The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project needs help to recover data from the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft.
Frankly, it’s a bit of a disgrace that Congress funds, well, all sorts of things, over this element of our history, but that’s besides the point. Do I want to get angry, or do I want to see this data preserved? Yes to both.
That’s why I’ve given the project some money on Rockethub, and I urge you to do the same.
Allan Calhamer, the inventor of the game Diplomacy, has passed away. The NYTimes has an obituary.
…the new points system rates the driver’s ability to pilot the MINI with a sporty yet steady hand. Praise is given to particularly sprightly sprints, precise gear changes, controlled braking, smooth cornering and U-turns executed at well-judged speeds. For example, the system awards maximum Experience Points for upshifts carried out within the ideal rev range and in less than 1.2 seconds. Super-slick gear changes prompt a “Perfect change up” message on the on-board monitor, while a “Breathtaking U-turn” and a masterful touch with the anchors (“Well-balanced braking”) are similarly recognised with top marks and positive, MINI-style feedback.
For more, see “MINI Connected Adds Driving Excitement Analyser.”
Now, driving is the most dangerous thing most of us do on a regular basis. Most Americans don’t get any supplemental driving instruction after they turn 17. So maybe there’s actually something to be said for a system that incents people to drive better.
I can’t see any possible issues with a game pushing people towards things that are undesirable in the real world. I mean, I’m sure that before suggesting a U-turn, the game will use the car’s adaptive cruise control radar to see what’s around, even if the car doesn’t have one.
The Security Bloggers Awards were this week at RSA!
Congratulations to Naked Security (best corporate blog), Paul DotCom (best podcast), Krebs on Security (Most educational, best represents the security industry), J4VV4D’s blog (most entertaining), Andy Greenberg’s “Meet The Hackers Who Sell Spies The Tools To Crack Your PC (And Get Paid Six-Figure Fees)” and Jack Daniel for joining the Hall of Fame!
You are invited to submit nominations to the 2013 PET Award.
The PET Award is presented annually to researchers who have made an outstanding contribution to the theory, design, implementation, or deployment of privacy enhancing technology. It is awarded at the annual Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS).
The PET Award carries a prize of 3000 USD thanks to the generous support of Microsoft. The crystal prize itself is offered by the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada.
Any paper by any author written in the area of privacy enhancing technologies is eligible for nomination. However, the paper must have appeared in a refereed journal, conference, or workshop with proceedings published in the period from April 16, 2011 until March 31, 2013.
The complete Award rules including eligibility requirements can be found at http://petsymposium.org/award/rules.php.
Anyone can nominate a paper by sending an email message containing the following to award-chairs13@petsymposium.org:
I came across a fascinating post at Jon Udell’s blog, “Homicide rates in context ,” which starts out with this graph of 2007 data:
Jon’s post says more than I care to on this subject right now, and points out questions worth asking.
As I said in my post on “Thoughts on the Tragedies of December 14th,” “those who say that easy availability of guns drives murder rates must do better than simply cherry picking data.”
I’m not sure I believe that the “more guns, less crime” claim made by A.W.R. Hawkins claim is as causative as it sounds, but the map presents a real challenge to simplistic responses to tragic gun violence.
Facebook’s new Graph search is a fascinating product, and I want to use it. (In fact, I wanted to use it way back when I wrote about “Single Serving Friend” in 2005.)
Facebook’s Graph Search will incent Facebook users to “dress” themselves in better meta-data, so as to be properly represented in all those new structured results. People will start to update their profiles with more dates, photo tags, relationship statuses, and, and, and…you get the picture. No one wants to be left out of a consideration set, after all. (“Facebook is no longer flat“, John Battelle)
But privacy rears its predictable head, not just in the advocacy world:
Independent studies suggest that Facebook users are becoming more careful about how much they reveal online, especially since educators and employers typically scour Facebook profiles.
A Northwestern University survey of 500 young adults in the summer of 2012 found that the majority avoided posting status updates because they were concerned about who would see them. The study also found that many had deleted or blocked contacts from seeing their profiles and nearly two-thirds had untagged themselves from a photo, post or check-in. (“Search Option From Facebook Is a Privacy Test“, NYTimes)
Perhaps a small set of people will, as Batelle suggests, slow down their use of ironic, silly, or outraged likes, but the fundamental problem is that such uses are situated in a context, and when those contexts overlap, their meanings are harder to tease out with algorithms. People engage with systems like Yelp or LinkedIn in a much more constrained way, and in that constraint, make a much simpler set of meanings. But even in those simple meanings, ‘the street finds its own uses for things.’ For example, I get the idea that this 5-star review may be about something more than the design on a shirt.
There’s another study on “Facebook Fatigue:”
Bored or annoyed by Facebook? You’re not alone. A majority of people surveyed by the Pew Internet and American Life Project said they had taken sabbaticals from the social network at some point, to escape the drama, or the tedium. (“Study: Facebook fatigue — it’s real“, Jennifer Van Grove, CNet)
When our nuanced and evolved social systems are overlaid with technology, it’s intensely challenging to get the balance of technology and social right. I think the Pew research shows that Facebook has its work cut out for it.
It’s Data Privacy Day, and there may be a profusion of platitudes. But I think what we need on data privacy day are more tools to let people take control of their privacy. One way to do that is to check your privacy settings. Of course, the way settings are arranged changes over time, and checking your settings regularly is a drain.
Enter PrivacyFix.
PrivacyFix is a Firefox & Chrome plugin that you might want to check out. It looks at your Facebook and G+ settings, and helps you fix things. It also helps you send opt-out email to web site privacy addresses, which is awesome.
Not having a Facebook or G+ account, I can’t really test it. I do find the model of a plugin that works when you’re on their site (versus local UI) to be confusing. But maybe I’m not their target audience. Anyway, I did want to refer back to my Lessons from Facebook’s Stock Slide, in which I talked about intent versus identity.
I don’t know if PrivacyFix’s estimates of revenue are accurate. But unless they’re off by 2 orders of magnitude for each of Facebook (under-estimating) and Google (over-estimating), then wow.
It is a truism that the Star Wars prequels sucked. (Elsewhere, I’ve commented that the franchise being sold to Disney means someone can finally tell the tragic story of Anakin Skywalker’s seduction by the dark side.)
But the issue of exactly why they sucked is complex and layered, and most of us prefer not to consider it too deeply. Fortunately, you no longer have to. You can simply get “Why the Star Wars Prequels Sucked, and Why It Matters,” a short “Polemic on Aesthetics, Ethics and Politics. With Lightsabers.”
Really, what else do you need to know?
An example? Ok, the diner scene, and how it compares to the cantina scene. The cantina exudes otherness and menace. The diner looks like it was filmed in 1950s and then had a few weird things ‘shopped in. The scene undercuts the world which Star Wars established. Or the casual tossing in that Anakin was a virgin birth, and how after tying to one of the most enduring stories in western culture, the subject is then never referred to again.
Or the utter lack of consequence of anything in the stories, since we already know how they’ll come out, and how, by focusing on characters whose fates we know, Lucas drains any dramatic tension of of the story. The list goes on and on, and if you want to know why you hated the prequels so much, this is a short and easy read, and highly worthwhile.
Oh, and you’ll learn how Lando Calrissian is Faust. So go buy it already.
One last thing. Delano Lopez? That’s a name I hadn’t heard in a very long time. But he and I went to school together.
In my post on gun control and schools, I asserted that “I worry that reducing privacy around mental health care is going to deter people who need health care from getting it.”
However, I didn’t offer up any evidence for that claim. So I’d like to follow up with some details from a report that talks about this in great detail, “The Case for Informed Consent” by Patient Privacy Rights.
So let me quote two related numbers from that report.
First, between 13 and 17% of Americans admit in surveys to hiding health information in the current system. That’s probably a lower-bound, as we can expect some of the privacy sensitive population will decline to be surveyed, and some fraction of those who are surveyed may hide their information hiding. (It’s information-hiding all the way down.)
Secondly, 1 in 8 Americans (12.5%) put their health at risk because of privacy concerns, including avoiding their regular doctor, asking their doctor to record a different diagnosis, or avoiding tests.
I’ll also note that these numbers relate to general health care, and the numbers may be higher for often-stigmatized mental health issues.