Technology and Privacy

Interesting how many people who use phones and computers regularly to connect to other people and share information, are surprised that doing so may connect and share information with law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Everything about phones and computers is designed to send and store information, from the casings all the way to the chips inside. Any attempt to keep them from sending or storing things is against their fundamental purpose. Regardless of whether they should be private or not, making them secure or private is always an uphill battle going against their reason to exist. Nor is snooping in our private stuff new; for as long as there has been postal mail, people have steamed open letters, read them, and resealed them. So now you know. And to our friends at the [choose your acronym law enforcement or intelligence agency] who have just started following my posts: hope I can entertain you and you're having a nice day in the surveillance van/listening post. #LongestSetUpEverForANotVeryFunnyBit #PrivacyIsStillAThingWeShouldHave

Aircraft Carrier Flight Ops

I vlog a landing and a takeoff from the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier.

Frankenmixer

The world's first satchel mixer. Self-contained power, adjustable pot-to-plug spacing and made of 100% recycled materials. Proudly assembled by August/Richards industries in the USA.

Privacy Evolves

Zach Cumer posted about Safety & Security for the now + the future and graciously invited me to comment. Here is what I wrote today:

Thank you for the invite to comment. I'm out and about right now, so here are some brief thoughts.

The Internet, social media and our digital devices have brought transparency to our lives and the organizations we interact with. That never quite existed like this before. The youngest generation's entire idea of privacy is different than older generations' tend to be.

This new transparency is a double edged sword. On the one hand information is more available and often more useful than ever before. On the other, what used to be physical things, the artifacts of our lives, have become increasingly digital. Not everyone is ready for or understands what this means, even though it has already happened in many ways.

Hurricane Sandy, the storm that is hitting the East Coast of the US right now, illustrates: the moment the Internet goes out, our lives are plunged into 1980 style existence. Anything online, "in the cloud," is suddenly unavailable. Even more, if power goes out too, much of our lives goes back to 1880. Once the batteries run out, we learn the hard way what not being ready for power outages, being "1880 compliant" as I call it, is. We aren't used to how to do things like they were done in 1880. At least not long term.

At a retail job I had just after high school, the store couldn't see what was in inventory, on its own shelves, if there was a storm. The storm made the satellite link to headquarters go down. And the store's local computers didn't have that information by themselves. Technically, this is a problem of not having business continuity in the event of natural disaster, or simple rainfall in their case. Today, millions of people and companies can't get to their own address books, music collections or email because of a storm. One hopes the data-centers that store our digital lives don't lose the data in the rain and wind. Once hopes we'll still be able to get to everything after the storm has past. We need life continuity whether our tech works or not.

But, back to the privacy issues your post brings up. We don't send postal mail in clear envelopes because everyone wants, even needs, some privacy in their lives. Privacy still matters, and many call personal privacy a basic human right. Chapter 2 article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union says [e]veryone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications. Yet despite privacy still going into laws, we don't have great answers for how our lives and our whole society are affected when privacy erodes accidentally, or through malicious breaches. Or simply because the privacy settings can be confusing.

From the scary sounding scenario of showing up online in the background of a stranger's photo auto-tagged by facial recognition, to the more likely possibility that you forget your smartphone at a bar, with your identity and financial data on it, we as a society are forced to rethink things. Beyond extremes like home break-ins because the people check in publicly online, or identity theft, there are other ways our privacy is dynamic. Web search histories and online profiles together are used to market things to us based on what we share with the world. What we share is both things we know about, like a restaurant review we know we wrote and share in public, and stuff we don't know about, like data from Google on flu searches getting used by the Centers for Disease Control to predict outbreaks more accurately. What do we want to have private and what can never be private again not matter how much we want it to be? As a civilization we lack great answers.

I have some ideas how to prepare ourselves. Computers are not just laptops and desktops, they are phones and tablets and gaming consoles and more. Computers and networks are designed to store and transmit information. From the rubber feet on the bottom, to the casing, to every line of code, everything about them is for keeping and sharing information; it is their fundamental purpose. Anything done to contain or remove information from computers and networks works against their foundation, their purpose. And that is why all ways to try to keep information private is going against the grain of computers. In a perfect world, a secret we want to have stay secret should never be digital. Once it is, the uphill battle of keeping it private begins.

There is almost no way to remember that things tend toward being stored and shared digitally. Even harder to live knowing this moment to moment. Our devices get so tangled up in our day to day lives, it's easy to be lulled into comfort. It is easy to ignore that our devices easily share anything and everything we put on them, and reveal everything we interact with. So try to brace yourself, if such a thing is possible. Brace yourself for having something of yours shared when you don't want it to be. This very possibly can happen to you and to me. We may want to prepare for what we do when our privacy goes away. This isn't actually a new thing. Secrets have become not secret for eons. Not always, but often.

Forever, bad things have sometimes happened to good people. Having your private stuff go public is just one way it can happen. Panic and fear are never a good answer. Be aware of what your devices and digital life might reveal of your life, thoughts and such. Be aware no one can be perfect in securing stuff. And beyond matters of life and death, like national security, try to be open. When you are open you get to be involved in how the world gets your private stuff. And for god's sake, don't use "password" or your name or someone's birth-date as your access code/pin/password.

Like having locks on doors, if you don't use the security things you have, then you don't get the security they can give. Put a passcode on your smartphone. That way if your phone is lost or stolen, your email, profiles and the information about all your contacts is less likely to be in the open. If you're worried dirty pictures or video you would take might end up on tv or something, don't take them. And breathe. Whether we like technology or not, it is not our enemy. And whether we want technology to be part of our lives or not, it isn't going away anytime soon.

Society can't really ever move beyond itself. As our sense of privacy evolves, there will be growing pains. And there's nothing horribly wrong with still using cash, or still getting a paper statement like it's 1880.

Worldwide Film Set

I have the hope to at some point, for some project, have people in various places, like different international locales and LA, shoot the same scene, with the reverse being the other place. Cutting it together without the audience knowing the 2 singles are shot on different continents. An international production without airfare or hotels to budget. Don't have a project in mind yet, but I like the idea of doing it.

I already have leads on locations in LA that can double for places far away (like Australia). I'm thinking other units in other places may also be able to find locations that can double for LA. That way 2 scenes, one set here in LA and another set elsewhere, can be shot with both actors in both scenes on camera, but actually never leaving their respective towns. Perhaps a "You go take care of this in LA." "ok I will" scene followed by a "you didn't take care of it, so I flew here to do it myself" "I'm sorry" scene.

It all works because video conference coordination, even from set on location, and sending footage/assets with the internet is doable.

Space Station Flyover

The ISS flies over Los Angeles on Christmas Eve 2010.

Everything is Global

You have to remember that in the age of Twitter and YouTube, nothing is a local event anymore. Every event is global, or can be global, within seconds

Aral Balkan writing about Microsoft's recent gaff in Norway (from The story behind that nasty Microsoft dance routine).

Big Money is Big

Going by the $1 billion price tag, Facebook is paying about $33 for each Instagram user. That's a fraction of the $118 that Facebook investors will be paying per Facebook user if the company gets its expected $100 billion valuation after going public. By that math, Pachter said, $1 billon "doesn't sound crazy"

(from Barbara Ortutay).

Mobile Devices Overtaking PCs for Accessing Web

With current growth rates, web access by people on the move - via laptops and smart mobile devices - is likely to exceed web access from desktop computers within the next five years.

From an International Telecommunication Union press release from June 2010. There are some that say ...in the next 18–24 months, mobile devices will overtake PCs as the most popular way to access the web and vitally point out the need to stop treating the mobile web as a separate thing.

Seagull Stole GoPro

This may or may not be real, but a seagull stole this guy's camera. Interestingly, the video has already been to Cannes (it was filmed there).

Beware Filter Bubbles

As web personalize services there's an unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview.

Racecar Driving Physics

What it takes to race cars.

Netflix is Bigger than BitTorrent

Netflix has overtaken BitTorrent when traffic is averaged over 24 hours...the data show that people are increasingly more interested in streaming legitimate paid content than pirating it if the price is right and the delivery is convenient

(from PCWorld). May mean legitimate video streaming is using more bandwidth than not-always-legitimate-streaming. When iTunes was launched years ago it may similarly have begun to catch up to illegal music downloading's use of resources.

Shack Assassin

Sniper targets a dangerous... building. Shot as a proof-of-concept video.

To Use a CDN for JavaScript or Not

If we use Google’s JavaScript Library CDN, we are asking the majority of our website visitors (who don’t have jQuery already cached) to take a 1/3 of a second penalty (the time to connection to Google’s CDN) to potentially save a minority of our website visitors (those who do have a cached copy of jQuery) 1/3 of a second (the length of time to download jQuery 1.3.2 over a 768kps connection). That does not make sense

(from Should You Use JavaScript Library CDNs?).

Animatronics

John Nolan's animatronics show reel.

SF to Paris in Two Minutes

Nate Bolt's airplane time-lapse from San Francisco to Paris and the ...photos during take-off and landing are all computer models and totally rendered because I would never use an electronic device during times when the FAA prohibits them.

Calculator

I wrote many programs on this old calculator. I wrote a chess program, and a race-car game. I wrote a maze game that used data compression to fit many levels in the small memory, and another that made infinite random but still solvable mazes. For chemistry class, I wrote a program that could "roll" virtual dice, instead of the real ones, for an experiment on nuclear decay. After seeing a tv show about the enigma code the Germans used in World War Two, I wrote an encryption program that was based on it, but more powerful (many decades of technology made it much easier for me to do than it would have been for them).

On my way to visit my then girlfriend in Europe, I wrote a game program for her that had a hidden, and encrypted, love note built into it. I put the program on her calculator and later, an ocean away, I surprised her with how to get it to ask her for the secret code and to read it. A few of my math grades may have reflected the attention I gave this device, instead of my school work. But I had a lot of fun, and still use much of what it taught me.

My First Cell Phone

It was small, this is it with the battery installed and all, but it was mighty. Had a small keyboard that could plug into the bottom, got great reception and could email, txt and make phone calls. Kind of miss using it.

Quadrocopter Ball Juggling

Ball juggling experiments with quadrotors.