Richard pointed me at this wonderful life-expectancy simulation. Very sobering – a bit like visiting an ossuary – and fascinating, too.
It reminds me that I haven’t yet ported my Time’s Wingèd Chariot watchface to my Apple Watch. I’d better get working on it while I still can…
Yesterday, I used my watch to buy entrance tickets at the Botanic Garden, and coffee at its café. This morning I paid for petrol using Paypal on my phone, and then used my watch to buy lunch at a local cafe and groceries at a local store.
I only had to get my wallet out today at the market, but that was to buy an old-fashioned apple pie, so I didn’t mind using an antique payment method.
I am looking forward to the day when wallets are things you see in costume dramas, though…
From this interview with Tom Maudlin…
It’ s easy to prove that a ham sandwich is better than heaven, because:
Here I am, almost visible on Google Streetview:
Or you can try to get a better view here if you’re curious! For future readers, it’s the April 2015 view…
I should have waved out of the window more vigorously when I saw the car, but then they’d just have blurred out my face anyway. (A wise precaution in any photo that includes me, for aesthetic reasons.)
Well, I’m back home from Michigan, enjoying the more moderate temperatures of the UK, and some real marmalade, after a two-week absence from both.
I’m also back in the world of hard water, and was pondering this as I squeegeed our shower cubicle this morning, as I do every day, to reduce limescale build-up. I’m sure that that clever inventor Mr Dyson could come up with something to save me having to go through this rigmarole. Perhaps some kind of induced vortex which would pull all the water drops back towards the plughole so that they wouldn’t hit the walls of the cubicle — or perhaps even render those walls unnecessary.
Alternatively, maybe something like the Airblade technology could blast the water droplets off the walls before they had a chance to evaporate? And then also dry me as I stepped out of the door?
Over to you, Sir James…
There’s an old saying:
If you’re not a communist at the age of 20, you haven’t got a heart.
If you’re still a communist at the age of 30, you haven’t got a brain.
I’ve always liked this quote, and have wondered about its origin since I first heard it. Now, thanks to the web — invented when I was about 25 — I can find out. It turns out to pre-date communism by some time, at least as a rhetorical device.
It was said about republicanism by François Guizot, the French Prime Minister in the mid 19th century, whose childhood had been during the Reign of Terror.
Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head.
It was later adopted by Georges Clemenceau, who substituted socialiste for republicain.
But, Fred Shapiro points out, one could argue that even Guizot was pipped to the post by John Adams, who said something similar, though not as elegantly, in 1799:
A boy of 15 who is not a democrat is good for nothing, and he is no better who is a democrat at 20.
Adams missed the heart and head distinction, though, which I think is important: it captures the sometimes misguided fervour of youth and the wisdom that comes from experience (or, others might say, the conservatism that comes from age).
Of course, I still prefer the ‘communist’ version, but that’s because of when I grew up. I wonder what variations will be popular in 50 or 100 years’ time?
John’s recent column about self-driving cars made me ponder some of the conversations I’ve had about them recently.
I’m a huge fan of the idea, because I think it will transform society in ways we can only begin to imagine, and most of these will be highly beneficial. To those friends kind enough to humour me, I can enthuse for ages about decluttering the narrow residential streets of Cambridge, currently filled with empty, parked, individually-owned cars; or about the joys of rural living when you can read a good book, enjoy breakfast, or even sleep during your commute; about not having to share the roads with heavy goods vehicles, since they’ll mostly be cruising to their destinations in the small hours of the morning…
My favourite dream, though, is that of owning a self-driving motorhome. One evening, not too far off, I’ll use an iPhone app to summon it from its out-of-town parking space, and when it pulls up outside, Rose, Tilly and I will climb aboard with a good movie and a bottle of wine, and I’ll say, “Chamonix, please!”, before settling down for the evening. The following morning, I’ll take the dog for a walk in the Alps. Oh, and if a large vehicle will be a bit too cumbersome for exploring the winding roads of Haute-Savoie once we get there, I’ll just tell my car to follow us.
Now, when it comes to these ‘autonomous vehicles’, there are plenty of naysayers around. There are those who are concerned that cars will have to make ethical decisions in the face of potential accidents, and may not always make the right ones. Conspiracy theorists talk about young or high-net-worth individuals being spared while elderly or impoverished pedestrians are sacrificed. Others fear that a car swerving to miss a dog will hit a human, and so forth. It’s not, however, clear to me that human drivers, often with less information available in that split second, will necessarily do any better, especially if they are drunk, elderly, tired, distracted or short-sighted. Many of the objections are often really variations on Phillipa Foot’s classic Trolley Problem, which has been debated for many decades without any machines being involved.
It does seem clear, however, that road safety overall will be improved greatly by this technology, so unless things are sidetracked by expensive and complicated litigation in individual cases — a real danger — the lower insurance premiums associated with self-driving cars may eventually pay for their wide deployment. In fact, I expect that driving your own car will eventually be something only the rich can afford to do.
So I’m somewhat bemused when I see articles stating, for example, “The autonomous Google car may never actually happen“. Such headlines are, of course, mostly just link-bait, but it seems to me self-evident that autonomous vehicles will eventually not just ‘happen’, but will be the norm, and we’ll look back with astonishment at the time when two fallible humans were allowed to hurtle these deadly missiles in opposing directions within a few feet of each other.
Self-driving cars will come eventually. The question is simply how long it will take us to get there, and how many political and legal potholes they have to dodge en route. I, for one, can’t wait: I’ll be buying an autonomous vehicle just as soon as somebody makes one I can afford. Even if it isn’t a motorhome.
Block’s Farm Market, in Romulus, Michigan, is a great place.
I particularly liked the way they sell sweetcorn: a tractor drives in from the nearby field towing a couple of trailers, and you just help yourself. You pack as many as you can fit in two large bags, for $5. It’s also, I have to say, perhaps the best sweetcorn I’ve ever tasted.
From our just-in-case-you’re-Googling-for-it department…
In Python code, wildcard import statements, such as:
from foo import *
can be very convenient, but are now usually considered bad practice.
I’ve written a really simple tool called dewildcard to help replace them with full expansions, which can then be trimmed down using a tool like pylint or pyflakes.
Just in case it’s useful…
I meant to post this when it came out a month ago…but better late than never…
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, a computer security journalist, wrote about why he’s ditching his Android phone for an Apple one, in an article entitled Goodbye, Android. He’s not a particular fan of the Apple ecosystem but feels he must make the change for security reasons, and that’s not Google’s fault — they’re quite prompt about issuing security patches — it’s a feature of the Android ecosystem.
Google still has very little control over software updates, and Android users are basically at the mercy of their carriers and phone manufacturers when it comes to getting updates or new operating system versions. For example, it took Sony more than six months to push Android 5.0 Lollipop to its new line of Xperia Z phones, despite the fact that it had promised for a much shorter turnaround after Lollipop was released by Google. Just for comparison’s sake, when Apple released iOS 8 in September of last year, it immediately became available for all iPhone users, even those with an 2011 iPhone 4S.
As security expert Cem Paya put it, that was a conscious decision Google made when it created Android. Paya called it a Faustian deal: “cede control over Android, get market-share against iPhone.” Basically, Google was happy to let carriers put their bloatware on their Android phones in exchange to having a chance to fight Apple in the mobile market. The tradeoff was giving carriers and manufacturers control over their Android releases, leaving Google unable to centrally push out operating system updates.
If you enjoyed Andy Weir’s book, The Martian, anything like as much as I did, then you’ll certainly enjoy this splendid hour-long interview with him. (If, for some reason, you haven’t yet read it or listened to the audiobook, you should probably save this until you’ve done so.)
A couple of months ago, at my local Shell petrol station, I noticed they had installed big QR codes by the pumps. Interesting. Inside the store, I found leaflets telling me about Fill Up & Go, their new payment option: you can just scan the code at the pump using their app, and then fill up, confirm the transaction on your phone and drive away: it’s billed to your Paypal account.
Excellent. I’m a big fan of anything that moves us towards electronic payments, and a big user of Paypal, and this sounded rather fun, so I took a leaflet, went home and downloaded the app. But I couldn’t find anything at all relating to QR codes or to Paypal. Strange. So I filled in a support query and sent it off. Sigh.
It was a little over a week before I got a standard canned email reply, which said that it would be available through their app ‘later this year’. So why are they installing QR codes and giving out leaflets now? Who knows? But, “We are really excited to be offering this innovation to our customers, beginning with you.” Mmm, yes.
The message did, however, say it was currently available through the Paypal app. Ah! OK. So I went and looked at that more carefully. Errm… no. Sorry. Nothing there either. Sigh again.
So I gave up. Well, almost. I didn’t actually get around to deleting the app from my phone. And so it was that this last week, a notification popped up saying that Fill Up & Go was now available! Hurrah! OK – I fired up the app again, filled in my Paypal details, chose a PIN… and then it died with an error. Sigh yet again.
A few days passed, and then another notification from the app popped up. This one apologised for the problems some users had experienced setting up their payments, and said things had now been fixed. “Finally!”, I thought, and went back in and successfully set up the Paypal account. Things were looking better. It confirmed the connection. It let me set a PIN. It even told me that my friendly local station was the nearest place I could use it. Great!
So I drove around the corner, pulled up at the pump, pulled out my phone, turned to look at the sign, and what did I see? The QR codes had been removed and replaced with a ‘Coming soon’ message. Sigh. This was starting to become farcical.
Today, however, I had some time to spare, and was passing a different Shell station, where I knew they had QR codes. At last. My chance to experience the future. I turned in. Waited only a brief period for the pump to be free. Pulled up. Fired up the app. Scanned the QR code… and got a message. “Problem connecting with that Paypal wallet. Please pay in the store.” I drove off. Sighing.
I got home, and looked at their website… where they have a nice map that still shows my local QR-free garage as one of the places you can use it.
Now, Shell, since you are so determined to refuse my attempts to give you money, can we try the other way around? My team and I could keep using you as an object lesson in ‘how not to do it’, or we could offer you some very nice consulting for a very reasonable price…
In the meantime, here’s some free advice. Just install Apple Pay. It works.
© Copyright Quentin Stafford-Fraser
RSS feed
Recent Comments