(via Instapaper)
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I was using Google Reader today (Google’s RSS application) and went to share an item with a note to my friends, when low and behold, Google was tacking an ad to my note. I suppose this shouldn’t surprise me, nothing in life is free and Google needs to pay all of their great engineers that put out great products like Reader. But for me, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I don’t like how much Google knows about me. I don’t like that they probably know what I’m going to do next better than I do. And now I ready to pay for software to read my RSS feeds and to hopefully maintain some semblance of privacy. At least one private company won’t know what I do with every single waking hour of my day.
Next up replace:
- reader with Vienna or Net News Wire
- gmail with ? (any recommendations on a good provider with exchange support?)
- google calendar with ical
- google search with bing
- google docs with zoho
And I’m happy to say I’ll be able to replace Facebook with an open source alternative soon. Have you read about Diaspora yet? Looks like it’ll be available September 15th hopefully.
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I personally don’t endorse the use of marijuana, probably because of my strict upbringing and the negative impacts I’ve seen it had on some people’s lives. But, I also know plenty of people that use it occasionally with no worse effects than alcohol.
I’ve also sat through a day of District Court in Durham, NC and watched as at least 3 out of 4 cases were charges of less than an ounce of marijuana. These cases were entirely made up of low-income black males. These men were being put through the system and given a record for the same charges I’ve seen every white person I know get expunged from their records. This is institutional racism.
I’m sure no one intends for this disparity to happen, but when the actual enforcement of a law has such a disparity between black and white there is a structural bias. This needs to change.
It’s interesting to see that the people at the Turbo Tax blog created the above graphic highlighting the tax benefits of legalizing and taxing marijuana. I’m mostly curious though at what effect this would have on preventing young black males from entering the jail system and creating cycles of poverty. I realize this blog post comes across as patriarchal, but shouldn’t everyone be able to have such a charge expunged from their record, and not just those that can afford a lawyer?
via Turbo Tax
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This drive has made a big improvement in my computers performance. Start-up is faster, and everything seems snappier. Most importantly though is that Spotlight search is lightning fast now. I rely on Spotlight to find files because I’m a bit of a hoarder and don’t use folders all that well for projects. Mostly because many of the projects I do bleed into one another, so that .pdf of a study of what makes a neighborhood walkable doesn’t belong in just one folder.
Anyway, if you’re in the market for a new hard drive, I highly recommend the Seagate Momentus® XT Solid State Hybrid Drive. It’s made a huge difference in my computer performance.
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Fossil Fuel Subsidies Are 12 Times Support for Renewables
