Videos of robots created by Boston Dynamics have been circulating alot around the Web lately. Here’s one of them, an older one called RISE

Imagine that crawling up your balcony or nearby tree. Or imagine dozens of them, all over your house.

I find it interesting that Boston Dynamics, which is in the business of making military robots, is also very good at promoting themselves with their videos. People that would not watch videos of jet planes or artillery are fascinated by their videos, even if the former videos and weapons could be just as sophisticated as the latter. Boston Dynamics is good at downplaying the military role of their robots, but I am positive that the expectation of the military is that these robots could eventually be used in warfare. (The U.S. military is not funding these machines to help you clean your house.) We watch the videos, partly in admiration and partly in fear.

I think one of the reasons that these videos do well is the air of fear they possess. The robots aren’t doing domestic things. They look harmful, even if they aren’t shown doing anything harmful or potentially harmful. People that have commented on them note that. That’s not necessarily the fault of Boston Dynamics: humans have been worried about robots for along time. (Asimov’s Laws of Robotics are what they are for a reason.) But Boston Dynamics doesn’t do anything to dissuade us that we shouldn’t fear these robots, either. We fear robots, most of all for their potential to overwhelm us. The videos by Boston Dynamics show us that robots are well on their way to doing that.

It’s just a matter of time before we see videos of swarms of small robots or drones like in Minority Report. Or large troops of headless biped robots attacking an outpost. Or a pack of robot dogs pursuing soldiers. This, as much as anything, is the future.

This blog post, Stop your bitching; you’re not paying for it! – Sensei Blogs, is typical of some of the critics who argue that users of Instagram have no right to get mad. If you agree with the assumptions of the author, it makes sense. However, I am here to argue that you should not agree with those assumptions.

First off, I would argue that the title of this blog post could apply not to you, but to Instagram, Facebook, etc. They should be delighted they are getting such a sweet deal. Not only all this free content from you, but they are getting free promotion / advertising from you and they are getting your social graph…ALL FOR FREE.  Quite the deal, yes? Many companies would love all that free content and advertisers. Somehow social media sites feel that they have a right to it. They are wrong: they do not have a right to it. Look at MySpace, or Friendster, or any of the many start-ups trying to get your content and promotion and social graph. That stuff that you possess, that you create, has alot of value, and no one has a right to it.

You might then argue: my content is not valuable. First off, it is very difficult to say what is of value. I have blog posts that have only a few views, and blog posts that have tens of thousands of views. That’s just me. Multiply that by many bloggers and you have a Long Tail in action. And if your social media site (e.g. Instagram) is seen as valuable by a lot of people, then big name companies will flock to it and bring alot more value to it. Likewise, if no one cares about your site anymore (e.g. My Space), then you can forget about getting big name companies to your site unless you are willing to pay them a lot of money. That’s right: even those trivial blog posts and photos of cats add up one way or another.

Furthermore, the service that social media sites are providing is not all that valuable. I am sure their IT people work hard. But really, is there anything about the technology used by Instagram, or Facebook, or any social media company that is so advanced, so revolutionary, that you think: if I don’t use this site, my life won’t be the same? If anything, the sites that provide you email provide a much more valuable service than social media sites. Likewise, the technology of social media sites is not difficult to recreate. What makes Facebook powerful is not the souped up PHP code that they write: it’s the social graph you bring and the activity you engage in there. People use Facebook despite the technology, not because of it. People use Instagram not because of the filters, but because of the others that they want to share photos with.

You might argue: well, they need to make money. Sorry, but no one is entitled to that. Ask journalists and other quality writers: they provide a much more valuable service than social media sites, and they have a devil of a time making money. Same with many folks creating things on the web. Everyone is having a hard time making money, and social media sites are no more entitled to it than anyone else. Is that good? No. Is it the way it is for many at this time? Yes.

Which brings me to Apple and the App Store. Apple has a different model than social media sites. With Apple, you create content (i.e., an app) and if it is of good quality, you can put it in the App Store and make money from it. The chances of you making money are slim, but the chances of you making money on Instagram or Facebook is none. Likewise if you publish an e-book on Amazon. You have some chance of making some money from it. I think the way of the future is in content aggregators that pay content creators for their content. Aggregators that respect your content, not try and rip it off.

When people say: “if you are not paying, you are the product, not the customer”, tell them that they have it wrong. If you are not paying, you are the staff, not the product. And as the staff, you expect to benefit somehow.  Demand payment or good service, and if you don’t get it, go elsewhere. You aren’t beholden to any site, and the material you create has value to you and lots of other people. Expect more for it. Don’t settle for being taken advantage of and used. You deserve better.

Over time, the sites that provide more value to users will win over sites that don’t. Business models that rip off users will become archaic. You can be skeptical, but I would advise any start-up that wants to win work on developing a tangible rewards program. Over time those will companies will be the winners.

And while they are for a good cause, this is one more step to making drones acceptible. Read Google Drones Launch In Africa (from Fast Company).

Great late night driving music….

BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge continues to provide great music. Scour YouTube for more great covers and performances.

Rita Ora Frank Ocean Swim Good BBC Radio 1 Xtra Live Lounge 2012 – YouTube

It is how women in Egypt are using social media to prevent sexual assault during demonstrations in Tahrir Square. See this article in Al Jazeera English for more details: Tahrir’s bodyguards.

You can also follow @tahrirbodyguard on Twitter.

 

I love this piece of music, and now we are approaching Christmas, I can blog about it. 🙂

I came across this surrendipitously today on YouTube.  Sometimes the best things in life arrive that way.

Enjoy.

O Come, Emmanuel – (Piano/Cello) – ThePianoGuys – YouTube

A good article from Reuters on how IBM (my company) is building An operating system for cities. Each city is using a facility from IBM (Intelligent Operations Center (IOC)) to solve problems that they are having, be it water management, traffic management, what have you. If you’d like to know more about IOC, go here ( Intelligent Operations Center).

I got this today, and while it has the markings of being legit, the first question you have to ask yourself is why Yahoo! would use a web site other than Yahoo! in emails to you. Also, why would the email come from someone other than Yahoo! (And for you Gmail snobs, you may see them for Gmail as well). Needless to say, it is a phishing attempt and should be deleted.

—- Text below this line —-

Dear Account User,

Your mailbox has exceeded the limit of 30 GB, which is as set by your
manager, you are currently at 30.9GB, very soon you will not be able to
create new e-mail to send or receive again until you validate your
mailbox.To re-validate your mailbox, click on the link below and follow
the instruction for your upgrade.

http://4discorecords.com/templates/atomic/new/administrator_restore.htm

Sincerely,

Email Administrator.

Copyright © 2012 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.Copyright/IP Policy |
Terms of Service

What is this?

Well, if you guessed “minesweeper”, you’d be correct. Actually, reading about it here, Mine Kafon: The low-tech, high-design tumbleweed minesweeper – CNN.com, I got to thinking about something else. You can see the objections to the idea on the CNN article. It is a classic case, though, of someone being too conservative in their objections and missing the point. The creator of this recognizes the limitations. What the critic doesn’t recognize, though, is the limits of his criticisms. To me, any and all approaches should be taken to removing land mines. If this idea helps, so much the better.

When proposing new ideas, look out for those who are too conservative in their objections. Be it a small idea, or a big one like this.

Here’s the NYTimes.com obituary for Zig Ziglar, 86, Motivational Speaker and Author, who died recently. The obit is worth reading to get a sense of the man. He was a top notch motivational speaker, getting paid $50,000 for each one. And according to the NYTimes obit…

He had a formula: Prepare extensively every time, be funny (“Every seven to nine minutes I’ll have them laughing”), and frequently reinforce the broader message (“I make certain that every five minutes I’m giving them a concept, an idea, a process, a hope builder”).

It sounds obvious, but when I think of how many presentations that I have had to listen to over the years, it’s anything but. I think anyone giving a talk in the near future should review it and restructure it with this formula in mind. (Yes, anyone can be funny. Even trying to be funny in a self deprecating way can be appreciated by an audience.)

This version is particularly wonderful. Sarah Vaughn was so young and lovely at the time when this was filmed. And no one can do this classic better than her. Here’s Sarah Vaughn, The Nearness of You (YouTube)

How? By moving this way: Senate Judiciary Committee Approves Overhaul of Electronic Communications Privacy Act – NYTimes.com. As the Times says:

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved a bill that would strengthen privacy protection for e-mails by requiring law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant from a judge in most cases before gaining access to messages in individual accounts stored electronically.

Someone on Twitter said that we should thank General Petraeus for this, and they may be correct. His recent situation likely has lead to bipartisan support for updating the law and giving more protection to email (which is more or less the only mail people send or receive these days)

I believe laws for email and other IT need to be updated more frequently (this law was on the books in 1986). Not as often as tech does, but it should be regularly reviewed for relvance.

It’s good to see New York city taking advantage of existing infrastructure (pay phone pods) to make their city more digital: First of 250 internet-connected touchscreens replace pay phones in New York City | The Verge. It is not as novel as this use of the pay phone pods (How New York Pay Phones Became Guerrilla Libraries – Arts & Lifestyle – The Atlantic Cities) but it will be more useful.A great example of the city becoming a computer.

It is good to see New York leading in efforts to make theirs a digital city. See also this article, More NY Subway Stations Will Get Wi-Fi, Cell Service – Personal-tech – Wireless Technology – BYTE. Digital cities need user interfaces (like the touchscreens), but they also need infrastructure (the wireless network). Now they need more APIs and other components and subsystems if they are going to truly become something users can use and programmers can program. But it’s getting there.

While lots of cities will be pursuing such ideas, I think New York making progress like this will help propel alot of other cities to become more digital.

(Standard disclaimer: this post expresses my own thoughts and opinions and not those of my employer.)

..if you are this jellyfish

The NYTimes has an excellent article on the Immortal Jellyfish, here: Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality? – NYTimes.com.

Well worth a read. Maybe only Taxes are the only thing certain anymore.

It seems a universal thing to slam Black Friday. And the excessive of it is a bad thing, for certain. However, here’s six reasons why it is a good things.

1. It helps you get your Christmas shopping out of the way.
2. It helps you save on your Christmas shopping.
3. It gives you a chance to get away from your family on American Thanksgiving 🙂
4. It helps retailers plan their year. Retail is a tough business. This helps make it less difficult.
5. It’s forces retailers to compete for your business by offering you good deals.
6. It’s voluntary. No one is making you go and shop. Don’t like Black Friday? Don’t go.

It is very likely that Black Friday is eventually going to blow up. In Canada, Boxing Day sales (which used to happen on December 26th and are just as bad if not worse than Black Friday) have become diluted over time. Now it’s Boxing Week sales, and sales before Christmas, etc. in Canada. I expect the same thing will happen with Black Friday. In the meantime, those keen to shop and save should get out there. The rest should enjoy the season and relax and unwind.

 

While lots of office space still conforms to cubicleland, more and more of it are looking like this: The new Google HQ in Toronto is better than your office. It’s a good article, and you should check it out to see what the new HQ looks like. (Yes, it has the ubiquitous foosball table, but it has a nice Toronto mural on the wall).

I think this is going to be the way it is or should be for offices of the future. For example, if you go and look up jobs at Medium (e.g., this one,Infrastructure Engineer — Work at Medium — Medium), you will see that they are promoting their stylish workplace at the same time they are looking for skilled people to work for them. And why not? Better work environments give companies competitive advantages when it comes to attracting talent. Even mobile work spaces like the ING DIRECT Canada Downtown Café in Toronto has a similar style to it.

If you want people to work for you now and in the future, you need to provide a similar if not better work environment. This is the new vernacular for the workplace.

It may sound ridiculous, “The upcoming robot infestation problem”, so consider this:

1. Build your own drones: iStrike Shuttle | Dream Cheeky
2. Wifi everywhere: More NY Subway Stations Will Get Wi-Fi, Cell Service – Personal-tech – Wireless Technology – BYTE

Mobile technology is going to be going in a new direction. It will no longer need to be held by you. It will be very cheap and very mobile. You can release it into the physical world and it can go places for you and monitor or deliver things for you, as #1 shows. Instead of stalking your ex on Facebook, you can stalk them by releasing a drone to circle their yard. Want to see if someone is doing something they shouldn’t? Send a drone (or 10).

The newer drones won’t continue to be as primitive as #1: they’ll be small and sophisticated. Just as handheld devices have become more and more sophisticated, so too will the new personal drones. And what will the drones use to communicate back and forth? Why the new wifi that will be built out in our cities. (See #2).  People will be able to release drones onto the ground, into the air, and they will send information back via metro wifi and determine future information based on feedback from their base.

Already there are primitive drone type devices for sale in electronic stores. About the only thing that will prevent drones from having more of a future will be cost or capability. But if the cost goes down, expect to see alot more drones in use and walking or flying in a neighborhood near you. What will people do with them? If they are general purpose enough, you will see all sorts of uses for personal and professional drones and robots.

Finally, there is no guarantee they will be harmless drones, either. More likely they could be like this:

Why? Two reasons at least. One, she has lots of great books on wine you can pick up as gifts, including ‘Unquenchable’ and ‘Red, White and Drunk All Over’. Her latest just came out in paperback.

Two, she can help you save money and get great wine if you go here: Wine Reviews and Food Pairings.

There’s lots of other good reasons to visit her site but those are two great ones to get you started.

Cheers!

P.S. Mobile phone users, check out her mobile app as well.

This: Facebook ‘Security’ Phone Number Being Sold To Advertisers – Business Insider

Yep. The phone number they said was security purposes is now being used to target you more effectively for advertisements

You should just assume that any information that you provide Facebook will be used against you. No wonder they are rapidly becoming the next version of MySpace.

Can be wiped away by reading this, Who’s to Blame for the Hostess Bankruptcy: Wall Street, Unions, or Carbs? – Jordan Weissmann – The Atlantic. As anyone with intelligence would suspect, it is not a simple matter of blaming the unions or the executives, though all have made bad decisions that have cost the company. It also sounds like the company is dysfunctional from top to bottom. Finally, as much as people are sentimental about the loss of the company, I think there is more sentiment than demand for the product.

There will be lots more to come from Hostess, or whomever ends up taking over the products they produce. But to use the situation as one to make political points means you miss the real problems there.

It could be tempting to see Nate Silver as someone trendy that will come and go, especially after the way people went gaga over him during the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election. But Silver is in the vanguard of how journalism is changing over the next decade. Alot of work with regards to data and news and journalism has been ongoing for a few years, but now it is going to accelerate. If you follow only one person to keep tabs on the changes, you should follow Nate.

To get a taste of what I mean, check out this interview of him: Nate Silver on the Election, Pundits, and His Drunk Alter Ego – C Notes – November 2012.

Even if you don’t agree with me, read the interview: he’s an interesting guy and they did a good job. Well worth a few minutes (but you will be thinking about it long afterwards).

 

The first is this one, China congress ends with new leader, and fractured leadership – The Globe and Mail.

The second is this one, How Online Sleuths Are Transforming Chinese Officialdom | Tea Leaf Nation.

Read one, then the other. They are really two sides of the same story, and they lead to the idea that China is going to be undergoing some dramatic shifts in the next decade. I am not hopeful for positive change in China, but no one knows this, not even the Chinese themselves, I suspect.

And both Black Cab Sessions. First the new: Wall.

Black Cab Sessions – WALL – YouTube

Second, thanks to YouTube popping this up, I came across this much older session that deserves a listen. Lovely to see Bach played on a cello for Black Cab Sessions!

Black Cab Sessions – Johnny Byers – YouTube

If you have a root disk on an AMI on Amazon’s EC2 server that is too small and you want to increase it, you have to do two things.

You need to 1) create a new volume and 2) you need to resize it.

To create a new volume, you have to stop the server, take a snapshot of the current drive, build a new bigger volume with the snapshot, detach the old volume and attach the new volume. (Note: make sure you get the name of the mount point correct. I was typing /dev/sda instead of /dev/sda1 and it was failing).

Once you do that and start the server, you need to login to the server and increase the disk size. For Ubuntu this will be done with resize2fs command. On Windows, it will be done with the diskpart command.

The following links will provide you with some details on these steps:

• Resize Amazon EC2 Windows Server Boot Disk | Ready Code

• Increase disk size for an EC2 instance in AWS

• Resizing Root Partition on Linux in Amazon EC2 | Pinehead.tv

• IT KB Central: Attach additional Volume(s) to AWS EC2 Linux (Ubuntu) Instance(s)

Note, for the diskpart command, you should enter a list disk and list partition command and then enter commands like this select disk=1 and select partition=1 (assuming that you want to extend disk 1 and partition 1. I think the root drive is disk 0, in which case you just enter select disk=0)

I am entering all this because I spent far too many hours figuring this out. Why should you have to as well? 🙂

CNET already has the answer, here: iPad Mini vs. Google Nexus 7 vs. Amazon Kindle Fire HD | iPad Atlas – CNET Reviews.

Short answer: Apple fans will get the Mini. People who are not fans or looking to save money will likely gravitate towards the other two.

My first thought is that this is going to grow the tablet market signifigantly, and all three companies will benefit in the short term.

My second thought is that Apple is just getting started, and subsequent Minis will get better and better. I can’t see why Google won’t follow suit.

Exciting times!

 

can be found here: Author Quote Posters – Design – ShortList Magazine.

My favourite is this:

Go to the link to see the rest.

(Thanks to @KatinWilm for this. )

 

 

Lamb – Gorecki – Live At Glastonbury 2003 – YouTube

Luminous and ethereal.

Carly’s EP, “The Cure for Growing Older” can be purchased at iTunes. She’s an independent artist, so put cancel that afternoon coffee run and get this instead. 🙂

Enjoy.

More on Carly can be found at her website.

Emma – Carly Rhiannon – YouTube

Ezra Klein does a good job about explaining QE3 (Here’s why everyone is so excited about what the Fed did yesterday). So much so that I think you should go read it (if for no other reason, you will now know what QE3 is.)

What he does leave out is something I don’t think alot of people are talking about, and that is that the U.S. Federal Reserve is exercising new approaches to affecting the economy. I think QE3 will be either be successful or at the very least, not unsuccessful. While being successful is important now, what is just as important is that in the future, the Fed (and other central banks around the world) will have a precedent for doing the same thing again. And that is a good thing.

The head of the Fed, Ben Bernanke, should have done this along time ago. I think partly he did not because of push back and fears of what this might do. But now the precedent has been set, it will not be as hard to do again in the future.

And that’s a good thing.

John Coltrane, one of the great musicians of the 20th century, was born on this day. There’s a wealth of video on YouTube you can watch to get a sense of his greatness, including this (John Coltrane – My Favorite Things Live 1965 – YouTube)

You can watch him on YouTube, but better still, go and buy some of his music.

 

 

This map was taken from here: Where life expectancy is falling (in one map). Key quote:

The areas are by and large rural and lower income. They also tend to be areas with fewer doctors, likely meaning less access to the health care resources available elsewhere in the country.

I would be interested to know obesity rates and smoking rates in these areas. Also it is noteworthy that it is concentrated in the South of the U.S. I don’t know if there is a cultural element coming in there (and it would likely be hard to measure, especially compared to concrete things such as obesity, exercise rates, smoking, etc.).

Regardless, it’s not good.

P.S. Obesity rates are here and they overlap to a great degree.

I came across these great portraits of Enrico Nagel, like this one:

via Andrew Sullivan’s blog. I wanted to know more, and I clicked through to this link, Flavorwire » Enrico Nagel’s Delightfully Strange Scanner Portraits. I recommend you do too: there’s lots of great portraiture there.

It put me in mind of this cover art from the Tragically Hip from 1992, for the album, Fully Completely

The album came with art similar to Nagel’s. Both are really good. The Hip has the benefit of coming with great music too. 🙂

While there is a focus here on white Americans, Life Expectancy for Less Educated Whites in U.S. Is Shrinking – NYTimes.com, the fact that life expectancy for ANY group in the U.S. is inexcusable. Women in particular have been hit hard. Key quote:

The five-year decline for white women rivals the catastrophic seven-year drop for Russian men in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, said Michael Marmot, director of the Institute of Health Equity in London.

It’s not a small thing: it’s comparable to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

American society as a whole is suffering badly. This is a key indicator of it, and a signifigant sign more dramatic changes need to occur.

Exquisite.

The Civil Wars – Billie Jean (Michael Jackson Cover) – YouTube

One reason: cell phones. As this article shows, Obama’s Lead Looks Stronger in Polls That Include Cellphones – NYTimes.com, there is a big difference in polls that use cell phones in their mix and those that do not.

I think the ones that that include cell phones show better results. If they do, I also expect the ones that do not include cell phones will change their methodology soon. Or go out of business.

 

He jokes he is not a socialist, but read his comments in this article, Lloyd Blankfein’s ‘socialist’ moment – The Globe and Mail. Such comments can easily get you labelled “socialist” in large parts of Western countries. For example, some of things attributed to him in the article are:

The U.S. economy does not do a good enough job of distributing wealth fairly. The U.S. government needs to keep spending. Investment banks must accept more regulation. Oh, and bankers should be prepared for the criticism that comes with having been at the centre of the financial crisis.

Such declarations aren’t coming from Barack Obama or an Occupy Wall Street protester – they’re from Lloyd Blankfein, the head of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Well worth a read.