The Canary In The Coal Mine Mac OS

May 13, 2014 Canaries can be useful creatures. Coal miners used to bring them into the mines as a warning sign of methane or carbon monoxide. A dead canary meant the miners needed to get out of there pronto. Oct 20, 2010 It’s clear that Apple is moving towards full-screen all around and is even featuring this approach in the next version of Mac OS X (10.7). Perhaps iPhoto ’11 will be the canary in the coal mine to show if this approach is a great innovation for the desktop or a simple gimmick designed to ride the coattails of the iPad.

Like the rest of Sydney, I’ve spent the past month or so choking through a haze of hazardous smokey particulate matter. I am lucky by comparison. Communities, care workers and emergency responders have directly faced the fire’s consequences. Some of which have lost their lives trying to help. The rest of us have been left with a strange set of daily challenges; how to buy the right face masks, dealing with toxic indoor air, handling commitments to people, work and school. It feels strange to try to celebrate the traditional holiday season when so many have lost so much.

Throughout all of this, I keep thinking about canaries. You’ve heard the cliche; ‘canary in a coal mine.’ The phrase stems from a mining safety tradition of carrying canaries down into deep sub-surface mines. Though from a modern perspective it was an inhumane practice, the canaries’ ill health was a crucial urgent sign that the mine’s air was no longer safe.

Canaries, like many birds, have a complex respitory cycle. Due to the demands of flight and thanks to some rather ingenious adaptions, they gather oxygen from the air during both inhalation and exahaltion. This makes them especially sensitive to the effects of gasses, including toxic gasses like carbon monoxide. Though it might be odourless and invisible, carbon monoxide gas is a deadly poison, which causes rapid suffocation and leaves a telltale red flush. Canaries are more likely to display ill effects sooner than the humans carrying them.

The idea to use canaries may have been courtesy of the chemist John Haldane. Famous for experimenting on himself with the effects of deadly gases, he noted both the effects and identified the likely cause of carbon monoxide poisoning. He suggested using birds in mines due to their uniquely sensitive respitory cycle. If canaries have anyone to thank for their predicament, it is Haldane.

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The ability to detect danger quickly has consequences. Just ask Gordon Clark. The last time he saw his father was on 24 September 1939, just before his father, James Clark, walked up to work at the Glen Afton mine in New Zealand. Unbeknowest to Gorden or his father, a weekend fire had led to dangerous levels of carbon monoxide in the mine which would go on to kill eleven people, including James Clark. It was around this time that we began to see canaries. As quoted from the archives of the New Zealand Herald:

“Tiny cages holding finches, canaries and budgerigars were ... taken into the shafts as the rescue parties entered.” (Quoted from: The Waikato coal mining disasters that killed 54 men in two Septembers)

'Many of the men who went below owed their lives to them, for toward seven o'clock tonight searchers were confronted with increasing waves of carbon monoxide, detected only by the collapse of the birds they had brought with them.' (Quoted from: The Waikato coal mining disasters that killed 54 men in two Septembers)

The phrase, ’canary in the mine’ has become a hallmark of an early warning that something is not right in our context. This is especially true when dealing with something that we can’t easily detect with our own senses; something that is too small, like fine particulate from fires, or too large and distributed, like the effects of climate change.

Though all thinking may be subject to some bias or another, we owe it to ourselves to try to agree on the best impartial evidence as a basis for decision making. This way, we aren’t basing crucial decisions on the vagaries of social, economic or political forces. So the quesiton remains: In the case of our current experiences, what level of evidence should cause us to worry that there is something serious going on? Is it the hottest recorded average day in Australia? The largest fires? The longest run of polluted days in recorded New South Wales history? Maybe all of these. Maybe none of these.

In England, it took until 1989 for miners to stop using canaries as evidence for toxic air. New electronic ‘noses’ were developed instead. That’s the thing about evidence; as we develop new science and technology, we can upgrade our criteria for what counts as good evidence. Though it might have been good enough once to rely on stories and memories of hot summers, it might be better now to rely on actual historically recorded temperature data and the mathmatics to analyse it. We might once have accepted the evidence of our noses and eyes, whether the air looked and smelled okay. Now, it might be better to use the evidence from our atmospheric measuring instruments.

Carefully selecting the right evidence can be hard. Psychologically, we’re better at dealing with threats that we can see and understand, directly in front of us in space and time. It makes it hard to worry much about evidence that imply longer-term risks when we are busy worrying about if the air is safe enough for our children to play outside today. That’s what makes choosing the right evidence so important. In our effort to deal with the present, we don’t want to miss the evidence that tells us about dangers that lurk in our many possible futures. If we miss the evidence, then we may miss our opportunity to innovate the way we live now, before it’s too late. Just ask the canary.

References

Eschner, Kta (2016) The Story of the Real Canary in the Coal Mine. Retrieved December 2019, from: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/story-real-canary-coal-mine-180961570/

Inglis-Arkell, Esther (2014) Why did they put canaries in coal mines?Retrieved December 2019, from: https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-did-they-put-canaries-in-coal-mines-1506887813

Johnston, Martin (2017) The Waikato coal mining disasters that killed 54 men in two Septembers. Retrieved December 2019, from: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11920733

Waikato Times (2009) The day Glen Afton mine took 11 lives. Retrieved December 2019, from: http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/2893406/The-day-Glen-Afton-mine-took-11-lives

Zimmer, Ben (2014) A Canary, a Coal Mine and a Cliché. Retrieved Decembe 2019, from https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-overused-metaphor-of-the-coal-mine-canary-1394841016

Yellow Bird Photo by Julia Craice on Unsplash

There are a ton of features in Chrome you likely don’t know about, all the newest stuff is in the Chrome channel Canary.

“What’s a channel?” you ask? Don’t worry, I’ll break it all down for you.

What is Chrome Canary?

Chrome’s development process is split into four different “release channels”: Stable, Beta, Dev, and Canary. Stable is the regular Chrome that you’re probably using right now. Beta is the stuff that’s new and probably works. Dev is for developers; updated weekly with new features, but less stable.

Named for the proverbial “canary in a coal mine,” the term canary has been adopted by the software development community for bleeding-edge versions run side-by-side with production releases to accelerate iteration and bug-tracking. It’s Google’s name for Chrome’s experimental model.

You’ll find the familiar Chrome interface. But under the hood are features that may or may not make their way into future Chrome releases. And many that may not work.

You can’t set Chrome Canary as your default browser because it’s inherently unstable. Google used to warn that Canary is “designed for developers and early adopters, and can sometimes break down completely.” But if you’re a developer, you might want to use Canary regularly despite this.

How is Canary different from other versions of Chrome?

Canary is the only Chrome channel that installs separately. And on a Mac, it’s the only one that can be run right alongside Stable. Windows users should find they can run Dev and Beta side by side. Linux users don’t get access to Canary.

Chrome Canary is also a better environment for developers than other Chrome channels because it comes with features, flags, and APIs that are new and untested.

For instance, at the time of writing, any JS written in the console in Dev tools is evaluated immediately. The autofill CSS feature was available first in Canary, months before it was released as part of Stable.

Finally, Canary offers a less-cluttered search experience. It’s not totally ad-free, but it does seem to show a lot fewer ads than Stable, and the interface is a little cleaner.

Who should use Chrome Canary?

Canary is mainly for developers. It’s updated nearly daily with new features, and because it can be run alongside Chrome’s Stable channel for testing and development purposes, developers get access to the latest features while getting the stable, polished Chrome everyone else is using. Developers can test new features, APIs, changes, and flags while enjoying a stable environment for day-to-day work too.

If you’re not a developer, you can use Canary to get a glimpse of where Chrome might be heading, or to get a more modifiable browser experience. Some users like to use Canary because they use Stable for work and work-related applications.

Let’s look at the features, flags, and APIs developers are using.

Canary features

Developers get early access to new additions to Chrome DevTools in Canary.

For example, right now, Canary users can use Audits and dev tools like Request Blocking and Local Overrides to diagnose website performance. If Audits says that render-blocking resources are slowing down a page, you can use the Request Blocking tab to block those scripts, then re-Audit the page to see if you’ve correctly identified the problem.

The Canary In The Coal Mine Mac OS

There’s also a payment handler debugger in the Background Services section of the Application panel, and a new third-party diagnostic tool in the Audits panel that tells you how much third-party code was requested and how long it blocked the main thread while the page loaded.

Other new things worth mentioning: a bug reporting tool for DevTools itself and additions to the Timing section, including Largest Contentful Paint, which measures time to render the largest content element in the viewport. But new features are added regularly.

Canary flags

The Canary build contains hundreds of experimental “flags” (or features buried in Chrome for developers to tinker with), ever-changing, with new ones added and others removed all the time.

To see these in Chrome Canary, go here: chrome://flags/

You can search for the flag you’re looking for or just scroll down the list. A few of my favorites:

  • Force Dark Mode: Creates a dark mode for websites that don’t already have one.
  • Custom Theme: Lets you build your own Chrome theme.
  • Reader Mode: Strips extraneous content out of web pages to make them easier to read.

Many flags are less for improved browsing experience and more for developers.

There’s tons of Chrome Flags in the Stable version of Chrome. You will get access to even more experimental flags in Chrome Canary.

Canary APIs

Canary lets you use experimental APIs too. These are turned on using flags and accessed using the permissions field of an app’s manifest. Two things to know about this:

1. The manifest

Some APIs will tell you how to declare permissions in the manifest. For experimental APIs, you’ll need to enter this code in the manifest:

2. Finding the APIs

Go to chrome://flags/, find Experimental Extension APIs, and enable it and relaunch Canary.

You’ll now be able to run extensions that rely on Canary’s experimental APIs. This sometimes includes extensions reliant on new technology, such as augmented reality (AR) extensions.

Problems When Using Chrome Canary

Canary breaks completely about once a month, and usually takes a day or so to fix. That can be frustrating if you’re relying on it.

Canary can also be buggy. Expect that things won’t work as intended. But you will notice that bugs get fixed faster than the Dev or Beta version of Chrome. Canary gets rebuilt every day so small changes go live faster instead of slowly working their way through an entire release schedule like other versions.

Other common problems with Canary include:

  • Problems with Flash
  • Pages such as the Settings page failing to load
  • Major applications like Docs simply not working
  • Bugs with video and graphics rendering
  • Total failure to load sites, extensions, or settings
  • OS-specific crashes

Who should NOT use Chrome Canary?

Coal Mine Canary

If you’re not technologically knowledgeable and capable, Canary isn’t for you. There’s little benefit to be had from using a slightly more advanced version of Chrome if you don’t need most of those advanced features anyway. The instability is too high a price to pay.

Canary In Coal Mine Metaphor

You should also avoid Canary, and to a lesser extent the other early-release Chrome channels, if you speak English as a second language. These builds will be only partially translated into languages other than English. New features, in particular, will probably be labeled and documented in English only.

How to Get Chrome Canary

There are Chrome Canary builds for Windows 64-bit, 32-bit, Mac OS, and Android, though not for iOS or Linux. Click the relevant link to access it:

The Canary In The Coal Mine Mac Os Download

All versions of Google Chrome can be downloaded from this page.

The Canary In The Coal Mine Mac Os X

And if Canary is broken and you still want access to bleeding-edge new features—or if you are, in Google’s words, “absolutely crazy”—you can download a chewing-gum-and-baling-wire version of Chrome that isn’t even Canary-ready yet here. Updated every few minutes, this build is likely to be extremely buggy and not work well at all.