Random Neurons Firing
Thoughts about Software, Networking, and Life
Category: Life
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Although I usually agree with him, one of my favorite bloggers, Dave Winer, recently said this: One of the ideas circulating is that your ISP has a monopoly, owns the only way for you to get to the Internet, but that’s an old idea, it’s no longer true. Where I live the wireless vendors are…
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Hat tip to Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna on Twitter) for this… A Portugal ISP (with no net neutrality constraints) appears to be charging 4.99€ (about US$5.86) per month for access to social media. And another 4.99€ for streaming video (Youtube, Netflix, etc). Oh, and another 4.99€ for streaming music. And additional charges for other kinds of…
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A couple news items on the VW Diesel Goodwill Package: I did get my 2.0L Goodwill package. It took about four weeks to arrive, and then I promptly used more than half of it on transmission service at VW. Sigh. They have announced a Goodwill Package for owners of 3.0L diesel engines. That program expires…
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I’m one of the “lucky ones”… A “proud” owner of a 2010 VW Jetta Diesel 2.0 Liter engine. I’m afraid to look at the loss of value in the Kelley Blue Book from a year ago. I signed up today for the Goodwill Package. As partial compensation for the loss of value and hassle, VW…
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I took a few interesting photos this year, and screwed up my courage to enter them into the Valley News Amateur Photo Contest. Here are my two entries: Sunset, Post Pond, and Ice Flowers I’ll find out at the 2016 HomeLife show in March whether either is selected.
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We have been planning a trip to Iceland (mostly to see the aurora) next year. I am now looking into tours that go near the volcano at Bárðarbunga and Holuhraun as well. I think that land tours (I would love to stand next to the lava front) are out of the question, since the authorities…
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I have given out this tip in past years to people in Revels North who’re preparing for the Christmas Revels show… I found this trick for memorization in a wonderful book, Don’t Shoot the Dog, The new art of teaching and training, by Karen Pryor. It talks about modifying behavior — yours and others. (One…
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I’ve been following Rei, a blogger from Iceland, who is reporting on the Bárðarbunga/Holuhraun volcano as it continues to erupt. It’s way more impressive/scary than I originally thought. It’s huge, with fresh lava covering 37 square km, or about 2/3 the size of Manhattan, and the magma fountains are shooting 300 feet or more in…
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I recently joined Lessig’s citizen-funded MAYDAY.US campaign, an ambitious experiment to win a Congress committed to ending corruption in 2016, and we did something amazing: We raised $1 million dollars in 12 days. That’s a ton of money, but it’s not enough. The plan is to raise $12 million in 2014, and use it to…
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There’s a Whitehouse.gov petition posted about Net Neutrality. It’s a little bit of a rant, but I agree with its punchline: No bandwidth modifications of information based on content or its source. This relates to a comment from Philip Greenspun’s blog (How many times do we have to pay for the same internet service?) If…