Not that I’ve been too bothered by the lack of the ability to stream Netflix to my Samsung ARM Chromebook, but there are those who have. Now thru the use of what’s apparently the first use of HTML5 to stream Nexflix, it’s available on the ARM-based Chromebook. I’ve tested it on mine, and it works as advertised…
What a nice day! Although this is “spring forward” weekend with an hour less sleep, today has been full of blue skies, warm temperatures and light winds. Ran a couple errands, then took the dogs to the creek. It’s hard to see any person or animal happier than a lab running thru the woods along a creek.
Sitting on the porch in the sun now, dogs asleep, finishing last night’s bottle of Chianti…
Back last month, I wrote about trying to get up to speed on HTML5 and CSS. I finally popped the (virtual) book off the (virtual) stack again this evening, and opened the chapters on Canvas (one on 2D and one on 3D) along with a bottle of Domaine St. Damien Gigondas, which was very nice 🙂
I’m quite impressed with what can be done with just a wee bit of HTML and Javascript using the Canvas API. I’m beginning to see why HTML5 “apps” can do so much in the mobile device world. I’m not sure what I’ll do with this knowledge, but sometimes just being aware of how it’s working can help you conceptualize solutions in different ways. There are layers and layers of functionality…this particular book leverages the three.js library for 3D support. Looks quite powerful; the examples just scratched the surface.
A good result for Chrome OS at the CanSecWest security conference, as so far Google has not had to pay out on its potential bounty of $Pi M. Chrome was cracked on another browser platform, as were just about all of the pieces of Internet-facing software. I know just enough about how these attacks work to be in awe of those who can make these cracks work. It’s very sobering to reflect on what can be done by a targeted, determined individual or team.
I have a digital subscription to the Wall Street Journal and get news alerts from it throughout the day via email. One in particular caught my eye today…”U.S. Household Wealth at Highest Level Since 2007,” said the headline. The linked article further says “…the net worth of U.S. households—the value of homes, stocks and other investments minus debts and other liabilities—rose 1.8% in the fourth quarter of 2012 to $66.07 trillion, the highest level since the final quarter of 2007, when the recession began, the Fed said.” The article went on to say that those with equity and real estate portfolios were beginning to feel flush, thus spending more and hopefully driving the economy forward.
At one level, this is good, as consumer spending is the engine that drives much of the economy, and this will hopefully help to pick up economic activity, decrease unemployment, and generally move the recovery along. However, I find it hard to reconcile this with the incessant assault against the social safety net and the impassioned cries to cut government spending, lest we need to tax the job and wealth creators. The percentage of government spending that goes to “discretionary” items (other than defense, social security, medicare and medicaid) is the lowest in 40 years, and the tax burden has been steadily decreasing over that time. Those with capital and real estate are doing well. If we don’t figure out how to start spending on infrastructure, education and research (as well as supporting a decent social safety net) we be both exacerbating the bimodal distribution of wealth and income as well as diminishing our pool of future capital and growth. I don’t agree with everything Charles Murray says in his book “Coming Apart,” but the phenomenon he vividly describes is what we see around us today.
Capitalism is effective in motivating economic activity (to reformulate Churchill’s statement on democracy, capitalism is the worst option except for all the others that have been tried). However, it needs to be tempered with compassion, and needs to have nets and gutter guards for those who can’t navigate today’s globalized economy as well as others. Government can be a force for good. We all pay taxes for things we would not choose to support, but in the pooling of resources, we can meet many diverse needs. In these days when the 1% (or even the top 5-10%) is seeing portfolio growth, why not support the modest tax increases necessary to provide those failsafes as well as the investment in education needed for the future?
I’ve used 1and1.com for my hosting provider for several years, and they’ve been (to my notion) pretty reliable and have offered me reasonable service at a good price. I’m a bit irritated, though, at the apparent lack of transparency with an outage from the evening of 3/1 to the morning of 3/2. It just happened to coincide with some work I was doing on Friday, moving a wiki from one directory to another and changing the directory that served a particular domain name. I first figured that it was either a DNS propagation issue or the result of hacking after a couple glasses of wine, so I went to bed 😉 . However, the problem persisted this morning, and I started looking into it. Seemed that a number of folks were reporting issues, but the status.1and1.com page and their twitter feed were reporting happiness. Isitdownrightnow.com was showing a problem, though. Come on, guys…give us some quasi-useful status information, at least. The good news is that it’s all back and running normally now.