Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook (13″)

At Amazon, Lenovo - 2022 - IdeaPad Flex 5i - 2-in-1 Chromebook Laptop Computer - Intel Core i3-1115G4 - 13.3" FHD Touch Display - 8GB Memory - 128GB Storage - Chrome OS.

Blog Slow Loading in Chrome

As noted, the blog's not been loading.

So, I checked my browsers. I'm still having problems in Chrome (and will update when I get it fixed).

But I fixed the problem on my iPhone 7. Check this piece, at iGeek Blogs, "Safari Running Slow on iPhone or iPad? Five Tips to Speed It Up."

The full blog, not [just] the mobile URL, loads in about 2-3 seconds 1 second on my iPhone after implementing the fixes at that piece, so I know there's something going on in Chrome that I can't figure out.

I haven't had complaints, and the traffic's been better than normal this week, so I'm not too worried about general accessibility. I'd just like to my own reading to be enjoyable and blog performance to be good.

More later.

Thanks for reading.

Shop Electronics, Computers, and Accessories

*BUMPED.*

Thanks for your support.

At Amazon, Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs, and More.

And, 20% or More Off Select Laptops.

Here, 40% or More Off USB Flash Drives.

More, Best Sellers in Televisions.

Also, 40% Off Select Headphones.

BONUS: David Schoenbrod, DC Confidential: Inside the Five Tricks of Washington.

Shop Electronics, Computers, and Accessories

At Amazon, Computers and Accessories, Tablets, Laptops.

And, Get 30% or More Off on Selected External Hard Drives.

Plus, Shop Office Products and Supplies.

Also, Computer Games and Accessories.

BONUS: Adam Alter, Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked.

The Silencing of KrebsOnSecurity

On Techmeme earlier, "Brian Krebs' site hit by record 620Gbps sustained DDos attack, nearly twice as big as any previous attack seen by Akamai..."

Up now, "The Democratization of Censorship: As insecure IoT devices make large-scale DDoS attacks more potent, the Internet community should work to adopt standards and tools to prevent these attacks..."

And at Ars Technica, "Why the silencing of KrebsOnSecurity opens a troubling chapter for the ‘Net":

For the better part of a day, KrebsOnSecurity, arguably the world's most intrepid source of security news, has been silenced, presumably by a handful of individuals who didn't like a recent series of exposés reporter Brian Krebs wrote. The incident, and the record-breaking data assault that brought it on, open a troubling new chapter in the short history of the Internet.

The crippling distributed denial-of-service attacks started shortly after Krebs published stories stemming from the hack of a DDoS-for-hire service known as vDOS. The first article analyzed leaked data that identified some of the previously anonymous people closely tied to vDOS. It documented how they took in more than $600,000 in two years by knocking other sites offline. A few days later, Krebs ran a follow-up piece detailing the arrests of two men who allegedly ran the service. A third post in the series is here.

On Thursday morning, exactly two weeks after Krebs published his first post, he reported that a sustained attack was bombarding his site with as much as 620 gigabits per second of junk data. That staggering amount of data is among the biggest ever recorded. Krebs was able to stay online thanks to the generosity of Akamai, a network provider that supplied DDoS mitigation services to him for free. The attack showed no signs of waning as the day wore on. Some indications suggest it may have grown stronger. At 4 pm, Akamai gave Krebs two hours' notice that it would no longer assume the considerable cost of defending KrebsOnSecurity. Krebs opted to shut down the site to prevent collateral damage hitting his service provider and its customers.

"It's hard to imagine a stronger form of censorship than these DDoS attacks because if nobody wants to take you on then that's pretty effective censorship," Krebs told Ars on Friday. "I've had a couple of big companies offer and then think better of offering to help me. That's been frustrating."

Until recently, a DDoS attack in excess of 600Gb was nearly impossible for all but the most sophisticated and powerful actors to carry out. In 2013, attacks against anti-spam organization Spamhaus generated headlines because the 300Gb torrents were coming uncomfortably close to Internet-threatening size. The assault against KrebsOnSecurity represents a much greater threat for at least two reasons. First, it's twice the size. Second and more significant, unlike the Spamhaus attacks, the staggering volume of bandwidth doesn't rely on misconfigured domain name system servers which, in the big picture, can be remedied with relative ease...

Pretty amazing.

Keep reading.

Deal of the Day: Up to 50% Off Select Logitech PC Accessories

At Amazon, Logitech K810 Bluetooth Illuminated Wireless Keyboard for PCs, Tablets, Smartphones - Black, and Logitech Bluetooth Mouse M557 for PC, Mac and Windows 8 Tablets (910-0 03971).

More, Save on Logitech PC Accessories.

Also, Braun Series 3 3040 Wet and Dry Shaver, Electric Men's Razor, Razors, Shavers.

Plus, from E.J. Dionne, Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism, From Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond.

And Matt Lewis, Too Dumb to Fail: How the GOP Betrayed the Reagan Revolution to Win Elections (and How It Can Reclaim Its Conservative Roots), and McKay Coppins, The Wilderness: Deep Inside the Republican Party's Combative, Contentious, Chaotic Quest to Take Back the White House.

John Sides and Lynn Vavreck, The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election.

Still more, from Ed Morrissey, Going Red: The Two Million Voters Who Will Elect the Next President--and How Conservatives Can Win Them.

BONUS: Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government.

Deal of the Day: Ivation 1.7 Liter (7-Cup) Precision-Temp Stainless Steel Cordless Electric Tea Kettle [BUMPED]

At Amazon, Ivation 1.7 Liter (7-Cup) Precision-Temp Stainless Steel Cordless Electric Tea Kettle; 6 Preset Heat Settings; Auto Keep-Warm for 2-Hours; Safety Shutoff Boil-Dry Protection, 1500w SuperFast Heatup.

Also, Save 69% on Norton Security Premium - 10 Devices.

More, Computer Accessories.

Plus, Power Wheels Disney Frozen Jeep Wrangler, Baby Blue/Purple.

And, AmazonBasics High-Speed HDMI Cable - 6 Feet (Latest Standard).

Still more, from J. Kael Weston, The Mirror Test: America at War in Iraq and Afghanistan.

BONUS: Clinton Romesha, Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor.

Deal of the Day: 75% Off This HP EliteDesk 705-G1 Mini Desktop

Sounds hot.

At Amazon, HP EliteDesk 705-G1 Mini Desktop, AMD A8-7600B 2.2GHz Quad-Core, 8GB DDR3, 256GB Solid State Drive, 802.11n, Win7Pro 64-Bit.

Also, Up to 70% Off Select Emerson Ceiling Fans.

And, Fallout 4 for Personal Computers.

Plus, ICYMI, Kim R. Holmes, The Closing of the Liberal Mind: How Groupthink and Intolerance Define the Left.

More, from Greg Lukianoff, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate.

Still more, from the late Barry Rubin, Silent Revolution: How the Left Rose to Political Power and Cultural Dominance.

BONUS: Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism.

$65 Off Kindle Fire HDX 7

From the Gold Box deals, today at Amazon.

And see McKay Coppins, The Wilderness: Deep Inside the Republican Party's Combative, Contentious, Chaotic Quest to Take Back the White House.

BONUS: From John Sides and Lynn Vavreck, The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election.

How Apple is Preparing for the End of the iPhone Affair

Pretty interesting.

At Telegraph UK, "The launch of the iPhone 6s, fourth generation Apple TV and iPad Pro is impending, but it's Apple's battles with the likes of Netflix and Spotify which will prove pivotal to the company's future success..."

Britain's Lord Sewel Resigns House of Lords After Snorting Cocaine with Two Hookers (VIDEO)

He's a former Labour peer.

The story first broke at the Sun UK, "Lord Coke: Top peer’s drug binges with £200 prostitutes ... And he’s the the one in charge of standards."

More at Sky News, "Lord Sewel Steps Down From House of Lords."

And at Telegraph UK, "Lord Sewel resigns and faces police inquiry after 'snorting cocaine with prostitutes'."

Laptop of the Future

This is pretty good.

I'm on a cheap Acer Chromebook, which is all I need. I do word processing on my son's MacBook or at the office on my dinosaur Dell PC.

But the new MacBook is wicked. Get the kinks worked out and you'll be in laptop heaven.

From Joanna Stern, at WSJ, "Apple MacBook Review: The Laptop of the Future Isn’t Ready for the Present."

Be sure to watch the video as well. She's funny.

Parenting as a Gen Xer: We’re the First Generation of Parents in the Age of iEverything

An interesting, if somewhat pathetic, piece, from Allison Slater Tate, at WaPo:

The truth is, my generation of parents are pioneers here, like it or not. We’re the last of the Mohicans. We can try as hard as we want to push back and to carve space into our children’s lives for treehouses and puzzles and Waldorf-style dolls, but in the end, our children will grow up with the whole world at their fingertips, courtesy of a touch screen, and they will have to learn how to find the balance between their cyber and real worlds. It is scary. I don’t think I even believe there is a “right way” to parent with technology. But acknowledging that what we are doing is unprecedented – that no study yet knows exactly what this iChildhood will look like when our children are full grown people – feels like an exhale of sorts.

RTWT.

Latest 'Leaked' iPhone 6 Images

At the Independent UK:

Latest 'leaked' iPhone 6 images tease quite metaphorical scratch-proof logo http://t.co/Q35ptEeYQ0 pic.twitter.com/wpo9GDblNL

— The Independent (@Independent) August 11, 2014

Plus, a great piece at WaPo, "Why surveillance companies hate the iPhone."

New Acer Chromebook 13

I've been using an Acer Chromebook since last Christmas and I like it. It's just for blogging.

So Acer's got a new HD model coming out with lots of memory, at the Verge, "Acer's new Chromebook 13 offers a high-resolution screen and all-day battery life."

Apple Reflects On 30 years of Macintosh

At the Verge.

Chromebooks' Success Punches Microsoft in the Gut

My wife bought me a Chromebookfor Christmas.

I've been using my son's Macbook for the last year, and we didn't want to put out $1,000 for another one, so she picked up one of these inexpensive laptopsand it's working pretty well.

At Computer World:

Chromebooks had a very good year, according to retailer Amazon.com and industry analysts.

And that's bad news for Microsoft.

The pared-down laptops powered by Google's browser-based Chrome OS have surfaced this year as a threat to "Wintel," the Microsoft-Intel oligarchy that has dominated the personal-computer space for decades with Windows machines.

On Thursday, Amazon.com called out a pair of Chromebooks -- one from Samsung, the other from Acer -- as two of the three best-selling notebooks during the U.S. holiday season. The third: Asus' Transformer Book, a Windows 8.1 "2-in-1" device that transforms from a 10.1-in. tablet to a keyboard-equipped laptop.

As of late Thursday, the trio retained their lock on the top three places on Amazon's best-selling-laptop list in the order of Acer, Samsung and Asus. Another Acer Chromebook, one that sports 32GB of on-board storage space -- double the 16GB of Acer's lower-priced model -- held the No. 7 spot on the retailer's top 10.

Chromebooks' holiday success at Amazon was duplicated elsewhere during the year, according to the NPD Group, which tracked U.S. PC sales to commercial buyers such as businesses, schools, government and other organizations.

By NPD's tallies, Chromebooks accounted for 21% of all U.S. commercial notebook sales in 2013 through November, and 10% of all computers and tablets. Both shares were up massively from 2012; last year, Chromebooks accounted for an almost-invisible two-tenths of one percent of all computer and tablet sales.

Stephen Baker of NPD pointed out what others had said previously: Chromebooks have capitalized on Microsoft's stumble with Windows 8. "Tepid Windows PC sales allowed brands with a focus on alternative form factors or operating systems, like Apple and Samsung, to capture significant share of a market traditionally dominated by Windows devices," Baker said in a Monday statement.

Part of the attraction of Chromebooks is their low prices: The systems forgo high-resolution displays, rely on inexpensive graphics chipsets, include paltry amounts of RAM -- often just 2GB -- and get by with little local storage. And their operating system, Chrome OS, doesn't cost computer makers a dime.

Mine's just for blogging. There's no Microsoft software on a Chromebook, for example, a word processing program. Folks can use Google docs for free. But if you're planning to do major creative computing work, you'll need another device.

In any case, more at the link (via Techmeme).

Google Hegemony

At the New York Times, "Google's Road Map to Global Domination":

Fifty-five miles and three days down the Colorado River from the put-in at Lee’s Ferry, near the Utah-Arizona border, the two rafts in our little flotilla suddenly encountered a storm. It sneaked up from behind, preceded by only a cool breeze. With the canyon walls squeezing the sky to a ribbon of blue, we didn’t see the thunderhead until it was nearly on top of us.

I was seated in the front of the lead raft. Pole position meant taking a dunk through the rapids, but it also put me next to Luc Vincent, the expedition’s leader. Vincent is the man responsible for all the imagery in Google’s online maps. He’s in charge of everything from choosing satellite pictures to deploying Google’s planes around the world to sending its camera-equipped cars down every road to even this, a float through the Grand Canyon. The raft trip was a mapping expedition that was also serving as a celebration: Google Maps had just introduced a major redesign, and the outing was a way of rewarding some of the team’s members.

Vincent wore a black T-shirt with the eagle-globe-and-anchor insignia of the United States Marine Corps on his chest and the slogan “Pain is weakness leaving the body” across his back. Though short in stature, he has the upper-body strength of an avid rock climber. He chose to get his Ph.D. in computer vision, he told me, because the lab happened to be close to Fontainebleau — the famous climbing spot in France. While completing his postdoc at the Harvard Robotics Lab, he led a successful expedition up Denali, the highest peak in North America.

A Frenchman who has lived half his 49 years in the United States, Vincent was never in the Marines. But he is a leader in a new great game: the Internet land grab, which can be reduced to three key battles over three key conceptual territories. What came first, conquered by Google’s superior search algorithms. Who was next, and Facebook was the victor. But where, arguably the biggest prize of all, has yet to be completely won.

Where-type questions — the kind that result in a little map popping up on the search-results page — account for some 20 percent of all Google queries done from the desktop. But ultimately more important by far is location-awareness, the sort of geographical information that our phones and other mobile devices already require in order to function. In the future, such location-awareness will be built into more than just phones. All of our stuff will know where it is — and that awareness will imbue the real world with some of the power of the virtual. Your house keys will tell you that they’re still on your desk at work. Your tools will remind you that they were lent to a friend. And your car will be able to drive itself on an errand to retrieve both your keys and your tools.

While no one can say exactly how we will get from the current moment to that Jetsonian future, one thing for sure can be said about location-awareness: maps are required. Tomorrow’s map, integrally connected to everything that moves (the keys, the tools, the car), will be so fundamental to their operation that the map will, in effect, be their operating system. A map is to location-awareness as Windows is to a P.C. And as the history of Microsoft makes clear, a company that controls the operating system controls just about everything. So the competition to make the best maps, the thinking goes, is more than a struggle over who dominates the trillion-dollar smartphone market; it’s a contest over the future itself.

Fascinating.

RTWT, at the link.

And ICYMI, the interview with Google's Sebastien Thrun, "'I think anybody who believes that we are in a period of decline or stagnation probably hasn’t been paying attention...'"

'I think anybody who believes that we are in a period of decline or stagnation probably hasn’t been paying attention...'

That's Sebastian Thrun, Google's top research scientist, at Foreign Affairs, "Google's Original X-Man: A Conversation With Sebastian Thrun."

A phenomenal interview:

There are people who feel that the prospects of life are diminishing and that the next generation is not going to have a better life than the previous one. Do you think your child’s life will be more interesting and exciting and filled with larger prospects than yours?

If you look at history, the fear that the next generation would be worse off than the previous one has been around for many centuries. It’s not a new fear. And it’s often due to the lack of imagination of people in understanding how innovation is moving forward. But if you graph progress and quality of life over time, and you zoom out a little and look at the centuries, it’s gotten better and better and better and better.

Our ability to be at peace with each other has grown. Our ability to have cultural interchanges has improved. We have more global languages, we have faster travel, we have better communication, we have better health. I think these trends will be sustained going forward, absolutely no question. If you look at the type of things that are happening right now in leading research labs, I see so many great new technologies coming out in the next ten to 20 years. It ought to be great.

So you disagree with the notion that innovation is dead, or that we’re in a great stagnation, or a period of decline?

I think anybody who believes that we are in a period of decline or stagnation probably hasn’t been paying attention. If you look at the way society has transformed itself in the last 20 years, it’s more fundamental than the 50 years before and maybe even bigger than the 200 years before.

I’ll give an example. With the advent of digital information, the recording, storage, and dissemination of information has become practically free. The previous time there was such a significant change in the cost structure for the dissemination of information was when the book became popular. Printing was invented in the fifteenth century, became popular a few centuries later, and had a huge impact in that we were able to move cultural knowledge from the human brain into a printed form. We have the same sort of revolution happening right now, on steroids, and it is affecting every dimension of human life.

A century or two ago, you had innovations such as steam, electricity, railroads, the internal combustion engine, the telegraph and telephone and radio. Those things had ramifications that fundamentally changed the structure of society, the structure of political organization. Is the information technology revolution going to have that kind of impact?
I think the impact will be greater. I don't want to belittle any innovation. I think the steam engine, the car, television, all the examples you mentioned are landmarks of history. But if you zoom out a little bit, most of these inventions come from the last 150 to 200 years. Very few are a thousand years old or older, and given that humanity is much older than that, you could say that almost all inventions are recent. I believe the full potential of the Internet has not been realized yet, and we're not very used to it. But a hundred years from now, we will conclude this was one of the biggest revolutions ever.

I believe we live in an age where most interesting inventions have not been made, where there are enormous opportunities to move society forward. I'm excited to live right now. But I would rather live 20 years from now or 50 years from now than live today. It's going to be better and better.

Electronic Eitquette in the Classroom

On the first day of classes I post the department's policies on electronic equipment on the projection screen during classes. (I didn't write the policies and I don't make students apologize to class if their cellphones ring.) It helps keep kids focused, or at least for a time. I've already had a few of the more "popular type" of young ladies texting and goofing off in class. And it's only been two weeks!

Last semester I had a woman who looked at her phone all semester, had it stashed right behind her purse on the top of her desk. I don't think she was doing well in class, and I probably docked her some "progressional points" on her semester grades (which are basically freebie extra credit points for students who behave themselves).

In any case, technology in the classroom's a net negative in my experience. Some students will used their laptops appropriately, taking notes and accessing their textbooks during lectures. But otherwise I've long railed against the distractions of cellphones. It's interesting how many students have to "go to the bathroom" these days, or those who just step out routinely to take a call. Most of all, though, the focus of the students is not on what's being taught but on their social lives. And for young students around 18 and 19 years-old, that social life obsession --- fueled by ubiquitous social media applications --- is the bane of their personal and professional development.

In any case, there's more on this from Evan Selinger, at the Wall Street Journal, "Should Students Use a Laptop in Class?":

There's a widely shared image on the Internet of a teacher's note that says: "Dear students, I know when you're texting in class. Seriously, no one just looks down at their crotch and smiles."

College students returning to class this month would be wise to heed such warnings. You're not as clever as you think—your professors are on to you. The best way to stay in their good graces is to learn what behavior they expect with technology in and around the classroom.

Let's start with the million-dollar question: May computers (laptops, tablets, smartphones) be used in class? Some instructors are as permissive as parents who let you set your own curfew. Others are more controlling and believe that having your phone on means your brain is off and that relying on Google for answers results in a digital lobotomy.

Professors are united, though, in the conviction that the classroom is a communal space and that students share the responsibility for ensuring that nobody abuses it by diminishing opportunities to learn. An instructor who lets you squander your tuition by using class time to fuss with your iPhone is likely to have zero tolerance for distracting activities that make it hard for the rest of the class to pay attention.

One of my colleagues has resorted to a severe policy that he calls the "Facebook rule," which turns the classroom into a wild west of bounty hunters and social media outlaws. Students are encouraged to earn extra credit by busting classmates who use their computers for activities like social networking, shopping or gaming during his lectures.

Other professors prefer imposing the scarlet letters themselves. One colleague became so fed up with a student who played games whenever the class went to a computer lab that he installed speakers on the offender's machine. Halfway through the class, the speakers got turned on and everyone stared as the post-apocalyptic sound track started blaring.

Ultimately, rule-breakers are their own worst enemies. Students may be savvy enough to text the occasional query to partners-in-crime during exams. But it is only a matter of time before the mute button isn't pushed and the whole class gets to hear your "I'm sexy and I know it" ringtone.

This guy's a riot.

Continue reading.

The part about student emails is hilarious, but I cut my students a lot of slack there. Learning professionalism takes time. I just draw the line on excessive distractions and disruptions in the classroom.