Futurist

There are 390 posts filed in Futurist (this is page 22 of 39).

Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy | Wait But Why

This Huffington Post repost of a Wait But Why post draws an unflattering picture of Generation Y:

Say hi to Lucy.

Lucy is part of Generation Y, the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. She’s also part of a yuppie culture that makes up a large portion of Gen Y.

I have a term for yuppies in the Gen Y age group — I call them Gen Y Protagonists — Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs. A GYPSY is a unique brand of yuppie, one who thinks they are the main character of a very special story.

So Lucy’s enjoying her GYPSY life, and she’s very pleased to be Lucy. Only issue is this one thing:Lucy’s kind of unhappy.

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War is so last decade

America & Not America. This sums it up.

America & Not America. This sums it up.

Congress and the President are having a tough time drumming up support for bombing Syria. Locally, an informal Triangle Business Journal poll had 79% opposing war to just 21% supporting it.

One of my Facebook friends noted this:

Interesting that adamant left- and right leaning friends are posting the SAME photos & links regarding Syrian intervention. Refreshing change to see harmony! Wonder what impetus is bringing us together – is it expense, not wanting to intervene in another country, more pressing issues at home, or…?

I think a decade of never-ending war in the Middle East kind of sapped Americans’ enjoyment of the thing. I think we as a country are starting to question the utility and effectiveness of bombing as a foreign policy. Seeing Americans from both sides of the political spectrum reach this conclusion gives me hope that maybe we have turned the corner on the all-war-all-the-time mentality that has gripped this country for the last 25 years.

Ex-spooks debate Snowden’s actions

I’m a member of a Facebook group called United States Navy Cryptologic Technicians. Last week a member authored a post which questioned why NSA leaker Edward Snowden wasn’t being hunted down with all available resources. It spawned a very lively debate amongst ex-spooks about Snowden’s motives and those of the NSA, a debate which continues as I post this. There are many former spooks like myself who find the NSA’s new reach to be quite alarming, while others seem to be comfortable with Americans’ almost complete lack of online privacy. Several point out that Snowden took an oath to protect this information and broke his oath.

I took a similar oath when gained my security clearance. Like every other servicemember, however, the first oath I took was support and defend the Constitution of the United States “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” To the extent that the latter conflicts with the former, the former (being the law of the land) always takes precedence. In addition, it was drilled into us as sailors that it was our duty to disobey an unlawful order. In hindsight this is far easier to say than do, as in practice disobeying a lawful order would most likely put you in a world of hurt. At least the government would come out looking good during your court-martial.
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North Hills and Brier Creek

Last week I had a delightful opportunity to meet my friend Mandy for lunch at a restaurant in Brier Creek. Not being familiar with the shopping center, I managed to park a short distance from my destination and spent a good 10 minutes walking from building to building to find it.

The walk made me realize just how vehicle-centric Brier Creek truly is. There are few or no sidewalks anywhere in the parking lots. There are no crosswalks at its internal intersections, either. The whole time I was on foot I felt like a sitting duck as cars whizzed by me. It seemed that shopping centers like Brier Creek fit an outdated mold of shops plunked down amidst acres and acres of parking lots. Sure, the stores are shiny and new but the paradigm is a dinosaur.
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Human Evolutionary Change 100 Times Higher in Past 5,000 Years

Fascinating.

“We are more different genetically from people living 5,000 years ago than they were different from Neanderthals,” according to John Hawks -University of Wisconsin anthropologist. “Five thousand years is such a small sliver of time – it’s 100 to 200 generations ago. That’s how long it’s been since some of these genes originated, and today they are in 30 or 40 percent of people because they’ve had such an advantage. It’s like ‘invasion of the body snatchers.’What’s really amazing about humans,” Hawks continued, “that is not true with most other species, is that for a long time we were just a little ape species in one corner of Africa, and weren’t genetically sampling anything like the potential we have now.”

via Human Evolutionary Change 100 Times Higher in Past 5,000 Years Today's Most Popular.

Six things you might not know about solar panels

Solar PV deck

Solar PV deck


Recently a neighbor asked about our home’s solar photovoltaic (PV) system. Since he’s not the first I thought I might write about our system, specifically a few things people might not know about PV systems. This reflects my experience and may differ from others. As always, your mileage may vary.

Solar PV is not rocket science. Solar PV literally once was rocket science, as one of its first practical applications was to power orbiting satellites. Apollo astronauts even left solar panels on the moon. Fortunately, a PV system no longer requires a NASA-sized budget nor an engineering degree. While the jargon may be confusing at first, you’ll quickly learn what’s what and things will start to make sense.
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Poor password management by banks

I recently signed up to the site of one of my (many) 401K administrators. When it came time to pick a password for my account, I was disappointed to see the kind of restrictions the bank put on my choice of password:

Password requirements:

Must contain 8 – 20 characters
Must contain at least one letter and one number
Is case sensitive (e.g. “MyPassword” with an uppercase “M” and “P” is different from “mypassword” with a lowercase “m” and “p”)
Cannot contain any spaces
Cannot contain special characters (e.g. !#$%^&@,;*( )+~?<>‘\”)
Cannot contain more than 2 of the same consecutive letters or numbers (e.g. aaa or 222)
Cannot be the same as your previous 6 passwords
Cannot be the same as your Username

I understand some of these, but not allowing spaces or special characters? That significantly reduces the complexity of available passwords, making the password easier to crack. Now perhaps they get around this by giving the user x number of tried before locking her out, but why not just allow special characters?
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Ancient DNA mapped from 700,000-year-old horse

Fascinating.

Gene experts said Wednesday they’ve been able to unravel the genetic blueprint of a prehistoric horse that lived in Canada some 700,000 years ago, the oldest DNA mapping effort ever attempted.

A dramatic extension of the limits of ancient DNA recovery, the advance re-creates a gene map, or genome, which is roughly 10 times older than the previous record-holder. The feat suggests that ancient DNA may be recoverable from frozen remains almost a million years old, raising the possibility of someday recovering even more ancient gene maps of humanity’s primitive ancestors.

via Ancient DNA mapped from 700,000-year-old horse.

Nextdoor and neighbors

My friend Reid Serozi wrote a blog post in support of Nextdoor.

Almost one year ago, I started questioning the value of using Google Groups and started to wonder if there was a better way to communicate with my neighbors. I discovered Nextdoor in early 2012 and immediately recognized the value and how it could address the pains I found with using Google Group for a neighborhood/community communication tool.

He makes some good points, but doesn’t address the issue of how poorly Nextdoor deals with neighborhood boundaries. Reid ran into this issue himself this week, as this post to the Oakwood mailing list shows:

I am trying to reach the Historic Oakwood Nextdoor lead.

It appears we have a boundary issue, since the Mordecai CAC overlaps your neighborhood boundary near East Franklin.

Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. All these boundaries. Virtual gated communities is what it is. Even with Nextdoor’s announcement that they’re reenabling their Nearby Neighborhoods feature doesn’t give me a warm fuzzy feeling.

Maybe I’m a geezer (okay, maybe the question should be how much of a geezer I am), but I’m all about open, open, open. Let everyone participate, don’t put up barriers (i.e., membership). Let people own their own data.

Then again, I didn’t see the value of Facebook but now I visit it constantly. You kids get off my lawn!

via Nextdoor Explosion | Reid Serozi – Civic Geek.

Everybody’s in

One of my shipmates, an engineer who served with me on the Elliot, posted a comment to one of my NSA Facebook posts that made me think. Referencing my cryptologic technician past, he said.

You should have been an engineer. No one would care what you say or think.

This implies that I have something worth listening to – which as anyone who’s ever read this blog knows is patently ridiculous. Tales of my past as a crypto tech are about as far removed from James Bond as possible. It would bore anyone to tears.
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