text:
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How to torpedo a bad patent my former large employer is filing?
I worked for a large software company recently and quit to go work a much better place. I thought I had a clean break, but apparently the company is filing to patent work I did there.
The specific patent is basically simple configuration screens on top of a regular expression engine to detect spam. None of these screens is novel, and I was aware of similar implementations by competitors. We were playing catch up in the industry. These screens are just on-off switches and obvious to anyone who knows how to build software UIs.
Somehow my coworkers, looking to get the $1500 bounty and tally on their performance reviews, got these screens filed as a patent. And they put my name on it and asked me to sign (I wrote the specs for this feature and prototyped it). I said no to the patent lawyer, provided links to the existing examples (prior art) that the team was aware of, and the lawyer sent me a nice letter saying they would proceed and treat me as a "non-cooperating inventor." And they sent me a $250 check.
I don't want the money (if it were $10million, maybe, let's be honest). Moreover, I don't agree with most software patents I read about in the papers, I don't want this patent filed. What can I do? Can I tell someone at the patent office about the prior art and the willful disregard of it when filing?
patentability filing inventorship
(IANAL and all that jazz...) Did your employment contract specify that IP you developed there belonged to the company? Probably, in which case I don't think you'd be able to prevent the filing. Instead, wait 'til the application shows up on google patents and then collect prior art on this site. – grossvogel Sep 21 '12 at 15:20
What was the IP policy of the company you worked for? Do you remember any IP clauses from your employment contract? Probably that information will help in the quality of the answer. At the outset I should say that, if prior art exists which is significantly similar then the chances of the patent being granted are very slim. – pkz Sep 21 '12 at 15:25
Step one: don't cash the check. That would show tacit or implicit cooperation. – Roddy of the Frozen Peas Sep 21 '12 at 19:32
Thank you for the questions and feedback. I don't have a copy of the employment agreement (I would have signed it 6 years ago and threw it out sometime in the last year since quitting). I have email to HR requesting a copy. Also, related to inventive step for this: it doesn't make sense that something can be patented if I, the human who made the decisions that invented it, don't think those decisions are novel or non-obvious. Am I not the skilled practitioner? There is something seriously messed up if I can't one way or another. – user1005 Sep 22 '12 at 15:25
This is a great question. First off, patent rights are initially owned by the inventor and are normally only assignable by a written agreement. In tech companies, developers are normally required to sign such a written agreement when they start their jobs. If that didn't happen, then you still co-own the patent rights. If you are a co-owner, one thing that you can do is simply announce to the world (perhaps here on this site) that you hereby give a free and open license to use this particular invention. In patent law, any owner has full rights to give away (or sell) licenses without any recourse to the other parties. You can also cause lots of trouble at the USPTO if you have rights.
Most likely you signed away your rights in the initial contract. However, it would be important to see the exact language of the contract. In particular, did you "promise to assign" your rights or did you "hereby assign all rights." The courts have interpreted these two phrases differently, and, with a "promise to assign" they still need to obtain a written assignment of rights from you (or a court order) in order to have legal title.
Now, most of the time the employment agreements also include a promise that the inventor will assist with the filing and prosecution of the patent. You will be contractually bound to this even after your employment and challenging the patent will be a violation of that promise. This may be why you use the term "torpedo" which suggests some amount of subterfuge.
Companies have always had a mechanism for filing patents even when the inventors refused. Elements of the America Invents Act (AIA) became effective on the 16th of September 2012 make this process even easier. Thus, the USPTO will not care whether you sign the documents or not. It is probably worth $1k to the company to get you to sign (rather than just $250) but that is far from $10m.
[More after a while]
Dennis CrouchDennis Crouch
@Dennis_Crouch - When you come back: Isn't it possible that the employment agreement includes an automatic assignment of patent rights? What degree of cooperation is necessary in that case? – user96 Sep 23 '12 at 16:09
user96: If an NDA or similar agreement has an automatic assignment clause, then that document can be recorded as proof of assignment. – g33kz0r Sep 24 '12 at 19:30
Regarding automatic assignment: (1) yes, most new employment agreements include automatic assignment language. The company lawyers hope that language will be interpreted to mean that the company automatically owns the invention as soon as it is invented. Supreme Court Justice Breyer noted his skepticism in that interpretation (how can you sell something that doesn't exist yet?). However, lower courts have accepted the language as effective. As USER96 correctly noted, a company this automatic assignment clause can be used to prove ownership when the inventor refuses to sign assignment docs. – Dennis Crouch Sep 25 '12 at 17:15
Even if you have the "promise to assign" language, that just means the company will sue you for contract breach and request specific performance from the courts as a penalty (amongst other things). You probably don't want the hassle of going through all that :-) – user1602 Dec 7 '12 at 6:52
@DennisCrouch, But assuming Breyer is handling the case, wouldn't he be required to follow the status quo due to stare decisis? – Pacerier Oct 10 '15 at 20:53
First off, just because you think something is "obviously" covered by Prior Art doesn't mean that it really is. It takes years of experience to understand how to read a list of claims and it is possible that the independent claim(s) is written in such a way that it is not covered by the existing art in the field.
All that said, you do have a duty to disclose any and all material that you think constitutes Prior Art. It could well be that what you view as the Prior Art doesn't actually teach the methods or processes that are being disclosed. Or it could be that what you came up with isn't being used as the Independent Claim -- dependent claims needn't be "unique", they are simply additional variations on the Independent Claim. If you read most of my software patents they have a laundry list of dependent claims about how and where the "thing" that is doing the Independent Claim can reside or be accessed. My former employer pays for some huge number of applications to be filed annually and they all seem to include 20 claims, regardless of how pointless than last 4 or 5 are.
I'll give you an example from my portfolio where "Prior Art" isn't really Prior Art --
I applied for, and received, a patent on a Method and Process which makes use of bit masks in a manner which is virtually identical to another field of art which makes use of bit masks. If you read the claims (ignoring the specific area of application), and you were familiar with that other field of art, you'd likely recognize what was being done, think that it was probably seriously broken, then question how I received a patent. What was Novel wasn't the bit-shuffling, but the way in which that bit-shuffling was applied in a Non-Obvious way to a completely different field of art.
In short, there are a lot of ways that Prior Art isn't. If you dislike the software patent system, that's one thing. But don't confuse a dislike of software patents for a bad software patent.
Julie in AustinJulie in Austin
Julie, would you please cite your "Method and Process" patent? I am about to commence upon a Duh invention that reads exactly like that paragraph. – Chris K Dec 30 '13 at 4:09
@ChrisK - It's US Patent #7,757,277. It was a favorite of mine for quite a while. The number was pretty trick as well :) – Julie in Austin Sep 4 '14 at 5:00
Yajoe, this is rich. You have all sorts of options and may already be well on the way, based on what you have provided here.
To start, you and your co- inventors and their patent attorneys are all bound by a Duty of Disclosure - basically saying all of you must disclose any information that is "material to patentability." As an inventor you are supposed to fulfill this duty by disclosing any such information to the lawyer responsible for the application. He is then responsible for disclosing it to the Patent Office. You have already done that, so he should disclose what you have already disclosed to him. Get onto the Public Pair system and see if they have disclosed it (you might need some help to do this the first time). If they have, the Examiner should be able to figure it out.
But if the lawyer didn't submit it, or you think the patent office will need more help, or really want to rub your employer's nose in it you can submit further information yourself. You can also explain why the prior art makes the invention obvious. You could even include a copy of your letter to the lawyer as evidence of their failure to comply with duty of disclosure. You could either get help from a patent attorney or agent to do this, or keep watching this website, I would think it will eventually have some easy how-to postings.
RabblerouserRabblerouser
good luck getting an attorney to help you discredit another attorney. In general they stick together and the other attorney is likely going to provide more assistance to the attorney the op would want sanctioned. You might be able to find a paralegal to help you with the paperwork but it would mostly be a diy for the filings. – Chad Sep 21 '12 at 19:30
I tried using public pair, but all I have is the docket number. I can't find any other number of the document the lawyer sent me, and in the document there is no reference to the prior art I mentioned. I also had 2 business days to reply -- is this all normal? – user1005 Sep 25 '12 at 5:12
YaJoe - applications are only available on public PAIR once published. This is generally 18 months after the application was filed -- that may be why it doesn't come up. – Dennis Crouch Sep 25 '12 at 17:17
Hmm, $1500 bounty and performance reviews tied to patents. I suspect you were working for a big company which made you blue to the point where you had to leave.
If it is who I think it is then, yes, your employment contract will detail that all work carried out by yourself during your employment is owned by the company (as do all their contracts, I believe). Even if it's a different company, the fact that they submit patents at all probably means that their employment contracts come with similar clauses. IP is very important to many large companies.
In employment contracts I've seen, they've even tried to claim stuff that was unrelated to the work that people were doing for them, but people have gotten that stricken before accepting, since they may have been doing contract work or their own stuff in addition to what they was doing for the company.
So, bottom line, they almost certainly own the work you did before leaving, including that patent submission. Hence, no, you cannot stop this patent from being filed since you have no control over that.
What you can do (if you feel strongly about it) is to try and stop it from getting to the NOA (notice of allowance, meaning that the patent has been approved) stage within the USPTO.
First, I would cash the cheque. $250 is $250. It's not a reward for supporting the patent. It's really just the company trying to stop you from causing them trouble and, unless it's attached with an official agreement for you not to oppose, you can take the money and run.
Then I would notify (in writing) the lawyers of the prior art and why you think it invalidates the submission. They will then be legally required to bring that information to the USPTO as part of the submission. However, these lawyers are paid very well for arguing their way around such prior art so that may not kill it off.
There are other groups you can join such as Peer To Patent, which can be used to put forward prior art as well. I would wait until it hits the publication stage (available on PAIR) then submit the prior art to P2P and the USPTO. The latter may cost a little bit of money but you can probably use some of that $250 if you feel strongly enough about it - it would be karmic for the company to fund the fight against their own patent :-)
You'll need to wait for official publication since it's the claims of the submission that you need to discredit. Arguing about how non-novel this is is irrelevant until you see the claims.
Me, I would just cash the cheque and let it go, life's too short for crusades. If you're ever called on to testify in the patent lawsuit, just tell the truth. Getting the patent thrown out after the company has spent $50K+ on the whole process plus court costs will be far more damaging to them than stopping it from filing at all.
Standard disclaimers: I am not a lawyer, I am certainly not your lawyer, this diatribe above is not advice and it's worth every cent you paid me for it, which is a big fat zero :-)
I had thought about writing a letter to lawyer with the prior art, but I agree that the lawyer is just going to route around. I like the suggestion to wait for the publication (if I remember). I'm torn on cashing the check. One note, though, is that I'm not referring to big blue. Blue is a significant color for full-time employees, and I thought that's what you meant at first :) – user1005 Oct 15 '12 at 22:16
Not sure why you're torn on cashing the cheque. The patent is almost certainly going to be filed no matter what you do so you may as well get some benefit from it. If it's not BigBlue, then you should consult your actual agreement, but I suspect it will be similar. Any organisation actively seeking patents (and paying employees for them) will likely have the same protections in place as IBM. – user1602 Oct 16 '12 at 0:18
@yajoe "I like the suggestion to wait for the publication (if I remember)" - perhaps it has been published by now – kristof Apr 3 '13 at 10:38
@paxdiablo Actually I don't think there is anything at all odd wrt feeling bad about cashing it -- if one thinks it is fruit of a rotten tree, one should feel bad about eating it. This is basic ethics question. I am not saying everyone would have to feel bad (I could see many counterarguments); just that this seems like an ethical thing to do. Either accept it, cash; or not accept, don't cash. – StaxMan Jul 22 '13 at 19:44
Luckily my (very flexible) ethics allow me a third option: cash but don't accept :-) – user1602 Jul 8 '16 at 6:14
Yajoe, there are a few possibilities here, but it isn't very likely that you can actually stop the patent application from being filed - as Dennis Crouch noted, in most cases, your employee agreement will require you to sign papers, etc. -- you can (and should) ask for copies of all the filings of course!
Given your description, there are a couple of things that will happen now:
First, the patent attorney and anyone else involved with the patent application that you told about the prior art will be obligated to disclose that prior art to the USPTO. (This may not actually invalidate the patent, of course, but the art will have to be disclosed.) You may want to remind the attorney and your former colleagues of this obligation.
Second, unless they claim an invention that you did not participate in creating, you will have to be named as an inventor. I think it is unlikely that this will give you any actual ownership rights over the patent -- you probably signed those away as part of your employee agreement. But you may want to check in on this.
So one thing you should check on is whether the relevant prior art has been disclosed to the USPTO. If not, then I'd argue that you not only have the right to disclose what you know, but the affirmative obligation to do so. If the art has been disclosed to the USPTO, then the matter is basically out of your hands - unless your employee agreement is unusual and allows you to withdraw your assignment or something.
But the bottom line is that your best bet is to make sure that the USPTO examiner has the relevant prior art, and everything you knew of at the time of filing. At that point the ball is in the examiner's court.
Polk WagnerPolk Wagner
Are you implying that if the lawyer does not disclose the prior art to the USPTO in the filing that he is doing something illegal or unethical? What are the consequences for this lawyer? Could he play the 'oh, I forgot' or the 'oh, I didn't know' card? – Jeach Feb 5 '13 at 23:21
If you made a patentable invention, as recognized by the law of the land, then your recognition is subservient to such law. You probably signed an IP assignment agreement with your former employer, so they likely have rights to file.
Your interest and insider knowledge, used to materially harm your former employer, may impact the judgement in a case/suit where your acts or information is used as evidence (perhaps against you)
New AlexandriaNew Alexandria
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text:
Movies A - Z
Redboxing: Gold & War on Everyone
by Rob DiCristino
This week, we celebrate corruption, apathy, ignorance, and rage. It's fun!
Gold (2016, Dir. Stephen Gaghan)
While Gold may at first appear to be a swashbuckling adventure film in the tradition of Romancing the Stone or The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, it's actually more of a cousin to The Wolf of Wall Street or The Big Short, stories about how dimwitted hubris is so often propped up by unregulated capitalism and greed. Loosely based on the 1993 Bre-X Minerals mining scandal, Gold follows the misadventures of Kenny Wells (Matthew McConaughey), heir to his father's modest prospecting operation. After dad (Craig T. Nelson) dies and the business hits the skids, Kenny plans a Hail Mary expedition with geologist Michael Acosta (Edgar Ramirez), whose theories about a great untapped gold mine in Indonesia have been laughed-off by the rest of the scientific community. But not by Kenny. He sees in Acosta the same unappreciated genius he sees in himself – the kind of blustering, haphazard madness we celebrate in scientists and condemn in businesspeople. That madness pays off when Acosta strikes big, and suddenly all of Wall Street is celebrating Kenny as a visionary.
Gold is the kind of prestige project that studios use as leverage, passing it back and forth with directors (Michael Mann, Spike Lee) and actors (Christian Bale) attaching and detaching as the development process goes on. By the time the actual film is made, it's often sanded-down, stripped of the writer's distinct voice and given a new one by producers and executives. Gold may very well have begun life as a complex character study on the relationship between business and ethics, but it ended up as little more than another McConaughey vehicle. He's a great movie star, for sure, but his performances require so much time and compromise that they often leave little else to play with. That's certainly the case here. He does his thing (still playing smarmy shit-eater like a pro), but there's not much depth or pathos to the character outside of "snake oil salesman with a beer belly." Nor does the film spend enough time with characters like Kenny's Ride or Die Kay (Bryce Dallas Howard) or opportunistic banker Brian (Corey Stoll) to really forge meaningful contrasts between them. Everyone just lives in McConaughey's world, which ends up being pretty dull.
Still, Gold is an interesting enough take on the "fake it till you make it" attitude that has (alarmingly) defined our economic infrastructure for generations. This is the story of inexperienced and undisciplined speculators taking giant risks and building an elaborate house of cards that comes crashing down around them. But the storytelling devils are in the details: That Kenny's inherent ignorance gives way to accidental success undercuts any greater deconstruction of the means by which he prospers. He's just the guy dumb enough to (literally) climb in the tiger's pen and give it a pat on the head. He's never asked to compromise anything or cross any meaningful thresholds he wasn't willing to cross before the story began, and the film never really judges him for his actions (in fact, he's ultimately rewarded for his industry). More time with Acosta or a repositioning of FBI Agent Jennings (Toby Kebbell) might have given us more insight into an ultimate point, but Gold ends up a cautionary tale without a clear lesson.
War on Everyone (2016, Dir. John Michael McDonah)
Speaking of genre traditions, the British crime comedy and the buddy cop film join forces in John Michael McDonagh's War on Everyone. Alexander Skarsgård and Michael Peña star as Detectives Monroe and Bolaño (respectively), a pair of foul-mouthed corrupt cops swinging dicks and running scams all over Albuquerque. Bolaño enjoys a happy (if dysfunctional) home life with Delores (Stephanie Sigman) and their two sons, while Monroe's encounter with the beautiful Jackie (Tessa Thompson, who needs to be in everything) pushes him to consider settling down himself. The partners are thrust into High-Octane Action when they inadvertently cross paths with dignitary-turned-crime-boss Lord James Mangan (Theo James) and his wacky sidekick Russell (Caleb Landry Jones), forcing The Chief (Paul Reiser, for some reason) to strip them of their badges and all their precious power. On tilt and without influence for the first time in their careers, the pair resolves to bring Mangan down and get back the (stolen) money that was (not) rightfully theirs.
That's the general gist of it, anyway. It doesn't really matter. War on Everyone uses a familiar genre structure as a frame on which to hang a mean-spirited, subversive, and nihilistic black comedy. It's Archer meets Lethal Weapon, In Bruges meets Starsky & Hutch. Guy Ritchie meets Shane Black. You get it. It's a film delighted by its own political incorrectness, one that gleefully celebrates its erudite characters as they spout off esoteric trivia and poke fun at the naïve worldviews of the lesser beings they manipulate every day. It takes multiple narrative detours for dance numbers, semantic arguments, and even a tennis match with Muslim women in veils. It gives smug and self-satisfied answers to existential questions and treats romantic relationships as if they were nothing more than the businesslike exchange of bodily fluids. The women in War on Everyone are about as fleshed-out and sympathetic as the men (as in not very), and often just as crass and maladjusted.
All of this would be unforgivably irritating were War on Everyone not also written, directed, edited, and performed with a super-heroic level of confidence and wit. I'm not familiar with McDonagh's other films (Calvary and The Guard among them), but this one is the tits for viewers with the right kind of eyes. Skarsgård and Peña are, frankly, fucking great in these roles, both seeming to understand the hero cop tropes they're spinning enough to do something a bit unexpected with them. There's a lived-in feel to each character that shows how game the actors were to mess around. They're not human beings, of course – there's no trace of a heart or soul anywhere in this film – but that seems to be McDonagh's (who also wrote the screenplay) intention. We find ourselves cheering on these horrible criminals as they betray the public trust for their own personal gain. Why shouldn't we? Life and death, good and evil, right and wrong – they're just words, McDonagh argues, and the burden of proving otherwise rests on our shoulders, not his.
Posted by Patrick Bromley at 12:00 PM
Labels: 2016 movies, alexander skarsgard, buddy cop movies, gold, john michael mcdonagh, matthew mcconaughey, michael pena, redboxing, rob dicristino, war on everyone
Mikko Viinikka May 18, 2017 at 1:04 PM
I was War on Everyone at a festival last year and had a blast with it (the crowd also ate it up, which surely enhanced it). Especially Skarsgård with his odd delivery and strange forward-leaning posture steals the show.
And not to be a dick about it, but the writer-director's name is McDonagh. Calvary and The Guard are also both excellent, but very different from each other. The Guard shares some DNA with War on Everyone, Calvary emphatically does not.
Rob DiCristino May 18, 2017 at 1:39 PM
Sorry about the typo!
straighttovideo May 18, 2017 at 3:42 PM
For the love of God watch Calvary! As a second generation Irishman, John Michael McDonagh nails Irish cynicism & our dark sense of humo(u)r. Loved the Guard & War on Everyone too but Calvary is a masterpiece.
Adding it to the list!
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Resilient WASH systems need to be able to cope with changes in the availability of water. This section explores which techniques can be used to improve water availability over space and time in areas not only prone to drought and changing climate variability, but also those areas with deteriorating water availability due to increasing water demands and human influences. The focus is on water supply and non-motorized irrigation in rural areas for populations of up to 5,000 people. Resilience is a concept used to describe how to make water systems more robust in terms of water availability, thereby reducing the vulnerability of people that rely on them.
Impact of drought on WASH systems - Includes world maps on the locations of water stress, scarcity, and historical drought.
Drought and links to other disasters - How drought is linked to other major disasters such as poverty, inequality, and conflict.
Drought resilience, non-technical solutions - Non-technical ways to make water systems more resilient, such as financial, institutional, environmental and social measures.
Drought resilience, technical solutions - Technical solutions to make water systems more resilient.
Drought cycle management - Four stages of drought management: normal, alert, emergency, recovery.
Framework for evaluation of projects in drought-prone areas - a set of questions to help evaluate projects.
Both technical and non-technical components are important in discussing how to make water systems resilient. In many cases, it is not technical issues which cause projects to become unsustainable, but non-technical issues such as management, social relationships and community dynamics. A useful model to use is the FIETS model, which covers five dimensions of sustainability: Financial, Institutional, Environmental, Technical, and Social.
Improving the availability of water over space (more points of water increase access for people and livestock).
Improving the availability of water over time (more water available to last the entire dry season, or with agriculture, short dry spells).
Improving techniques that influence water demand, such as water-saving technologies, irrigation practices, re-use techniques and drought-resistant crops.
Social solutions - e.g. changing behavior in water use, use of communal sources, etc.
This page was last modified on 20 December 2013, at 06:24.


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text:
title: "Snowhash in Rust with WASM"
date: 2018-05-22
draft: false
banner: /images/rust-wasm-snowhash/title.png
categories:
  - technical
tags:
  - rust
  - wasm
  - procedural
  - hash
scripts:
  - /scripts/lib/sha256-0.9.0.min.js
  - /scripts/snowhash-wasm/index.js
---

A little while ago I came across this [Snowflake][snowflake] generator. It's a project by Raph Levein that takes a hash string and uses it to procedurally generate a unique snowflake. He explains that

> the original motivation was as a cryptographically secure visual hash, so that people would reliably be able to tell by visual inspection whether two hashes were identical.

I thought that was a pretty cool idea. Having someway to quickly tell if two similar strings were distinct has some real benefits. But to be honest, I thought the snowflakes that were generated were the coolest part (pun completely intended).

I set about rewriting the project in Rust using the algorithm Raph described in a [follow up article][snowflake-explain] he posted. As I was writing it I thought generating snowflakes would also be a great way to play around with Wasm.

Targeting Wasm from Rust code has been something I've been meaning to check out. And this project was perfect for it. The Rust code could handle all the procedural generation stuff, and then I could write a small bit of JS to call the Wasm function and draw each point onto a Canvas.

## impl Snowhash

Let's start from the top: the main `generate` function.

```rust
/// Generate points from the provided hash string.
pub fn generate(hash: &str) -> Vec<Point> {
    let seed: &[_] = &[hash_sum(hash)];
    let mut rng: StdRng = SeedableRng::from_seed(seed);

    let mut open = vec![Point::origin()];
    let mut closed = vec![];
    let mut filled = vec![];

    for bit in BitStr::from_str(hash) {
        let index = rng.gen_range(0, open.len());
        let point = open.remove(index);

        if point.on_axis() || bit.as_bool() {
            let mut reflection = point.reflection();
            filled.append(&mut reflection);

            let mut extension = extend(&point, &closed);
            open.append(&mut extension);
        }
        closed.push(point);
    }
    filled
}
```

That's not a lot of code, but let's run through it bit by bit.

```rust
let seed: &[_] = &[hash_sum(hash)];
let mut rng: StdRng = SeedableRng::from_seed(seed);
```

First we seed the random number generator (RNG). `hash_sum` takes the `u8` value of each character in `hash` and adds them all together. I found that this resulted in greater changes between two similar hashes, when compared to having a fixed seed.

We also don't want this to be an unreproducible seed, such as Unix time since epoch. Using that would mean that the same hash would produce two distinct snowflakes. It would still look cool, but that would go against the whole point of generating the snowflake from the hash.

Next, we iterate through all the bits in the hash with `BitStr::from_str(hash)`. I'll come back to the `BitStr` implementation a bit later.

```rust
let index = rng.gen_range(0, open.len());
let point = open.remove(index);
```

And for each iteration we get a random point from `open` and remove it from the vector.

```rust
if point.on_axis() || bit.as_bool() {
    let mut reflection = point.reflection();
    filled.append(&mut reflection);

    let mut extension = extend(&point, &closed);
    open.append(&mut extension);
}
closed.push(point);
```

The final section is the loop iteration. This is just the algorithm that Raph described. The `extend` function grabs all neighbours of `point`, in our specific slice, that we haven't seen yet (isn't in `closed`).

At the end of this function we return `filled: Vec<Point>` which is, as the name suggests, all the points we need to fill to show the snowflake.

### Point

The `Point` struct is exactly what you'd expect. It's a just a tuple struct of two `i32`s.

```rust
pub struct Point(i32, i32);
```

It also has a bunch of methods to make the `generate` function a bit cleaner, namely `Point::reflection` and `Point::neighbours`.

### BitStr

Implementing `BitStr` required a bit more thought. Here's the struct.

```rust
struct BitStr<'a> {
    bytes: Bytes<'a>,
    cur: Option<u8>,
    cur_idx: u8,
}
```

`bytes` are the bytes we want to iterate though. `cur` is the current byte, or another way of putting it is the most recent byte taken from `bytes`. And `cur_inx` is the index into `cur`, used for extracting individual bits from the byte.

This struct just implements the `Iterator` trait so we can iterated over all the bits. Then, for each iteration we grab the next bit, with some bit shifting. If we find we have gone through all the bits in `cur` then we reset `cur_idx` and grab the next byte from `bytes`.

```rust
impl<'a> Iterator for BitStr<'a> {
    type Item = Bit;

    fn next(&mut self) -> Option<Self::Item> {
        if self.cur.is_none() || self.cur_idx >= 8 {
            self.cur = self.bytes.next();
            self.cur_idx = 0;
        }

        if let Some(byte) = self.cur {
            let bit = Bit::from_u8((byte << self.cur_idx) & 128);
            self.cur_idx += 1;
            return Some(bit);
        }
        None
    }
}
```

### Bit

If I'm implementing my own `BitStr` I may as well implement my own `Bit` as well. For this I also wanted to take advantage of Rust's empty tuple, which has a size of 0.

```rust
struct Bit(Option<()>);
```

Even though we're now using a Rust specific type, the `Bit` implementation is still super simple. If `bit.0.is_some()` then it's a high bit, and if `bit.0.is_none()` then it's a low bit.

## impl From<Snowhash> for Png

That's the entire implementation. Not too much logic for some really interesting snowflakes. Now I just need to display them.

Before jumping straight into compiling to Wasm, I went for something a bit more familiar and rendered the points as a PNG. For this I used [`cairo-rs`][cairo-rs], a wrapper around the [Cairo Graphics][cairo-graphics] clib.

Coming this far we get some pretty interesting looking snowflakes, like this one from the title banner.

```bash
$ snowhash_png 2552a8f69a6d45dbd786a8452d14dc841c665f04e763bb2c6b2157b8b95a231a
```

![](/images/rust-wasm-snowhash/2552a8f69a6d45dbd786a8452d14dc841c665f04e763bb2c6b2157b8b95a231a.png)

Or this one from a randomly generated hash.

```bash
$ snowhash_png dd76ecd83a8b238b58507b13096f6727cabf33ad90530c9a97de07b55d3efa3b
```

![](/images/rust-wasm-snowhash/dd76ecd83a8b238b58507b13096f6727cabf33ad90530c9a97de07b55d3efa3b.png)

Plug those hashes into the Snowhash generator on this site and you should see the exact same snowflake. But this generator makes no guarantees between machines when running `snowhash_png`.

To achieve consistency between `snowhash_wasm`, and `snowhash_png` on multiple devices I imagine all that is required is some small changes to the RNG. But that's something to look into another day.

## impl From<Snowhash> for Wasm

For now, onto Wasm.

This turned out to be much easier than I was expecting. In fact, excluding imports and a helper function, this is all that we need.

```rust
#[derive(Serialize)]
struct CanvasPoint(f64, f64);

#[wasm_bindgen]
pub fn generate(hash: &str) -> String {
    let points: Vec<CanvasPoint> = snowhash::generate(hash)
        .iter()
        .map(|point| hex_to_cartesian(point.x() as f64, point.y() as f64))
        .map(|(x, y)| CanvasPoint(x, y))
        .collect();
    serde_json::to_string(&points).unwrap()
}
```

I created a new struct `CanvasPoint` just so I didn't have to make the Snowhash library depend on `serde`.

And the `generate` function just takes the points from `snowhash::generate(hash)`, converts them from Hex grid coordinates into Cartesian grid coordinates, and turns the resulting `Vec` into a JSON list.

The `#[wasm_bindgen]` macro above the `generate` function tells the rust compiler that we want to make this function available as part of the Wasm module. Without it, the JS code wouldn't be able to call `snowhash.generate()`.

Something else worth mentioning is that Wasm, at the time of writing, [only supports numeric types][wasm-types]. I thought that this would allow me to return a `Vec<(f64, f64)>` from `generate` but that isn't supported just yet.

As a workaround I went with serializing `Vec<CanvasPoint>` to JSON. In JS land, there's already a module to parse JSON strings without needing to include any external libs.

### Reducing the Bundle

Compiling to Wasm and adding some JS to draw the hexagons to the canvas worked out pretty well. Except that the bundle started out as being ~710KB.

I'd heard that this is a bit of an issue. There seems to be some good work going into improving this but it's still a fair way to go.

Still I wanted to reduce the size at least a little if I could.

I was surprised by how little effort I had to put in to drop the bundle size by nearly 50%, to 358KB. All I did was install `wasm-opt`, as part of the [WebAssembly/binaryen][binaryen] toolchain, and run `wasm-opt -Os snowhash.wasm`. The `-Os` flag tells `wasm-opt` to optimize for size over speed and, well it seemed to do the job.

## Snowhash

So after that explanation here's the finished product. I've embedded it at the bottom of the post, but it's also available [on it's own page][joshleeb-snowhash].

By the way, if you get tired of manually changing the hash, click on the snowflake (the canvas) and a new random snowflake will be created.

Enjoy!

<form>
    Hash:

        <input id="hashInput" name="hashInput" type="text"/>

</form>
<canvas id="hexgrid" size="500", scale="3"></canvas>

[snowflake]: http://levien.com/snowflake.html
[snowflake-explain]: http://levien.com/snowflake-explain.html
[hexagonal-grids]: https://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons
[cairo-rs]: https://crates.io/crates/cairo-rs
[cairo-graphics]: https://www.cairographics.org
[joshleeb-snowhash]: https://joshleeb.com/projects/snowhash
[gh-snowhash]: https://github.com/joshleeb/snowhash
[wasm-types]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/Semantics.md#types
[binaryen]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/binaryen

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Books About Serial Killers
James Oliver
Createspace Independent P...
48 Page Book
3.1 / 5.0 Avg.
Looking for a copy of this book?
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Elizabeth Bathory
Elizabeth Bathory was written by and James Oliver. The 48 page book was published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform in 2016 with an ISBN 10 of 1541054857. Most books are now available in ebook, pdf and audible formats. If you need more information about this publication, it can be purchased at Amazon.com or Google Books. If the book is older and/or out of print book try to locate a copy on eBay.com. Elizabeth Bathory mentions 1 serial killers including Elizabeth Bathory. The author James Oliver has 1 book(s) listed on Killer.Cloud used for the purpose of documenting facts about Serial Killers listed in our database.
This book mentions 1 Serial Killers:
Was Elizabeth Bathory a Monster? Read this book for FREE on Kindle Unlimited - Order Now! Do you know the story of the Countess? Were you fascinated by Lady Gaga's recent depiction of Elizabeth Bathory in "American Horror Story"? Would you like to know more about this controversial historical figure? If so, Countess Elizabeth Bathory: The Life and Legacy of History's Most Prolific Female Serial Killer is the book for you. It explains the life and times of this powerful woman - and how she came to be accuses of so many heinous crimes. You'll gain access to a variety of historical versions, perspectives, and accounts of her life - some of which paint her as a villain-and others as a victim! Countess Elizabeth Bathory: The Life and Legacy of H...
1 TotalAuthors
1 Books Books By James Oliver
View 1 books written by
Author James Oliver
1 Total Serial Killers Mentioned
15 Books Books about Elizabeth Bathory
View 15 books that mention
Serial Killer Elizabeth Bathory
MOST CONFIRMED VICTIMS
(by a Serial Killer)
Luis Garavito
La Bestia, The Beast
MOST POSSIBLE VICTIMS
The Blood Countess, The Čachtice Countess
LONGEST YEARS ACTIVE
(as a Serial Killer)
Westside Rapist, The Southland Strangler


text:
Equatorial Guinea throws down the gauntlet
The west African state's hopes of restoring oil output rest on the reception given to its 2019 licensing round
Ophir's Fortuna FLNG finally bites the dust
Ophir Energy's long-running efforts to fund the Equatorial Guinea project fail, as the company engages in takeover talks
Use it or lose it, Equatorial Guinea tells drillers
The West African state wants to see more activity from oil firms now the oil price has recovered, and is launching a new bid round
Equatorial Guinea rebuilding bridges
Relations between Malabo and international oil companies seem to be warming up again
Help not hinder Africa
Oil in Africa has a bad press—but it needn't be that way, argues a new book
Capacity up, supply down in Angola
Angola says it has already begun to reduce supply but how and where is unclear
Choppy waters ahead for Equatorial Guinea as production declines
Minister of mines, industry and energy, Gabriel Obiang Lima, is taking a hard line with investors amid low oil prices and falling output
Equatorial Guinea floating LNG set for 2019
The floating LNG scheme could aid the development of remote gasfields around the continent
Gabriel Mbaga Obiang Lima wants to see Equatorial Guinea become a regional hub
Malabo's dash for gas in Equatorial Guinea
Equatorial Guinea has secured fresh supply for its LNG plant, but can it build on that success?
Gabriel Mbaga Obiang Lima is a big fan of natural gas. Equatorial Guinea's energy minister spends large chunks of his year travelling around the world proselytising on the potential of the West African producer—the smallest Opec member by crude output—to become a major gas export hub.
He says he is taking his cue from Middle Eastern oil producers now focusing on gas as the fossil fuel of the future. But he is also well aware of the need to replace Equatorial Guinea's declining oil output from maturing fields with export earnings from new volumes.
Crude output is running at around 113,000bl/d in 2019, compared to 120,000bl/d in 2018, according to the minister. He puts a positive spin on that, saying that the decline could have been worse—possibly down to as low as 100,000bl/d—had it not been for efforts by UK independent Trident Energy, ExxonMobil and others to boost output from existing producing fields.
"There has been some drop off in crude, which was expected. But we have also been able to reduce the percentage of the decline," he told Petroleum Economist in an interview at June's Africa Oil and Power Forum in London.
Trident says it has increased output from the Ceiba and Okume complex, off the south cost of the country's mainland, by around a quarter from an initial 42,000bl/d when it took over their operatorship from US independent Hess in late 2017. The company says it expects further gains due to the use of electric submersible pumps to enhance production, followed by infill drilling. Trident, which is backed by private equity firm Warburg Pincus, teamed up with US independent Kosmos Energy to buy three Equatorial Guinea exploration licences in 2017, as well as taking over Ceiba and Okume.
There has also been positive news on the gas side, with another US independent, Noble Energy, reaching an agreement with the government to feed gas from the Alen condensates field to the Alba processing plant at the Punta Europa industrial complex near the capital Malabo on Bioko Island. The gas is currently being reinjected.
The plant, operated by US independent Marathon, is set to run short of gas feedstock, as output from Marathon's 5.2tn ft³ Alba gasfield declines, prompting Obiang Lima to threaten to take the Alen project away from Noble earlier this year if it did not take a rapid final investment decision.
An agreement was duly reached in April, paving the way for the construction of a 70km-long pipeline to the plant, capable of handling 950mn ft³/d, the details of which are expected to be finalised later this year. Noble has estimated the project could recover an incremental 600bn ft³ of gross natural gas equivalent resources. First gas is expected in 2021.
Once processed to extract liquids, the dry gas will go to the nearby EG LNG plant. Obiang Lima says this will help ensure the LNG facility, in which Marathon is also the largest shareholder, would be able to maintain exports close to its 3.4mn t/yr capacity over the next five years, even as output from the Alba field declines.
Further gas could come from the ExxonMobil-operated Zafiro field, which accounts for most of Equatorial Guinea's oil production. Much of the associated gas from the field, which is located to the west of Bioko Island, is currently flared, making it an obvious source of feedstock for Punta Europa. Equatorial Guinea is also promoting turning Zafiro into a hub into which to feed gas from surrounding fields for pipeline transfer to Punta Europa.
However, progress there will probably need to wait until the government and ExxonMobil resolve discussions over the terms of future development of the field, with a number of companies reportedly interested in buying the asset should ExxonMobil want to sell.
Investment drive
The need for more oil and gas discoveries if Equatorial Guinea is to become a regional hub in the longer term has prompted a flurry of licensing round activity. In April, the country launched its 2019 licensing round including 25 exploration blocks, as well as two blocks where gas discoveries have already been made for appraisal and development.
The latter two include the former Block R—now EG27—where UK independent Ophir Energy had planned to use a floating LNG (FLNG) facility to develop gas exports, but ran into funding difficulties. Ophir had its license revoked in January, and has since been taken over by Indonesia's Medco. The other development block is EG23 is adjacent to the Alba field and includes parts of the former Block D, which was relinquished by Marathon.
Whoever replaces Ophir on EG27 may be advised not to resurrect the idea of an FLNG project. "Personally, I'm not happy with [FLNG]. I am looking more to bring the resources by pipeline to Punta Europa, rather than floating LNG," Obiang Lima says. Any gas from Block 23 could also go to Bioko Island via the existing Alba field pipeline infrastructure.
Obiang Lima says 14 companies had applied for pre-qualification for EG27 and EG23. That process closes in early July and bids will then be invited for both those blocks and the exploration blocks—which do not require a pre-qualification process—by late September. Block winners for the exploration acreage are scheduled to be announced in November.
However, Obiang Lima says extra time is likely to be needed to evaluate the appraisal/development blocks, especially EG27, where the minister is keen to get in an operator who has the resources to carry through the development rapidly.
"I do not see us deciding on EG27 by November, it would probably be first quarter of next year," he says.
The drive for offshore investment does not end with the 2019 round. Another is planned for 2020 with a focus on deepwater acreage and Equatorial Guinea is not just after the familiar faces of the western oil sector to bid. Obiang Lima is heading for Beijing in July to try to woo companies to both the country's mining and hydrocarbons opportunities. He says Chinese companies had already expressed interest in next year's round.
Regional hub aspirations
It remains to be seen how easy it will be to attract investment for potentially costly deepwater projects. But Equatorial Guinea hopes it may also be able tap the potential of "stranded" gas reserves in neighbouring countries, as part of its regional gas hub push. Obiang Lima hopes to persuade them to send their gas to Punta Europa, rather than needing investment in expensive stand-alone export infrastructure.
Source: Petroleum Economist
Talks with Cameroon, São Tomé and Príncipe and Nigeria continue over possible development of gas reserves close to Equatorial Guinea that could remain stranded and undeveloped, if they are not piped to Punta Europa. Equatorial Guinea is open to collaboration with its neighbours to finance early stage exploration to help open up these areas to drillers, says the minister.
Perhaps the best bet for cross-border cooperation is the development of gas reserves that straddle the maritime border between Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon in the Yoyo-Yolanda gas condensate field, which is operated by Noble on both sides of the divide.
A memorandum of understanding was signed between the countries over a possible development in July 2007, but progress since then has been slow.
With the future of the Punta Europa gas facilities seemingly assured for the next few years, Obiang Lima is hopeful a deal can be reached to develop a jointly run unitisation development. He is keen for Cameroon to act quickly, in order to keep development costs down by using rigs, seismic and other oilfield services equipment already in, or heading for, Equatorial Guinea.
"Some of the critical decisions need to be done in months," he says. Equatorial Guinea also proposes that 40,000bl/d of liquids separated from the Alen field gas at Punta Europa could go to Cameroon's Limbe refinery, as part of any agreement to take gas from Cameroonian projects.


text:
Joseph Kibwetere, né en 1932 dans le village de Kabumba, dans le district de Ntungamo, en Ouganda, fut l'un des dirigeants d'une secte millénariste dissidente de l'Église catholique romaine, le « Mouvement pour la restauration des dix commandements de Dieu ». Il serait mort le  dans l'incendie de l'église de la secte à  en compagnie de plusieurs centaines de fidèles.

Biographie
Selon la presse et la Commission des droits de l'homme ougandaise, Kibwetere était issu d'un milieu catholique pratiquant. Il s'était marié en 1960 avec Theresa, une institutrice, et était le père de 16 enfants, dont 3 hors mariage. Il travailla longtemps, au sein de l'école catholique du diocèse du district de Mbarara. Il créa une école catholique, la . Dans les années 1970, il fut membre de la commission foncière en Ouganda (Uganda Land Commission). Il fut également une fois président de la Commission du service public (Public Service Commission) dans le gouvernement du royaume d'Ankole. Dans les années 1960 et en 1980, il s'aventura en politique comme membre du Parti démocratique et animateur de campagne pour plusieurs hommes politiques locaux. Il avait un commerce de bière à Kabale et un moulin pour maïs.

Selon la presse et l'enseignement diffusé par la secte, Kibwetere, qui avait été témoin d'une apparition de la Vierge Marie en 1984, aurait été bouleversé par sa rencontre avec Credonia Mwerinde venue lui transmettre un message de la part de la Vierge Marie. Il aurait décidé de laisser Mwindere s'installer chez lui et, ensemble, en 1989, ils auraient créé le Mouvement pour la restauration des dix commandements de Dieu, afin de diffuser les dix commandements à travers tout l'Ouganda.

Le rapport de la Commission des droits de l'homme ougandaise publié en 2002 a proposé une version sensiblement différente des circonstances de la création du mouvement : en 1988, Mwerinde, peut-être sous l'influence de réfugiés rwandais Tutsi originaires de Kibeho où se serait produite une apparition mariale, aurait rejoint un mouvement fondé par Blandina Buzigye, une femme prétendant avoir vu la Vierge Marie à Nyabugoto Rock, dans le district de Rukungiri. Blandina Buzigye affirmait avoir été informée par la Vierge Marie de l'imminence de l'Apocalypse et avoir reçu pour mission de créer un Mouvement pour la Restauration des dix commandements afin que les hommes pieux puissent être sauvés. C'est au sein de ce mouvement que Credonia Mwerinde se serait affirmée comme leader en recrutant des membres importants de la secte comme Joseph Mwerinde, Paul Ikazire et Dominic Kataribabo. Elle aurait, par la suite, renforcé son ascendant sur le mouvement en mettant à la disposition du groupe un terrain fourni par son père à Kateete dans le district de Kanungu.

Joseph Kibwetere fut ordonné évêque du mouvement pour la restauration des dix commandements de Dieu en 1991 sous le nom de "Bishop wa Nyina Itwe Bikira Maria" (Évêque de la Vierge Marie). En 1992, cependant, alors que le mouvement comptait déjà plus de 200 adeptes qui se réunissaient sur la propriété de Kibwetere, sa femme et ses enfants exaspérés décidèrent de chasser la secte de chez eux.  Kibwetere préféra partir avec le mouvement à Kanungu et divorça de sa femme. Ses derniers contacts avec sa famille remontent à 1995, à l'occasion de l'enterrement de l'un de ses fils. Plusieurs anciens membres de la secte ont affirmé que Kibwetere avait une liaison avec Credonia Mwerinde. On a prétendu qu'il avait été assassiné par Mwerinde dès 1999 mais cette version est contredite par d'autres témoins. Selon la BBC, Kibwetere aurait, en revanche, été soigné pour un trouble bipolaire dans un hôpital de Kampala, en 1999.

Comme le montre son manuel de référence , le Mouvement était obsédé par la question de l'Apocalypse. Pour ses adeptes, la planète Terre allait être détruite au tournant de l'an 2000 si les hommes ne respectaient pas les dix commandements. À la fin des années 1990, la direction du mouvement annonça que la fin du monde était imminente et qu'elle aurait lieu, le . Comme celle-ci ne se produisit pas à la date prévue et que la secte commença à se diviser, une nouvelle date fut arrêtée pour le . Ce jour-là, un incendie se déclencha dans l'église du mouvement à Kanungu et plusieurs centaines de fidèles y trouvèrent la mort.

Le rôle de Kibwetere dans le groupe et dans cette tragédie n'est pas connu avec certitude. Certains ont affirmé qu'il était le leader du groupe et qu'il aurait planifié le massacre. Ce serait lui qui aurait fixé une nouvelle date pour la fin du monde (le ) et annoncé que la Vierge Marie apparaîtrait le  pour emmener les fidèles au Paradis. Kibwetere était en contact régulier avec William Kamm, le gourou d'une secte millénariste australienne,  (les Serviteurs de la Rédemption), condamné en 2007 à 15 ans de prison pour agression sexuelle.

Un journaliste a rapporté que Kibwetere avait écrit quelques jours avant le drame une lettre à sa femme lui demandant de continuer le culte car les fidèles allaient mourir. (Selon une autre version, sa famille aurait simplement reçu un paquet contenant différents documents de la secte et un livre des dix commandements). Le  Kibwetere aurait, lui-même, amené les fidèles jusque dans l'église avant que n'éclate l'incendie.

Pour d'autres observateurs, en revanche, parmi lesquels la commission des droits de l'homme ougandaise, Kibwetere aurait plutôt été manipulé par Mwerinde, la véritable prêtresse du mouvement. Cette dernière aurait profité de sa propriété et de son argent pour créer le mouvement puis elle l'aurait utilisé pour représenter le mouvement à l'extérieur en raison de son statut de notable et de son expérience au sein de l'Église catholique et de l'administration locale. Kibwetere intervenait ainsi une demi-heure chaque jour sur Radio Toro, l'une des plus importantes stations de radio ougandaise, pour annoncer la fin du monde et inviter les auditeurs à rejoindre la secte. Kibwetere paraissait à ce point respectable qu'il put ainsi recruter pour le compte de la secte des enfants à la sortie des écoles sans être inquiété. Malgré cela, Kibwetere a, selon plusieurs témoignages, directement participé à des actes de violences perpétrés à l'égard des fidèles considérés comme contestataires .

Bien que Kibwetere soit probablement mort dans l'incendie, certains ont affirmé qu'il avait réussi à s'enfuir à temps avec Mwerinde. En , les autorités ougandaises ont délivré à son encontre un mandat d'arrêt international. La police ougandaise n'a toutefois pas pu mettre la main sur lui et il est probable qu'il soit mort dans l'incendie de l'église le .

Références

Voir aussi
 Mouvement pour la restauration des dix commandements de Dieu
 Credonia Mwerinde

Liens externes
 Photos des sites où le Mouvement s'était installé

Chef religieux du XXe siècle
Personnalité religieuse ougandaise
Personnalité ayant souffert de troubles bipolaires
Suicide collectif
Naissance en 1932
Naissance dans le protectorat de l'Ouganda
Décès en mars 2000
Décès en Ouganda

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


With support from Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez, last night Manhattan Community Board 12 passed a resolution that calls on DOT to erase the current Dyckman Street bike lanes — which the board endorsed last year — and replace them with a more dangerous design.
Last December, DOT installed parking-protected bike lanes along Dyckman's north and south curbs from Broadway to 10th Avenue. The project separated bike and motor vehicle traffic, shortened pedestrian crossing distances, and forced motorists to slow down while making turns.
The design was the product of a nine-year public process. But soon after its implementation, business owners began complaining because drivers couldn't illegally double-park as easily as they used to. Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and Congressman Adriano Espaillat took up the cause, requesting in February — when the bikeway was just a few weeks old — that DOT remove it.
Under pressure from merchants and fellow electeds, Rodriguez came out in favor of a two-way bike lane on the north side of the street. That would create more conflicts between drivers and cyclists than the current design and expose people to greater risk of injury.
Drivers turning across a two-way bike lane have to look for cyclists approaching from both directions, which leads to more collisions. For this reason, street engineers try to avoid the design that Rodriguez and CB 12 are calling for.
When DOT does use two-way bike lanes, the agency opts for streets with few intersections where drivers cross the bikeway — think Prospect Park West or Kent Avenue. Rodriguez and CB 12 are asking the agency to abandon this principle of safe bikeway design. The north side of Dyckman is interrupted by more cross streets than the south side, as well as a suburban-style Duane Reade parking lot. Putting a two-way bike lane on the north side will guarantee more crashes and injuries than the current design.
A more dangerous bike lane configuration would also do nothing to address the actual causes of Dyckman dysfunction: cheap parking meter rates and poor curbside management.
Good decision by Manhattan CB12 members @MANCB12 and our community support on voting (32 YES & only 4 NO) on the proposal, not to remove, but to have a 2-way #BikeLanes in the northside of Dyckman Street. Our NYC streets belong to everyone!
DOT has so far rebuffed demands to undo the Dyckman project, but agency staffers haven't ruled out wholesale changes in the future. We asked DOT for comment on last night's CB 12 vote, and will update this post if we hear back.
Can anyone explain why they're calling for the two-way bike lane on the north side, despite the south side having less intersection conflicts?
Because the business people at the table with Rodriguez didn't scream when it came up.
That is a giant middle finger to all of us. Not just cyclists. Vote the fools out. Inwood stands for double parked cars over everyone and everything else.
The sad part is, Ydanis was being one of the "reasonable" ones by calling for a 2-way bike line rather than ripping them out entirely, which appeared to be the consensus position of the Dyckman street business owners. And they hated him even for that: we can probably expect that he will get voted out next time, and replaced by someone even further opposed.
Even $500/year is an insane giveaway. The cheapest parking lot space in Inwood is $250 a month.
Hey JarekFA -and Brad @inklake here.. Just a heads-up, that for mysterious reasons, Twitter declared my acct. 'may be compromised by a user or a service not associated with Twitter." No idea what it's about.. but anyway, can't tweet for almost 24 hours.
Followed their instructions, and sent mail to support but we'll see. If I have to create another Twitter account …grrr. I'll let you know. You can find me on FaceBook.
Rodriguez might have been trying to be reasonable, but to propose a two-way lane is ridiculous, given how rare they are. He and others in 10034 have this attitude that Inwood is special and shouldn't conform to how the rest of Manhattan works. Whether it's zoning, or double parking, or nightlife, Inwood politicians propose custom solutions to what out to be uniform standards. It's a neighborhood of contradictions and conflict. We have wealthy white people like me west of Broadway. We have displaced hipsters from Brooklyn moving in, and accelerating gentrification. We have nouveau riche Dominicans and Dominican-Americans who have established a nightlife district that further accelerates gentrification, and we have some of the poorest residents of Manhattan being squeezed out of existence. And in all of this, we have leaders who can't agree that the northernmost east to west throughfare can't have standardized one-way bike lanes. People do ride their bicycles around Manhattan. Dyckman is on that route.
They're punishing you for calling out the 84th.
This is why I have never liked Ydanis as chair of the Transportation committee. He is influenced by the nightlife, livery cab and small business groups that fund his campaigns, as his involvement here clearly shows.
He will be gone soon due to term limits, but not before he upzones Dyckman to 40%+ more density while protecting double-parking the whole time. Bizarre. Wouldn't a high-density rezoning go together with a proper complete streets plan?


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Homebound Brew Haus and Compartés For Lucy Lovers – Here's What's Popping Up
Michele Stueven December 9, 2021
Any I Love Lucy fan knows that almost every Ricardo argument ended with a heart-shaped box of chocolates. To celebrate the highly anticipated Amazon original movie, Being The Ricardos, starring Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem, Prime Video has teamed up with Compartés to produce a limited-time-only chocolate bar inspired by the I Love Lucy biographical drama.
An L.A. staple since it opened in 1950, Compartés became famous with Lucille Ball contemporaries like Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley and hold Oprah, Gwyneth Paltrow and Drew Barrymore as loyal customers. The chocolatiers have created a red velvet cake-flavored chocolate bar, a nod to TV's most famous redhead. Starting today, the gourmet chocolate shop will be distributing white chocolate and red velvet cake flavored treats as gifts with a purchase via their website.
Red velvet cake-flavored chocolate bar (Courtesy Compartes)
Art DOGL, a first-of-its-kind community celebration centered on the connection between canines and their companions, will take place on Saturday, December 11 and Sunday, December 12 in Downtown Los Angeles. The two-day festival is free for the public and their dogs to attend, will feature immersive installations, visual art performances, complimentary Tito's Vodka cocktails, a Nationwide® pet "Pup Portrait Studio" (complete with appearances from Santa Paws), and participation from over 50 local artists and businesses. Full Moon Pet will be providing dog pizzas with recipes designed by chef Elizabeth Faulkner. The event benefits Wags&Walks, a non-profit rescue and adoption center to help find forever homes for some of their rescued pups. Tickets are available via EventBrite and are free to the public (and their dogs) to attend.
BONDLE wines are popping up for the tasting on Saturday, December 11 at Garcons de Cafe in DTLA from 1-4 p.m. The new French natural wine company will be pouring from magnums offering glass pours of their champagne, red, white, rose and orange wine and will be serving bites from founder Duyen Ha. Sample bites include:
Oysters, champagne sabayon, honey emulsion, tarragon oil
Hamachi, perilla oil, pomegranates, thai basil, chili lime, sesame rice crackers
Radishes, tarama, pea shoots/mizuna, cilantro, tagete, sourdough
Mont d'or, endives, grilled broccoli rabe, saffron, toasted rice powder
Pandan basque cheesecake, Vietnamese coffee cremeux
RSVP for the afternoon HERE.
After a two-year pop-up collaboration, Parm Boyz returns to Ronan for a "Home for the Holidays" pop-up event and toy drive benefiting Children's Hospital of Los Angeles on Sunday, December 12. The final night revival will be a red sauce Italian four-course meal that includes antipasti, Caesar salad, chicken and eggplant parm, and tiramisu. There will also be veal chop parm and veal Tomahawk chop add-ons for an additional cost. A modified vegetarian menu will also be available. The grand finale includes a toy drive, where guests are encouraged to bring an unwrapped gift to donate to Children's Hospital of Los Angeles. Guests who pay it forward with a gift will receive a welcome nip of limoncello, on the house. Reservations can be made via Resy and are highly encouraged. Be aware, there is a $10 per person cancellation fee if canceled with less than 24 hours' notice.
Courtesy Parm Boys
Piccalilli is bringing back its Night in Tel Aviv for the second year in a row on Wednesday, December 15. For one night only, the downtown Culver City restaurant will offer a menu of modern Middle Eastern dishes inspired by Israeli-born sous chef, Liyam Ezer. Highlights include Tahini & Spicy Stuff with "Har-bracha" tahini, schoug, arissa, and charred chili; Yellowtail Carpaccio with olive oil, nuts, onion and urfa chili; Seafood Kabab with fish, shrimp, amba & charred scallions; Lamp Malfoof with "Sandpit" slow roast lamb wrapped in cabbage, matbucha and herbs. Reservations are recommended by calling 424-298-8540 or on resy.com.
The former Imperial Western Beer Co. at Union Station has reopened in its full splendor as the Homebound Brew Haus with a flurry of events:
Krampus Rock 'n' Roll Sundays (December 12, 19, 26)
On offer will be Krampus-inspired specialty cocktails, late-night happy hour from 8 p.m. to close, first beer for $1 to anyone in Krampus dress/costume. Music stylings will include heavy rock 'n' roll a la The White Stripes, Danzig, Ozzy Osbourne and the like, all set to visual stylings of eerie holiday films, such as Nightmare Before Christmas, Scrooge and, of course, Krampus.
Motown Monday Holiday Happy Hour (December 13, 20)
Homebound will offer an extended happy hour until 8 p.m. on Mondays throughout the holiday season, complete with Motown holiday music programming, light bites and bar deals.
Brew Hall Karaoke Wednesdays – Holiday Edition
Running every other Wednesday in December and January, Homebound will be offering a late-night happy hour from 8 p.m. until close. Themed nights in December include:
December 15: First annual holiday caroling karaoke with a prize for ugliest sweater, beer and cocktail specials, spiked hot apple cider and mulled wine.
December 29: First annual hot cocoa Karaoke starts at 7:30 p.m. with ugly sweater contest, spiked peppermint hot chocolate and holiday bubbles.
What's Popping Up is a weekly column in the L.A. Weekly that explores all that's new in food and drink.


72 pp in full colour on how to care for your health and well being for 50+, contains a range of seated indoor exercises and lots of health tips, ideal for winter months or anyone who hasn't got time to get outdoors and exercise.
Order now to guarantee your copy at £7.99 + P+P £2.00 Total £9.99.
Written and edited by Tricia Moxey and with over 140 pps and more than 100 full colour photographs by John Price. This book is well worth reading if you are a fan of trees and nature. It illustrates the 50 winning trees that were nominated as the Epping Forest Districts favourites.
This will be available soon, currently out of print please fill out the contact us form if you wish to be notified when available.


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Building a Strengths-focused Organisation - Getting Started
James Brook
Strengths Partnership Ltd
Our recent discussions and observations with Human Resources (HR) practitioners and line managers suggests that whilst the vast majority quickly recognise the advantages and possibilities arising from an organisation built around employee strengths and successes rather than weaknesses and 'gaps', the process of implementing such an approach can appear daunting. In particular, the time and financial requirements to implement such an approach, as well as getting top management buy-in, have been cited as reasons for being cautious about transitioning the organisational mindset and people management infrastructure. In this article, we will try and address these concerns and provide practical and low-cost ideas and guidance to get you started down the strengths path.
Although a great deal more research is needed, there is a growing body of research that suggests that strengths-focused people management and development holds significant promise for improving employee engagement and organisational results such as profitability, turnover, safety and customer satisfaction (e.g., Harter, Schmidt, & Hayes, 2002).
Some of the specific benefits of such an approach include:
* Helps people get clarity on their natural strengths, enabling them to use them more productively and with greater agility
* Helps people understand and minimise the impact of their weaknesses, providing them with a wider and more creative choice of strategies for dealing with these areas
* Encourages a positive, energised team environment where people appreciate and play to each others' strengths
* Builds a culture of engagement and excellence
* Promotes resilience, confidence and optimism, enabling faster and more effective change
* Strengthens the organizations brand proposition to candidates, therefore improving talent attraction and retention
But these benefits will remain unrealised if HR and line management decision makers are unwilling or unable to start moving the organisation away from more mechanical, transactional and control-based people management approaches to processes and practices focused on strengths.
Be Open to Challenge Current Assumptions
As management guru Peter Drucker pointed: "Get the assumptions wrong, and everything that follows from them is wrong" (1998, p.1).
A strengths-focused organisation is built on a different set of assumptions about how talent in hired, managed, motivated and deployed. The most important of these are:
1. Exceptional performers are not well rounded. They learn to apply a few unique strengths well and become agile in the way they use these across different situations.
2. Many behaviours rooted in underlying character cannot be easily learned; they are fairly 'hardwired' by the time we are in our teens.
3. Fixing weaknesses is important, but does not lead to outstanding performance; it only prevents failure. A better understanding of one's strengths can help manage or mitigate weaker areas.
4. Peak performance in organisations is rarely an individual phenomenon, it occurs through complex interaction between the individual, his/her team and the performance context.
HR and line management decision-makers should start discussing these assumptions in relation to their own set of beliefs and assumptions around how people are managed. Some of the questions that should be asked include:
1. What beliefs and underlying assumptions will help us attract, develop, retain and deploy the talent we need to meet our current demands and future challenges?
2. How do our current talent management practices and processes square up with the answer to the first question, above?
3. What do we need to do differently to implement the beliefs and assumptions we feel are necessary to attract, develop, retain and deploy talent?
4. How can we measure the success of our talent management activities and programmes?
Part of this discussion requires critical and honest reflection and dialogue about the success of existing assumptions and approaches. For example, despite being used by companies for nearly 4 decades, the evidence of a link between traditional competency systems and harder measures of performance such as revenue, profitability and customer engagement is inconclusive (Bolden, & Gosling, 2006; Corporate Leadership Council, 2005). Yet many organisations fail to question the effectiveness of their people management systems and practices, preferring instead to take the well trodden "cow path" and persevering with approaches based on oversimplified, weakness-based assumptions.
Identify Opportunities to Pilot Strength-focused Approaches
Rather than trying to introduce radical transformations in the way talent is managed, start by identifying opportunities to experiment with or pilot different approaches based on strength-focused research, concepts and better practices. In order to engage the hearts and minds of managers and employees and be most impactful, these should be aimed at addressing immediate challenges/blockages or making progress towards critical organisation goals and imperatives. We have identified several examples below which would require relatively low investments of time and money:
1. Communicate to managers your expectations about the changing beliefs and assumptions regarding people management. We recommend you keep this relatively low key at first to avoid making it too much of a big deal and raising unrealistic expectations and accusations of "yet another management fad". It is sufficient to communicate that the team/organisation will be focusing more on strengths in future and that all employees are required to think about their strengths and ways they can make these even more productive.
2. Train managers to hire, manage, develop and retain talent based on strengths. If managers don't understand and embrace these new assumptions regarding managing talent, it is highly improbable that you will be successful in building a strengths-focused organisation. Accordingly, it is important to invest in training managers, providing them with knowledge, skills and tools to implement your goals.
3. Refocus the performance dialogue between managers and employees to make it more prospective and focused around strengths and outcomes rather than weaknesses and formulaic approaches to performing the job. Questions that could be incorporated include: "What strengths have you used to achieve your outcomes in the last performance period?"; "How can you use your strengths more productively to achieve your goals in the next performance period?"; "What can I do to help you use your strengths more productively?" and "What additional goals or outcomes might be possible for you to achieve if you were able to play to your strengths more often?".
4. Start using your competency framework as a tool to guide employees around areas of particular strength and how they can optimise these rather than as a prescriptive, check-list based measurement tool.
5. Build teams based around complementary strengths and invite them to discuss work environment factors that enable or block the productive application of strengths. Enablers/blockers could be anything from management style, through the nature and frequency of rewards and recognition, to the design and layout of the work environment.
6. Introduce a strengths assessment tool (such as ©Strengthscope™; www.strengthscope.com) to help people understand their underlying personality and performance strengths and how these can be used more productively at work. This type of tool has the added benefit of creating a common language around strengths in the organisation and provides decision-makers with a more accurate and focused basis for having strengths-focused discussions about performance and potential.
7. Incorporate strength-focused thinking into the hiring process. Rather than simply asking candidates about competencies identified in the job description, focus more on the person and what energises them at work. Ask candidates about their strengths and how they have used these across different situations in the past. Questions that can be asked include: "What activities and tasks have you found to be particular energising in the past?"; "If I had to ask other people who know you well about occasions when you have been particularly energised and performing at your best at work, what do you think they would say?"; "Tell me about an occasion you feel you have been so totally immersed in a task at work, that you lost track of time and nothing else seemed to matter?"; "Which work-related strengths do you feel you have not been able to use as much as you would like in your current/previous roles?"; and "What do you consider as your weaker areas? Provide examples where you have been able to manage or mitigate these to prevent undesirable results?"
8. Promote talent based on underlying strengths, values, and a desire to learn and progress as well as skills, knowledge and experience. Remember that the latter are generally easier to learn, whilst the former are extremely difficult to change.
Don't Ignore Weaknesses
It is crucial to point out that a focus on strengths does not mean people's weaknesses are disregarded. We have found that through better understanding one's strengths, people are likely to understand and manage their weaknesses more effectively.
This occurs for the following reasons:
1. Weaknesses are often strengths in overdrive or overplayed strengths. For example, when productively applied, my "courage" strength (which has been largely instrumental in my career success to date) means I take on challenges and risks and am prepared to challenge the status quo in support of positive change. However, earlier in my career, I was far too eager to take on risky positions and challenges that had a high probability of failure and challenged established views and assumptions head on. This behaviour was perceived as reckless, obsessive and overpowering by others. One of my greatest strengths had gone into overdrive and become a potential derailer. Through understanding that my courage strength has an associated "darkside", I have been able to apply it more skillfully based on a careful assessment of the situation.
2. By exploring performance weaknesses as well as perceived or real performance "blockers" from a strengths perspective, employees will feel more confident about dealing positively with their weakness/performance blocker. This perspective will also broaden the options available to them to meet the development challenges, often resulting in some highly creative solutions. For example, Britain's new Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been able to adequately compensate for a lack of natural charisma and oratory which characterized his predecessor, Tony Blair, through employing his strengths of efficiency, dependability and tough mindedness.
Build on Successes and Measure the Impact
Sharing successes and better practices from early pilot projects across teams and organisational boundaries will cement successes and build a cadre of advocates who are sufficiently willing and informed to carry the strengths message deeper into the organisation, and even beyond it to their families and social institutions.
One of the implications of this is that you should select the target group for your pilot work carefully. Identify a higher profile group that comprises a large proportion of key influencers or 'connectors', as these people are more likely to be able to engage the social network and "spread the word" about early successes and learning.
However, leveraging the power of social networking to promote enthusiasm around strengths-focused initiatives is not enough. It is crucial to measure, as accurately as possible, the success of these pilot projects. We recommend the following four questions are explored using quantitative and/or qualitative measurement techniques:
1. How do people feel about the strengths-focused project? (Do they feel it has made a positive difference?)
2. What new learning has arisen about how to identify, measure, deploy and develop strengths as a result of the project?
3. To what extent does the project result in people using their strengths more productively and exerting additional effort?
4. To what extent does the project result is measurable changes in organisational outcomes (e.g., improvements in employee and/or customer engagement, increases in revenue, reduction of costs, product and process innovation, etc.)
Have the Courage and Resilience to Stick with It
Finally, any change involving shifting mindsets and core assumptions such as this requires a fair amount of grit and courage in order to overcome inevitable objections, mistakes and organisational inertia. However, when the benefits and opportunities associated with a strengths-focused organisation are weighed against the risks and longer-run costs of staying with weaknesses-based approaches and ineffectual traditional competency systems, including losing out in the growing "talent war", the returns on this additional effort will almost certainly be worthwhile.
In this article, we have tried to present practical and easy to implement ideas and guidance to get you started down the strengths path. However, it is important to remember that there is no "one size fits all" approach to building a strengths-focused organisation. Tremendous opportunities exist for pace-setters to trail blaze new strengths-focused ideas that create strongly differentiated and sustainable people management advantages. The most important step is to plant the seeds of change and encourage fast growth by having the courage, belief and enthusiasm that there are refreshingly different and more positive ways to change people's behaviour and improve performance. Like a tree that over time becomes bent in the direction of the strongest prevailing winds, the direction of the change will be shaped by the organisation's members and environment, enabling best use of strengths in the way it attracts, develops, deploys and retains talent. For more information and advice on designing and implementing a strengths-focused talent management strategy contact James Brook, Founder and Director on Strengths Partnership at james.brook@strengthspartnership.com; Ph: +44(0) 7976 454 445.
Bolden, R., & Gosling, J. (2006). Leadership competencies: Time to change the tune? Leadership 2 (2), 147-163.
Corporate Leadership Council (2005). Literature Key Findings: The Advantages and Disadvantages of Competency Models. Downloaded August 2005 from www.corporateleadershipcouncil.com
Drucker, P. (1998). Management's new paradigms. Downloaded 14 July 2007 from http://members.forbes.com/forbes/1998/1005/6207152a.html Harter, J.K., Schmidt, F.L., & Heyes, T.L. (2002). Employee engagement, satisfaction and business-unit level outcomes: Meta-analysis. Princeton, NJ: The Gallup Organisaiton.
James Brook, M.Soc.Sci, MBA
James is founder and director of Strengths Partnership Ltd (www.strengthspartnership.com), a management consulting firm specialising in strengths-focused leadership development, coaching, talent management and organisational change solutions. He has 15 years experience in leadership and talent development, having worked in various international roles in consulting and talent management.
James specialises in strengths-focused solutions to talent development and performance improvement; building authentic, inspirational leadership; executive and cross-cultural coaching; and designing innovative assessment approaches to identify, retain and develop talent.
Author: James Brook Strengths Partnership Ltd
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