Events

The IANA time zone database published an update a couple days ago, and yesterday I uploaded the changes to a few of my web applications. Then one of the applications blew up. This is because I hadn't accounted for the possibility that a time zone abbreviation could include non-alpha-numeric characters. Within an hour I'd updated the affected code and published an updated NuGet package. So now it's fixed. I just have to update a couple of applications that have all their time zone data in caches, so that...

Cranky Flier thinks Brussels Airlines has done a remarkable job keeping its passengers moving after its principal hub closed for repairs last week: Two days after the bombing, Brussels Airlines started to get things running, but only on its short haul network. It deployed its Avro RJ100 aircraft to Antwerp, a mere half hour north of Brussels Airport, to fly within Europe. That may sound ideal, but the airport has a runway less than 5,000 feet long. The Avro can handle that with ease, but it’s not great...

Interesting. A Ukrainian criminal has essentially announced his intention to attack 50 law firms worldwide in order to get insider information on securities: The mastermind, a broker named "Oleras" living in Ukraine, has been attempting since January to hire hackers to break into the firms' computer systems so he can trade on insider information, according to a Feb. 3 alert from Flashpoint, a New York threat intelligence firm. Kirkland & Ellis, Sidley Austin, McDermott Will & Emery and Jenner & Block...

In the wake of last week's news that Chicago lost close to 0.2% of its population last year, Chicago Tribune columnist Dahleen Glanton says it's not too bad here: Maybe it's time to face the truth: Chicago has been in a downward spiral lately and our reputation is tarnished. We've slipped in a lot of crucial areas and moved to the top of the heap in several areas where we'd prefer not to compete. For example, we recently learned that our beloved Willis Tower — or Sears Tower as Chicagoans still insist...

As someone with both student debt and mortgages, our encroaching deflation (and consistent below-target inflation) frustrates me. Take a look at this special report by Crain's showing how bad the problem of student debt has become in general: The share of college grads owing at least $30,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars jumped from 6 percent to 30 percent in the eight years ended in 2012, according to the College Board, while the average debt of new graduates in Illinois ballooned 85 percent, to...

Wow, I missed a yuge milestone a couple weeks ago. It turns out that a stupid post on March 7th was the 5,000th Daily Parker post since the blog launched as a pure blog in November 2005. I don't usually miss those things. I must be distracted...

Jeff Atwood uses a complaint about how computers have ruined chess forever to make an important point about security: What's not clear in this table [of exponentially decreasing dollars per gigaflop] is that after 2007, all the big advances in FLOPS came from gaming video cards designed for high speed real time 3D rendering, and as an incredibly beneficial side effect, they also turn out to be crazily fast at machine learning tasks. Let's consider a related case of highly parallel computation. How much...

I've been running around all day and only have a couple of minutes to list some things I've read on my phone while running around. All day. New Zealand voted 56-44 to keep its existing flag. But the 44% suggests there will be another flag referendum in a few years. Chicago 9th Ward Alderman Anthony Beale wants to kill your ride-share service. Because why deregulate taxis when you can over-regulate cars? Chicago lost its fight to renegotiate public employee pension payments, so I expect my property taxes...

Microsoft launched and then quickly shut down an AI customer service bot this week after the Internet taught it bad habits: The aim was to “experiment with and conduct research on conversational understanding,” with Tay able to learn from her conversations and get progressively “smarter.” But Tay proved a smash hit with racists, trolls, and online troublemakers, who persuaded Tay to blithely use racial slurs, defend white-supremacist propaganda, and even outright call for genocide. Microsoft has now...

Multiple news outlets reported today on preliminary Census Bureau numbers for the last year showing Chicago lost more population than any other city in the U.S.: Census Bureau figures released today show the five collar counties gaining 5,084 residents, not enough to offset the 10,488 decline in Cook County during the period. The population of DuPage and Lake counties decreased slightly. That left Cook County with 5.2 million residents and the six-county region with 8.4 million. Let's make fun of that...