Daily Archives: November 10, 2012

Our devices are learning about our habits and adapting 3

This entry was posted in cars technology on by (updated 4188 days ago)
Back before the +Chevrolet Volt went on sale, the engineers talked about using your destination information to adapt the way the energy in the battery was used. For example based on your distance from home, it could run the engine for a while before it normally would to save the remaining battery power for the final stretch. If you were 5 miles from home and only had 2 miles of capacity it might run the engine for 3 miles and use the battery as you go through your neighborhood. Alternatively it could also run the battery into the buffer zone if your close to home where you will plug in. The goal is to get as many miles on the battery as possible, since charging costs less per mile than gas. At this point, none of that has been implemented yet on the Volt.

+Ford Motor Company has however implemented EV+ on it's new generation hybrid systems in the C-Max and Fusion. Information about your location and driving habits is aggregated using SYNC GPS, to look for patterns. As the system learns when you are approaching regular destinations, the battery gets used more aggressively to save fuel. This works on the regular hybrids, but it really comes into its own on the plug-in hybrid C-Max Energi and Fusion Energi where it will try to use up the battery power as you approach locations where you regularly plug in. Both C-Max versions and the Fusion hybrid are available now and the Fusion Energi PHEV goes on sale early in the new year.

Between this and systems like Google Now on Android phones, the cloud will soon no more about us than we do. 

Reshared post from +Green Car Reports

Would't it be nice if your electric car just knew when you were close to home?

2013 Ford C-Max Energi: New EV+ Feature ‘Learns’ Regular Routes
Every driver of a plug-in hybrid electric car eventually wants to drive more on electricity and less on gasoline. So it’s frustrating when the battery charge indicator shows a reasonable level of char…

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Why would anyone buy from QVC?

This entry was posted in shopping technology on by (updated 4188 days ago)

I've never bought anything from QVC and probably never will. However, my wife was flipping through channels to see whats on and noticed that they were selling iPads and wondered why Apple would be pushing their stuff on a shopping channel. I turned it on for a couple of minutes and quickly realized that they were pushing the latest (or should that be the late) 3rd gen iPad which has just been supplanted by an upgraded faster 4th gen model. My first thought was that if Apple was involved at all they are probably just clearing out leftover stock now that new models are in all the retail outlets. 

Then I noticed the price they were charging for these tablets. Until the 4th gen replaced it a couple of weeks ago, a 3rd gen 16GB WiFi iPad cost $499.   QVC is bundling a bunch probably third-rate accessories (definitely not Apple brand stuff) and charging $779 for the previous generation model. That's more than 50% more than the iPad alone cost direct from Apple. 

Please if you are considering buying this stuff from QVC, DON'T! You can get a newer faster one from Apple and get a similar bundle of accessories for under $100. If you really want a deal go to the Apple online store and get a factory refurbished unit that comes with the same one-year warranty as a brand new one for just $379 http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC705/refurbished-ipad-with-wi-fi-16gb-black-3rd-generation

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A double-edged sword cuts both ways 2

This entry was posted in america politics on by (updated 4188 days ago)
During the hour or so on Tuesday night before the polls closed in California, the numbers seemed to be trending toward a narrow electoral college victory for Barack Obama and a narrow popular vote victory for Mitt Romney. That of course got those on the right-hand side of the spectrum up in arms that Obama would have no real mandate to push his policies forward. 

As the 9 million or so ballots from the Golden state were tallied, that argument quickly evaporated and the Donald Trumps head exploded (wishful thinking on that last part).

Nonetheless, Republicans still tried to maintain the lack of mandate argument based on the narrowed but still healthy majority they managed to win in the house of representatives. Unfortunately for John Boehner and his troops, a look past the surface reveals that even there, the GOP doesn't have a mandate to maintain the obstructionism of the past two years. 

The Republican majority in the house is the direct result of gerrymandering and the highly politicized process of drawing district boundaries. by getting control of so many state legislatures in 2010, Republicans were able to control that process (something Democrats are just as guilty of in the past and even now in places where they are in command).

As a result we have boundaries that are are arbitrarily drawn in such a way that pockets of opposing support are heavily concentrated in fewer districts. The remaining districts are drawn to ensure just enough of a Republican majority to almost guarantee that they will maintain a majority in the house for the next decade (until after the next census and subsequent redistricting). Of course the same thing has been done on the other side in order to ensure the likelihood of some African Americans in congress so there is definitely plenty of blame to go around. 

The bottom line this year is that the latest round of Republican-led gerrymandering has resulted in a mandate-less majority where they have a 233-194 advantage despite the fact that Democratic candidates collectively got 54,301,095 votes while Republicans got 53,822,442. 

Going forward, we need to find a way to take district drawing away from partisan politicians and make the process neutral. 

House Democrats got more votes than House Republicans. Yet Boehner says he’s got a mandate?
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Hey kettle, you're black says the pot!

This entry was posted in humor on by (updated 4188 days ago)
Hey kettle, you're black says the pot!

Reshared post from +George Takei

Robert Scoble calls my content "internet noise." His wife is a fan of mine, though, and disagrees.

I guess it's true: when one man's post really get another's wife going, there'll be trouble.

http://scobleizer.com/2012/11/09/the-war-on-noise/

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Even if the electoral college were eliminated, it might not make much of a difference…

This entry was posted in america constitution politics on by (updated 4188 days ago)
Even if the electoral college were eliminated, it might not make much of a difference in how campaign money is spent.

This is another great visual representation of how the campaigns focus their efforts on a small proportion of states where there is a distinct possibility of turning the election one way or the other. These are the regions where support for the two major parties is split relatively evenly and the popular vote margins tend to be slim in either direction. The rest of the states tend to go much more one direction of the other. 

For example in California, where Obama got 59.2% of the vote, he got nearly 2 million more votes than Romney. Prior to the west coast state results coming in on Tuesday, Obama was running slightly behind in the popular vote despite having an edge in electoral votes. Similarly in Texas, Romney got 57.2% and a 1.2 million vote edge. 

Even without the electoral college, those states along with New York, New Jersey and most of the Old South probably wouldn't get much attention although the distribution might flatten out a bit. The bulk of the effort would still be spent on the purple states. Of course as demographics change in the future, that whole calculation will have to adjust as well. 

Reshared post from +Jeff Jarvis

Really superb NPR visualization of campaign spending. It's also a magnificent demonstration of what I tell NPR people all the time: No, your value is not making great audio. It's explaining the world well. 

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Creating infographics that are both graphically engaging and more importantly informative… 1

This entry was posted in media on by (updated 4188 days ago)
Creating infographics that are both graphically engaging and more importantly informative is by no means a trivial matter

This is especially true if you are trying to create a visualization of how the US presidential election could turn out. The New York Times team that created the Path to the White House graphic did a fabulous job of addressing the vagaries of the electoral college system. 

The biggest issue with conventional color coded maps is that the vast majority of states rarely change allegiance leaving about a dozen or so battlegrounds. There is also the problem of uneven population density so the map appears to be predominantly republican by area, but most of the 24 states that went red have small populations and correspondingly few electoral votes. 

The interactive tree created by the Times let users follow the potential paths and see what the results would be. I can see others doing something similar in 2016. 

How the NYT created its “512 Paths to the White House” data tool
When the New York Times started working on its electoral calculations tool for the 2012 election, Shan Carter said at the Visualized conference Friday, they decided two things: “It shouldn’t include e…

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