Thoughts, early 21st century - Home

Hace casi un año en Phnom Penh
- 7 Feb 2012
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- asia cambodia en_español text texto
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Estación de autobuses, esperando a que nos movamos. Fuera veo a una niña pequeña llevando a una niña aún más pequeña. Quizás de 4 y 1 años. Hombres esperando para meter sus bicis en la bodega del autobús. Niña probablemente vestida con su mejor ropa. Desde que vi el documental cada vez que veo a una persona mayor que yo siento respeto y me pregunto qué habrá sufrido.

Aquí primero se suben los pasajeros y a continuación se reposta en la gasolinera. El conductor se pone su cinturón, el único que puede hacerlo. Veo una chica con cara seria que mira desde fuera. Hace un momento estaba sentada aquí dentro. Me pregunto si hay pasajeros que solo van si no hay otros que paguen más.
En Phnom Penh hay semáforos y se suelen respetar.
El bus se detiene un segundo, se sube una chica. Como no quedan asientos libres el ayudante saca de la bodega un taburete de plástico para ella.
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Runkeeper's poor privacy settings
- 4 Feb 2012
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- fail in_english privacy text
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I decided to Google my own name a few weeks ago. Most of what I found was expected, but one thing called my attention. I found my own profile at Runkeeper.com. It was a surprise because I had no intention of sharing that information with anyone except one friend. But there it was: my name, exercise times, distances, even the exact route in a map. I'm usually very aware of privacy issues and think before sharing, so I found this extremely annoying.

I immediately went and changed my name. I tried to change my photo but it didn't work. There is no button to delete my photo either. After many attempts I tried using Firefox. It allowed me to replace the photo in my profile, but not in their forums.

It came to my mind that if my profile was there, others' were too. I went to Google and restricted my search to their domain: google.com/search?q=site:runkeeper.com. Have a look at it yourself: over a million profiles waiting to be downloaded. Most of them with name, last name, city, sometimes weight, and often a very detailed map of where exactly this person was running or cycling. I would say most users do not know this information is there for everybody to see. I think there is more than one way this information can be abused. Maybe by health insurance companies or by someone wanting to enter your home. Just as an experiment, I searched in Google+ some of the names on that list. I felt tempted to write them a message and ask if they knew their details are online, but decided to write this post first.

There is a discussion in their forums about this issue. I made a copy here in case it's taken down. In comment #22 someone from support claims they can not do anything about Google indexing their page, which is not true. He even says we should contact Google about this, which is ridiculous.

If you use Runkeeper, watch out and let your friends know about this.
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White absence of noise
- 20 Jan 2012
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I exit the building and start walking.
The white stuff changes many things. For example, it redefines
something I normally give for granted: the fact that the ground is a
safe place to walk on.
It also changes the way the world looks like. Sidewalks are gone. They
now blend with streets, roads, grass, sea and forests. It's all part
of the same thing, and I find it extremely beautiful. Things are now
black and white. Black for the trees, white for everything else.
Soft shapes without edges. A complete transformation of the landscape
in matter of days. A transformation that does not distinguish between
man-made or natural, nor about borders of any kind. A transformation
done by tiny particles, weak and insignificant on their own, but
powerful when collaborating together. Men fight these symmetric
weightless particles with noisy weightfull machines, in an attempt to
keep the black of the roads unchanged.
It's not the first time I realize all this.
What surprises me this time is the silence. I see cars passing by and
my brain tells me there is something missing. I see those cars, but
they make no sound.
I observe the red light turn green. Fifteen cars accelerate completely
silently and I must laugh. I can only hear the engines of those
passing right next to me. The sound immediately fades away. The tires,
which are usually the noisiest part of these vehicles, are now silent.
It feels like several layers of carpets had been laid on the asphalt,
and inside my ears.
The experience is like a gift for someone like me.
Then, suddenly, it comes to my mind. Many people live their lives this
way, not hearing what they see.
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To my friends and family
- 25 Dec 2011
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I challenge you to do the things you kept pushing for later.
Use your imagination and laugh.
Choose beauty.
http://www.streetartutopia.com/?p=5982

Te reto a que hagas las cosas que has ido dejando para después.
Usa tu imaginación y ríete.
Escoge la belleza.
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Early morning cup of coffee
- 10 Dec 2011
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Street in New Delhi
- 9 Dec 2011
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Street under a very modern metro line in the capital of India. The loud noise is missing in the photo.
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No es China, es la eficiencia la que está acabando con nuestros empleos
- 6 Dec 2011
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- en_español text texto traducción translation
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Este artículo me pareció tan interesante que decidí traducirlo y compartirlo aquí con permiso de su autor, Dyske Suematsu. Puedes leer el original en http://dyske.com/paper/945.

La mayor parte de la riqueza se concentra ahora en la parte superior de la escala social. Esto ocurre en los EEUU y la brecha se amplía cada año. Creo que se debe a la eficiencia y no a China. Hoy en día las mejores ideas pueden propagarse por el mundo de manera rápida y eficiente, y todos pueden encontrarlas y comprarlas de manera eficiente, lo que convierte a los propietarios de esas ideas en personas asquerosamente ricas y hace que las ideas que no son las mejores apenas puedan sobrevivir. No solo es rápida la transferencia de información, la riqueza también se transfiere rápida y eficientemente.

Imagina que en el futuro existe algo similar al teletransportador de Star Trek que nos permite servir comida recién cocinada a cualquier persona del mundo. La eficiencia de un dispositivo así probablemente acabaría con los restaurantes locales que no son los mejores. La eficiencia de esta cocina del futuro permitiría a un cocinero servir a millones de comensales cada día. Probablemente solo necesitaríamos unos pocos cocineros por cocina en todo el mundo. La razón por la que muchos cocineros aún tienen trabajo es por que el mundo aún no es tan eficiente. En otras industrias mucha gente ha perdido su trabajo debido a la invasión de la eficiencia en sus campos.

Cuando alguien es propietario de un medio de producción más eficiente puede eliminar un gran número de puestos de trabajo y obtener unos grandes beneficios con el dinero que ahorra. En otras palabras, no es tanto que los empleos estadounidenses estén yéndose al extranjero, sino que los propietarios de medios de producción eficientes se están embolsando el dinero que gastaban en la contratación de empleados.

Read the rest of this post »
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On the road
- 6 Dec 2011
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Last February on our way to Agra.
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Gravity acceleration
- 3 Dec 2011
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I remember discussing with my math and physics teacher. I was about sixteen years old. She argued that the attraction the Earth exerts on any bodies around it increases as we get closer to the center. My intuition was telling me that if gravity acceleration is caused by mass, the point of maximum gravity should be the surface of the planet, not the center. At the center of the earth we would be surrounded by mass, so nothing would be pulling us towards the center of the Earth anymore. I believe she probably had this formula in her head: F = G*m1*m2/r*r. That's Newton's law of universal gravitation. In that formula, as the distance between the two masses decreases, the force gets stronger. If the distance (r) would approach 0, the force (F) would increase towards infinite. This formula is useful if we consider the two masses (m1 and m2) to be points. But the Earth is not a point. Points have no inside and outside, but this planet does.

Somehow a few days ago, twenty years after that discussion, these ideas came back to me. So I went and asked Mr. Internet. It turns out we were both partially right. The gravity acceleration does not immediately decrease as we move towards the center of the Earth, as my intuition had told me. In fact, it first increases a little as we go down. There are at least two reasons. One, the effect of the planet rotation, which tries to throw us up into space, is stronger on the surface than down below. And two, density of the matter inside the planet is not always the same: it changes depending on the depth.

That means that as we start digging towards the center of the planet, the gravity acceleration initially increases, reaching the maximum at about half way through our trip to the center of the Earth. But after that it decreases down to zero, as I had suspected.

My teacher did not appreciate so much my ability to get the right answers without knowing or remembering all the theorems and rules. At least publicly she didn't, I don't know what she thought about it. In any case I believe it was an ability to be promoted, not something to get rid of. My feeling is that teachers wanted students who were able to memorize things, not understand them. That's why I find this video important: Changing Education Paradigms, why I enjoyed the book Hackers and Painters. And maybe one reason why I'm interested in the Khan Academy and recorded almost 100 episodes of Fun Programming.

The two images are Creative Commons material. You can find the license and author information here and here.
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BarCamp Tampere
- 9 Oct 2011
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The news rarely mention the positive aspects of the Internet, but there are hundreds! Yesterday I attended a BarCamp for the first time and I really enjoyed it. Even it is not strictly an Internet thing, it is often organized and announced through the Internet.

Since it was my first time I'm really not an expert on this, but for what I've seen, a BarCamp is a one or two day event where people meet, present and discuss ideas. BarCamps are a kind of unconference. According to Wikipedia, they are participant-driven meetings. In normal conferences there is a speaker and many listeners. But unconferences have many speakers who are also the listeners.

A few years ago there was an Android related BarCamp in Berlin. That was the first time I heard about this idea, but I did not attend. I must admit that one of the reasons was that I believed that a self organized meeting would have a low quality. But I was wrong.

Yesterday we were about 20 or 30 people. The program was decided in the morning, as people wrote on a whiteboard the time and title of their presentation. The event took place at the Futurice offices, which is a beautiful space. There were free drinks, including Club Mate :) There were a few technical presentations about mobile phone development and others about photography, music writing and the Internet. I also gave an improvised presentation about my Fun Programming videos.

I'm glad I participated.
I'm now going to tell my friends in Mallorca they should organize a BarCamp there =)
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Hello. This is the blog of Abe Pazos. Here I share my creations and ideas. You can find more about me at http://gplus.to/hamoid I recommend watching the photos in full screen mode: press F11 (Firefox or Chrome) and click the photo.

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