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I'll be 44 in April so in 2025 I'll be 56. I'm one of those strange people that plans on embracing the ability to augment myself with the latest technology. Whether its LCD contact lenses or synthetic telepathy, the next 12 years will start to see some of the more fantastic applications of biology and electronics begin to become available.

The first mainstream example Google's Glass.

There is a trope in science fiction where humans with enhancement are feared and ostracized by the unenhanced. Are we seeing the opening chapters of that trope playing out now?

West Virginia may ban Google Glass before it is released.. West Virginia has very strict rules about using devices while driving a car. How will they respond when the devices are embedded in us? How can you turn your eyes off?

Scientist Says McDonald's Staff Tried To Pull Off His Google-Glass-Like Eyepiece, Then Threw Him Out is an example of individuals reacting in ways reminiscent of past types of discrimination. One can easily imagine the employees saying something like “Your kind aren't wanted here”.

Indeed, that has already happened in a Seattle bar. It is obvious when someone is wearing a pair of Google Glasses. But what happens when its embedded in the eye? Will those who have been augmented be forced to wear something indicating their status? Will there be “augmented free” places and services we will be barred from by law?

Will this be the civil rights issue of 2025?

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This happened last week:

Black knights

Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

Techie Adria Richards fired after tweeting about men's comments (CBS News)

I've only rarely dove into patriarchy theory or privilege theory so I will make no statement as to an opinion. My only observation is that I simply see no way out. My sincerest hope is that our technology helps us evolve ourselves beyond all of this before we tear each other apart.

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As April 15th approaches many of us are dealing with IRS tax forms. Some will have noticed the sections that ask if we have any bank or brokerage accounts in other countries. That is a result of the Foreign Tax Compliance Act of 2010 (FACTA). When many here in the US hear of someone having an “off-shore account” they instantly assume something nefarious is going on. But outside the US having money outside your country is the norm. Most of Europe's retirement accounts are in a country other than the one the person lives in. Everyone else in the world thinks we're a crazy police state for monitoring and taxing its citizens this way.

FACTA's reporting requirements on foriegn banks is onerous enough that many banks (Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, HSBC, ING Group and Credit Suisse) are closing US accounts and refusing new ones becaue they simply aren't worth the effort.

The result is that very few US citizens hold money outside the US and that number is shrinking. Economists suggest that while it doesn't constitute institutional capital controls, it is the functional equivalent of capital controls for individuals.

The operating assumption behind FACTA and the IRS's implementation of it in the courts is that the mere presence of a bank account outside the country with anything more than a few thousand dollars is probable cause for investigating and prosecuting. If that position stood up in court then the result is the functional equivalent to making it illegal for US citizens to have direct financial relationships with institutions outside the US.

Thankfully it didn't. While the rest of Jimmy Pflueger's life is a mess the Federal District Court of Hawaii did acquit him of all four counts of tax fraud. The court held that the mere presence of an off-shore account does not indicate that a crime has been committed.

But how long before it is? As the bureaucratic overhead increases and any tax and income advantages disappear (advantages the rest of the world enjoys), how long before it is illegal to have money overseas? That's China's policy, by the way. One result is that US citizens abroad are finding the overhead so high that it outweights any benefits of US citizenship. That's one reason citizenship renunciations are so high.

Is this really where we want to go?

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Pipefish has been investigating new co-working and/or office space around town so we visited MyInventorClub's new space yesterday:

The location is almost directly across the Connector from from Grady Hospital and its HUGE. Here are some of the shots Jared and I took:

This is “the shop”. Its huge and already has a couple of people working on the available mills and lathes:

These are one of the three floors:

The other two floors are just as large and open. The renovation is beautiful and the shop is gigantic. The property was formerly part of the Atlanta Water Works. Contact them to schedule a time to stop by and check it out.

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Since I updated Rocketforge to use Amazon's S3 and Middleman back in January I have been moving all of my websites to that same configuration. It has worked extremely well with one exception: rewrites and redirects. There is still no solution to the “Creating redirects for query string parameters in AWS S3” problem.

AWS should build a simple service that integrates with Cloudfront and S3 that can intercept and rewrite/redirect URLs of any type. This would allow for many very very useful use cases:

1) Rewrite to “data:” URLs for even faster page loads of certain small assets

2) Migration of existing sites with query parameter based URLs to move and still maintain old links

3) Seemlessly integrate static and dynamic content by forwarding paths to apps and vice versa

4) Enable instantaneous deploy and rollback of service updates

As it stands I'm having to build my own version by creating a micro instance and having nginx run as a proxy to S3 with URL rewrites and then have Cloudfront sit in front of that. This is probably such a common setup that AWS should just replicate it.

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Its late. I have a headache and I'm in the mood for something light.

A few years ago I picked up a Cuisinart small batch ice cream maker and set about making anything but vanilla. I've loved coffee ice cream since I was 10 (mixed with rum raisin). All of the recipes I found involved using either instant coffee (bleck!) or normally brewed coffee. The problem with brewed coffee is the water produces a very crunchy and icy texture instead of something creamy.

After a few experiments I found the secret: brew the coffee with cream, not water. Pick a very good coffee with as bold a flavor as possible. While there is some debate about whether you really need to scald your cream (some think its a hold over from before pasteurization), scalding your cream is a great way to infuse flavors into your ice cream.

For the Cuisinart ice cream maker a typical recipe will call for about three cups of cream and 1 cup whole milk. Use 1 heaping tablespoon of ground coffee (use the grind for drip coffee) per cup of milk/cream and bring them to a bare boil (180 degrees). Let the mixture steep for 5 minutes.

While the mixture is steeping take one aluminum bowl and fill it half full with ice. Take a moderately sized piece of cheesecloth and fold it in half twice (i.e. you'll have a piece that is four layers thick). Place the folded cheesecloth so it covers the mouth of a medium sized strainer or colander and place the strainer over a second aluminum bowl. Now slowly pour the coffee/milk mixture onto the cheesecloth so only the cream filters through the cheesecloth into the second aluminum bowl. As it slows you can pick up the cloth and squeeze the cream but be careful because it will be hot. But do not squeeze to much or your cream will start to become bitter. If your recipe uses egg yolks go ahead and temper the yolks and mix them into the now awesome cream. Put the second bowl down into the ice in the first and chill.

Follow the instructions in your ice cream maker and enjoy.

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Masten Space Systems debuted Xaero-B today. I was one of the original co-founders but left in 2011. The new vehicle is an update to Xaero which was lost on re-entry this past September.

Some of the differences are a new engine, improved boattail with fins, and a larger payload bay. In a recent Aviation Week article the team speculated about eventually removing the legs and using the precision landing system to land in a cradle.

Tethered flights begin soon.

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For the space folks Free Cash Flow is defined as:

A measure of financial performance calculated as operating cash flow minus capital expenditures. Free cash flow (FCF) represents the cash that a company is able to generate after laying out the money required to maintain or expand its asset base. Free cash flow is important because it allows a company to pursue opportunities that enhance shareholder value. Without cash, it's tough to develop new products, make acquisitions, pay dividends and reduce debt.

For the business folks Delta-V is defined as:

A scalar which takes units of speed. It is a measure of the amount of “effort” that is needed to change from one trajectory to another by making an orbital maneuver. Delta-V is produced by the use of propellant by reaction engines to produce a thrust that accelerates the vehicle.

You can increase the Delta-V of a spacecraft by either increasing its fuel efficiency, increasing the amount of fuel it carries, or using orbital mechanics tricks to slingshot you around big things like planets.

Organizations have their own form of Delta-V. Its their ability to get things done. Growth is achieved by increasing Delta-V. You can increase your efficiency, increase your fuel, or use the orbits of others to slingshot you around.

There is a rumor going around that the next Dragon flight will attempt a vertical landing in the ocean of the Falcon 9.1 first stage and that the next version of the Grasshopper will go to 300K ft. Going from Grasshopper first flight to an operational vertical landing in this amount of time is a perfect illustration of what Free Cash Flow does to an organizations Delta-V.

Free Cash Flow is an organization's Delta-V. The more you do the more FCF you make. SpaceX apparently has enough Free Cash Flow that it can walk and chew gum at the same time. It can run an operational program of Falcon 9 flights, build the Falcon Heavy, and make the Falcon 9 recoverable all at the same time. All thanks for Free Cash Flow. THAT is a virtuous cycle.

NEVER underestimate the Delta-V multiplier of Free Cash Flow.

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Yea, this is a rant. Get over it.

While driving down south yesterday I listened to a Freakonomics Radio Podcast about parking. While most of the podcast was interesting, especially when it came to the effect of dynamic pricing for parking in the SFParking project (it lowered it), there was a definite assumption that parking policy should be used to socially engineer people to not drive to begin with. While Donald Shoup wasn't entirely anti-car, he and the host were definitely anti-“sprawl”.

By their definition sprawl is wide open spaces where there is plenty of room between businesses and residences, where there is plenty of parking, and roads with lots of intersections. Their tone of voice and word choice when discussing places like Houston and Los Angeles is reserved by most people for rotting garbage or misbehaving children on an airplane.

So, I'll say it again: I like sprawl.

What I don't like is the intolerant and sanctimonious priggishness of many city dwellers and “walking city” advocates who use “sprawl” like an epithet and assume that anyone who disagrees is somehow a flawed person. I live in the suburbs but I work in Midtown Atlanta. I see the appeal of in town living, especially if I were still 20. It feels like a college campus. But I'm not 20 anymore.

I prefer driving over walking. I live next to a mountain that has wild turkeys, deer, and horse trails. In the same time it takes me to drive to work (30 minutes) I can be in the North Georgia Mountains. I like the architecture of large southern homes with a lot of room and amenities. I'm also growing fond of the stonework style of architecture of the larger homes in the northern Dallas/Ft. Worth suburbs (specifically Southlake). And before you dismiss them as “cookie cutter McMansions”, have you really looked at places like Virginia Highlands with a fresh set of eyes? All of those houses look exactly the same! Even when they've been custom remodeled they look the same! The reason those homes need significant remodeling? They have structural or other systemic problems that come from primitive construction techniques. What can be more cookie cutter than brownstone row homes?

And those walkable communities? They all look the same, too! Even the people walking in and out of those 12 story high-rises with color schemes taken from the Starbucks menu all look the same. Fedoras and beanies with skinny jeans and shaggy hair. I suspect there is a hipster cloning facility somehwere in Vermont that does nothing but clone the same 10 people over and over again.

I like the choice I have out here. I like not living cheek by jowl with people I don't know. I choose my friends a bit more carefully than simply who I happen to live next to.

But here's the thing: even though I prefer it out here, I'm not about to suggest someone who disagrees with me and choses to live a different lifestyle is somehow wrong or flawed. All I expect is the same courtesy.

I like my sprawl. Stop trying to “fix” us by turning us into little copies of you.

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Pipefish is growing quickly over the next few weeks which means some of the corporate culture decisions are being made. One of the long term goals of the company is building a core platform of technology and people that can iterate quickly when opportunities come up. That requires a team of diverse viewpoints and skill sets. But as a company grows and focuses on its problem it turns inward by necessity.

Pipefish is going to try and solve this using Google's “20 percent time” policy but slightly modified. The reality is that talented people worth hiring usually have something “on the side”. Whether its a consulting gig here and there, old clients who call for support, a book deal, or speaking at conferences, anyone with talent is always hedging their bets by keeping multiple things on the back burner just in case. Pipefish is going to embrace that by assuming its there and making sure employees have the time to pay attention to those side projects (in my case its Space Georgia).

But in some cases employees have an itch to scratch that is somewhat related to the company. While I was at Masten the rule we used was an opportunity had to be “within 45 degrees of the long term vector of the company”. In those cases the company may decide to help out with its own resources.

I'm sure at some point someone will take advantage of this policy but I still think maintaining the diversity and attracting multi-talented people is worth the risk.

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