obligatory obscure reference

FINALLY made it to a HackPGH member’s meeting. It’s a nice little space, not in the best part of town, but at least there’s parking and the like. Many members have donated time and equipment to help set up the space, now they’re needing help with things like putting in A/C wiring and continuing to build out the space.

So what sort of things to people do at hacker spaces? Well, whatever the members think would be a fun project. Say, for example, building and launching a high-altitude balloon or learning about fizzy drinks.

If you’re in Pittsburgh, and you’re looking for a studio space to hack on technology or take classes, haul yourself out to the next Hack PGH open house night or take a class, you won’t be sorry.

Some notes from today’s ride

1. Before you start cycling here, and especially before you move here or look for a place to live, go over to BikePGH and read up on the city. Get their fine cycling map and your riding will go much more smoothly.
2. There’s a popular belief that Pittsburgh drivers are some of the most polite in the US. While this may be true, they also get into dangerous, passive-aggressive games of “no, you first” that block traffic and cause other people to do stupid things.
3. The Pittsburgh Left is as real and as dangerous as it seems.
4. If you see a motorist doing something rude or dangerous don’t assume they’re a jerk. It’s quite likely that they’re probably just incompetent, elderly, or both. The state driver’s exam is a joke — you just drive a bit in a parking lot — and there’s also no mandatory retest as you get older.
5. If elderly, incompetent drivers annoy you then avoid Squirrel Hill.
6. There’s a reason there are sharrows on one side and a bike lane on the other. Trust me.
7. If you’re in Oakland and almost collide with an oblivious college student, thank Pitt.
8. If you’re in the South Side and almost collide with an oblivious hipster, thank PBR.
9. Negley is not nearly as fun as you think it will be.
10. Yes, you broke 35mph without trying. We all have.
11. Cycling here has improved several orders of magnitude in the four years I’ve lived here. There are bike lanes, sharrows, a pro-bike org, and city support for cycling.
12. Tuesday night is Bacon Night at the Harris Grill.

I do privacy and security stuff for a living, so I can honestly say that Facebook doesn’t have to make everything opt-in by default. They could just as easily do opt-neutral or even opt-out by default, but they’ve decided to err in favor of stalkers and data miners.

Facebook has added a new privacy setting called “Instant Personalization” that shares data with non-Facebook websites BY DEFAULT. You have to manually go and turn it off you don’t want Facebook to share your data with non-Facebook websites.

On top of that, Facebook will still let your friends share information about you on other sites unless you block the individual applications.

You can turn off the data sharing by Facebook within Facebook settings: Account > Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites -> Instant Personalization -> Edit Setting

To block the Applications, you have to go to each and every Application within Facebook and individually block it:

Pandora: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=139475280761

Yelp: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=97534753161

docs.com: I haven’t found the app yet.

I’m just now back from spending two weeks in Japan, almost exclusively in Tokyo. While the two cities are obviously very different culturally, I noticed some similarities between the two and was intrigued by how Tokyo’s residents benefit from things that Pittsburghers see as problems.

First question: How big do you think Tokyo is? Huge, right? 12 million people?

Wrong. Tokyo is (was) actually pretty small. It was a single town in the middle of the Tokyo Prefecture, which covers what we would call the greater Tokyo metropolitan area. There are actually 23 wards (think boroughs) in Tokyo, each that collects its own taxes and has its own local government. If you live in Shibuya you pay different taxes than if you live in Roppongi, but for those of us who don’t live there, we’d never know (or care) about such details. We see a huge city with consistent signage, the Tokyo Metro Police helping tourists, Tokyo Fire Department trucks being washed/polished, and the wonderful collection of decorated sewer and storm drain covers of the public services.

So how big is Pittsburgh? Is it a little town or is it a region? I live two towns away from Pittsburgh, yet my mailing address is still “Pittsburgh, PA”. A friend of mine in California told me he was from Pittsburgh, it turns out he’s from Murraysville.   

Now, how many police departments do we have in “Pittsburgh”? How many fire departments? How many road maintenance organizations?

Could the Borough of Forest Hills, Swissvale, and WIlkinsburg continue to retain what identity they have while sharing a police force with Pittsburgh and one another? Would “Pittsburgh” benefit from having unified police and fire departments that shared frequencies, training, and equipment?

I’m not talking about consolidating cities, I’m talking about sharing resources that are common across adjoining towns and communities. Pittsburgh already has several “zones” for its police department, would adding another zone (or few) be cheaper than operating multiple, tiny police departments with duplicated services?

Technorati Tags: pittsburgh, tokyo

Perhaps folks in local government can learn something from the success in Boston?

“[...]

Researchers, working with police, identified 34 crime hot spots. In half of them, authorities set to work – clearing trash from the sidewalks, fixing street lights, and sending loiterers scurrying. Abandoned buildings were secured, businesses forced to meet code, and more arrests made for misdemeanors. Mental health services and homeless aid referrals expanded.

In the remaining hot spots, normal policing and services continued.

Then researchers from Harvard and Suffolk University sat back and watched, meticulously recording criminal incidents in each of the hot spots.

The results, just now circulating in law enforcement circles, are striking: A 20 percent plunge in calls to police from the parts of town that received extra attention. It is seen as strong scientific evidence that the long-debated “bro ken windows” theory really works – that disorderly conditions breed bad behavior, and that fixing them can help prevent crime.

[...]

Technorati Tags: crime, pittsburgh

On the way home tonight I stopped at a PCLB store (state owned liquor and wine but no beer store) to pick up a bottle of cheap sake. Good sake is hard to find here, but at least PLCB stocks Sho Chiku Bai Nigori, a fine table/drinking nigori. The PLCB I stopped at has a history of having “something other than gekkikan”, so I was checking out the good stuff and considering maybe trying a new ginjo or two.

Then I noticed bottles of Sho Chiku Bai Organic Nama Nigori on the shelf.

Yeah, you read that right. “…Nama Nigori on the shelf”. I don’t know that non-refrigerated sake is bad for you, but it’s probably going to taste pretty foul.

What happened next is a wonderful example of what I think of as a culture of complacency.

Me: Excuse me, but there’s a problem with some of your stock.

Manager: What?

Me: This sake. It’s nama sake, it’s unpasteurized, and if it’s not refrigerated it will go bad. It’s probably not safe to drink either, I don’t think spoiled sake is something I’d want to drink.

Manager (showing no interest in looking at the bottle): They ship me stuff, I put it where they tell me.

Me: Right, but they apparently didn’t tell you this needs to go in the fridge.   

Manager (still no interest in looking at the bottle): Look, I told you, they ship me stuff, I put it where they tell me.

Me: Ok, but it even says on the bottle to “keep refrigerated”. If it’s gone bad, or if it’s a health risk, you aren’t going to at least take it off the shelf?

Manager: Nobody’s returned any of it yet.

Me: Well, you just started carrying this. I’ve been living here 3 years, this is the first time I’ve seen nama anywhere in a state store.

Manager: I’m telling you, they ship me stuff, I put it where they tell me. You don’t have to buy it if you don’t want it.

And yes, I’m notifying the PLCB and ACHD including store and date/time of visit…

I’d like to think that if I went to a manager/owner of a privately owned store and said, “hey, one of your products is definitely gone off and might be bad for someone to drink” that their response wouldn’t be “so?”

Technorati Tags: complacency, pittsburgh, plcb, sake

Surplus? What Surplus?

And I never thought about it this way, but yeah:

“Brain-drain no brainer: Where do young graduates go when they leave Pittsburgh? To cities with viable public transportation systems, so they can work and play without having to buy a car on entry-level salaries or coffee shop wages”

Technorati Tags: future, pittsburgh, PAT

Given the number of negative attack ads running on the TV and radio, I find myself unable to watch your channel or listen to your station. Between now and the day after the election, I will only be watching national news that I’ve recorded on my TiVo DVR, and even those shows I will not be watching those in real-time.

This is something you, the local media, have a say in. You are able to refuse ads, so why not set some civil standards? Only accept ads paid for by the candidates and only those ads that spend at least 3/4 of their time talking about the candidate and not the opponent. Or only accept ads aren’t currently debunked by factcheck.org.

But you, the local media, have decided to take every dollar and any ad that comes along. I find myself regularly turning off KQV as soon as an attack ad starts and listening to NPR or a CD. Soon, I’ll stop turning in to KQV all-together and spend a few minutes looking at the traffic online before I leave the house rather than waiting for a traffic report on the radio.

Same goes for local TV stations — why should I wade through repeated attack ads that insult my intelligence and damage the democratic process on local TV when I can tune to an international news channel or go to my computer and get the news and weather there?

You need to have viewers and listeners to justify your ad rates, and to get us, you need to broadcast content we want. I don’t mind ads for things I might want, but ads that make me angry also make me change to another station, CDs, or the Internet.

Technorati Tags: media, pittsburgh, politics,

I wish this were in The Onion and not the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

A national children’s advocacy group is pushing to get Pittsburgh removed from the Street View of Google’s map search until the technology is refined so pedophiles can’t use it to pinpoint children’s homes, schools and playgrounds.

Street View, an addition to Google Maps that uses vehicle cameras to take 360-degree, street-level views of neighborhoods, allows users to virtually cruise down a street and across a city. In the process, the tool shows pictures of children, toys and family cars that could tip a would-be predator to an area where children could be found and potentially victimized, according to the group, Stop Internet Predators.
[...]

OMFG! I bet you could use Street View to find cars to steal! Or burglars could find houses with plate glass front windows surrounded by bushes that are easy to break into! Rapists could find bushes to hide in!

I mean, it’s not like people can drive around neighborhoods and find those things in real time, is it?

Sadly, this ignorance about crime is nothing new.

Quintilian, INSTITUTIO ORATORIA, II, xvi (first century AD):

“Doctors have been caught using poisons, and those who falsely assume the
name of philosopher have occasionally been detected in the gravest crimes.
Let us give up eating, it often makes us ill; let us never go inside
houses, for sometimes they collapse on their occupants; let never a sword
be forged for a soldier, since it might be used by a robber.”

Technorati Tags: google, idiocy, privacy

I don’t follow PA state politics closely to understand why this is a partisan issue, but the claim is that Democrats in the house are trying to kill a bill that reflects current federal law regarding antenna regulation by sending it off to a subcommittee.

This from the Atlantic Division Director, Bill Edgar, N3LLR:

Please see the attached document from Joe, N3TTE. They’re sample letters to be sent to your local rep as well as Rep Dwight Evans, the Chair of the House Appropriations Committee. After speaking to my local representative his office suggested that all interested parties contact Representative Evans urging him to bring the bill out of Committee and up to the house for a full vote. AB3ER also called Rep. Evans office and the staffer there commented that the Appropriations Committed was being “used” to kill the bill. We need to look like an 800Lb Gorilla who votes coming at these representatives to keep the special interest (PA State Association of Township Supervisors) from killing this legislation.

The full email, along with sample letters is here. Take a minute and write/fax/call your local Representative and ask that this bill be brought out of committee.

Technorati Tags: amateur radio, antenna, pennsylvania