Originally started on Steemit, summarizing the original BBC article and adding a much broader perspective from talking with Chinese-Canadians in Vancouver. Cross-posted on Medium. China is creating a new social credit system to rate citizens’ trust. “By 2020, everyone in China will be enrolled in a vast national database that compiles fiscal and government information, …
A talk explaining some theory and then the practical elements behind regaining control over your Android device at DCTRL in Vancouver last December. The key topic was how to remove as much Google and manufacturer bloatware from Android phones as possible while still maintaining a fully functioning device, based on my experiences tinkering with my …
… aaaand “home”. I say this both since Poland certainly is this for me, and because of the relief I feel for writing up the final of my Baltic blogs: Latvia, Lithuania, and Belarus done, it’s time to head to the a country as homely to me as my native Canada. About a week out …
Fresh out of Vilnius, our cousin took us on a genealogical adventure retracing the steps of our great-grandparents to where her sister now lives, in a tiny hamlet just outside the village of Svir in northern Belarus. We paused there for a few days to take in the atmosphere of a forest cottage where the …
October 5th: a day out of Riga and we immediately head out on a 4h bus ride for Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital. That evening we’re already at the National Olympic Committee office downtown on the river Neris, where Lina Vaisetaitė is ready to greet us. Lina has a very impressive CV, with posts as a university …
Last fall I traveled with my sister through northeastern Europe, convincing her to turn her Euro tour into a genealogical and semi-professional adventure. In under two weeks we powered through Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, Minsk, Kaliningrad, and Gdańsk, getting a smattering of flavour throughout as we inhaled our way through the Baltic States. Genealogy and culture …
Bloodsport (1988, 92m, 6.8, 33|74%) is a cult martial arts action film made in the typical American Hollywood style, where the lines delineating good and evil are simple and audiences gather to either watch the fight scenes or the cute hero. It portrays the now-tired storyline of the young Westerner trained by an exotic, mysterious …
Tl;dr: I hacked at my OnePlus 3 for a few days to update from Marshmallow to Nougat, going the TWRP/SuperSU route. I then swapped stock GApps for OpenGApps pico, to minimize Google’s footprint. I ran into several problems, key being the “dm-verity” error message, but it all sorted itself out in the end. This is …
The past decade or so I’ve gotten into some real deep identity-, ethnicity-, and — more recently — genealogy-diving. I was extremely lucky in my search, the timing of it coinciding with the advent of the Internet as a true publicly accessible technology. I started with Poland but very quickly found myself in Germany, Israel, …
I am often asked why I’m so into family tree research, why I’m as deep into it as I am, why my research is so comprehensive and far-reaching as possible. Why not just plan for the future and let generations past stay buried where they are — what’s the point, anyway? Sometimes I’m asked rudely, …
After a surprisingly long relationship with my trusty rusty Nexus 4, I bit the $586.47 CAD bullet and got me a shiny new OnePlus 3. The honeymoon truly was up when I wasn’t able to properly update my custom ROM on the Nexus, but the screen suddenly losing huge chunks of responsiveness was really the …
After wrapping up my sport psychology MSc, I’ve returned to work in Vancouver to continue paying off student loans. That in itself is a different discussion: why does our current system so often leave our brightest, freshest, most enthusiastic and most prepared minds saddled with so much debt? Wouldn’t they be of more benefit to …