Are You Are Real Man? Time For You To Stand Up

 A few times a week, after dark, for an hour or so, I wonder the streets of my neighborhood. Not looking for trouble, but ready if it finds me. I’ve been doing this for years.

The story of Iryna Zarutska haunts me. A lot of terrible things happen in our world (why?), but even though I won’t watch the video all the images I have stumbled across have hit me hard. To be attacked for no reason and in such a cowardly manner by someone twice her size. And those pieces of shit, the MSM, don’t want to acknowledge what happened because of their complicity. They are partly responsible for her death, with their constant race baiting.

Press enter or click to view image in full size

This image makes me so sad

There are monsters out there. We must be prepared to fight them.

If I were on that LRT Iryna would be alive today. Bold statement? Let me tell you a bit about me. I’m really quite bad at minding my own business. I have also inherited the hunter/protector gene.

If you are wondering what is a “hunter/protector gene”: humans have been around for a long time, living in tribes with nature. My role in my tribe was supposed to be hunter/protector. Not “computer programmer” like I am now.

When on public transit I’m a people watcher, the first thing I notice: how are people feeling? In the images of the incident it’s clear DeCarlos was unstable and that Iryna was concerned. But she decided to not move, likely afraid to set off the man who had chosen to sit behind her. I would have noticing and gotten close, just in case. Better safe than sorry. I wish I had been there, maybe you feel the same?

She wasn’t the first young woman to be hurt, but she needs to be the last. You got more important things to do than make sure women feel save? Got to watch a game or go to the pub? Fuck that. Spend an hour or two, a couple/few times a week patrolling. Bring a friend and make a night of it. Take a flashlight, it let’s others know you want to be seen.

From the “grooming scandal” to out of control sexual assaults, teenage girls carrying axes to protect themselves, women stabbed with needles, and grisly murders. It has to stop!

If you are a real man stand up and get out there.

Programming sucks, why "learn to code" was bad advice

 Don't confuse this post with the awesome and timeless Programming Sucks, which you should most definitely read. But like that post, mine also makes the point: you don't want to be a programmer. I will leave the biggest reason for later, and it is a very big reason.

I've been programming a long, long time. When I got into programming it was fun, I like coding. But as every year went by being a programmer meant a little less about writing code and a little more about working with other people's software and code - which is not fun at all. The fun part of coding is the creating part, but every day I get to do less of that. It's probably why I started blogging and working on software projects at home, so I could still be creative.

And let's face it, programming is just not fun for most people. Do you really want to be chained to a computer all day? It used to pay well, and a few places still do, but the average programmer does not make that much anymore. Of course the reason until now has been open-source software, which greatly degrades the value of programmers. Open source means we need less code, and needing less code means we need fewer programmers (and thus we get paid less). Oh before I forget to mention one little detail: programmers are famous for being arrogant dicks who think they are smarter (and more special) than they actually are. Some are nice, but others you're gonna wanna smack.

But it gets much, much worse. Check out this code Claude.ai wrote for me:

        private static byte[] EncryptECIES(byte[] plainText, ECPublicKeyParameters recipientPublicKey, ECPrivateKeyParameters senderPrivateKey)
        {
            // Perform ECDH key agreement
            var agreement = new ECDHBasicAgreement();
            agreement.Init(senderPrivateKey);
            BigInteger sharedSecret = agreement.CalculateAgreement(recipientPublicKey);

            // Derive key using HKDF
            byte[] salt = new byte[32];
            _random.NextBytes(salt);
            byte[] info = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("ECIES");
            byte[] key = HKDF(sharedSecret.ToByteArrayUnsigned(), salt, info, 32);

            byte[] iv = new byte[12];
            _random.NextBytes(iv);

            // Encrypt using AES-GCM
            var cipher = new GcmBlockCipher(new AesEngine());
            var keyParam = new KeyParameter(key);
            var parameters = new AeadParameters(keyParam, 128, iv, null);
            cipher.Init(true, parameters);

            byte[] output = new byte[cipher.GetOutputSize(plainText.Length)];
            int length = cipher.ProcessBytes(plainText, 0, plainText.Length, output, 0);
            length += cipher.DoFinal(output, length);

            // Combine salt, IV, and cipher text
            byte[] result = new byte[salt.Length + iv.Length + length];
            Array.Copy(salt, 0, result, 0, salt.Length);
            Array.Copy(iv, 0, result, salt.Length, iv.Length);
            Array.Copy(output, 0, result, salt.Length + iv.Length, length);

            return result;
        }

AI has only become wildly available recently and will only get better. AI will absolutely decimate programming jobs. We will need much fewer programmers and they will get paid much less. Soon anyone will be able to build complex software systems with minimal training. NVIDIA is already claiming we won't need programmers AT ALL. I don't necessarily believe NVIDIA but I do believe a terrible winter in the field of programming is coming.

Here is a list of the things AI can do extremely well right now:

• write complex software
• make one programmer as productive as two or three programmers
• make our shitty documentation much more accessible, AI can explain things better than 99% of people
• actually at can explain everything better than most people, not just programming
• turn our shitty notes into useful documentation
• summarize bloated emails into something actually useful and readable
• make system administration much easier and more reliable
• help trouble shoot problems of all types
• make recommendations, for example which software to use to solve a specific problem
• create images, create marketing, create movies
• perform all customer service functions
• manage people

AI perfect? No. Better than most people at most things software related? Yes.

As if the picture was not bleak enough, AI will accelerate the trend of managers expecting shorter and shorter development times. Content on the Internet, open source and frameworks have contributed to shorter and shorter schedules. AI will mean schedules will become ridiculous.

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Check out my other work at GerrysApps.com 

Why Writing Android Apps is Awful and How to Fix it

Android's APIs are like something out of a horror movie, they are just freaking nasty.

GPS: A Developers Nightmare

Consider the tale of The GPS API That Ate Christmas (as in ate up all your time off). GPS is just a few basic fields: timestamp, latitude, longitude, altitude, heading and speed.

Hard to imagine anything simpler. Should take about 15 minutes to add to your app right? Wrong! Instead, this is your life:

•     Read thousands of words of documentation to understand the nuances of the Location API
•     Write dozens or even hundreds of lines of code, annotations and declarations
•     Spend hours, days, or even weeks wrestling with the API to get it working nicely
•     Put a massive amount of effort into permissions, something the OS should take care of completely transparently

If you use high accuracy Android will bombard your app with location updates as frequently as every 100 milliseconds, even when the values haven’t even changed. The code behind the API is completely brainless, the developers did the absolute bare minimum.

And then there is the special hell of getting your app approved for the Play Store. Any app that wants to use GPS is treated as malware.

The Forgotten Standard of APIs

The Android people, like pretty much everyone else, seem to have forgotten that APIs are supposed to provide a service. One of the top goals of all APIs should be to help the API caller be successful. If you have done any Android development you probably wondered if the goal of Android APIs is to get developers to quit Android development. It is almost as if they want to waste as much of your time as they possibly can.

It is pretty clear Google wants it all for themselves. We know they rig search results (fact) and they rigged ad words to keep costs up (fact). It would not be a stretch that they are intentionally making app development less than ideal for everyone else in order to give their own apps an advantage.

Access to GPS data and accurate timers are two examples of permissions that are notoriously difficult for non-Google developers to obtain. While Google's own apps seem to have unfettered access to these resources, third-party developers are forced to jump through hoops to achieve similar functionality, if it is even possible.

The Play Store

Deploying an app is like an episode of the Twilight Zone. There are many hops to jump through, but when they have a problem with your app, the problem is often incredibly vaguely communicated, almost like they are trying to prevent you from publishing. One example: your app may be rejected because of one of the countries you have selected to publish to. Which country? They won’t tell you!!!

Even when Google may have a very specific reason for rejecting your app, all they will do is point you to a huge web page (or pages) of documentation that covers many different topics and scenarios. At times their own support people appear to be embarrassed by the hidden rule that they are not allowed to tell you why your app is rejected.

Sure AI can develop apps, but that is no excuse for bad API design. Google/Android fix your shit APIs. And stop withholding information from app developers.

My Android Apps

Google often changes things then demands developers update their apps. Comply or your app is removed from the app store.

Pink Calendar Appointments

A “wall calendar” style calendar and day planner. The best feature is the criteria for repeating reminders is simple yet powerful, custom tailored to fix the selected date/time. Available here.

This app is shadow banned by Google: despite its unique name the last few times I have searched for it have all come up empty.

Nationalism IS Propaganda

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Oh, Canada, blah blah blah blah blah blah...

I was born in Canada, not a bad place, I definitely picked the right country to be born in, damn I'm smart. I'm a proud Canadian.

What a bunch of bullshit. One person is not more important than another person because of where they were born.

When your political leader, excuse me, your "elected representative", gets up on some podium  and feeds you some line about how "great" your country is, know that you are being feed a bunch of propaganda. These people don't give a shit about you or your country. They are parasites working hard to keep the masses ignorant and placated.

The hidden messages to you behind their "isn't our country great" talk:

• I'm (referring to themselves) doing a great job
• No need for you to pay attention to what is going on
• Things are fine, no need to look for areas of improvement
• Don't do anything
• Don't say anything

What would happen if people in power would just stop lying and tell the truth? First people probably wouldn't believe them, there isn't much people hate more than the truth. But eventually, after some time of hearing the truth, maybe people would say "Hey, let's take the steps needed to make things better. We can solve these problems."

Robot Watch

The world is becoming more and more automated - with fewer and fewer good-paying jobs. The trend is likely to continue.

Articles:

• The rich and their robots are about to make half the world's jobs disappear
• 2018: US companies put record number of robots to work
• US banks to automate 200,000 jobs in next 10 years
• Walmart Nation continues to lose jobs to automation
• PepsiCo to layoff workers in automation push
• Robots to stock shelves in 50 Walmart stores
• Self-driving cars for pizza delivery
• Chinese factory replaces 90% of humans with robots, production soars
• Drones to take over some human work
• Deutsche Bank: a lot of people will see their jobs affected by automation
• Nike lays off 100,000 low-wage workers and replaces them with automation
• Adidas to switch from Asia manufactoring to robots in Germany
• Foxconn lays off 60,000, replaces workers with robots
• Autonomous vehicles to replace divers for underwater inspections
• How Google might put taxi drivers out of business
• Schools need to change or robots will destroy the middle class
• Burger robot to disrupt the fast food industry, also here
• $35K robot cheaper than hiring at $15 an hour
• Apple to replace 500,000 workers with robots
• The robot that might replace you at your job
• Outsourcing jobs is no longer cheap enough, so they are being automated
• Robots really are coming for your job and there's nothing you can do about it
• Autonomous truck cleared to drive on US roads for the first time
• Self-driving trucks are going to hit us like a human-driven truck
• McDonald's testing kiosks to replace cashiers
• There will never be enough good jobs again
• Driver-less trucks coming to Alberta's mining regions
• First driver-less trucks at a mine up and running 24/7
• Autonomous vehicles will replace taxi drivers, but that's just the beginning
• Self-driving car travels 3400 miles across America
• Japan to launch robot taxi trials in 2016
• AI to "create a useless class of human"
• World's first driver-less bus service comes to the Netherlands
• Automation expected to take more traditional jobs from men than from women
• Dear striking fast food workers: meet the machine that just put you out of a job
• Japan making robots to help with elderly care
• Bosch develops robot to do weeding work on farms
• AI could leave half the world unemployed
• Google's SkyNet robots
• Uber's autonomous cars will destroy 10 million jobs
• A lot of people who make over $350,000 are about to get replaced by software
• Manufacturing jobs are not coming back
• Learning to code won't save your job
• Veggie factory: world’s first vertical farm run entirely by robots
• A fleet of trucks just drove themselves across Europe 
• Volvo is sending 100 self-driving cars to China for testing
• BMW to launch self-driving cars within 5 years 
• Commerical driverless taxis
• Naive millennials belief robots creating jobs
• First drone delivery, cleaner and cheaper than trucks, and no driver required
• South Korea to invest heavily in robotics to automate factories

Related:

• McDonald's to hire extra workers but also deploying self-service kiosks
• Self driving cars are coming by about 2020
• AI as good as human experts in medical diagnosis
• Ireland joins international call for a four-day work week

Economists tell us that while technology displaces jobs, it also creates jobs, right? Economists also tell us people are rational, LOL. If you want to understand the real world, the first thing to do is ignore economists, or use them as a negative-indicator.

The pace of displacement has been (and is) accelerating to the point where job creation is not keeping up with job destruction.

And the compensation of the created jobs has been much less than the compensation of the displaced jobs. Goodbye manufacturing job that used to pay a decent living, hello minimum wage job at Wal-Mart.

Keyboard Manufacturers: It is time to stop putting number pads on keyboards

The number pad means I have to reach farther for the mouse. If you take a look at comments on Amazon and other places on the web you will see plenty of people complaining about the stupid number pads that nobody uses. Okay so a few data entry people use them, but they are the minority.

Instead of 90% of keyboards coming with number pads 90% of keyboards should not have them.

You Are Being Lied To 101: A Free Online Course

Purpose:
This free-online course will help you understand that you are being lied to. You will learn that war, poverty, injustice, inflation and environmental degradation are all OPTIONAL. The terrible cost to you and to humanity of all of the lying that goes on in this world is beyond measure. This course will take approximately 32 hours to complete. When (and if) enough people understand the truth, and they take action, the world will become a better place.

You are encouraged to question “the facts” and do your own research. Don’t expect any book or documentary to be perfect. To obtain a depth of understanding it is essential to follow through with each lesson and not take shortcuts: the devil is in the details.

For some reading material and documentaries visit your local library. Also try services such as Netflix, Amazon.com (used books), and other services (online and off) to obtain the material. After Lesson 1 the other lessons can generally be done in any order.

Lesson 1: Evil in our World (approx. 6 hours)
A person can’t understand our world without understanding that there are people out there who simply do not have a conscience to guide them. They are called psychopaths (and sociopaths) and they do not all become serial killers: many become politicians, CEOs, petty criminals, lobbyists, etc. They make up approximately 1% of the population and they (with the support of their naive and ignorant followers) are the primary cause of most of the suffering in this world. Read Without Conscience by Robert Hare.

Lesson 2: Propaganda and the Media (approx. 8 hours)
Read Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky (or watch the documentary, but the book is better). Note: some people don’t agree with or like Chomsky. As an intelligent person you try to understand another person's point of view; agreeing or disagreeing is irrelevant if you do not (at least) understand their point; and liking them or not is completely irrelevant.

Lesson 3: A Quick History of Banking, Money, Debt and the Environment (1 hour)
Watch "Money As Debt” on YouTube at youtu.be/e6LWqgohO4E.

Lesson 4: A Longer History of Banking (4 hours)
We take banking for granted since it has been around for so long and the people behind the counter seem so nice; it is time to re-evaluate the industry. Watch “The Money Masters” at: topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-money-masters.

Lesson 5: The Corporation (approx. 2 hours)
This is not a joke: the US Supreme Court ruled a corporation is a person with all the legal rights of a person. [The court also ruled money is speech, which shows how illogical their thinking can be.] Watch The Corporation. See thecorporation.com for film information. For extra credit visit www.citizensunited.org.

Lesson 6: The Story of Stuff (20 minutes)
Watch at www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-stuff/

Lesson 7: Religion, War and 9/11 (approx. 4 hours)
Watch Zeitgeist and Zeitgeist: Addendum. See www.thezeitgeistmovement.com for film information; watch online at topdocumentaryfilms.com/zeitgeist-the-movie/ and at http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/zeitgeist-addendum/.

Lesson 8: Moving Forward (approx. 2 hours)
Watch Zeitgeist – Moving Forward. See www.thezeitgeistmovement.com for film information; watch online here topdocumentaryfilms.com/zeitgeist-moving-forward/.

Lesson 9: War is a Racket (approx. 3 hours)
Download and read War is a Racket by (Congressional Medal of Honour Recipient) Major General Smedley D. Butler from here http://archive.org/details/WarIsARacket. Note: the copyright on this book has expired.
 
Lesson 10: Why We Fight (2 hours)
The warning at the beginning of the documentary from President Eisenhower (also a 5-star General) will send a chill down your spine. No longer at http://freedocumentaries.org, try your local video store library, or maybe Netflix.

Additional Credit
Setup an account at www.reddit.com, learn how to use it and try to visit daily for a full year. The recommended subreddits are “news” and “world news”. Select top stories for the week as your primary entry point to Reddit. Over time you will notice the difference between the stories on Reddit and the corporate controlled news (aka the main stream media) to be significant.

Watch The Panama Deception here: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-panama-deception. It is a good example showing America abusing it’s military power and the media abusing it’s responsibility to keep people informed.

Watch Banking with Hitler at http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/banking-with-hitler/ and see how the banks really operate.

Read the philosophy behind The People’s Book Project at http://thepeoplesbookproject.com/project-philosophy/.

Random References
The International Monetary Fund has proposed a return to a non-privately controlled monetary system, referred to in this article in the Telegraph. The paper itself is available at the IMF website here.

Putting It All Together
This section is to be completed soon. Please feel free to get started on the lessons and hopefully I will get this section completed before you finish the lessons; I expect to have it done later this year.

A Quick Introduction to Vi (GVIM) for Programmers

Vi is an awesome editor. A bit of a learning curve, but this little tutorial will get you going.

[Important note: Vi is not an IDE. Two developers in a row made some very strange comments about Vi and compiling code. Vi is just an editor.]

An Editor of Two Minds (or Modes as it were)

Vi has two modes: typing mode and command mode. Command mode turns the entire keyboard into a bunch of function keys.
Vi starts in command mode. To switch into typing mode press (for example) the i key (i for input). To exit typing mode (and go back to command mode) press Esc.
When in typing mode, type, as normal. This is the behaviour most people are used to, it is command mode that is somewhat unique to Vi.

Command Mode

Command mode turns the entire keyboard into function keys: not keys with which to enter text.
Some frequently used commands:

Command Key	Result
i	switch to typing mode; start at the current cursor position
Esc	exit typing mode
a	switch to typing mode, start after the current cursor position
d	delete the character at the current cursor position
D	delete from the cursor to the end of the line
dd	delete the current line
dG	delete from the current line to the end of the file
.	repeat the last edit [Note: eventually you will realize this command is bloody awesome and one of the main reasons to use vi]
o	open up a newline (after the current cursor position) and enter typing mode
j	move the cursor down a line
k	move the cursor up a line
h	move the cursor left
l	move the cursor right
u	undo last edit (this is repeatable command)
G	go to the bottom of the file
Y	yank; copy the current line into the buffer
3Y	yank 3 lines into the buffer (note many command can be prefixed with a count)
p	put the contents of the buffer (as line(s) after the current line
M	move the cursor to the middle of the current screen
:2,9 s/in/out/	from lines 2 to 9 substitute the first occurrence of in on each line with out (press Enter to execute)

The best vi editors:
General: vim.org
For Visual Studio: viemu.com
For Eclipse: viplugin.com
For NetBeans: jvi.sourceforge.net/

Wind Power Rules

I’ve heard the argument that wind power is not a great solution to our energy needs because it isn’t always windy. Makes sense huh? Except there are two realities that argument ignores.

The first is the energy grid. Most of us get our power from many miles away, often from hundreds of miles away. It might not be windy right here right now, but it is windy somewhere right now, somewhere not that far away. The energy grid moves the power from where it is generated to where it is needed. Wind power needs to be installed in multiple well-researched locations and connected to the energy grid. I live on Vancouver Island and the northwest coast of the island is very windy, yet there is no wind power installations (yet). It is because “BC Hydro” is stuck with a hydro mindset, not appreciating the benefits of wind.

The second thing is return on investment. The amount of energy invested into implementing wind power compared to the amount of energy produced. (The cost of the investment is closely tied to the energy cost.) Today it takes about 1 barrel of oil (energy) input to produce 3 barrels of oil output which explains why the costs of gas keeps going up (and will continue to go up). According to Crash Course wind power is actually one of the most efficient energy investments there is. Wind power has a great return on investment.