Luminar revisited
About 18 months ago, it seems, I installed Luminar on dischord, my Microsoft box. It clearly didn't leave much of an impression: I didn't even mention it here. There's a lot of photo software out there, but the lack of mention at least meant that I didn't find it really terrible. But then Chris Baker, on the M43 Tech Talk on Facebook, came up with the idea that it was a good alternative to DxO PhotoLab. While that's unlikely, it occurred to me that it might be worth looking at again. Starting Luminar told me that there was a new version available.
Expanding the AWS Cloud ? Introducing the AWS Europe (Stockholm) Region
In April 2017, Amazon Web Services announced that it would launch a new AWS infrastructure region Region in Sweden. Today, I'm happy to announce that the AWS Europe (Stockholm) Region, our 20th Region globally, is now generally available for use by customers. The AWS Europe (Stockholm) Region is our fifth European Region, joining Dublin, Frankfurt, London, and Paris. With this launch, AWS now provides 60 Availability Zones, with another 12 zones and four Regions expected to come online by 2020 in Bahrain, Cape Town, Hong Kong, and Milan. Starting today, developers, startups, and enterprises?as well as government, education, and non-profit organizations?can use the new AWS Europe (Stockholm) Region.
Overlaying maps
Chris came for dinner tonight rather than the usual Saturday: Königsberger Klopse. Talking about maps after dinner, and generally lamenting how difficult it has become to use Google Maps. Somehow got on to this 1889 map of Dereel, which we investigated in great detail: I downloaded it three years ago, and to the best of my knowledge it's the only high resolution copy (5120x3598) of the map on the web, as discussed at the time. Chris thought it would be a good idea to overlay it with a modern map.
Awards and citations at computing conferences
I’ve heard a surprising “fact” repeated in the CHI and CSCW communities that receiving a best paper award at a conference is uncorrelated with future citations. Although it’s surprising and counterintuitive, it’s a nice thing to think about when you don’t get an award and its a nice thing to say to others when you … Continue reading "Awards and citations at computing conferences"
Videos from the University of Chicago ?Censorship and Information Control? seminar
This year, I helped University of Chicago science fiction writer and renaissance scholar Ada Palmer and science historian Adrian Johns host a series of interdisciplinary seminars on “Censorship, Information Control, & Revolutions in Information Technology from the Printing Press to the Internet.” Thanks to our generous Kickstarter backers, we were able to raise money to... more
Ericsson/O2 outage root cause announced
Was the root cause of the O2 outage really an expired certificate? Why wasn't the "root cause" any of these? Certificate expiration not monitored Certificate renewal process complex so that everyone hopes someone else fixes it Certificate renewal is so rare, we aren't good at doing it Deploying new certificates manual and error-prone Vendor did not document all periodic maintenance requirements Soon-to-expire certs not logged Logging for each component an island onto itself The reason, dear reader, is that there is no such thing as a single "root cause". There are only contributing factors.
San Franciscans! Come celebrate the launch of the EFF/McSweeney?s special privacy issue with me on Dec 11!
I’m heading to San Francisco next week for a launch party on December 11th celebrating the release of The End of Trust, a collaboration between EFF and McSweeney’s on internet surveillance and the future of the net; the event is at 7:30PM at Manny?s at 3092 16th Street (RSVP here), and I’ll be on a... more
Banana Peels
Although it’s been decades since I last played, it’s still flashbacks to Super Mario Kart and pangs of irrational fear every time I see a banana peel in the road.
Emacs font sizes
After yesterday's change of font size for my xterms, it was time to do the same for Emacs. But how? Google is my friend: Select Set Default Font from the Options menu (I can hear rms grumble). And that seemed to work. But not the way I thought. It only applied to one window, and after trying a couple, I couldn't get back to where I started. When I tried it on a second window (from the same Emacs process), I got different results. And when I tried changing things in the first window, it didn't change it there?but in the non-active window instead!
More photo editing investigations
I now have a number of programs that can remove the extraneous objects from photos like this one: But I haven't done the job. Why not? I don't like the amount of manual intervention needed. All of them require you to mark what you want to remove, and that's very difficult with things like the fences line in front of the horses: Surely there's be something out there that can identify things like this and select them exactly to the pixel.
?Internet Explorer?: really better?
Why does DxO support claim that I should use Microsoft ?Internet Explorer? to download archives? Superstition, of course, but superstitions don't come from nowhere. Discussed it on IRC today and came up with some insights: From carnival: ?I think they work something out, decide a reason for why it worked, file it as done and try to use it forever.? And yes, that sounds very likely. ?If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".
Handling software support
Another reply to my tickets with DxO today. The one I entered yesterday (166777) was simply closed. No explanation, no follow-up possible, just assigned to my favourite support person. Had he deliberately closed it? Sent a follow-up ticket. That's 8 tickets in the last week or so, none of which have been closed to my satisfaction. Also a response from the person responsible for ticket 165481. I had explained: For what it's worth, the MD5 checksum of the downloaded files is: === [email protected] (/dev/pts/36) ~ 20 -> md5 DxO_PhotoLab* MD5 (DxO_PhotoLab2_Setup (1).exe) = 732dd80f53f1e66ca8b8ea3645f35c3e MD5 (DxO_PhotoLab2_Setup(1).exe) = 732dd80f53f1e66ca8b8ea3645f35c3e The first is the file I downloaded last week, the second was downloaded by Microsoft "Internet Explorer".
More DxO ?support? pain
While updating the outstanding support request that DxO is digesting (or, more likely, rejecting), it seemed good to mention other issues, notably sporadic inability to select images. From ticket 166777: On the two versions of PhotoLab 2 that I have used, I have occasionally had a situation where specific images displayed in the preview strip could not be selected, while others could. With PhotoLab 1 I had no problem selecting any image. Restarting PhotoLab 2 did not help. This is sporadic. Please let me know how to chase down this bug.