May 2013

There were 19 posts published in May 2013 (this is page 2 of 2).

Solar system

Solar panels

Solar panels


Last week we got our own solar system: a solar PV system installed by Southern Energy Management. Friday morning, I flipped the breaker that officially “tied” it to the power grid. The rooftop panels then began feeding electricity to both our home and the neighborhood.

It’s been a long journey to get here and we’re not done yet. It was two years ago that we first considered getting solar panels. We got the roof surveyed and a quote generated but didn’t feel the need to jump on it yet. Then in February, the rapid rise of stupidity in our state legislature made me wonder if the many incentives now in place to encourage solar adoption might soon vanish with the setting sun. I also knew the price of solar had dropped considerably in that time so it was wise to revisit the decision.
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Don’t share that infographic spam – Salon.com

Salon’s Andrew Leonard wrote in March about what might actually be behind the mystery infographics. Nice reporting, Andrew!

Won’t you share my infographic, please?

Doesn’t seem too much to ask, does it? Until you investigate further and discover that by incorporating these infographics into your website, you are not only probably violating at least the spirit of Google’s guidelines on Web spam, but you are also quite likely steering unsuspecting visitors to websites bankrolled by the for-profit education industry.

via Don’t share that infographic spam – Salon.com.

onlinecriminaljusticedegree.com changes hosts?

You are encouraged to skip this post if you’re afraid of getting geek on you.

I noticed that onlinecriminaljusticedegree.com still hosts the same type of content it did before. It’s domain still hosted by a privacy-protecting registrar. However, it’s moved servers. Previously it was hosted at The Planet. Now it’s an Amazon S3 site:

Domain Name: ONLINECRIMINALJUSTICEDEGREE.COM
Registrar: MONIKER ONLINE SERVICES, INC.
Whois Server: whois.moniker.com
Referral URL: http://www.moniker.com
Name Server: NS1.MONIKERDNS.NET
Name Server: NS2.MONIKERDNS.NET
Name Server: NS3.MONIKERDNS.NET
Name Server: NS4.MONIKERDNS.NET
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 13-apr-2013
Creation Date: 23-sep-2004
Expiration Date: 23-sep-2014

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Dear William: fat chance.

Got this in today, with regard to the mystery infographics. I was thinking of responding politely that I wasn’t interested but then I realized this was yet another bulk email distributed through pandasent.com. Nor is it personalized in any way: my name does not appear anywhere in it.

So, tough luck, “William.” I’m not interested in covering your tracks!

Received: from pandasent.com (localhost [127.0.0.1])
by pandasent.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 38C0B47E2
for My_Email_Address; Tue, 7 May 2013 12:32:24 +0000 (UTC)
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=simple; d=pandasent.com; h=message-id
:mime-version:from:to:subject:date:content-type
:content-transfer-encoding; s=postfix; bh=blah blah blah=
Message-Id: 08UE0KF-5RC7-UWYS-JIEE-FRL6JC12TPZ@onlinecriminaljusticedegree.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
From: William Pritchard william.pritchard@onlinecriminaljusticedegree.com
To: My_Email_Address
Subject: OnlineCriminalJusticeDegree.com Link Removal Request
Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 07:31:16 -0700
X-Bounce-Tracking-Info: blah blah blah
Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable
X-SMTPCOM-Tracking-Number: blah blah blah
X-SMTPCOM-Sender-ID: 446126
X-SMTPCOM-Spam-Policy: SMTP.com is a paid relay service. We do not tolerate UCE of any kind. Please report it ASAP to abuse@smtp.com

Hello,

My name is Will, and I am writing to you today on behalf of my employer, OnlineCriminalJusticeDegree.com. We’ve been keeping a close eye on the goings on of other websites since the advent of the new Webmaster Standards. We want to make sure we’re doing everything in our power to stay up to date and relevant. Looking around the web, as it were, we’re beginning to fear that, perhaps, we’re not doing everything correctly. We’ve studied the guidelines rather closely, and we do see where we might have missed the marks.
Continue reading →

Government Lab Reveals It Has Operated Quantum Internet For Over Two Years | MIT Technology Review

Astonishing.

One of the dreams for security experts is the creation of a quantum internet that allows perfectly secure communication based on the powerful laws of quantum mechanics.

Today, Richard Hughes and pals at Los Alamos National Labs in New Mexico reveal an alternative quantum internet, which they say they’ve been running for two and half years. Their approach is to create a quantum network based around a hub and spoke-type network. All messages get routed from any point in the network to another via this central hub.

via Government Lab Reveals It Has Operated Quantum Internet For Over Two Years | MIT Technology Review.

World’s largest midget?

Went out to dinner with some family friends when my friend leans over the table.

“I see you all the time on public access,” he tells me.

“Really?” I reply. This was news to me.

It brought up all kinds of questions, namely

  • there are people who actually watch public access
  • I’m friends with one of them, and
  • I have no clue what could be showing that has me in it.

I don’t have cable so the only time I can see what’s on Raleigh Television Network is the streaming the city does of its government channel. I might show up at an occasional city council meeting but more often than not there’s other stuff showing.

Being on public access all the time is kind of like being the world’s largest midget.

Kiera Wilmot’s chemistry explosion: Is she more like Oliver Sacks or Dzhokhar Tsarnaev?

Nice commentary on letting kids experiment with science, bangs, stinks, and all.

It is without a doubt risky to let kids try unsupervised science, but we already let kids do hazardous things such as ride bicycles and play baseball, and even encourage them to do so with a chaperone. You don’t get better at fielding unless you throw a ball around outside of regular team practices. We accept the idea that accidents might happen in the course of enthusiastic practice. So while throwing a baseball around in an open grassy area behind the cafeteria before school is a really bad idea, it is not a felony—even if you have the misfortune to accidentally hit someone in the head. We accept these risks in order to get better ball players.

via Kiera Wilmot’s chemistry explosion: Is she more like Oliver Sacks or Dzhokhar Tsarnaev? – Slate Magazine.

Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?

Astonishing. There’s a reason the federal government buys millions of dollars worth of file servers.

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a conversation. There’s no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?

CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.

BURNETT: “So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.

CLEMENTE: “No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”

via Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government? | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

Concussion

Feeling like the Bad Parent. Son Travis said he hit his head while playing after school but I failed to take it seriously. It took Kelly arriving home to get him whisked to the ER, where he was diagnosed as having a concussion. As many concussions I’ve had in my life, I should’ve known better.

They’re on their way home now where he’ll simply need some rest to return back to normal.