Andy McKay

Denying PRISM

2013-06-08T00:00:00-07:00

When the PRISM scandal broke, all the major tech companies were quick to deny it.

But look at the Verizon sharing court order. The court order states:

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that no person shall disclose to any other person that the FBI or NSA has sought or obtained tangible things under this Order, other than to: (a) those persons to whom disclosure is necessary to comply with such Order; (b) an attorney to obtain legal advice or assistance with respect to the production of things in response to the Order; or (c) other persons as permitted by the Director of the FBI or the Director's designee.

Verizon court order

So if Google, Microsoft and so on were under a similar order, they would have to deny it as well. So we can't believe them.

People briefed on the discussions spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are prohibited by law from discussing the content of FISA requests or even acknowledging their existence.

NY Times

So whats the answer? Don't work with US companies or store data on US servers for sensitive things. Like say medical records. Oh wait.

This is something I remembered bringing up a long time ago with people. I would much, much, much rather use a Canadian hosting company than a US one.

Federal vs Provincial

2013-06-02T00:00:00-07:00

In BC we unfortunately have a Liberal government. The BC Liberals are officially unconnected with the federal Liberals, a separation that occurred in 1987.

When I talk to people about this, people pretty much always agree with the statement that the federal and provincial parties are not the same. Wikipedia calls the BC Liberals a "conservative and neoliberal" party and the federal Liberals "generally sits at the centre".

I don't fit comfortably into any political party, its rare to find a good independent candidate in a riding. But what is more confusing is when I saw a tweet like this:

Congrats to my friend and good federal Liberal @jthornthwaite on being re-elected the MLA for North Vancouver - Seymour! #bcelection2013
— Taleeb Noormohamed (@Taleeb) May 15, 2013

Taleeb was the federal Liberal candidate in my riding and I was annoyed he supported our local Liberal candidate. Of course, there's no reason he can't do that, it's just a friendly message. But it still annoyed me, because a politician I thought was the best choice in federal politics seemed to be aligning himself with a terrible provincial party that seems to have little correlation with the federal one.

And here's the thing. It's ok to vote differently for Federal and Provincial parties. Even if they were the same (which they are not), the issues are very different. The jurisdictions are different, the issues are different. Federal politics deals with broad swaths of the criminal code and tax, international relations, the military, overall budget. Provincial has it's own set of criminal code, health care provision, education and the like.

Somehow it seems I've allied myself with the Liberals federally and the NDP provincially. The reasons why are complicated. As it turns out I didn't vote for the NDP, because we had a much better independent candidate in Jamie Webb.

But don't tie yourself down - think about the influence the politicians have and the parties independently in the elections. And don't ask me how the US copes with just two parties all the time, what a bizarre system.

Safe biking

2013-05-28T00:00:00-07:00

This week is bike to work week and there's lots of coverage on CBC about this. However a lot of the discussion is about how we need to seperate cyclists from cars and I just don't agree with that situation all the time.

The main exception is when I'm biking with my kids. Then it's just fine. We need to be isolated from the cars, otherwise it becomes really scary. But there's another time I ride and that's commuting. I commute from Deep Cove to downtown and back again. That's about 35km a day. I do it in summer and winter, but only a couple of days a week. And here's the difference. I want to get there fast and a lot of the bike routes are just plain stupid.

For example, there is no bike lane on Dollarton highway. It's on the Seymour parkway. Yet even sunny day there are loads of bikers on Dollarton. I take Dollarton. Why? Because the Seymour parkway has lots of steep hills on it. Lots of work for elevation gain which you then lose. No wonder cyclists don't take it.

When you get near Second Narrows bridge, you are meant to go on the sidewalk. Then you wait at the pedestrian crossing for cars to stop. Then cross, then go to the traffic light. Then go across, then wind under a pedestrian underpass, slowing for the 90 degree corners and then. Oh I've lost interest.

Or you could do what I do, I'm crusing at about 20km/h, so I go into the same lane as the cars (thats merge left), keep going in a straight line and then merge right. Done.

And that brings up my next point. The most dangerous times on a bike are trying to undertake a truck on a corner (seriously don't do that) or when you cross in front of traffic.

The most dangerous intersection on my ride home is here. You have to cross Hastings Street and be prepared for all the drivers who run the left turn signal, then cross in front of traffic whose main objective is to get onto the highway as fast as possible. You have to really be aware on your bike and make sure they stop for you.

The same is true on the other side when bikes are meant to go off onto the widened sidewalk. The problem is that widened sidewalk is a death trap of driveways. Continual driveways that cars will come out of quickly, without checking to see if bikes are coming. You have to go slowly around the obscured driveways to be sure cars aren't coming out. Car drivers will instictively stop at the roadway, blocking the bike route.

So is the answer more segregated bike routes? Maybe. But think about what's good for the cyclists, not just what is good for the cars. Because if the bike routes don't make sense, we won't use them.

What we rewarded

2013-05-18T00:00:00-07:00

On Tuesday, somehow the BC Liberals won the provinical election and another 4 years at running the province of British Columbia. With a depressingly low 52% of people voting the BC voteres effectively endorsed:

A negative campaign style. People repeatedly say they dislike negative campaigns, but they work because people vote for them. The Liberals basically announced their platform on then went on the negative against the NDP. They trotted out continual lies and half-truths about the NDP. Things that were discredited by the media. Because they had little campaign platform of their own, other than repeating their failed policies, they had to keep attacking the NDP.

A controlling message. In order to stay on message and stop people talking about things that might matter to them, they kept the focus on the economy and ridiculous things like LNG. Healthcare and education, for example were hardly discussed. The Liberals would always pull it back to the economy.

Fear of another party? Is that really how you want a government to be chosen? When we reward this behaviour, we reinforce it. And you'll see a different campaign from the NDP next time.

Best DjangoCon ever

2013-05-17T00:00:00-07:00

The last two days I've been at DjangoCon Europe. This time it was in Warsaw and to be different, it was in a tent, in a field. And it was awesome. There was a big circus tent, in a grassy field. Surrounding the tent were beach chairs and hammocks or you could just lie in the grass and listen to the talks. There was free beer, food and ice cream. Seriously, forget stuffy hotels where you don't see the light of day, this is the way to go. That's probably the best conference venue I've ever seen.

What impressed me as well was the level of organization from the team. When I arrived in my hotel I found a personalised note reminding me when my talk was, with some vodka, chocolates, a rather dodgy looking hangover cure... and a prepaid data SIM card for my phone. What a nice touch.

Of course in this environment something could have gone wrong. It could have rained. But what happened instead was that the airport did some construction on a road and two weeks before the conference changed the flightplan at the airport so that planes took off right over the tent. But that became a game, spawned Twitter accounts and life moved on.

I know how much work a conference takes, this team really raised the bar. Great work - thanks Ola, Ola, Kuba, Tomek and Jarek.

..listening to talks in style at DjangoCon EU.

Different World

2013-05-12T00:00:00-07:00

There's nothing quite like the Silicon Valley bubble. From the ridiculous salaries and treatment that developers get to the types of problems that people are trying to solve. Like getting limos to drive them around easier (Uber) or tacos delivered by drones (TacoCopter). It's hard to forget that the majority of the world does not live like this.

Recently I've begun following Jack Munroe a mother who while unemployed had to feed herself and her son for £10 a week. Her recipes meals under £1 are great and a help to so many in similar situations. I thought of similar friends in the UK who have issues raising a family. It's not easy folks.

Anil Dash recently had a great blog post "Ten tips guaranteed to improve your startup success":

"Be raised with access to clean drinking water and sanitation."

Anil Dash

It's been over 4 years since I went to Kenya with Matt Berg to help fight malaria and malnutrition. Although that's probably the smallest amount I've ever contributed to a project, it is still the one I'm proudest of. For a brief moment my technology was actually helping real people in clear and obvious ways.

I have to find a way to do more of this stuff.

Christy Clark on Debt

2013-04-23T00:00:00-07:00

My wife isn't that interested in politics so when she asked if I heard Rick Cluff's interview on CBC, I knew I had to listen as Christy Clark peddled her fiscal record. The podcast is here.

Christy Clark is using the credit ratings agencies to provide credibility to her platform. The credit ratings agencies. Moody's? The same company that:

2009 Moody's issued a report titled "Investor fears over Greek government liquidity misplaced"

Guardian

The same goes for groups such as Enron, Lehman Brothers and AIG. Days before they went bust, Moody's, S&P, and Fitch all still rated these failing companies as safe investments

Guardian

The same company that colluded with others to contribute to the recession are the ones the Liberals are tying their credibility too.

But then she lies about what they say (at 5.15 mark). When specifically pointed out that Christy Clark said that the credit rating of the province will be downgraded if the NDP win. That statement is not in the reports. The CBC read through it and it says:

"Should fiscal discipline be lost or the provinces debt service ratio increase on more than a temporary basis this could apply pressure to the provinces rating."

Christy Clark reading the report in the interview

So it doesn't say the NDP will cause a downgrade. It says that any increase in debt will apply pressure to credit rating. Well duh. But doesn't that apply to the Liberals? Sure it does.

In fact, Moody's gives B.C. a "negative" credit outlook, and blames the province's recent accumulation of debt under the B.C. Liberals.

CBC

There's spin, but this is just ridiculous.

Joining Political Parties

2013-04-22T00:00:00-07:00

As it turns out I'm not very good at this whole political party thing. But if you were going to join a political party, you might want to read the fine print. For most, you are not allowed to join more than one. Which is annoying, my personal opinions don't fit nicely into a party. The prospect of being in more than one party could be interesting.

So I asked the parties why I can't join more than one and after several months I got a couple of answers by email.

The reason we ask that you not retain other memberships in other provincial or federal party’s is because as a member of the NDP you may be privy to sensitive information about both donors, member details and election planning.

BC NDP party

It is a party constitutional requirement.

BC Liberal party

Federally this is also true for the liberals (PDF), Green party and NDP.

But not for the federal Conservatives and BC Conservatives.

Apparently the numbers of people actually in political parties are quite small. A similar problem exists in the UK where numbers have been falling over the years. In Canada:

Of the eight to ten per cent of Canadians who were engaged more robustly in election campaigns, only about 1-2% per cent were consistently active members of a party, placing Canada at the bottom of the list of Western democracies.

On party membership

Debt

2013-04-21T00:00:00-07:00

The Liberal government made deficits illegal in 2001:

"The main estimates for a fiscal year must not contain a forecast of a deficit for that fiscal year."

BCLaws.ca

Feb. 2 2009, that legislation was amended to allow them.

On the campaign trail:

Clark has reiterated during her campaign her pledge to use the revenues from LNG to establish a Prosperity Fund to pay down the provincial debt in 15 years.

Vancouver Sun.

Amount of revenues from LNG sources so far? Zero.

Yeah, right.

Sources:

Taxtips.ca which was then imported into a Google spreadsheet.

Elections

2013-04-16T00:00:00-07:00

The BC election for 2013 just kicked off today. Of course the real campaign has been happening for ages. Basically the Liberals gave up on being a government months ago, disbanding parliament and just "campaigning".

But there was a comment today on CBC that annoyed me:

The election should be a verdict on the last two years

Some guy on CBC

Of course it won't, elections do not work like that. Elections are a snapshot of the society at that point. For this election people will take into account the last 20 years of Liberal and NDP governments. And they'll have to because the parties will continually remind us of them. The list of Liberal screw up is long (debt, BC Rail, HST and so on) and that's what people will be voting on.

And each election changes the political landscape, the NDP aren't anything like they were under Carole James. The Conservatives are sadly facing a resurgence. Fortunately that resurgence will cause a split of the right wing vote. The Green party is sadly not going anywhere in BC. Fortunately that is unlikely to split the left wing vote.

The Liberals don't look like they have much chance. And when I vote I'm not taking into account only the record of our current unelected premier over her last two years.

And... any bets how quickly Christy Clarke will dump politics once she loses?

HTTP status codes

2013-04-13T00:00:00-07:00

For the Firefox Marketplace we are building out a REST API. We have had one for a while for app submission and it is now growing to provide an API for fireplace, an app that will go onto Firefox OS phones.

When writing a REST API you have an opportunity to be more expressive than just returning web pages and a few normal statuses like 200, 302, 403 and 500. A HTTP status can tell the client quickly and succinctly what happened. Most client libraries assume that a status with a range either means a success or failure. So returning a status code 202 over 200, will work in pretty much every library and convey more information.

Some of the HTTP status codes we are using:

201 Created: we have created the new resource (e.g.: app).
202 Accepted: we haven't processed yet, but we will do. Normally this means we've pushed the request off to a Celery queue.
402 Payment Required: you tried to install an app without paying for it.
409 Conflict: this would generate a conflict in the state of the resource. For example you tried to POST something instead of a PUT or PATCH.
429 Too Many Requests: you've made too many requests and we've throttled you.
451 Unavailable for Legal Reasons: the app is unavailable for legal reasons, perhaps due to region or content restrictions.

Unfortunately some of these status codes are a little less well defined. For code 451 there are currently at least 3 proposed meanings: something about users mailboxes and something RTSP along with the legal restriction. But hopefully users of our API will realise we aren't using Exchange or RTSP and maybe even read the docs to find out what this means.

Using HTTP statuses is simple and descriptive. I like that.

My first Iain Banks book

2013-04-06T00:00:00-07:00

Fuck every cause that ends in murder and children crying.

Iain Banks, Against a Dark Background

It was my first job out of university and I was working at company in London. A bizarre place as it turned out and a job I didn't really enjoy much. It seemed to have some great people and some rather more eccentric ones. I did enjoy that I'd landed in the coolest department of all, my boss was a laid back guy who was obsessed with music, sports and popular culture. Unfortunately I've never been able to talk about sports, especially the most recent exploits of his football team, Chelsea.

One day I lamented that I'd run out of books to read and asked for suggestions. Within moments I had a copy of Complicity in my hands.

The book showed me what was to become a trait of Iain Banks. Well paced, witty, intelligent, thoughtful and completely impossible to put down. I tore through Complicity in a matter of days. I recommended it to anyone who'd listen.

Being a science fiction fan I quickly moved onto his Culture work. I was soon working my way through Consider Phlebas, Use of Weapons and his old works. The Culture series highlighted his focus on powerful vision of humanities future and present.

You need to read more science fiction. Nobody who reads science fiction comes out with this crap about the end of history.

Iain Banks

Later I got introduced by the same people to Douglas Coupland and Colin Bateman. I couldn't talk about sports or music too much with my boss. But we talked about books all the time.

It's now 18 years later and Iain Banks is dying. I've read every Iain Banks book since and my book shelf is full of them.

His last announcement matched his writing. To the point, dry humour and lack of self-pity.

I hope the time he has left is well spent.

Blog ported to Jekyll

2013-04-05T00:00:00-07:00

All the URLs will change and I'll probably spam a whole pile of RSS readers and twitter feeds. Sorry about that.