Friday, November 25, 2016
Monday, November 21, 2016
Sunday, November 20, 2016
Google Fiber installation in Brookhaven delayed as search continues for second hut site
"Dyana Bagby Posted by Dyana Bagby on November 20, 2016.
Google Fiber installation in Brookhaven delayed as search continues for second hut site
Nearly a year after the Brookhaven Zoning Board of Appeals denied Google Fiber’s request to build a needed hut in Parkside Park, a place to locate that park still has not been located.
Google Fiber being installed along North Druid Hills Road in July. (Photo Dyana Bagby)
Google Fiber being installed along North Druid Hills Road in July. (Photo Dyana Bagby)
Mayor John Ernst told residents attending his town hall Nov. 17 that the search for land to put the hut to service the south side of the city is still ongoing.
“It has not beared fruit yet,” Ernst said of the search. “The city is working really hard … so the south side can have some connectivity. I’m on a first-name basis with Google Fiber Georgia now.”
While the technology has advanced in the past several months, Google Fiber still needs to build a 10-foot tall barbed-wire fence surrounding the hut, Ernst said.
Last December, the ZBA denied Google Fiber’s request to build a hut in Parkside Park on a narrow strip of green space running along Dresden Drive between Apple Valley Road and Parkside Drive.
Google Fiber’s system requires a number of utility huts in central locations. In Brookhaven, the city agreed to provide space for two huts in public parks. One in Blackburn Park is finished. The other was to be in Parkside Park, a narrow strip of green space running along Dresden Drive between Apple Valley Road and Parkside Drive.
The hut was originally intended to go alongside the DeKalb County fire station at the park’s western end, but the city later learned it did not own the strip of land there.
That meant the Google Fiber hut had to be placed deeper into the park, much closer to a stream and Dresden Drive. The proximity to the stream required a zoning variance to reduce a buffer zone from 75 to 25 feet. The proximity to Dresden triggered community complaints about a fence at least 55 feet long front the street in a public park. The plan does include some vegetation screening the hut.
There were zoning-oriented questions, too, including whether Google or the city should request the variance, why a zoning overlay district wasn’t addressed in the application, and whether the application was fully updated with the plan changes.
Dyana Bagby
Friday, November 18, 2016
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
Secret Backdoor in Some U.S. Phones Sent Data to China, Analysts Say - The New York Times
Security contractors recently discovered preinstalled software in some Android phones that monitors where users go, whom they talk to and what they write in text messages. The American authorities say it is not clear whether this represents secretive data mining for advertising purposes or a Chinese government effort to collect intelligence.
International customers and users of disposable or prepaid phones are the people most affected by the software. But the scope is unclear. The Chinese company that wrote the software, Shanghai Adups Technology Company, says its code runs on more than 700 million phones, cars and other smart devices. One American phone manufacturer, BLU Products, said that 120,000 of its phones had been affected and that it had updated the software to eliminate the feature.
Secret Backdoor in Some U.S. Phones Sent Data to China, Analysts Say - The New York Times
Monday, November 14, 2016
Friday, November 11, 2016
Wednesday, November 09, 2016
The MacBook Pro is a lie - The Verge
This should come as no surprise to those who’ve long perceived the Mac platform as inward-looking, limited in compatibility, and generally worse value for money than comparable Windows alternatives. Pros are smart with their tools and their money, after all. But the change with Apple’s 2016 generation of MacBook Pros is that those downsides have been amped up — more expensive and less compatible than ever before — to an extreme that exposes the fallacy of the continued use of the Pro moniker. These are Apple’s premium laptops, its deluxe devices, but not in any meaningful way computers tailored for the pros. A MacBook Pro is now simply what you buy if you’re in the Apple ecosystem and have a higher budget and expectations than the MacBook can fulfill.
The MacBook Pro is a lie - The Verge