Udo's Data Stream

Ipredator is currently using the same platform as several other VPN franchises including Relakks, which means it's not really anything we haven't seen before. The servers are maintained and provided by Pirate Bay affiliates though, which may be more trustworthy to the average BitTorrent user than a random VPN provider.

That aside, we were told by former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde that contrary to what the legal page states, no logs of any kind are kept by Ipredator. The text that is in there is a left over from the standard template they got from the provider of the VPN platform.

And, according to Sunde, there will soon be even more advantages and added security to Ipredator.

Ipredator

Pirate Bay's Ipredator VPN Opens To The Public (TorrentFreak) (via Memex 1.1)

Ipredator is currently using the same platform as several other VPN franchises including Relakks, which means it's not really anything we haven't seen before. The servers are maintained and provided by Pirate Bay affiliates though, which may be more trustworthy to the average BitTorrent user than a random VPN provider.

That aside, we were told by former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde that contrary to what the legal page states, no logs of any kind are kept by Ipredator. The text that is in there is a left over from the standard template they got from the provider of the VPN platform.

And, according to Sunde, there will soon be even more advantages and added security to Ipredator.

Ipredator

Pirate Bay's Ipredator VPN Opens To The Public (TorrentFreak) (via Memex 1.1)

Ipredator is currently using the same platform as several other VPN franchises including Relakks, which means it's not really anything we haven't seen before. The servers are maintained and provided by Pirate Bay affiliates though, which may be more trustworthy to the average BitTorrent user than a random VPN provider.

That aside, we were told by former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde that contrary to what the legal page states, no logs of any kind are kept by Ipredator. The text that is in there is a left over from the standard template they got from the provider of the VPN platform.

And, according to Sunde, there will soon be even more advantages and added security to Ipredator.

Ipredator

Pirate Bay's Ipredator VPN Opens To The Public (TorrentFreak) (via Memex 1.1)

Ipredator is currently using the same platform as several other VPN franchises including Relakks, which means it's not really anything we haven't seen before. The servers are maintained and provided by Pirate Bay affiliates though, which may be more trustworthy to the average BitTorrent user than a random VPN provider.

That aside, we were told by former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde that contrary to what the legal page states, no logs of any kind are kept by Ipredator. The text that is in there is a left over from the standard template they got from the provider of the VPN platform.

And, according to Sunde, there will soon be even more advantages and added security to Ipredator.

Ipredator

Pirate Bay's Ipredator VPN Opens To The Public (TorrentFreak) (via Memex 1.1)

Ipredator is currently using the same platform as several other VPN franchises including Relakks, which means it's not really anything we haven't seen before. The servers are maintained and provided by Pirate Bay affiliates though, which may be more trustworthy to the average BitTorrent user than a random VPN provider.

That aside, we were told by former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde that contrary to what the legal page states, no logs of any kind are kept by Ipredator. The text that is in there is a left over from the standard template they got from the provider of the VPN platform.

And, according to Sunde, there will soon be even more advantages and added security to Ipredator.

Ipredator

Pirate Bay's Ipredator VPN Opens To The Public (TorrentFreak) (via Memex 1.1)

In this week's ReadWriteStart Weekly Wrapup - our digest of the best posts from the past week - we discuss why HTML 5 is going to kill Flash, where the best school for majors in entrepreneurship are, and how for the most innovative entrepreneurs, it all starts with "why." Also this week we revealed some secrets to social media, and added to our continuing series chronicling startup communities with profiles of both Boston and Portland.

Sponsor

Death to Flash: 3 Great HTML 5 Demos

This morning ReadWriteWeb accompanied The Great Wall Club (a group of Chinese mobile executives) to Google for a look at some of the company's development tools. While Developer Relations Manager Patrick Chanezon was unable to comment on yesterday's news of Google's threat to cease operations in China, he did show off some impressive demos utilizing HTML 5.

Top 6 Colleges with Entrepreneurial Programs

For young budding entrepreneurs approaching graduation this spring, or for those looking to go back for a post-graduate degree, finding the right program for your needs is very important. In their seventh annual joint effort last fall, Entrepreneur Magazine and The Princeton Review teamed up to rank the top 25 undergraduate and graduate entrepreneurship programs in the United States. Only six programs managed to make the top 10 in both lists, securing their spots at the top of the best overall entrepreneurship programs.

Social Media Secrets and Resources Revealed

Presentation company Slideshare recently released its list of "5 Social Media Secrets for 2010". While these secrets certainly sound like great suggestions, we thought we'd connect them to some concrete tactics and resources that you can use to improve your social media strategy.

Entrepreneurs: It's Not What You Do It's Why You Do It

Motivational speaker and author of the book Start With Why Simon Sinek believes he has found a way to map out the way inspiring leaders and innovators think. Young entrepreneurs who may think they aren't up to snuff with the big boys of innovation should be encouraged by Sinek's theories which seek to break down inspiration into an easily replicated formula.

He calls his concept "The Golden Circle," a series of three concentric circles that represent the different ways we think about a product or goal. The outermost circle, labeled "What," represents, for instance, a company's product. The next circle, "How," would be the technology behind this product, and the innermost circle represents "Why" the company makes the product.

Never Mind the Valley: Here's Portland

When asked what shapes Portland's startup culture, Silicon Florist blogger Rick Turoczy named 3 defining aspects of the industry - hardware roots, open source projects and iPhone development. Turoczy has been in Oregon for the past 15-years and started Silicon Florist as a way to cover the region's early stage startup scene alongside other Portland tech sites like Mike Rogoway's Silicon Forest blog and Strange Love Live.
Since then he's watched his town grow into a bustling tech hub and enjoyed every minute of it. ReadWriteWeb caught up with Turoczy and a few other Portland influencers to get a feel for the scene.

Never Mind the Valley: Here's Boston

With tourists flocking to the Boston to walk the cobblestone streets of the Freedom Trail and visit various historical landmarks, Boston is often thought of for its ties to the American Revolution. But Boston is also the birthplace of a revolution of a different sort.

In 1946, Georges Doriot, a professor at the Harvard Business School, founded the American Research and Development Corporation (ARDC) in Boston - one of the very first venture capital firms.
In 1957, the ARDC invested $70,000 in Digital Equipment Corporation, a company founded by two former Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineers working on transistor-based computing. The ARDC was later able to turn around and sell their investment for $450 million, quite possibly the best return on an investment ever at that point.

In this week's ReadWriteStart Weekly Wrapup - our digest of the best posts from the past week - we discuss why HTML 5 is going to kill Flash, where the best school for majors in entrepreneurship are, and how for the most innovative entrepreneurs, it all starts with "why." Also this week we revealed some secrets to social media, and added to our continuing series chronicling startup communities with profiles of both Boston and Portland.

Sponsor

Death to Flash: 3 Great HTML 5 Demos

This morning ReadWriteWeb accompanied The Great Wall Club (a group of Chinese mobile executives) to Google for a look at some of the company's development tools. While Developer Relations Manager Patrick Chanezon was unable to comment on yesterday's news of Google's threat to cease operations in China, he did show off some impressive demos utilizing HTML 5.

Top 6 Colleges with Entrepreneurial Programs

For young budding entrepreneurs approaching graduation this spring, or for those looking to go back for a post-graduate degree, finding the right program for your needs is very important. In their seventh annual joint effort last fall, Entrepreneur Magazine and The Princeton Review teamed up to rank the top 25 undergraduate and graduate entrepreneurship programs in the United States. Only six programs managed to make the top 10 in both lists, securing their spots at the top of the best overall entrepreneurship programs.

Social Media Secrets and Resources Revealed

Presentation company Slideshare recently released its list of "5 Social Media Secrets for 2010". While these secrets certainly sound like great suggestions, we thought we'd connect them to some concrete tactics and resources that you can use to improve your social media strategy.

Entrepreneurs: It's Not What You Do It's Why You Do It

Motivational speaker and author of the book Start With Why Simon Sinek believes he has found a way to map out the way inspiring leaders and innovators think. Young entrepreneurs who may think they aren't up to snuff with the big boys of innovation should be encouraged by Sinek's theories which seek to break down inspiration into an easily replicated formula.

He calls his concept "The Golden Circle," a series of three concentric circles that represent the different ways we think about a product or goal. The outermost circle, labeled "What," represents, for instance, a company's product. The next circle, "How," would be the technology behind this product, and the innermost circle represents "Why" the company makes the product.

Never Mind the Valley: Here's Portland

When asked what shapes Portland's startup culture, Silicon Florist blogger Rick Turoczy named 3 defining aspects of the industry - hardware roots, open source projects and iPhone development. Turoczy has been in Oregon for the past 15-years and started Silicon Florist as a way to cover the region's early stage startup scene alongside other Portland tech sites like Mike Rogoway's Silicon Forest blog and Strange Love Live.
Since then he's watched his town grow into a bustling tech hub and enjoyed every minute of it. ReadWriteWeb caught up with Turoczy and a few other Portland influencers to get a feel for the scene.

Never Mind the Valley: Here's Boston

With tourists flocking to the Boston to walk the cobblestone streets of the Freedom Trail and visit various historical landmarks, Boston is often thought of for its ties to the American Revolution. But Boston is also the birthplace of a revolution of a different sort.

In 1946, Georges Doriot, a professor at the Harvard Business School, founded the American Research and Development Corporation (ARDC) in Boston - one of the very first venture capital firms.
In 1957, the ARDC invested $70,000 in Digital Equipment Corporation, a company founded by two former Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineers working on transistor-based computing. The ARDC was later able to turn around and sell their investment for $450 million, quite possibly the best return on an investment ever at that point.

Boing Boing reader John says,

The folks at the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine are looking for feedback on how to respond to a recent cease & desist letter. While they reside in the Netherlands, and cease & desist letters are not equivalent to litigation and in fact do not always have a legal leg to stand on, it still seems important to consider the implications. This comes after suicidemachine.org's IP was blocked by Facebook. Similar service/software art Seppukoo, who were similarly issued a cease & desist and have issued this response.

From the nettime announcement by Florian Cramer:

"On behalf of Facebook, the law firm Perkins Coie has sent a Cease and Desist letter to Mike van Gaasbeek from WORM , the Rotterdam-based experimental arts center of which MODDR_labs , creators of the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine , are a part of.

Suggestions for competent legal defendants for WORM/MODDR would be welcome. As a non-profit organization with roots in improvised and electronic music and avant-garde filmmaking, WORM encounters this situation for the first time. (Other media arts institutions wouldn't have legal defense strategies ready in their desk drawers either.)"

More about the Suicide Machine, and Facebook's efforts to block it: NPR, WSJ.

Boing Boing reader John says,

The folks at the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine are looking for feedback on how to respond to a recent cease & desist letter. While they reside in the Netherlands, and cease & desist letters are not equivalent to litigation and in fact do not always have a legal leg to stand on, it still seems important to consider the implications. This comes after suicidemachine.org's IP was blocked by Facebook. Similar service/software art Seppukoo, who were similarly issued a cease & desist and have issued this response.

From the nettime announcement by Florian Cramer:

"On behalf of Facebook, the law firm Perkins Coie has sent a Cease and Desist letter to Mike van Gaasbeek from WORM , the Rotterdam-based experimental arts center of which MODDR_labs , creators of the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine , are a part of.

Suggestions for competent legal defendants for WORM/MODDR would be welcome. As a non-profit organization with roots in improvised and electronic music and avant-garde filmmaking, WORM encounters this situation for the first time. (Other media arts institutions wouldn't have legal defense strategies ready in their desk drawers either.)"

More about the Suicide Machine, and Facebook's efforts to block it: NPR, WSJ.

Boing Boing reader John says,

The folks at the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine are looking for feedback on how to respond to a recent cease & desist letter. While they reside in the Netherlands, and cease & desist letters are not equivalent to litigation and in fact do not always have a legal leg to stand on, it still seems important to consider the implications. This comes after suicidemachine.org's IP was blocked by Facebook. Similar service/software art Seppukoo, who were similarly issued a cease & desist and have issued this response.

From the nettime announcement by Florian Cramer:

"On behalf of Facebook, the law firm Perkins Coie has sent a Cease and Desist letter to Mike van Gaasbeek from WORM , the Rotterdam-based experimental arts center of which MODDR_labs , creators of the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine , are a part of.

Suggestions for competent legal defendants for WORM/MODDR would be welcome. As a non-profit organization with roots in improvised and electronic music and avant-garde filmmaking, WORM encounters this situation for the first time. (Other media arts institutions wouldn't have legal defense strategies ready in their desk drawers either.)"

More about the Suicide Machine, and Facebook's efforts to block it: NPR, WSJ.

Boing Boing reader John says,

The folks at the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine are looking for feedback on how to respond to a recent cease & desist letter. While they reside in the Netherlands, and cease & desist letters are not equivalent to litigation and in fact do not always have a legal leg to stand on, it still seems important to consider the implications. This comes after suicidemachine.org's IP was blocked by Facebook. Similar service/software art Seppukoo, who were similarly issued a cease & desist and have issued this response.

From the nettime announcement by Florian Cramer:

"On behalf of Facebook, the law firm Perkins Coie has sent a Cease and Desist letter to Mike van Gaasbeek from WORM , the Rotterdam-based experimental arts center of which MODDR_labs , creators of the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine , are a part of.

Suggestions for competent legal defendants for WORM/MODDR would be welcome. As a non-profit organization with roots in improvised and electronic music and avant-garde filmmaking, WORM encounters this situation for the first time. (Other media arts institutions wouldn't have legal defense strategies ready in their desk drawers either.)"

More about the Suicide Machine, and Facebook's efforts to block it: NPR, WSJ.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told a live audience yesterday that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would by default be public, not private as it was for years until the company changed dramatically in December.

In a six-minute interview on stage with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, Zuckerberg spent 60 seconds talking about Facebook's privacy policies. His statements were of major importance for the world's largest social network - and his arguments in favor of an about-face on privacy deserve close scrutiny.

Sponsor

Zuckerberg offered roughly 8 sentences in response to Arrington's question about where privacy was going on Facebook and around the web. The question was referencing the changes Facebook underwent last month. Your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, Friends List, and all the pages you subscribe to are now publicly available information on Facebook. This means everyone on the web can see it; it is searchable. I'll post Zuckerberg's sentences on their own first, then follow up with the questions they raise in my mind. You can also watch the video below, the privacy part we transcribe is from 3:00 to 4:00.

Zuckerberg:

"When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was 'why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?'

"And then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way and all these different services that have people sharing all this information. People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.

"We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are.

"A lot of companies would be trapped by the conventions and their legacies of what they've built, doing a privacy change - doing a privacy change for 350 million users is not the kind of thing that a lot of companies would do. But we viewed that as a really important thing, to always keep a beginner's mind and what would we do if we were starting the company now and we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it."

That's Not a Believable Explanation

This is a radical change from the way that Zuckerberg pounded on the importance of user privacy for years. That your information would only be visible to the people you accept as friends was fundamental to the DNA of the social network that hundreds of millions of people have joined over these past few years. Privacy control, he told me less than 2 years ago, is "the vector around which Facebook operates."

I don't buy Zuckerberg's argument that Facebook is now only reflecting the changes that society is undergoing. I think Facebook itself is a major agent of social change and by acting otherwise Zuckerberg is being arrogant and condescending.

Perhaps the new privacy controls will prove sufficient. Perhaps Facebook's pushing our culture away from privacy will end up being a good thing. The way the company is going about it makes me very uncomfortable, though, and some of the changes are clearly bad. It is clearly bad to no longer allow people to keep the pages they subscribe to private on Facebook.

This major reversal, backed-up by superficial explanations, makes me wonder if Facebook's changing philosophies about privacy are just convenient stories to tell while the company shifts its strategy to exert control over the future of the web.

Facebook's Different Stories

First the company kept user data siloed inside its site alone, saying that a high degree of user privacy would make users comfortable enough to share more information with a smaller number of trusted people.

Now that it has 350 million people signed up and connected to their friends and family in a way they never have been before - now Facebook decides that the initial, privacy-centric, contract with users is out of date. That users actually want to share openly, with the world at large, and incidentally (as Facebook's Director of Public Policy Barry Schnitt told us in December) that it's time for increased pageviews and advertising revenue, too.

The Flimsy Evidence

What makes Facebook think the world is becoming more public and less private? Zuckerberg cites the rise of blogging "and all these different services that have people sharing all this information." That last part must mean Twitter, right? But blogging is tiny compared to Facebook! It's made a big impact on the world, but only because it perhaps doubled or tripled the small percentage of people online who publish long-form text content. Not very many people write blogs, almost everyone is on Facebook.

Facebook's Barry Schnitt told us last month that he too believes the world is becoming more open and his evidence is Twitter, MySpace, comments posted to newspaper websites and the rise of Reality TV.

But Facebook is bigger and is growing much faster than all of those other things. Do they really expect us to believe that the popularity of reality TV is evidence that users want their Facebook friends lists and fan pages made permanently public? Why cite those kinds phenomena as evidence that the red hot social network needs to change its ways?

The company's justifications of the claim that they are reflecting broader social trends just aren't credible. A much more believable explanation is that Facebook wants user information to be made public and so they "just went for it," to use Zuckerberg's words from yesterday.

(Why didn't Arrington press Zuckerberg on stage about this? The rise of blogging is evidence that Facebook needs to change its fundamental stance on privacy?)

This is Very Important

Facebook allows everyday people to share the minutiae of their daily lives with trusted friends and family, to easily distribute photos and videos - if you use it regularly you know how it has made a very real impact on families and social groups that used to communicate very infrequently. Accessible social networking technology changes communication between people in a way similar to if not as intensely as the introduction of the telephone and the printing press. It changes the fabric of peoples' lives together. 350 million people signed up for Facebook under the belief their information could be shared just between trusted friends. Now the company says that's old news, that people are changing. I don't believe it.

I think Facebook is just saying that because that's what it wants to be true.

Whether less privacy is good or bad is another matter, the change of the contract with users based on feigned concern for users' desires is offensive and makes any further moves by Facebook suspect.

See also: Facebook's privacy vs. real-world privacy: two different things.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told a live audience yesterday that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would by default be public, not private as it was for years until the company changed dramatically in December.

In a six-minute interview on stage with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, Zuckerberg spent 60 seconds talking about Facebook's privacy policies. His statements were of major importance for the world's largest social network - and his arguments in favor of an about-face on privacy deserve close scrutiny.

Sponsor

Zuckerberg offered roughly 8 sentences in response to Arrington's question about where privacy was going on Facebook and around the web. The question was referencing the changes Facebook underwent last month. Your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, Friends List, and all the pages you subscribe to are now publicly available information on Facebook. This means everyone on the web can see it; it is searchable. I'll post Zuckerberg's sentences on their own first, then follow up with the questions they raise in my mind. You can also watch the video below, the privacy part we transcribe is from 3:00 to 4:00.

Zuckerberg:

"When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was 'why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?'

"And then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way and all these different services that have people sharing all this information. People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.

"We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are.

"A lot of companies would be trapped by the conventions and their legacies of what they've built, doing a privacy change - doing a privacy change for 350 million users is not the kind of thing that a lot of companies would do. But we viewed that as a really important thing, to always keep a beginner's mind and what would we do if we were starting the company now and we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it."

That's Not a Believable Explanation

This is a radical change from the way that Zuckerberg pounded on the importance of user privacy for years. That your information would only be visible to the people you accept as friends was fundamental to the DNA of the social network that hundreds of millions of people have joined over these past few years. Privacy control, he told me less than 2 years ago, is "the vector around which Facebook operates."

I don't buy Zuckerberg's argument that Facebook is now only reflecting the changes that society is undergoing. I think Facebook itself is a major agent of social change and by acting otherwise Zuckerberg is being arrogant and condescending.

Perhaps the new privacy controls will prove sufficient. Perhaps Facebook's pushing our culture away from privacy will end up being a good thing. The way the company is going about it makes me very uncomfortable, though, and some of the changes are clearly bad. It is clearly bad to no longer allow people to keep the pages they subscribe to private on Facebook.

This major reversal, backed-up by superficial explanations, makes me wonder if Facebook's changing philosophies about privacy are just convenient stories to tell while the company shifts its strategy to exert control over the future of the web.

Facebook's Different Stories

First the company kept user data siloed inside its site alone, saying that a high degree of user privacy would make users comfortable enough to share more information with a smaller number of trusted people.

Now that it has 350 million people signed up and connected to their friends and family in a way they never have been before - now Facebook decides that the initial, privacy-centric, contract with users is out of date. That users actually want to share openly, with the world at large, and incidentally (as Facebook's Director of Public Policy Barry Schnitt told us in December) that it's time for increased pageviews and advertising revenue, too.

The Flimsy Evidence

What makes Facebook think the world is becoming more public and less private? Zuckerberg cites the rise of blogging "and all these different services that have people sharing all this information." That last part must mean Twitter, right? But blogging is tiny compared to Facebook! It's made a big impact on the world, but only because it perhaps doubled or tripled the small percentage of people online who publish long-form text content. Not very many people write blogs, almost everyone is on Facebook.

Facebook's Barry Schnitt told us last month that he too believes the world is becoming more open and his evidence is Twitter, MySpace, comments posted to newspaper websites and the rise of Reality TV.

But Facebook is bigger and is growing much faster than all of those other things. Do they really expect us to believe that the popularity of reality TV is evidence that users want their Facebook friends lists and fan pages made permanently public? Why cite those kinds phenomena as evidence that the red hot social network needs to change its ways?

The company's justifications of the claim that they are reflecting broader social trends just aren't credible. A much more believable explanation is that Facebook wants user information to be made public and so they "just went for it," to use Zuckerberg's words from yesterday.

(Why didn't Arrington press Zuckerberg on stage about this? The rise of blogging is evidence that Facebook needs to change its fundamental stance on privacy?)

This is Very Important

Facebook allows everyday people to share the minutiae of their daily lives with trusted friends and family, to easily distribute photos and videos - if you use it regularly you know how it has made a very real impact on families and social groups that used to communicate very infrequently. Accessible social networking technology changes communication between people in a way similar to if not as intensely as the introduction of the telephone and the printing press. It changes the fabric of peoples' lives together. 350 million people signed up for Facebook under the belief their information could be shared just between trusted friends. Now the company says that's old news, that people are changing. I don't believe it.

I think Facebook is just saying that because that's what it wants to be true.

Whether less privacy is good or bad is another matter, the change of the contract with users based on feigned concern for users' desires is offensive and makes any further moves by Facebook suspect.

See also: Facebook's privacy vs. real-world privacy: two different things.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told a live audience yesterday that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would by default be public, not private as it was for years until the company changed dramatically in December.

In a six-minute interview on stage with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, Zuckerberg spent 60 seconds talking about Facebook's privacy policies. His statements were of major importance for the world's largest social network - and his arguments in favor of an about-face on privacy deserve close scrutiny.

Sponsor

Zuckerberg offered roughly 8 sentences in response to Arrington's question about where privacy was going on Facebook and around the web. The question was referencing the changes Facebook underwent last month. Your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, Friends List, and all the pages you subscribe to are now publicly available information on Facebook. This means everyone on the web can see it; it is searchable. I'll post Zuckerberg's sentences on their own first, then follow up with the questions they raise in my mind. You can also watch the video below, the privacy part we transcribe is from 3:00 to 4:00.

Zuckerberg:

"When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was 'why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?'

"And then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way and all these different services that have people sharing all this information. People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.

"We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are.

"A lot of companies would be trapped by the conventions and their legacies of what they've built, doing a privacy change - doing a privacy change for 350 million users is not the kind of thing that a lot of companies would do. But we viewed that as a really important thing, to always keep a beginner's mind and what would we do if we were starting the company now and we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it."

That's Not a Believable Explanation

This is a radical change from the way that Zuckerberg pounded on the importance of user privacy for years. That your information would only be visible to the people you accept as friends was fundamental to the DNA of the social network that hundreds of millions of people have joined over these past few years. Privacy control, he told me less than 2 years ago, is "the vector around which Facebook operates."

I don't buy Zuckerberg's argument that Facebook is now only reflecting the changes that society is undergoing. I think Facebook itself is a major agent of social change and by acting otherwise Zuckerberg is being arrogant and condescending.

Perhaps the new privacy controls will prove sufficient. Perhaps Facebook's pushing our culture away from privacy will end up being a good thing. The way the company is going about it makes me very uncomfortable, though, and some of the changes are clearly bad. It is clearly bad to no longer allow people to keep the pages they subscribe to private on Facebook.

This major reversal, backed-up by superficial explanations, makes me wonder if Facebook's changing philosophies about privacy are just convenient stories to tell while the company shifts its strategy to exert control over the future of the web.

Facebook's Different Stories

First the company kept user data siloed inside its site alone, saying that a high degree of user privacy would make users comfortable enough to share more information with a smaller number of trusted people.

Now that it has 350 million people signed up and connected to their friends and family in a way they never have been before - now Facebook decides that the initial, privacy-centric, contract with users is out of date. That users actually want to share openly, with the world at large, and incidentally (as Facebook's Director of Public Policy Barry Schnitt told us in December) that it's time for increased pageviews and advertising revenue, too.

The Flimsy Evidence

What makes Facebook think the world is becoming more public and less private? Zuckerberg cites the rise of blogging "and all these different services that have people sharing all this information." That last part must mean Twitter, right? But blogging is tiny compared to Facebook! It's made a big impact on the world, but only because it perhaps doubled or tripled the small percentage of people online who publish long-form text content. Not very many people write blogs, almost everyone is on Facebook.

Facebook's Barry Schnitt told us last month that he too believes the world is becoming more open and his evidence is Twitter, MySpace, comments posted to newspaper websites and the rise of Reality TV.

But Facebook is bigger and is growing much faster than all of those other things. Do they really expect us to believe that the popularity of reality TV is evidence that users want their Facebook friends lists and fan pages made permanently public? Why cite those kinds phenomena as evidence that the red hot social network needs to change its ways?

The company's justifications of the claim that they are reflecting broader social trends just aren't credible. A much more believable explanation is that Facebook wants user information to be made public and so they "just went for it," to use Zuckerberg's words from yesterday.

(Why didn't Arrington press Zuckerberg on stage about this? The rise of blogging is evidence that Facebook needs to change its fundamental stance on privacy?)

This is Very Important

Facebook allows everyday people to share the minutiae of their daily lives with trusted friends and family, to easily distribute photos and videos - if you use it regularly you know how it has made a very real impact on families and social groups that used to communicate very infrequently. Accessible social networking technology changes communication between people in a way similar to if not as intensely as the introduction of the telephone and the printing press. It changes the fabric of peoples' lives together. 350 million people signed up for Facebook under the belief their information could be shared just between trusted friends. Now the company says that's old news, that people are changing. I don't believe it.

I think Facebook is just saying that because that's what it wants to be true.

Whether less privacy is good or bad is another matter, the change of the contract with users based on feigned concern for users' desires is offensive and makes any further moves by Facebook suspect.

See also: Facebook's privacy vs. real-world privacy: two different things.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told a live audience yesterday that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would by default be public, not private as it was for years until the company changed dramatically in December.

In a six-minute interview on stage with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, Zuckerberg spent 60 seconds talking about Facebook's privacy policies. His statements were of major importance for the world's largest social network - and his arguments in favor of an about-face on privacy deserve close scrutiny.

Sponsor

Zuckerberg offered roughly 8 sentences in response to Arrington's question about where privacy was going on Facebook and around the web. The question was referencing the changes Facebook underwent last month. Your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, Friends List, and all the pages you subscribe to are now publicly available information on Facebook. This means everyone on the web can see it; it is searchable. I'll post Zuckerberg's sentences on their own first, then follow up with the questions they raise in my mind. You can also watch the video below, the privacy part we transcribe is from 3:00 to 4:00.

Zuckerberg:

"When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was 'why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?'

"And then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way and all these different services that have people sharing all this information. People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.

"We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are.

"A lot of companies would be trapped by the conventions and their legacies of what they've built, doing a privacy change - doing a privacy change for 350 million users is not the kind of thing that a lot of companies would do. But we viewed that as a really important thing, to always keep a beginner's mind and what would we do if we were starting the company now and we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it."

That's Not a Believable Explanation

This is a radical change from the way that Zuckerberg pounded on the importance of user privacy for years. That your information would only be visible to the people you accept as friends was fundamental to the DNA of the social network that hundreds of millions of people have joined over these past few years. Privacy control, he told me less than 2 years ago, is "the vector around which Facebook operates."

I don't buy Zuckerberg's argument that Facebook is now only reflecting the changes that society is undergoing. I think Facebook itself is a major agent of social change and by acting otherwise Zuckerberg is being arrogant and condescending.

Perhaps the new privacy controls will prove sufficient. Perhaps Facebook's pushing our culture away from privacy will end up being a good thing. The way the company is going about it makes me very uncomfortable, though, and some of the changes are clearly bad. It is clearly bad to no longer allow people to keep the pages they subscribe to private on Facebook.

This major reversal, backed-up by superficial explanations, makes me wonder if Facebook's changing philosophies about privacy are just convenient stories to tell while the company shifts its strategy to exert control over the future of the web.

Facebook's Different Stories

First the company kept user data siloed inside its site alone, saying that a high degree of user privacy would make users comfortable enough to share more information with a smaller number of trusted people.

Now that it has 350 million people signed up and connected to their friends and family in a way they never have been before - now Facebook decides that the initial, privacy-centric, contract with users is out of date. That users actually want to share openly, with the world at large, and incidentally (as Facebook's Director of Public Policy Barry Schnitt told us in December) that it's time for increased pageviews and advertising revenue, too.

The Flimsy Evidence

What makes Facebook think the world is becoming more public and less private? Zuckerberg cites the rise of blogging "and all these different services that have people sharing all this information." That last part must mean Twitter, right? But blogging is tiny compared to Facebook! It's made a big impact on the world, but only because it perhaps doubled or tripled the small percentage of people online who publish long-form text content. Not very many people write blogs, almost everyone is on Facebook.

Facebook's Barry Schnitt told us last month that he too believes the world is becoming more open and his evidence is Twitter, MySpace, comments posted to newspaper websites and the rise of Reality TV.

But Facebook is bigger and is growing much faster than all of those other things. Do they really expect us to believe that the popularity of reality TV is evidence that users want their Facebook friends lists and fan pages made permanently public? Why cite those kinds phenomena as evidence that the red hot social network needs to change its ways?

The company's justifications of the claim that they are reflecting broader social trends just aren't credible. A much more believable explanation is that Facebook wants user information to be made public and so they "just went for it," to use Zuckerberg's words from yesterday.

(Why didn't Arrington press Zuckerberg on stage about this? The rise of blogging is evidence that Facebook needs to change its fundamental stance on privacy?)

This is Very Important

Facebook allows everyday people to share the minutiae of their daily lives with trusted friends and family, to easily distribute photos and videos - if you use it regularly you know how it has made a very real impact on families and social groups that used to communicate very infrequently. Accessible social networking technology changes communication between people in a way similar to if not as intensely as the introduction of the telephone and the printing press. It changes the fabric of peoples' lives together. 350 million people signed up for Facebook under the belief their information could be shared just between trusted friends. Now the company says that's old news, that people are changing. I don't believe it.

I think Facebook is just saying that because that's what it wants to be true.

Whether less privacy is good or bad is another matter, the change of the contract with users based on feigned concern for users' desires is offensive and makes any further moves by Facebook suspect.

See also: Facebook's privacy vs. real-world privacy: two different things.

For the past two years, Stanford has been rolling out a series of courses (collectively called Modern Physics: The Theoretical Minimum) that gives you a baseline knowledge for thinking intelligently about modern physics. The sequence, which moves from Isaac Newton, to Albert Einstein?s work on the general and special theories of relativity, to black holes and string theory, comes out of Stanford?s Continuing Studies program (my day job). And the courses are all taught by Leonard Susskind, an important physicist who has engaged in a long running ?Black Hole War? with Stephen Hawking. The final course, Statistical Mechanics, has now been posted on YouTube, and you can also find it on iTunes in video. The rest of the courses can be accessed immediately below. (The courses also appear in the Physics section of our collection of Free Courses.) Six courses. Roughly 120 hours of content. A comprehensive tour of modern physics. All in video. All free. Beat that.

Modern Physics: The Theoretical Minimum

• Classical Mechanics (Fall 2007) iTunesYouTube
• Quantum Mechanics (Winter 2008) iTunesYouTube
• Special Relativity (Spring 2008) iTunesYouTube
• Einstein?s General Theory of Relativity (Fall 2009) iTunesYouTube
• Cosmology (Winter 2009) iTunesYouTube
• Statistical Mechanics (Spring 2009) iTunesYouTube

PS If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you should consider checking out Prof. Susskind?s new course.  It takes a yearlong look at new revolutions in Particle Physics, and how important theories will be tested by the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. His second course in the series begins next week. Learn more here.

Modern Physics: A Complete Introduction is a post from: Open Culture, the home of Free Audio Books, Free Courses, Free Movies, Free Foreign Language Lessons, a Free iPhone App and other intelligent media!

For the past two years, Stanford has been rolling out a series of courses (collectively called Modern Physics: The Theoretical Minimum) that gives you a baseline knowledge for thinking intelligently about modern physics. The sequence, which moves from Isaac Newton, to Albert Einstein?s work on the general and special theories of relativity, to black holes and string theory, comes out of Stanford?s Continuing Studies program (my day job). And the courses are all taught by Leonard Susskind, an important physicist who has engaged in a long running ?Black Hole War? with Stephen Hawking. The final course, Statistical Mechanics, has now been posted on YouTube, and you can also find it on iTunes in video. The rest of the courses can be accessed immediately below. (The courses also appear in the Physics section of our collection of Free Courses.) Six courses. Roughly 120 hours of content. A comprehensive tour of modern physics. All in video. All free. Beat that.

Modern Physics: The Theoretical Minimum

• Classical Mechanics (Fall 2007) iTunesYouTube
• Quantum Mechanics (Winter 2008) iTunesYouTube
• Special Relativity (Spring 2008) iTunesYouTube
• Einstein?s General Theory of Relativity (Fall 2009) iTunesYouTube
• Cosmology (Winter 2009) iTunesYouTube
• Statistical Mechanics (Spring 2009) iTunesYouTube

PS If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you should consider checking out Prof. Susskind?s new course.  It takes a yearlong look at new revolutions in Particle Physics, and how important theories will be tested by the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. His second course in the series begins next week. Learn more here.

Modern Physics: A Complete Introduction is a post from: Open Culture, the home of Free Audio Books, Free Courses, Free Movies, Free Foreign Language Lessons, a Free iPhone App and other intelligent media!

For the past two years, Stanford has been rolling out a series of courses (collectively called Modern Physics: The Theoretical Minimum) that gives you a baseline knowledge for thinking intelligently about modern physics. The sequence, which moves from Isaac Newton, to Albert Einstein?s work on the general and special theories of relativity, to black holes and string theory, comes out of Stanford?s Continuing Studies program (my day job). And the courses are all taught by Leonard Susskind, an important physicist who has engaged in a long running ?Black Hole War? with Stephen Hawking. The final course, Statistical Mechanics, has now been posted on YouTube, and you can also find it on iTunes in video. The rest of the courses can be accessed immediately below. (The courses also appear in the Physics section of our collection of Free Courses.) Six courses. Roughly 120 hours of content. A comprehensive tour of modern physics. All in video. All free. Beat that.

Modern Physics: The Theoretical Minimum

• Classical Mechanics (Fall 2007) iTunesYouTube
• Quantum Mechanics (Winter 2008) iTunesYouTube
• Special Relativity (Spring 2008) iTunesYouTube
• Einstein?s General Theory of Relativity (Fall 2009) iTunesYouTube
• Cosmology (Winter 2009) iTunesYouTube
• Statistical Mechanics (Spring 2009) iTunesYouTube

PS If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you should consider checking out Prof. Susskind?s new course.  It takes a yearlong look at new revolutions in Particle Physics, and how important theories will be tested by the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. His second course in the series begins next week. Learn more here.

Modern Physics: A Complete Introduction is a post from: Open Culture, the home of Free Audio Books, Free Courses, Free Movies, Free Foreign Language Lessons, a Free iPhone App and other intelligent media!

For the past two years, Stanford has been rolling out a series of courses (collectively called Modern Physics: The Theoretical Minimum) that gives you a baseline knowledge for thinking intelligently about modern physics. The sequence, which moves from Isaac Newton, to Albert Einstein?s work on the general and special theories of relativity, to black holes and string theory, comes out of Stanford?s Continuing Studies program (my day job). And the courses are all taught by Leonard Susskind, an important physicist who has engaged in a long running ?Black Hole War? with Stephen Hawking. The final course, Statistical Mechanics, has now been posted on YouTube, and you can also find it on iTunes in video. The rest of the courses can be accessed immediately below. (The courses also appear in the Physics section of our collection of Free Courses.) Six courses. Roughly 120 hours of content. A comprehensive tour of modern physics. All in video. All free. Beat that.

Modern Physics: The Theoretical Minimum

• Classical Mechanics (Fall 2007) iTunesYouTube
• Quantum Mechanics (Winter 2008) iTunesYouTube
• Special Relativity (Spring 2008) iTunesYouTube
• Einstein?s General Theory of Relativity (Fall 2009) iTunesYouTube
• Cosmology (Winter 2009) iTunesYouTube
• Statistical Mechanics (Spring 2009) iTunesYouTube

PS If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you should consider checking out Prof. Susskind?s new course.  It takes a yearlong look at new revolutions in Particle Physics, and how important theories will be tested by the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. His second course in the series begins next week. Learn more here.

Modern Physics: A Complete Introduction is a post from: Open Culture, the home of Free Audio Books, Free Courses, Free Movies, Free Foreign Language Lessons, a Free iPhone App and other intelligent media!

For the past two years, Stanford has been rolling out a series of courses (collectively called Modern Physics: The Theoretical Minimum) that gives you a baseline knowledge for thinking intelligently about modern physics. The sequence, which moves from Isaac Newton, to Albert Einstein?s work on the general and special theories of relativity, to black holes and string theory, comes out of Stanford?s Continuing Studies program (my day job). And the courses are all taught by Leonard Susskind, an important physicist who has engaged in a long running ?Black Hole War? with Stephen Hawking. The final course, Statistical Mechanics, has now been posted on YouTube, and you can also find it on iTunes in video. The rest of the courses can be accessed immediately below. (The courses also appear in the Physics section of our collection of Free Courses.) Six courses. Roughly 120 hours of content. A comprehensive tour of modern physics. All in video. All free. Beat that.

Modern Physics: The Theoretical Minimum

• Classical Mechanics (Fall 2007) iTunesYouTube
• Quantum Mechanics (Winter 2008) iTunesYouTube
• Special Relativity (Spring 2008) iTunesYouTube
• Einstein?s General Theory of Relativity (Fall 2009) iTunesYouTube
• Cosmology (Winter 2009) iTunesYouTube
• Statistical Mechanics (Spring 2009) iTunesYouTube

PS If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you should consider checking out Prof. Susskind?s new course.  It takes a yearlong look at new revolutions in Particle Physics, and how important theories will be tested by the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. His second course in the series begins next week. Learn more here.

Modern Physics: A Complete Introduction is a post from: Open Culture, the home of Free Audio Books, Free Courses, Free Movies, Free Foreign Language Lessons, a Free iPhone App and other intelligent media!

? Darwin ?

On this last day of the bicentennial of Darwin?s birth, I?d like to suggest that we honor Darwin by rejecting the dubious term ?Darwinism?.

To call something an ?ism? suggests that it is a matter ideology or faith, like Trotskyism or creationism. In the evolution wars, the term ?evolutionism? is used to insinuate that the modern understanding of the principles, mechanisms, and pervasive consequences of evolution is no more than the dogma of a sect within science. It creates a false equivalence between a mountain of knowledge and the emptiness called ?creationism?. ?Darwinism? has a similar effect, and the implied personalization further reinforces the suggestion of narrowness and rigidity.

Are areas of modern science normally called person-isms, or ?isms? of any sort? It would be strange to call cosmology ?Hubblism? or ?cosmologism?, or to call quantum mechanics ?Schrödingerism? or ?quantumism?. Imagine calling genetics ?Mendelism?, or physics ?Newtonism?, and thereby painting dynamic, modern inquiry with the faded colors of science from history books.

To honor Darwin and his legacy, I suggest rejecting ?Darwinism?, and ?evolutionism? too.

Why debate something called ?The Theory of Evolution??

The modern understanding of evolutionary biology is like the modern understanding of chemistry, physiology, or geology. Each is a rich body of knowledge, united by central principles and facts while spilling out across disciplinary boundaries.

Imagine discussing these vibrant fields as if each were devoted to studying ? today? one of its fundamental discoveries from a century ago. Now imagine calling that discovery a ?theory?: We?d have a ?theory of chemistry? (perhaps called ?atomism?, a.k.a.?Daltonism?), a ?theory of physiology? (?blood-circulationism?, or ?Harveyism?), and a ?theory of geology? (?ancient-earthism?, or ?Huttonism?).

This would not further public understanding, and neither does speaking of a ?theory of evolution?.

There are mechanisms of evolution (including both Darwinian selection and genetic drift), forces of evolution (from molecular to ecological), and facts of evolution (from the fossil record to the patterns of retroviral scars* in our genomes, shared with chimps from common ancestor). There are many specific theories within evolutionary biology, of course ? quantitative models of gene flow, kin selection, clutch-size optimization, and the like.

What the field doesn?t have, however, and doesn?t need, is a single, comprehensive, falsifiable theory to test or buttress with evidence. The modern evolutionary synthesis isn?t like that.

This is reason enough to regard the concept of a ?theory of evolution? as somewhere between unhelpful and misleading. Now, consider the cost of talking about and defending this odd abstraction, when its very name tells the public that it is a dubious proposition.

The?o?ry
?noun, plural -ries.
1. a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of
  explanation for a class of phenomena: Einstein?s theory of relativity.
2. a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural, in contrast
  to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting
  matters of actual fact.

Definition 1 is described as a ?technical use? of the term; definition 2 as ?used in non-technical contexts?. Public education and public debate are, today, intensely non-technical contexts. Calling a body of knowledge by an ill-fitting name that, to the intended audience, means conjecture is self-defeating.

Scientists seldom speak of a comprehensive thing called ?the theory of evolution? when doing science, but often do so when trying to defend science. I think this is unwise. There are better ways to share the knowledge that has grown from the seed that Darwin planted.

See follow-up post:Evolution: The concept and how we talk about it

• Knowledge about Knowledge: The most popular posts in the first year

On evolutionary themes, see:

• Evolutionary Capacity: Why organisms cannot be like machines
• For Darwin Day: On the Origin of Genetic Information
• Machines Evolving to the Brink of Failure
• Homo floresiensis, Crows, and the Baldwin Effect

From hosting Scientific American Frontiers to writing a play based on Einstein's letters, Alan Alda is a true geek. We caught up with him to find out about his exploration of the human brain for PBS, called The Human Spark.

Many don't realize that Alda has a geeky side. Known for his 11 year story arc on M*A*S*H, the actor has always been fascinated with science. He's been lucky enough to entertain that side of his life by serving on the board of the World Science Festival and hosting the now defunct Scientific American Frontiers for 12 years.

While he hasn't starred in any science-based films (yet), Alda did act the part of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman in the play QED in 2001. Explaining his lack of science fiction on his resume, Alda tells io9, "Nothing's been offered to me that looked really interesting." Are you listening, Hollywood?

"I used to read science fiction a lot and I still like it if it's a model of how we really are, so we can see ourselves from another perspective," Alda continues. "The thing is that I read so much science, much more than I do fiction, because to me, science in itself is a great detective story that's happening in front of us. I don't get as involved with science fiction, except as it tries to help me understand who we are, because the greatest frontier in science is to understand humanity itself."

In a quest to learn more about that very subject, Alda and the folks at PBS take a look at what makes us human in a three-part series premiering on January 6th. The Human Spark, a three-part miniseries, sends Alda to three continents as he talks with archaeologists and scientists about our evolution and how we differ from Neandrathals, apes, and other animals.

"We often start off with these great divides," Alda explains. "We say, we're the only ones that cry. We're the only ones that laugh. We're the only ones that build skyscrapers. And little by little, as we've explored this, I've begun to see some of these lines blur and disappear in certain cases. What my interviews with scientists, being out in the field with these animals, and taking part in these experiments has done, is I've personally started to feel more connected to these other animals and see some of the roots of my behavior."

Alda went so far as to have his brain scanned at MIT's McGovern Institute, but it wasn't the first time he's done so. Turns out the producers at Scientific American Frontiers have made Alda get his head examined a few times already. While the brain scans in this instance were done to show what areas scientists think are uniquely human, technicians at MIT noted that they wouldn't have been able to guess Alda's age based on his brain scans ? his noggin looks a few years younger! "I've carried that along with me for a while now," Alda laughs. "It cheers me up."

Alda's big question, which has yet to be answered involves our future as a species. "Scientists have told me that the average lifespan of a species is about two million years. We've only been here a fraction of that so far. Do we have a chance of having an average existence on earth? Can you picture us here a million years from now. What would we be like? What destruction will we be capable of? I hope we learn more about ourselves and that this series makes its own small contribution to that."

The Human Spark premieres on January 6th on PBS. Check local listings for times.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Offering unusually good philanthropic returns ? meaning greater odds of a positive Singularity and lesser odds of human extinction ? the Singularity Institute has launched a new challenge campaign. The sponsors, Edwin Evans, Rolf Nelson, Henrik Jonsson, Jason Joachim, and Robert Lecnik, have generously put up $100,000 of matching funds, so that every donation you make until February 28th will be matched dollar for dollar. If the campaign is successful, it will raise a full $200,000 to fund SIAI?s 2010 activities.

For almost a decade, the Singularity Institute has been asking questions on the future of human civilization: How can we benefit from increasingly powerful technology without succumbing to the risks, up to and including human extinction? What is the best way to handle artificial general intelligence (AGI): programs as smart as humans, or smarter?

Among SIAI?s core aims is to continue studying ?Friendly AI?: AI that acts benevolently because it holds goals aligned with human values. This involves drawing on and contributing to fields like decision theory, computer science, cognitive and moral psychology, and technology forecasting.

Creating AI, especially the Friendly kind, is a difficult undertaking. We?re in it for as long as it takes, but we?ve been doing more than laying the groundwork for Friendly AI. We?ve been raising the profile of AI risk and Singularity issues in academia and elsewhere, forming communities around enhancing human rationality, and researching other avenues that promise to reduce the most severe risks the most effectively.

If you make a donation to the Singularity Institute, you can choose which grant proposal your donation should help to fill. Any time a grant proposal is fully funded, it goes into our ?active projects? file: it becomes a project that we have money enough to fund, and that we are publicly committed to funding. (Some of the projects will go forward even without earmarked donations, with money from the general fund ? but many won?t, and since our work is limited by how much money we have available to support skilled staff and Visiting Fellows, more money allows more total projects to go forward.)

Donate now, and seize a better than usual chance to move our work forward.

We often romanticize the industrial technologies that came out of the Victorian Era, especially the clockwork and steam power associated with steampunk. But these Victorian infographics illustrate the era's understanding of natural sciences, including geology, astronomy, and biology.

BibliOdyssey has even more of these Victorian infographics, including the Victorian view of the history of the world. Check out higher resolution versions of these infographics at BibliOdyssey's Flickr account.

[via Metafilter]

Tableau d'Astronomie et de Sphère
Tableau d'Astronomie et de Sphère [detail]
Tableau d'Histoire Naturelle: Annelides, Crustaces, Arachnides, etc.
Chart of the World Exhibiting Its Chief Physical Features. Currents of the Ocean &c. Ethnographic Chart of the World Shewing (sic) the Distribution and Varieties of the Human Race
Geological Map Of The State Of Pennsylvania
Humboldt's Distribution of Plants in Equinoctial America
Tinted drawing showing the comparative lengths of rivers and heights of mountains worldwide. The first text page in this volume has the legend for this sheet.

We often romanticize the industrial technologies that came out of the Victorian Era, especially the clockwork and steam power associated with steampunk. But these Victorian infographics illustrate the era's understanding of natural sciences, including geology, astronomy, and biology.

BibliOdyssey has even more of these Victorian infographics, including the Victorian view of the history of the world. Check out higher resolution versions of these infographics at BibliOdyssey's Flickr account.

[via Metafilter]

Tableau d'Astronomie et de Sphère
Tableau d'Astronomie et de Sphère [detail]
Tableau d'Histoire Naturelle: Annelides, Crustaces, Arachnides, etc.
Chart of the World Exhibiting Its Chief Physical Features. Currents of the Ocean &c. Ethnographic Chart of the World Shewing (sic) the Distribution and Varieties of the Human Race
Geological Map Of The State Of Pennsylvania
Humboldt's Distribution of Plants in Equinoctial America
Tinted drawing showing the comparative lengths of rivers and heights of mountains worldwide. The first text page in this volume has the legend for this sheet.

[fr]

[en]

Ever since I discovered the magical combination of SSH + screen, I have come to loathe FTP. Although some of you will cringe at the idea, I like working directly on the server. No stray copies lying around, dated I-don?t-know-what. No chance of mistakenly overwriting your last set of changes.

Screen is a terminal multiplexer (just learned the term). What you do, basically, is climb inside it when you?re on the server, and do everything from there. The advantage is that:

• when you disconnect your SSH connection, screen keeps running, so your workspace is how you left it next time you come in
• you can have multiple ?screens? (ie, terminal windows) you can easily switch around, so you can have your IRC channel running in one screen, be editing a file in another, etc. (basically, multi-tasking like you would do with windows in a graphical environment).

I learnt shell commands as I went along. Those I use the most are:

• wget http://wordpress.org/latest.zip to download (instantly!) the latest version of WordPress directly on the server
• unzip latest.zip to unzip it, still directly on the server
• mv wp old-200910 to archive an old installation of wordpress (or move other files around)
• cp -Rf plugins/* ../../wordpress/wp-content/plugins/ to copy all my plugins to the freshly unzipped install of WordPress
• nano wp-config-sample.php to add my settings to the file and save it as wp-config.php

These are just a few examples. Once you know these commands and have them at the tip of your fingers, how fast you work is only limited by how fast you can type them. And you?re doing things directly on the web server. You?re not stuck looking at the ?real world? (= the server) through the imperfect lens of an FTP client, waiting for uploads to happen (or downloads), paying attention not to overwrite stuff, having everything ready on your computer before pressing the magic button and hoping everything will be all right, because otherwise you?re in for another bout of download, edit, upload?

Some of my clients have WordPress installations on servers with no shell access. Obviously, I don?t have as much practice doing things the FTP way, but I swear it takes me 5 times as much time to do things with no SSH access. When you know how to use it, the command-line is wickedly fast.

The only situation where I actually do like FTP is when I?m using CSSEdit, because coupled to an FTP client, I can be editing my CSS file with the added power of the programme on my Mac, and have it upload and update the file on the server each time I hit save. Because yes, it?s nicer to write CSS in CSSEdit than in nano.

But for managing files and moving them around and minor edits? I?m much happier sitting on my server inside my screen.Similar Posts:

• Scripts for a WordPress Weblog Farm
• Batch Category Editing For WordPress
• Basic Bilingual 0.4
• Bunny?s Print CSS Plugin Upgrade
• Virus Disguised as XP Update? Or not?

I just set up a friend's PC. I haven't done that in a while.

Wow.

Apparently, a computer is now not a computer, it's an opportunity to upsell you.

First, the setup insisted (for my own safety) that I sign up for an eternal subscription to Norton. Then it defaulted (opt out) to sending me promotional emails. Then there were the dozens (at least it felt like dozens) of buttons and searches I had to endure to switch the search box from Bing to Google. And the icons on the desktop that had been paid for by various partners and the this-comes-with-that of just about everything.

The digital world, even the high end brands, has become a sleazy carnival, complete with hawkers, barkers and a bearded lady. By the time someone actually gets to your site, they've been conned, popped up, popped under and upsold so many times they really have no choice but to be skeptical.

Basically, it's a race to the bottom, with so many people spamming trackbacks, planning popups and scheming to trick the surfer with this or that that we've bullied people into a corner of believing no one.

You can play along, or you can be so clean and so straightforward that people are stunned into loyalty. You know, as in, "do it for the user," and "offer stuff that just works" and "this is what you get and that's all you get and you won't have to wonder about the fine print."

Rare and refreshing. An opportunity, in fact.

I just set up a friend's PC. I haven't done that in a while.

Wow.

Apparently, a computer is now not a computer, it's an opportunity to upsell you.

First, the setup insisted (for my own safety) that I sign up for an eternal subscription to Norton. Then it defaulted (opt out) to sending me promotional emails. Then there were the dozens (at least it felt like dozens) of buttons and searches I had to endure to switch the search box from Bing to Google. And the icons on the desktop that had been paid for by various partners and the this-comes-with-that of just about everything.

The digital world, even the high end brands, has become a sleazy carnival, complete with hawkers, barkers and a bearded lady. By the time someone actually gets to your site, they've been conned, popped up, popped under and upsold so many times they really have no choice but to be skeptical.

Basically, it's a race to the bottom, with so many people spamming trackbacks, planning popups and scheming to trick the surfer with this or that that we've bullied people into a corner of believing no one.

You can play along, or you can be so clean and so straightforward that people are stunned into loyalty. You know, as in, "do it for the user," and "offer stuff that just works" and "this is what you get and that's all you get and you won't have to wonder about the fine print."

Rare and refreshing. An opportunity, in fact.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

My Good.is article from earlier this week, ?Benefits of a Successful Singularity?, reached the front page of Digg. I am boosting my stat in the ?Memetics? skill.

Here?s an interesting comment from a reader, which summarizes the article in the first paragraph and comments in the next:

AI is on the horizon, but we need to figure out how to create intelligence through algorithms, we can?t just keep souping up our hardware. AI will bring a major economic boost, lifting all boats, so to speak, across the planet, to beyond even what us hedonist westerners enjoy.
The next question is what we do with all this new wealth and knowledge, and where we go from there.

I think the author underestimates the impact of AI on our world. To even mention ?economy? is folly; with true AI an ?economy? would become obsolete. What use is an economy where anybody can get anything they want, and machines can perform any menial or non-menial task?

Yes, indeed! But, saying that outright can get some people riled up. Following the advice of Robin Hanson, I try to be weird in as few ways at possible to get my point across at any given time.

One of the comments singles out a particularly convoluted line:

?but each neuron operates so slowly that a $10,000 desktop supercomputer can execute 933 billion operations per second?

?what?

My point here is that this is within a factor of 10,000 of most estimates of the computing power of the human brain. That?s what I write right after that. Yes, it?s a slightly convoluted sentence that I had trouble writing, but I?m still trying to make the point that the Tesla Personal Supercomputer is surprisingly close to the computing power of the human brain. This ties in with my point that AI is about software, not hardware.

Someone also noticed:

I like that this article has advertisements for Caprica all along the right border.

It is a cool ad, isn?t it?

Another guy said:

Too long, did not read.

Wow ? it?s two pages. As someone who used to frequent Digg daily for more than two years, I am familiar with how low the average intellectual standard of your average ?nerd? is. Anything longer than a 200-word AP press release or an XCKD comic is not worth taking time from games for.

Download Bergensbanen in HD (Thanks, Espen)

Download Bergensbanen in HD (Thanks, Espen)

HOW do you react when you see somebody else in pain? Most of us can empathize with someone who has been injured or is sick - we can quite easily put ourselves "in their shoes" and understand, to some extent, what they are feeling. We can share their emotional experience, because observing their pain activates regions of the brain which are involved in processing the emotional aspects of pain.

But can seeing somebody else in pain actually cause pain in the observer? People with mirror-touch synaesthesia are known to experience touch sensations when they see others being touched, and this may also extend to pain in such individuals. There are also several anecdotal cases of patients who experience pain in the absence of noxious stimuli. And a new study by British psychologists now provides evidence that a significant minority of healthy people can also experience pain when seeing others' injuries. 

Read the comments on this post...

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Guilty Planet

Rolling around in a pile of toxic waste generally doesn't give you superpowers so much as make you incredibly ill, but for dogs in one Russian town, exposure to chemical waste has had a curious side-effect: it's turning them green.

Former guard dogs, strays in the city of Yekaterinburg have been spotted sporting green coats. Although some locals initially thought it was a prank, the police believe that illegal chemical dumping is responsible for these dogs of a different color. As a result of the startling discovery, the city council has been asked to clean up the toxic area.

It sounds like the color is probably the result of a chemical reaction with the dogs' fur, but it probably doesn't bode well for their overall health and well-being. Still, the folks responsible for the dumpng better hope they don't end up with a pack of canine Toxic Avengers on their hands.

Wild Dogs Turn Green From 'Toxic Waste' [Yahoo! News via Geekologie]

Rolling around in a pile of toxic waste generally doesn't give you superpowers so much as make you incredibly ill, but for dogs in one Russian town, exposure to chemical waste has had a curious side-effect: it's turning them green.

Former guard dogs, strays in the city of Yekaterinburg have been spotted sporting green coats. Although some locals initially thought it was a prank, the police believe that illegal chemical dumping is responsible for these dogs of a different color. As a result of the startling discovery, the city council has been asked to clean up the toxic area.

It sounds like the color is probably the result of a chemical reaction with the dogs' fur, but it probably doesn't bode well for their overall health and well-being. Still, the folks responsible for the dumpng better hope they don't end up with a pack of canine Toxic Avengers on their hands.

Wild Dogs Turn Green From 'Toxic Waste' [Yahoo! News via Geekologie]

Rolling around in a pile of toxic waste generally doesn't give you superpowers so much as make you incredibly ill, but for dogs in one Russian town, exposure to chemical waste has had a curious side-effect: it's turning them green.

Former guard dogs, strays in the city of Yekaterinburg have been spotted sporting green coats. Although some locals initially thought it was a prank, the police believe that illegal chemical dumping is responsible for these dogs of a different color. As a result of the startling discovery, the city council has been asked to clean up the toxic area.

It sounds like the color is probably the result of a chemical reaction with the dogs' fur, but it probably doesn't bode well for their overall health and well-being. Still, the folks responsible for the dumpng better hope they don't end up with a pack of canine Toxic Avengers on their hands.

Wild Dogs Turn Green From 'Toxic Waste' [Yahoo! News via Geekologie]

large / Gregor Halbwedl's Photos on Flickriver I'm dreaming of a white Christmas Just like the ones I used to know Where the treetops glisten, and children listen To hear sleigh bells in the snow I'm dreaming of a white Christmas With every Christmas card I write May your days be merry and bright And may all your Christmases be white I'm dreaming of a white Christmas With every Christmas card I write May your days be merry and bright And may all your Christmases be white

large / Gregor Halbwedl's Photos on Flickriver I'm dreaming of a white Christmas Just like the ones I used to know Where the treetops glisten, and children listen To hear sleigh bells in the snow I'm dreaming of a white Christmas With every Christmas card I write May your days be merry and bright And may all your Christmases be white I'm dreaming of a white Christmas With every Christmas card I write May your days be merry and bright And may all your Christmases be white

large / Gregor Halbwedl's Photos on Flickriver I'm dreaming of a white Christmas Just like the ones I used to know Where the treetops glisten, and children listen To hear sleigh bells in the snow I'm dreaming of a white Christmas With every Christmas card I write May your days be merry and bright And may all your Christmases be white I'm dreaming of a white Christmas With every Christmas card I write May your days be merry and bright And may all your Christmases be white

In 2004, Eliezer Yudkowsky of the Singularity Institute presented Coherent Extrapolated Volition (CEV) as a solution to the AI Friendliness Problem. The basic idea is to extrapolate the preferences of all humanity in such a way that we obtain an output that satisfices those preferences, then the CEV shuts down, its role finished. CEV is currently the most promising theory for building a Friendly AI.

A point I haven?t seen advanced before outside this document, though it seems pretty obvious, is that any AI, to be of any use to humans whatsoever, must use some variation of volition to fulfill human directives. Volition is introduced as follows: there are two boxes, box A and box B. One of the boxes has a diamond. Fred wants the diamond, and asks us for box A. We want him to have the diamond. One problem: the diamond is in box B. The document points out the problem with handing Fred box A:

But I do not simply say: ?Well, Fred chose box A, and he got box A, so I fail to see why there is a problem.? There are several ways of stating my perceived problem:

1. Fred was disappointed on opening box A, and would have been happier on opening box B.
2. It is possible to predict that if Fred chooses box A, Fred will look back and wish he had chosen box B instead; while if Fred chooses box B, Fred will be satisfied with his choice.
3. Fred wanted ?the box containing the diamond?, not ?box A?, and chose box A only because he guessed that box A contained the diamond.
4. If Fred had known the correct answer to the question of simple fact, ?Which box contains the diamond??, Fred would have chosen box B.

Hence my intuitive sense that giving Fred box A, as he literally requested, is not actually helping Fred.

If you find a genie bottle that gives you three wishes, it?s probably a good idea to seal the genie bottle in a locked safety box under your bed, unless the genie pays attention to your volition, not just your decision.

A powerful AI, or genie (big difference), must follow our volition, not just our direct decisions, or it would be dangerous. It is easy to imagine even worse failures based on interpreting the letter rather than the spirit of our requests ? for instance, a robot chauffeur designed to take one?s children to school would be viewed as an idiotic or evil entity if it took children to school even if the school were on fire, or covered in two feet of snow. Just decisions are never enough ? an AI needs an interpretation of volition. I see some connection between the idea of volition and revealed preference? people often say one thing, for social signaling purposes (often subconsciously), when they actually mean something else, which can sometimes be inferred from how they act, not what they say.

To me, the question is not whether we?ll use some form of extrapolated volition to pilot and direct AGI, but what kind we choose to use. In his paper, Eliezer proposed the following:

In poetic terms, our coherent extrapolated volition is our wish if we knew more, thought faster, were more the people we wished we were, had grown up farther together; where the extrapolation converges rather than diverges, where our wishes cohere rather than interfere; extrapolated as we wish that extrapolated, interpreted as we wish that interpreted.

Phew! That?s a mouthful. What does he mean by ?cohere?? What about ?growing up farther together?? (I think that should read ?further? ? ?farther? refers to physical distance.) How can we model growing up further together without actually modeling all 6 billion humans interacting socially? Not all these questions are answered in the document. (Some are.) I still regard it as a good starting point. It?s superior to the prior idea that Eliezer had, which was to create an AI that is a ?normative altruist? and uses various ?anchors and shapers? to craft a ?normative morality?. CEV ?cheats? by sucking the metamoral content out of the entire human race, like a gigantic infovorous vacuum machine.

The alternative to these sorts of extrapolation schemes all involve a programmer directly dictating the goal content of the AI in one way or another, which leaves you wide open to programmer-biased goal systems. Since the goal system of the first self-improving AI could quite plausibly dictate the fate of the universe from that point on, this is probably a bad idea. Other alternatives, like the one proposed by Bill Hibbard, involve direct feedback where humans essentially push buttons for what they like and the AI is eventually supposed to figure out moral philosophy. (Presumably.) The problem with this is that human metamorality is extremely complex and a system that absorbs the surface features without an eye for deep structure is destined to fail in stupid ways.

Humans can learn more or less what moral behavior is from other humans because much of our metamoral framework is already programmed in from an early age. When a child steals a plate full of cookies that are meant for after dinner, and a parent says, ?don?t do that!?, unless the child is extremely young, he or she will generally know what they did wrong and why the adult has a problem with it. A poorly programmed AI, on the other hand, would have no metamoral framework. Was it wrong because cookies are inherently evil? Because the AI did not bake the cookies itself? Because AIs are not meant to have cookies? An AI might know all the facts about cookies and their historical context, but that still won?t give it the background it needs to find out why taking the cookies was ?wrong?, and to what extent it was ?wrong?. If eating the cookies saved a life, it might not be wrong. What if eating a cookie saved a billion lives a billion years in the the future? A purely utilitarian AI might exterminate the human race today if it thought that doing so would create the greatest utility in the long term. AIs with hand-coded value systems may not have the ?moral common sense? that humans do. Moral facts do not follow physical facts. In some cases, we are morally biased for meaningless reasons like small changes in the wording of a hypothetical moral dilemma, or other framing effects. How is an AI supposed to make heads or tails of ?right? and ?wrong?? Giving up is not a choice ? we need an AI we can trust with nuclear weapons or worse. More sophisticated extrapolations of revealed preferences seem to be the most sensible pathway.

The moral realists suppose that a sufficiently intelligent AI will figure out ?right? and ?wrong? because they are self-evident. This is suicide. Right and wrong are not objective things-in-the-world, but human constructions. Murder is not wrong because it?s objectively wrong, but because human moral development over the course of thousands of years has decided that it is wrong most of the time. People worry about this interpretation of morality because they believe it?s a slippery slope, but Joshua Greene?s PhD thesis goes over all the reasons we might be afraid of moral anti-realism and shows that none of them are really compelling. Whether or not we consider moral anti-realism to be good for society, evolutionary psychology and cognitive science show us that it is true, whether we like it or not.

There is a lot of confusion around the idea of Coherent Extrapolated Volition, which I attribute mostly just to people commenting on the concept without reading the easily digestible 28-page document. People will comment on a concept for years without reading a short document actually explaining it. The way this works is that you read the first page, or less, then fill in the gaps with your imagination.

To dispel some of the worst misconceptions about CEV, here is a short list of ?6 points about Coherent Extrapolated Volition? that was posted to the SL4 mailing list in July 2005:

1. Coherent Extrapolated Volition is not a majority vote. No human being is asked to actually decide anything.

2. The key word in ?Coherent Extrapolated Volition? is ?extrapolated?. CEV does not use judgments produced by the sort of human beings that exist today.

3. The CEV writes an AI. This AI may or may not work in any way remotely resembling a volition-extrapolator.

4. The CEV returns one coherent answer. The AI it returns may or may not display any given sort of coherence in how it treats different people, or create any given sort of coherent world.

5. The CEV runs for five minutes before producing an output. It is not meant to govern for centuries.

6. The CEV by itself does not mess around with your life. The CEV just decides which AI to replace itself with.

For a jumping-off point into one discussion about CEV, see this SL4 thread from Oct. 2008: ?Just how coherent does CEV have to be??, which began with a question proposed by Alex Bokov. Kaj Sotala points out that the initial question is answered in the CEV document itself.

If you have any burning questions, check out the PAQ (Previously Asked Questions) portion of the CEV document first. For another very short summary of the CEV concept, see its Wikipedia entry.

Flying Spaghetti Monster holiday treats! (Thanks, Castewar!)

Flying Spaghetti Monster holiday treats! (Thanks, Castewar!)

Flying Spaghetti Monster holiday treats! (Thanks, Castewar!)

Flying Spaghetti Monster holiday treats! (Thanks, Castewar!)

The overwhelming popularity of zombies may be a relatively recent phenomenon, but in alternate timelines, zombie attacks have been a problem for centuries. These alternate history maps outline the geography these undead epidemics and the measures taken to combat them.

Earlier this fall, AlternateHistory.com held a map-making contest detailing the effects of zombie outbreaks, vampire migrations and other supernatural events in alternate history. Among the entries is a map of the Scourge from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and a few other standouts (recommended by Metafilter).

[AlternateHistory.com via Metafilter]

The Scourge of 1866
Essex County Cricket (& Zombie Eradication) Club
The Great Golem Uprising of 1848? A non-zombie entry.

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