process, by the way, is distressingly like moving to a new home and is equally as frustrating and potentially as traumatizing.)  After logging in for the first time, the system helpfully suggests that you create a system backup. …