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Technology

Technology

December 11, 2013

Pope Francis, the People’s Pope

What makes this Pope so important is the speed with which he has captured the imaginations of millions who had given up on hoping for the church at all. People weary of the endless parsing of sexual ethics, the buck-passing infighting over lines of authority when all the while (to borrow from Milton), “the hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed.” In a matter of months, Francis has elevated the healing mission of the church—the church as servant and comforter of hurting people in an often harsh world—above the doctrinal police work so important to his recent predecessors. John Paul II and Benedict XVI were professors of theology. Francis is a former janitor, nightclub bouncer, chemical technician and literature teacher.

Congrats Pope Francis It’s good to see TIME name someone that goes over and beyond in their role as the 2013 “Person of the Year”.

Norway is digitizing all its books and making them free to read online

It’s similar to the mass digitization efforts in the UK and Finland, but Norway has taken the extra step of making agreements with many publishers to allow anyone with a Norway IP address to access copyrighted material.

I absolutely applaud Norway for leading the way with this procedure.

2013/12/11
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Technology

December 9, 2013

Edward Snowden voted Guardian person of the year

“He gave his future for the sake of democratic values, transparency, and freedom,” said Miriam Bergholz. Colin Walker wrote: “We need people like him to have the courage to forget about their own life in the cause of other people’s freedom. Let’s face it, his life is over as even if he goes back to the US he will face decades in prison and the personal sacrifice he has made is immense.” One commenter, identifying themselves as “irememberamerica”, said he voted for Snowden “for his extraordinary and exemplary courage, and the historic value of his daring act. At every step, he has displayed an astonishing integrity and presence of mind. He is a great American and international patriot.”

Well deserved Snowden. I salute you.

Icelanders Overthrow Government and Rewrite Constitution After Banking-Fraud – No Word from US Media

Besides CNN Europe’s own coverage of the scandal, the events in Iceland were widely covered by international media and are easily verified by a simple search on Google which leads to a variety of reputable international news sources that ran numerous stories on the Icelandic revolution.

Wow, I didn’t know or even hear an ounce of this revolution. It’s amazing how distorted the US media can be. What is the US Government so scared of??…

Here is the full documentary of the change called “Pots, Pans and Other Solutions”. Very inspiriting. The Western world needs this.

Samsung tells customer to shut up about Galaxy S4 fire

Samsung saw the video and instead of rushing to rectify the situation and let it blow over, as everything on the Internet does, the company sent the user a letter. In this letter, Samsung reportedly stated that it would swap out the man’s charred and now useless Galaxy S4 — which was still under warranty, mind you — only if he removed his video discussing the matter from YouTube.

More rubbish from Samsung. Go figure.

The Sad Story of the Battery Breakthrough that Proved too Good to be True

[B]y spring 2013, it started to become clear that Envia could not replicate the 400 wh/kg technology and turn it into a product. Samsung, LG and Asahi Kasei declined to buy the company because it found problems with the technology, according to the court documents … When the technology was not recreated for GM by summer 2013, GM eventually cancelled the deal.

This is rather unfortunate for everyone because batteries seem like the technology that isn’t progressing exponentially.

2013/12/09
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Technology

December 6, 2013

Google why so evil?

What I do have issue with is that Google has been hiding behind the “Do No Evil” moniker for most of its life and really with what has been transpiring in the last few years, Google really needs to come clean and drop that part of its mission statement.

Daniel goes on to list a number of valid points where Google is up to no good with your personal data. I highly recommend this article, so bookmark it.

Microsoft ends Windows 8 retail sales

But officially, the major PC vendors — like Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo — will discontinue most Windows 7 PC sales in October 2014, making Windows 8 and its follow-ups, including Windows 8.1, the default.

This makes me vomit. I work in health care and very few things make me sick, so this means something. I feel so sorry for every future PC owner who is now going to be forced to use Windows 8.

74% of Apple devices running iOS 7

Android, on the other hand, suffers from much worse device fragmentation. Just 1.1% of Android devices are currently running Kit Kat, the latest operating system.

Any OS developer would kill to have this kind of adoption rate.

2013/12/06
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Technology

November 29, 2013

Privacy And Why It Really Matters

United States President Barack Obama is tragically mistaken with his “we need to find a balance between security and privacy” rhetoric. Let me quote Benjamin Franklin who makes my point more eloquently than I ever could: “they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety”. President Obama, or anybody else for that matter, can’t guarantee your safety – sadly nobody can. The only way to guarantee our safety is to find an equilibrium with foreign societies where they have no incentive to harm us. We have all the tools but the will is missing.

2013/11/29
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