Tsikbal: from my perspective

Music, TV series, and movies creator have had a thorny with the Internet. Its seen mostly as a enemy rather than an ally, since its easy for people to share media among themselves without the creators getting anything from their hard work. The real question here isn't how to prevent people from sharing, but how to enable them to do so in a way that its easy and that benefits the creators as well. Streaming services like Spotify , which I use and personally love, has make it a lot easier to listen to artist I already enjoy listening to and to discover new music. For me it has given me a practical way to enjoy music in a way that the artist can benefit as well, which is the ideal situation. While I've issues with Spotify being proprietary , and that it uses digital rights management( DRM ), I do believe its a step in a good direction to enable artists to receive the income they deserve. I'd love to see Spotify becoming free and open source software , and ditch DR...

The importance of public transit doesn't seem to understood by many, both by politicians and the common people as the attack on California's railroad shows. There is a need to make it easier for people and goods to move around in other ways than cars, both locally and on longer trips. Cars aren't the most efficient or environmentally friendly way to do so, as such there need to be options to help people leave it behind that are as practical and easy as their car. As cities grow, there is a need to move away from cars to really move as much people as possible in an efficient, friendly, and easy around. We need to make mass transit an integral part of our cities, one that adds value to them and the first option to move around them. In a way, we need to make people feel at home at their communities, not just at their house or apartment. There need to many reasons for people want to get out and to know that happens around them. What local shops have to offer, and ...

One of the things that Donald Trumps actions as the US president have shown, is how interconnected the world has become. All countries, and their citizens, are connected to each other in some way. Directly, or indirectly, all what one country does affects all others. The world has really become smaller, and we all can feel the impact of what happens in any other place in some way or another. We all have to face the fact that no country can so things all on its own, and that it's on everyone best interest to continue the integration to be able to improve every person quality of life. The question isn't if global integration is good, its how to do so in a way that it benefits as many people as possible and how to reduce the negative effects. Instead of building walls, we should be building bridges and trust. Only through cooperation can we hope to build a better future. Only by bringing people in, and giving them a stake on the future we want to build, there is a rea...

The data we produce everyday, can turn out to be much more valuable than we imagine on our hyper connected world. Data is at the core of who we are, and could be used in our favor or against us. Everything we do on daily basis, generates data that defines us in some way or another. In way, data can be seen as a way that could be used as a lens through which others can build an impression of who we are. It shows who we are, what motivates us to act a certain way, what are our philias and phobias. When put in context, that data can be used to reveal things that otherwise we wouldn't share. That's why is of upmost importance to protect it, since it can be used in ways that we don't intend to or are against our interests. We should be able to decide what data we share, with who, and for what purposes. So it goes with who the data we shared can be forwarded to third parties, and for what purpose. Even though our data is not something tangible, it should be consi...

The first week of 2017, and Yahoo! decline seems to finally coming to  it's end . Verizon is closing Yahoo as we know it, transforming it into an investment company called Altaba. Yahoo! was acquired by  Verizon last year, and it kind of makes sense for Verizon to make such a move. While in the 90's and some fo the 00's Yahoo was a force to be recon with the Internet, it has become rather irrelevant now. People has moved on to other places, like Google, Facebook, or Twitter. Even the way people interact with the Internet has changed drastically, with many using a  smartphone as their main, if not only, way to access it. We even use TV's and tablets to access some of the content on the Internet. While Yahoo will become  Altaba , it does mark an end of an era for some of us who have been around for a while. My second e-mail account was a Yahoo! one, which became my primary one since I didn't wanted to keep using my hotmail one. I've mixed feeli...

This year my music listening habits have changed to listening to my music library and to Spotify . I found that I really like Spotify, since it gives me the right balance of the music I like while letting me discover new music based on my tastes. It also has the plus that the artist get paid for their work. There is only one thing that I don't like about Spotify, and it's use of digital rights management( DRM ). I can't agree on the use of DRM, since it restricts users right to control the software that runs on their devices. DRM is not the way to help artists make a living, since efforts should be concentrated on making it easier for user to support their favorites artists. Adding artificial restrictions like DRM doesn't do much for help artists, and harm the user in more than one way. Instead of restricting users, ways to make easier to support artists should be made available. In some ways, artists, producers and content creators should realize that ...

There has been a lot of talk in Guadalajara about using smart cards on buses of the public transportation system, the only step taken toward this has been that a norm has been approved by the local congress a few years back. So far, only the light rail system and the Macrobus use smart cards. The problem being that they are incompatible, which is at least problematic for riders that use both systems on regular basis. The ideal would be that the smart card system for all three systems would be integrated, allowing riders use one card for the three systems. That would facilitate things for everyone involved, which is one of the main reasons to adopt the smart card to begin with. Personally, I'd go one step beyond and allow users to pay with their smartphones. That would facilitate things a lot more, since a large portion of riders already use smartphones to begin with. I rather use a smart card, specially if it allows me to use it on the three systems. I already u...