The Brooks Review

Month: October 2013

  • Double Dissolution

    Wikipedia entry on Australia’s ‘double dissolution’ provision:

    > The double dissolution provision comes into play if the Senate and House twice fail to agree on a piece of legislation (in section 57 called “a proposed law”, and commonly referred to as a “trigger”). The government may use this trigger (or any number of triggers) to recommend the Governor-General dissolve the House and the entire Senate – pursuant to section 57 of the Constitution – and issue writs for an election in which every seat in the Parliament is contested.

    This would be great to have in the United States, and probably would mean a lot more shit would get done.

  • ‘Today, or Tomorrow, What About Next Week?’

    Just posted the first in a series of posts about Begin, and the decisions that lead to the shipping version of the app. The first post focuses on why Begin is only today and tomorrow. (Of course, it also includes some early screenshots.)

  • ‘Let’s rally for Lavabit to fight for the privacy rights of the American people.’

    Good cause, donate if you can.

  • ‘NSA Storing Internet Data, Social Networking Data, on Pretty Much Everybody’

    [Bruce Schneier summing up the latest bullshit from the NSA](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/10/nsa_storing_int.html):

    > This is getting silly. General Alexander just lied about this to Congress last week. The old NSA tactic of hiding behind a shell game of different code names is failing. It used to be they could get away with saying “Project X doesn’t do that,” knowing full well that Projects Y and Z did and that no one would call them on it. Now they’re just looking shiftier and shiftier.

    If you haven’t read the key tag lines for the latest news about the NSA, I can sum it up as such:

    – They are preparing to take in 20 *billion* records a day and having those records ready for analysis in 60 minutes.
    – They collect all travel records.
    – There was some scary stuff about their social network mapping also.

    The bottom line is that the more we learn, the more it is realized that the collection is almost total. The safest assumption is that the NSA can collect everything, with an also safe assumption being that the NSA will eventually be able to crack just about any encryption you put in place. And yet the bickering in congress is over funding health care when this level of spying hurts everyone and most certainly should be debated vigorously.

    Hey, Congress, I know where to find you billions of dollars in extra cash…

  • ‘Recommended by 4 Out of 5 Dentists’

    Nick Heer:

    > A much simpler and more honest approach would be to either “recommend” a product, or to “not recommend” it. Perhaps there could also be a “highly recommended” ranking, for particularly good things (and, for the pessimists out there, an “avoid” ranking, for truly terrible things). This system appears to be more vague, but it is no less accurate than an arbitrary number score.

    The simple yes or no when recommending a product is the most honest way to end a review.