Events

Yes, another link round-up: Telecoms companies are drooling over city-wide WiFi in Chicago, no doubt because of the city's, ah, generosity towards business. However, free universal WiFi is just one way that city density promotes economic growth. Publishers, who have enough problems, soon will have to release authors from 35-year-old contracts starting in January. Back to designing software...

Via Bruce Schneier, apparently some of the confetti thrown at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade last weekend came from the Nassau County Police: A closer look shows that the documents are from the Nassau County Police Department. The papers were shredded, but clearly not well enough. They even contain information about Mitt Romney's motorcade, apparently from the final presidential debate, which took place at Hofstra University in Nassau County last month. Most significant, the confetti strips...

10th Magnitude's CTO, Steve Harshbarger, explains how the cloud makes economics better by giving us more options: We know we could build every feature of a custom application from the ground up. We get ultimate control of the result, but often the cost or timeframe to do so is prohibitive. So as developers, we look to incorporate pre-built components to speed things along. Not only that, we strive for better functionality by incorporating specialized components that others have already invested far more...

Just now: The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from the Cook County state's attorney to allow enforcement of a law prohibiting people from recording police officers on the job. The justices on Monday left in place a lower court ruling that found that the state's anti-eavesdropping law violates free speech rights when used against people who tape law enforcement officers. The law set out a maximum prison term of 15 years. Last May, a federal appeals court in Chicago ruled that the law “likely...

Via Sullivan, a new variety of bear has appeared in Canada because of climate change: One such sign [of environmental pressure on bears] is the emergence of a new creature in the polar bear’s range, first spotted in the wild in 2006 near Sachs Harbour, Northwest Territories. It’s got a long neck like a polar bear, but it’s smaller. It lies and behaves like a polar bear, but it has shoulder humps. The new creature has hairy paw soles like a polar bear, but its hair is mostly solid, with only patches of...

The long-time aviation blogger thinks the movie was a disservice: I’ll be told, perhaps, that I need to relax, and that the movie ought be judged beyond its technical shortcomings. Normally I would agree, and for the average lay viewer it will hardly matter at all. I’m happy to allow a little artistic license. We should expect it, and some light fudging of the facts can be necessary, to a degree, for a film like this to work. Honestly, I’m not that much of a fussbudget. The trouble with Flight is that...

Via Krugman, economist Adam Davidson explains why businesses can't find the right people: And yet, even as classes like Goldenberg’s are filled to capacity all over America, hundreds of thousands of U.S. factories are starving for skilled workers. Throughout the campaign, President Obama lamented the so-called skills gap and referenced a study claiming that nearly 80 percent of manufacturers have jobs they can’t fill. Mitt Romney made similar claims. The National Association of Manufacturers estimates...

Yesterday got up to 17°C, making it the warmest Chicago Thanksgiving since 1966. And then this happened, as predicted: It's now -1°C with 40 km/h wind gusts and a wind chill of -8°C. Even Parker looked annoyed this morning on his first walk, squinting into the wind with his ears flopping behind his head. It's amazing how little time he wastes in this kind of weather, compared with his need to sniff every square centimeter of Lincoln Park when it's nice out. (Or raining, for some reason. Must be nice...

We probably won't hit the record November 22 temperature (21°C, set in 1913), but we'll get awfully close. It's already 15°C at O'Hare, with a forecast of 18°C—followed by a cold front and 0°C by morning. Parker and I will therefore now go for a long walk.

Last night, my other sibling had a baby: That's Brendan Michael, aged one hour. Update, from the exhausted but happy dad: Brendan emerged at 2:53 PST weighing 3540 g and stretching out to 508 mm.