Soon after my discussion with Hilary Parker and Jenny Bryan about spreadsheets on Not So Standard Deviations, Brooke Anderson forwarded me this article written by Steven Levy about the original granddaddy of spreadsheets, VisiCalc. Actually, the real article was written back in 1984 as so-called microcomputers were just getting their start. VisiCalc was originally written for the Apple II computer and notable competitors at the time included Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Multiplan, all since defunct.

It's interesting to see Levy's perspective on spreadsheets back then and to compare it to the current thinking about data, data science, and reproducibility in science. The problem back then was "ledger sheets" (what we might now call a spreadsheet), which contained numbers and calculations related to businesses, were tedious to make and keep up to date.

Making spreadsheets, however necessary, was a dull chore best left to accountants, junior analysts, or secretaries. As for sophisticated “modeling” tasks – which, among other things, enable executives to project costs for their companies – these tasks could be done only on big mainframe computers by the data-processing people who worked for the companies Harvard MBAs managed.

You can see one issue here: Spreadsheets/Ledgers were a "dull chore", and best left to junior people. However, the "real" computation was done by the people the "data processing" center on big mainframes. So what exactly does that leave for the business executive to do?

Note that the way of doing things back then was effectively reproducible, because the presentation (ledger sheets printed on paper) and the computation (data processing on mainframes) was separated.

The impact of the microcomputer-based spreadsheet program appears profound.

Already, the spreadsheet has redefined the nature of some jobs; to be an accountant in the age of spreadsheet program is — well, almost sexy. And the spreadsheet has begun to be a forceful agent of decentralization, breaking down hierarchies in large companies and diminishing the power of data processing.

There has been much talk in recent years about an “entrepreneurial renaissance” and a new breed of risk-taker who creates businesses where none previously existed. Entrepreneurs and their venture-capitalist backers are emerging as new culture heroes, settlers of another American frontier. Less well known is that most of these new entrepreneurs depend on their economic spreadsheets as much as movie cowboys depend on their horses.

 If you replace "accountant" with "statistician" and "spreadsheet" with "big data" and you are magically teleported into 2016.

The way I see it, in the early 80's, spreadsheets satisfied the never-ending desire that people have to interact with data. Now, with things like tablets and touch-screen phones, you can literally "touch" your data. But it took microcomputers to get to a certain point before interactive data analysis could really be done in a way that we recognize today. Spreadsheets tightened the loop between question and answer by cutting out the Data Processing department and replacing it with an Apple II (or an IBM PC, if you must) right on your desk.

Of course, the combining of presentation with computation comes at a cost of reproducibility and perhaps quality control. Seeing the description of how spreadsheets were originally used, it seems totally natural to me. It is not unlike today's analytic dashboards that give you a window into your business and allow you to "model" various scenarios by tweaking a few numbers of formulas. Over time, people took spreadsheets to all sorts of extremes, using them for purposes for which they were not originally designed, and problems naturally arose.

So now, we are trying to separate out the computation and presentation bits a little. Tools like knitr and R and shiny allow us to do this and to bring them together with a proper toolchain. The loss in interactivity is only slight because of the power of the toolchain and the speed of computers nowadays. Essentially, we've brought back the Data Processing department, but have staffed it with robots and high speed multi-core computers.

tl;dr: new video explains a useful way to manage multiple Gmail accounts in Google Chrome:

YouTube: "Two Many Gmail Accounts? A Chrome Tip"

Background:

I got my first job in 1988 at 14 years old. I sold computer software at a retail software store in the basement of a bookstore called "Software Etc." Soon customers began hiring me to install software for them, at about 7x my hourly wage ($3.91 an hour, versus $20 an hour). My fondness for computers lead me to a lifetime of translating technology to other people.

Ten years later, I was an on-air TV host explaining the web with ZDTV's "Call for Help" with Leo Laporte:

That web explaining TV gig didn't last long, and I don't do much computer consulting these days. But I still get a deep thrill from helping people use these tools.

Recently I realized that many of my friends have multiple Gmail accounts, like I do. And I realized they mostly used Google Chrome, like I do. And many of them were signing out from one Gmail account each time they wanted to sign into their other Gmail! Or frequently using Incognito windows on their own personal computers. That isn't necessary - as it turns out, the Google Chromemakers have fashioned a useful system of "user profiles" and here's a short video that explains how it might be useful to you:

This kind of technology suggestion video is not a timeless truth - someday like Netscape, and Microsoft, Google will no longer dominate our online lives. But for now, if it does, you might find this tip useful. And then this will be a time capsule to 2016 browsing & online identity history. Perhaps I accentuated the rate of decay on this video by filming in 640x480 using a 2003 iSight web camera. Shooting a tech tip, in my glasses, at my desk, using an old webcam, felt like a nice change of pace from my typical greenscreen productions! Produced with the now-typical level of subtitle saturation (thorough).

Ben: Here’s a guest post from Daniele Procida, Community Manager at Divio – he’s a Djangonaut and lover of Python Conferences.

I’m lucky enough not only to work for a company that uses and produces open-source software, but likes to help support it by giving me the opportunity to be involved in Python/Django community conferences around the world.

The most recent of these was PyCon Namibia 2016, in January, organised by a committee of volunteers from Namibia and the UK.

Daniele Procida on Namibian television during the conference

A PyCon is a Python conference; there are dozens of them held around the world each year, from huge ones, such as PyCon US which runs for 9 days and hosts thousands of visitors, to much smaller weekend events. And of course there are PyCons of every size in between – wherever you are, there’s probably a PyCon not too far away.

PyCon Namibia 2016 ran from the 24th to 29th January, at the University of Namibia in Windhoek. We had nearly 120 attendees, from most corners of the world – Brazil, USA, Canada, UK, Netherlands, Germany, South Africa, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

As well as talks on a wide variety of Python-related subjects, PyCon also held a number of workshops and tutorials – Python for beginners, Django Girls, django CMS, automated testing, Python packaging using Conda and more.

It can often be a challenge running such workshops at conferences, because attendees don’t always have suitable software already installed. They typically need things like a good text editor, version control and a terminal application, not to mention a correctly-configured Python environment.

In Namibia, where many people don’t have access to a computer of their own, it can be more challenging still. Even where there are computer labs, they’re not always suitable for this kind of work. Unlike keyboards, mice or displays, which are relatively easy to get hold of, computers with the requisite Python software development toolchain installed are not.

PiLab

Our solution was to prepare a travelling computer laboratory, a Raspberry PiLab.

With a generous grant from the Python Software Foundation and financial support from the Phoenix Project at Cardiff University (one of the main backers of the conference) we purchased and configured 50 Raspberry Pis – complete with HDMI-VGA converters and wireless adaptors – from The PiHut (who also supported the project by offering a substantial discount).

It wasn’t much work – we had to set up just one machine, and then patiently copy the disk image to 49 other SD cards.

50 Raspberry Pis take up remarkably little space in a suitcase. We had more than one conversation with an airport official that went like this:

“What’s in this suitcase?”
“Fifty computers for a conference.”
“Ha ha.”
“No, really, there are fifty computers in there.”

In practice, our Raspberry Pis proved to be extremely effective and did their job beautifully, just as we’d hoped, but we also noticed some unexpected things too.

If you have to borrow or share a computer, you can’t simply mess around or experiment with it, for fear of breaking something. That’s a luxury that comes from having a computer of your own, and it’s necessary when you’re learning programming: you have to be able to install, tweak, configure and even break things.

The very low cost of the Raspberry Pis, and even their small size and modest appearance, made users feel less inhibited about trying things out and experimenting.

In countries like Namibia, the Raspberry Pi represents an excellent opportunity for overcoming barriers to participation in programming. At the end of the conference batches of the Raspberry Pis were handed over to new custodians, to be used for future teaching workshops, learning, experimentation and exploration.

Recipients included the department of Computer Science at UNAM, PyNam (the Python Namibia Society), PyZim (Python Zimbabwe) and numerous individual attendees in the Namibian Python community, amongst them several Namibian high-school pupils who attended the conference.

The Raspberry Pis were genuinely one of the stars at PyCon Namibia, and we were delighted at how well the Pi once again proved itself to be an ideal way to put the opportunity to be a programmer into the hands of more people.

We’re eager to find out how they are used over the coming months.

About Namibia

Namibia, in south-western Africa, has the world’s second-lowest population density. It’s known to many people mainly as a tourist destination, for its abundant wildlife and extraordinary landscapes, or as a site of rich natural resources, but there’s much more to it than that.

Since its independence in 1990, Namibia has been a democratic and politically stable nation, with a free press and an independent judiciary. It’s a safe and orderly place. Though it suffers from economic hardship and inequality, it has a promising future, and we’re sure that having a home-grown software development industry will be part of that future – and the Raspberry Pi can make its own small positive contribution too.

What’s next

We expect some great things from the growing Python community in Namibia. We heard some extremely impressive talks at the conference, and there is clearly not only some real programming talent there, but also an enthusiasm for it that will go a long way. Combined with the African attitude of can-do, we’re sure it will mean that we’ll be seeing and hearing more from Namibian programmers in the future.

And if you want to learn more about it at close hand, watch this space – and come to PyCon Namibia 2017 yourself.

In the meantime, the enthusiasm we saw at the event has not waned. Attendees from other African countries have gone back home with plans for new events of their own. The newly-created Python Africa email list is already discussing the organisation of PyCons in Nigeria  and Benin, and plans are afoot for more Django Girls workshops across the continent.

No doubt there’ll be a role for Raspberry PiLabs there too.

The post Raspberry PiLab at PyCon Namibia 2016 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Tim Cook's message to customers last week regarding iPhone security will mark a defining moment for his legacy as Apple CEO. While the legal and technological ramifications resulting from the San Bernardino iPhone case will take months and years to play themselves out, the business implications are already visible. One of the major questions facing Apple in the post-Steve Jobs era was how the company would be managed in such a way as to maintain its unique culture while keeping the product front and center. By remaining true to his promise regarding security and privacy, Tim Cook continues to build his legacy of strengthening the Apple experience by embracing principles and values that transcend hardware and software. 

The Apple Experience

There have been a handful of events since 2011 that have served as key milestones in Cook's tenure as CEO. The Apple Maps debacle, Apple Retail turmoil, Apple supply chain working conditions, environmental activism, and data privacy and security, have each played a role in laying the groundwork for Tim Cook's legacy. With Jony Ive focused on Apple's product vision, Tim Cook has been playing to his strengths dedicating much of his attention to nurturing the Apple experience by focusing on six values: security and privacy, trust, equality and ethics, and environmental responsibility. The following diagram highlights how Jony Ive's product vision is combined with Cook's value-oriented focus to create the Apple experience.   

For each of these six values, there have been specific events where Cook's actions demonstrated his leadership style and vision.

Security and Privacy

Tim Cook's long-standing stance on security and privacy were thrown into the public circle last week with the U.S. Department of Justice getting a federal judge to order Apple help them break into an iPhone involved in the San Bernardino terror case. Cook's hard-line stance against such an order should not have come as a surprise. Since becoming CEO, Cook has embarked on an unwavering campaign to regard security and privacy as human rights. This position is not just different from other technology companies, but is downright remarkable given the amount of risk Cook is willing to take on by believing so firmly in those stances. 

Last year, Cook gave a speech at the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Champions of Freedom event where he came down harshly on companies monetizing user data and not doing enough to educate customers as to how their personal information is being used. While some thought Cook was being a hypocrite by not recognizing what is seemingly the contradiction found with Apple's future and greater data collection, Cook's message regarding privacy was focused on the customer. The number one priority is to let the customer know what data is being collected and how it is being used. Apple knew that type of practice is simply not found in Silicon Valley, and Cook was determined to keep Apple on a different course.

Another incident highlighting Cook's passion regarding security and privacy was on display when he sat down with Charlie Rose following the iPhone 6 launch (and a few weeks after the iCloud celebrity hacking incident). When referring to rumors that Apple had created a backdoor to its servers, Tim Cook exclaimed to Rose, "they would have to cart us out in a box" before Apple created a backdoor. The message was clear. Apple was going to fight for its users and would be willing to go as far as the U.S. Supreme Court (which now seems quite likely).

Trust

Another key attribute to Tim Cook's legacy has been trust. Over the years, two events have come to demonstrate Cook's intense belief that customer trust is one of the most important values behind the Apple experience: the Apple Maps debacle and Apple Retail turmoil.

In 2012, following the botched Apple Maps launch which saw a mapping service in rough shape in terms of accuracy and usefulness, Tim Cook took it upon himself to issue an apology to Apple customers. The first and last paragraphs of the apology letter highlighted Cook's underlining motivation:

"To our customers,

At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better... 

Everything we do at Apple is aimed at making our products the best in the world. We know that you expect that from us, and we will keep working non-stop until Maps lives up to the same incredibly high standard."

It has been reported that Scott Forstall, who oversaw iOS software and Apple Maps, was fired due to his refusal to officially apologize for an inferior Apple Maps product. From Cook's perspective, Forstall's actions posed a threat to the Apple experience with trust at the heart of the issue. Apple had spent years building goodwill with customers with the end result being hundreds of millions of users trusting Apple that its products would lead to a top-notch experience. With Apple Maps, Forstall put this Apple experience at risk, and Cook took decisive action. This intense focus on the Apple experience soon became Tim Cook's primary motive in everything he has since done leading Apple. 

Cook's focus on nurturing customer trust was also seen in his handling of Apple Retail. After Ron Johnson left as head of Apple Retail in 2011, Apple's retail operations entered a tumultuous period. The iconic stores were still seeing incredible levels of traffic and sales per square foot, but the customer experience was deteriorating. Cook ended up making one of his biggest blunders to date by hiring John Browett to take over Apple Retail. Instead of focusing on the experience produced by the Apple Retail stores, Browett looked at physical Apple Retail locations as profit centers.

After being on the job for just 10 months, Cook fired Browett. Along with the Apple Maps fiasco, Browett's quick dismissal showed that Cook was comfortable admitting mistakes and taking swift action to correct those mistakes. More importantly, Cook learned from those mistakes. A year later, Angela Ahrendts was brought on board to lead Apple Retail. Her success at Burberry was a result of taking the luxury retail playbook and ripping it up by embracing technology. Ahrendts placed the experience above all else. In fact, Ahrendts has publicly mentioned she doesn't consider herself "a great retailer" but instead someone who understands people and the importance of building the right kind of retail team. This caught Cook's attention. He knew that Apple Retail stores were a great tool to build customer trust in terms of the personal touch that Apple Retail employees provide such as sales support, service and workshops. 

Equality and Ethics

In 2012, The New York Times published its "The iEconomy" series, which took a closer look at the negatives associated with globalization. Apple's supply chain was thrown into the spotlight. Apple's reliance on its supply chain was illustrated through descriptions and tales of unacceptable working conditions. It has been reported that Cook thought The New York Times investigative series was not accurate and very misleading. Instead of being content with the progress Apple had already been making with its supply chain, the iEconomy series seemed to reenergize Cook. He was on a mission to place Apple as the champion of human rights that went well beyond what other companies were doing.  He wanted Apple to be the undisputed leader.

Cook placed Jeff Williams as the executive monitoring third-party contract manufacturer and supplier working conditions. While there is still much progress to be made, Cook's focus on human rights issues once again relates back to the Apple experience. There is a story behind every Apple product, including how it is made, and Cook understood that the Apple experience began all the way back with the raw materials at factories and mines.

In addition, Cook has pushed for equality in other parts of daily life, becoming much more vocal in current political affairs by using Apple's power and standing to extend his reach. While it may be hard to find the direct relationship between these actions and Apple products, Tim Cook's motivation is clear: Apple is a company that stands for everyone. 

Environmental Responsibility

Apple's aggressive stance on green initiatives has been well chronicled in the press, but the motivation behind the actions are still being underestimated. Whether it was creating working forests in Maine and North Carolina, or building extensive solar projects in China, Cook has embarked Apple on a mission to minimize its impact on the environment. Cook hired Lisa Jackson, former Environmental Protection Agency chief, in 2013 to oversee Apple's environmental practices. It's not that this focus on being environmentally-focused started with Cook's imagination, especially since we can look back at how Apple embarked on more environmental friendly decisions in its product lineup under Steve Jobs. However, Cook felt that Apple's leadership status in the global economy placed it in an unique position to serve as an example for others. 

The Product

Apple's mission is to create products that people love. When judging Tim Cook's performance, the mistake many people have been making is analyzing the Apple CEO position as a seat that has to be filled with a product visionary like Steve Jobs. Not only is this faulty logic, but it fails to comprehend Cook's strengths. Tim Cook is Apple's CEO because he is not a product visionary.

Apple's current success was not due to Steve Jobs carrying the company on his shoulders. Thanks to Apple's revamped public relations strategy, we have gotten a better look at how the Apple machine actually operates. There is much more going on behind the scenes than a dictator not allowing debate, disagreement, discussion and collaboration.

Even though Cook is not a product person, this fact does not take anything away from Apple or his legacy since Jony Ive is purveyor of Apple's product mission. In fact, evidence would suggest Jony Ive has actually been the purveyor of Apple's product philosophy for over 15 years. Cook is confident that the executive team he has assembled will promote debate and discussion, just like in the past, leading to products that people love. Meanwhile, Cook dedicates his time and energy to overseeing the management team responsible for this debate and discussion while strengthening the Apple experience by looking at values that go beyond the tangible product. 

A Defining Moment

Tim Cook's message to customers last week regarding iPhone security will go down as one of the defining moments of his tenure as CEO because it perfectly encapsulated Cook's motivation as CEO. According to Cook, the best way to keep Apple's mission statement focused on the product is to embrace and strengthen ideals that strengthen the relationship with customers.

One paragraph from Cook's letter stood out: "While we believe the FBI's intentions are good, it would be wrong for the government to force us to build a backdoor into our products. And ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect."

Cook's letter wasn't just about an iPhone 5c or encryption. Instead, Cook took a stand protecting the very same ideals that the U.S. government is tasked to protect. Apple is known as the iPhone company today but could very well be known as a personal transportation business in 20 years. Despite this changing product mix, Cook knows the ideals he is focused on promoting within Apple's culture will remain unchanged. The Tim Cook legacy will one day be remembered as the era in which these ideals were established and engrained into the Apple experience. Even though the product will always be at the center of it all, hardware and software can only go so far in advancing humanity. 

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I’ve been thinking a lot about happiness and gravy. And not just because gravy (even vegan gravy) is delicious.

People are always telling me that I seem really content with my life. Granted, it’s been fairly easy (I wasn’t born in a country at war, my family had enough money to clothe and feed me, I mostly have my health, and I’ve found a way to make a living off of my creativity). My life isn’t without some struggles and loss though. That’s unavoidable, regardless of who you are.

Sometimes folks ask me what my expectations are with my freelancing business or product launches.

My answer is always that I expect very little from anything I do.

When I released my first book I hoped to sell 12 copies. 12. With Creative Class (my first course) I hoped to make a few thousand bucks over a year, to give me extra money on top of my freelancing revenue. And I was just as stoked with this mailing list when it hit 146 subscribers as I am about it now.

This is not because I’m a pessimist, not because I don’t believe in myself and certainly not because of some reverse entitlement or guilt.

My expectations are low because I consider anything beyond a little bit of success to be gravy. Sweet, delicious gravy.

I think about success like a scale with a start and end point. If the left is failure (i.e. a product launch that has zero sales) and the right is winning (not even sure how to quantify that… all of the sales, perhaps?), then somewhere in between is the point where I’m content with things and the rest is gravy. In fact, that contentment point is only slightly past the left edge.

The reason I set the bar so low is because I don’t want to hinge my life, my happiness or my feelings of worth on any given launch or product or thing I do for work. Especially since launches are mostly out of my control and good ones are the result of a billion tiny things going right. Outcomes like a successful launch rely on external factors and other people. That’s not a safe place to draw worth from.

I require very little from what I do to make me happy or content. Past that point (which is mostly a point chosen that covers my costs), the rest is gravy. Meaning, further success is just a bonus. Your meal is what you sustains you. Gravy isn’t required, but it’s nice when you can add it on top of something.

This doesn’t mean I don’t get angry, lose my mind or stress-the-hell out sometimes. Because that totally happens (especially ON launch days). It just means that over-all and on average, I’m more content than feeling those bad things.

I have more fun focusing on the process. Because that’s controllable—if you like what you’re doing outside of the results, then you’re going to like what you’re doing regardless of those results. Enjoying what you’re working on? Then KEEP DOING IT. Positive outcomes are great, but they’re just gravy on an already-delicious meal.

Which do you focus on, the process or the outcome?

If you’re not sure, consider your self-talk. Do you say:

• What if this fails?
• What if in doing this, I’m thought of as a fraud?
• What if this doesn’t make 5 or 6 figures in revenue?

Or:

• I really enjoy doing this sort of work.
• I’m stoked to be consumed by making what I’m making!

There’s obviously a huge difference, yes? The first way of thinking is outcome-based (and can lead you to not even starting something) and the second is process-based (where any positive outcome is really just gravy).

Developing a mindset that attaches some worth to the effort you put into something makes the process enjoyable and rewarding. Otherwise, it’s too difficult to start (let alone finish and launch) what you’re working on.

A lot of times people confuse being content with not being driven. This logic is flawed though – because contentment means I’m happy with where things are at right now but still endlessly strive to do more, to create more and to make the things I’ve made even better. The contentment is what drives me forward to want to do more things. (Like a jetpack!)

Things won’t always go right. Which is a nice way of saying that sometimes life is going to shit on your face or your mind is going run off to become a ninja. But with a low enough bar, those obstacles are overcome-able. And the wins, even the tiny ones, those just become delicious gravy.

The Flipped Contribution model is one that removes the project as the center of participation design and instead focuses on developing a strong, skill-set-specific, contributor-led community serving multiple projects.

They’re building the opportunity for projects to get involved with them. They’re building the community they want to see in the world.

Read my full post on Opensource.com

Image by cordyceps, CC BY 2.0

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The dispute between Apple and the FBI is a much closer question than it is being framed as in most of the tech press. In large part this is because the dispute itself is being serially mischaracterized by both Apple supporters and detractors.

Apple supporters are, in my estimation, too easily conflating the security issues at hand with the more fundamental debate about encryption; detractors are trivializing the significance of the FBI’s request by suggesting they simply want Apple to unlock the phone.

My goal with this piece is to, in as plain language as possible, lay out the issues at hand, give a framework to think about them, and explain why I am ultimately supporting Apple’s decision.

Three Debates

The first thing to understand about the issue at hand is that there are three separate debates going on: the issue at hand, the encryption debate, and the PR battle. To understand the issue it is necessary to separate them, but to figure out which side may win it is equally critical to understand how they relate to each other.

The Issue At Hand

As I laid out last week, iPhones running iOS 8 or later have all of their contents encrypted on-disk with very strong encryption that is practically unbreakable. Therefore, the most realistic way to get access to the contents of the iPhone in question in this case is to brute force — i.e. try every possible combination — the passcode on the device. This passcode, in conjunction with the iPhone’s unique ID key (UID) that is embedded at manufacture and unknown by Apple, forms a “key” that unlocks the contents of the drive.

Given that this is an obvious way to break into an iPhone, Apple has instituted a number of software-based protections against brute force attacks, specifically a (user-selected) option to delete the contents of the disk after 10 failed passcode entries¹ and a five-second delay between passcode entries. In addition, the passcode must be entered on the device’s touchscreen.

The FBI is asking Apple to remove these limitations: allow more than 10 passcode tries, remove the five-second delay (there would still be an 80-millisecond delay if the computation is done on the device due to a hardware limitation), and allow passcodes to be entered by a separate device instead of a human finger. The FBI cannot do this themselves because removing this limitation would require the installation of a new version of iOS, which itself requires its own key that is known only to Apple.

Moreover, the FBI is insisting that this is a one-time ask for one device: Apple would be able to use the device’s Unique Device Identifier (UDID), which is different than the aforementioned UID and is known to Apple (and anyone else with the device), to ensure the custom version of iOS could only run on the device in question. In fact, the FBI is even offering to let Apple install the custom version of iOS themselves to ensure it does not leave Apple’s campus.

The Encryption Debate

What the FBI is not asking in this case is that Apple defeat the device’s on-disk encryption, and for good reason: as I noted above the iPhone’s on-disk encryption is practically unbreakable. Small wonder that when, in 2014 with the debut of iOS 8, Apple extended this encryption to all of an iPhone’s data, law enforcement agencies everywhere were aghast. FBI Director James Comey, in an October 2014 speech at the Brookings Institute stated:

Encryption isn’t just a technical feature; it’s a marketing pitch. But it will have very serious consequences for law enforcement and national security agencies at all levels. Sophisticated criminals will come to count on these means of evading detection. It’s the equivalent of a closet that can’t be opened. A safe that can’t be cracked. And my question is, at what cost?…

Cyber adversaries will exploit any vulnerability they find. But it makes more sense to address any security risks by developing intercept solutions during the design phase, rather than resorting to a patchwork solution when law enforcement comes knocking after the fact. And with sophisticated encryption, there might be no solution, leaving the government at a dead end—all in the name of privacy and network security.

“Intercept solutions during the design phase” entail the creation of a so-called “golden key”: a built-in solution to an encryption algorithm that is independent of the user’s passcode. Basically, Comey has for a few years now been agitating for Apple’s on-disk encryption be designed like a TSA-compliant luggage lock: it opens with either the owner’s passcode or with a universal key owned by a government agency.

This is an unacceptable outcome that has to date been rightly rejected by Congress. While a “golden key” can not, contrary to conventional wisdom, be guessed, it can be stolen (much like the TSA luggage key has been). Worse, once said key is stolen, every single device governed by said key would be vulnerable without anyone knowing any better: that includes not only devices that hold personal details, but also corporate secrets, classified information, in short, nearly everything of value that underpins the United States economy. And no one would know when and if the data was being stolen.

Again, though, while Comey and the FBI have been the most outspoken advocates of this destructive golden key, that is not an issue in this current case. If it were, my support of Apple would be unequivocal, because a golden key is an issue where there is simply no compromise.

The PR Battle

Before I engage in such consideration, it’s important to acknowledge the PR aspect of this case: this is where details like the fact Apple helped the FBI bypass the passcode on non-encrypted iPhones goes, along with the fact that San Bernardino County, under direction from the FBI, reset the iCloud password associated with the iPhone in question. That’s not to say that PR doesn’t matter, but none of the surrounding details have anything to do with the substance of the question at hand: is Apple right to resist the FBI’s request to weaken software-based security measures (which do not entail breaking encryption)?

Three Contexts

As is the case with many contentious questions, the correct answer depends on the context with which you evaluate the problem.

The Technology Industry’s Perspective

Apple’s opposition to the FBI’s request, and the support they have received from most major technology companies, is completely understandable.

First off, complying with this order would be a burden (the degree of said burden will be the critical factor on which the court’s decision will turn). Apple would need to design a new version of iOS, figure out a way to secure said version to ensure it doesn’t become widely available, and develop an infrastructure to deal with the inevitable flood of requests from law enforcement agencies seeking similar assistance to the FBI. It is not simply an issue of “unlocking” an iPhone: it is far more complex and dangerous than that.

Secondly, Apple’s ability to resist government pressure in foreign countries — particularly China — will be severely compromised should Apple be forced to acquiesce in this case.

Third, as much as it clearly irked Apple when the FBI framed the company’s opposition as a “marketing stunt,” there is no disputing the fact that the company has made privacy and security a core part of the iPhone value proposition. Forcing the company to actively undo its own security measures certainly works against that proposition.

The FBI’s Perspective

All that said, technologists do their case a disservice by dismissing the FBI’s position out of hand. The fact of the matter is that privacy of information is not an absolute: the Fourth Amendment both prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures” and affirms an exception for warrants “upon probable cause”. Needless to say, the FBI has pretty damn compelling probable cause in this case,² and I don’t doubt that future requests along these lines will be accompanied by warrants as well.

Moreover, while it’s true the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have access to more information than ever before, both thanks to cloud services and also the expansion of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which compels carriers and ISPs to provide the government with the capability to intercept communications, there very well may be information on devices that are never transmitted (or that is encrypted upon transmission).

More broadly, while I argued an absolutists’ position above with regards to encryption, that is because absolutism is the only option: data is either securely encrypted or it’s not.³ Given that, one can certainly make the argument that given the inescapable reality that some amount of data will be “dark” because of encryption, it behooves the technology industry to cooperate on all requests that don’t entail compromising on something (encryption) that, by definition, cannot be compromised on. To put it another way, I can sympathize with law enforcement’s irritation that the position of companies like Apple when it comes to security leaves no room for the FBI’s enforcement of a different type of security: that of the public at large.

The U.S. Perspective

That noted, the FBI’s position itself is more limited than they themselves likely realize: the FBI is primarily concerned with domestic crimes, and their perspective is that of an investigator seeking to uncover a secret.

However, the United States does not exist in a vacuum: there are plenty of entities that would like nothing more than to uncover American secrets, whether those be on the individual level (compromising information, identity, credit cards, etc.), corporate level (trade secrets, financial information, strategic documents, etc.), or government level (military information, government communications, counter-espionage, etc.). Moreover, given the fact the United States is the richest country in the world with the largest economy, powered by corporations overwhelmingly based on intellectual property, defended by the largest and most sophisticated military in the world, the United States collectively has by far the most to gain from strong security. This is why people like Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA — no civil liberties ideologue, to say the least! — say the FBI is wrong. From USA Today:

“Look, I used to run the NSA, OK?” Hayden told USA TODAY’s weekly video newsmaker series. “Back doors are good. Please, please, Lord, put back doors in, because I and a whole bunch of other talented security services around the world — even though that back door was not intended for me — that back door will make it easier for me to do what I want to do, which is to penetrate.

“But when you step back and look at the whole question of American security and safety writ large, we are a safer, more secure nation without back doors,” he says. With them, “a lot of other people would take advantage of it.”

The fact that weaker security helps the FBI doesn’t change the fact that the United States has more to lose from weaker security than any other country on earth. By far.

Winning the Security Game

There’s one more way to look at the question of security in the context of the United States broadly. Consider a sports analogy: in a game like basketball you need to play both defense and offense; the FBI, given their responsibilities, is primarily concerned with offense — uncovering secrets. However, the agency’s haste to score buckets has the effect of weakening the United States’ defense.

This is particularly unnecessary because the United States already has the best offense in the world! Consider the iPhone in question: the fact of the matter is that the data could be extracted without Apple’s help.

• The first potential method would be to leverage a zero-day exploit that would allow the device to run code that is not signed by Apple;⁴ in other words, it is almost certainly possible that someone other than Apple could install the necessary software to bypass the 10 passcode entry limitation (the National Security Agency [NSA] is widely thought to possess several zero day exploits)
• The second potential method would be to extract the data from the memory chips, and then de-cap the phone’s processor to uncover the device’s unknown UID and the algorithm used to encrypt the data, and then conduct a brute force attack on the passcode using a separate computer designed to do just that⁵

Both of these processes are hugely difficult and expensive, which means they can only realistically be done by agencies with massive resources. Like, for example, the NSA — which is a big advantage for the United States. If there is strong security everywhere (i.e. everyone has the same defensive capability), then the country with the biggest advantage is the country with the most resources to overcome that security (i.e. not everyone has the same offensive capability). To lower the bar when it comes to defense is to give up one of the United States’ biggest strategic advantages.

Note what I have not discussed in this article: privacy. In fact, I do agree that there are significant privacy concerns around the FBI’s insistence that Apple explicitly weaken iPhone security, and I would personally lean towards the privacy side of the debate when it comes to the privacy-security tradeoff.

That said, as I articulated above, I understand the FBI’s concerns about going dark, and the agency could hardly have picked a more compelling example to make their case for tech company cooperation.⁶ I am not surprised that a majority of Americans say Apple “Should unlock the terror suspect’s iPhone.”

That is why it is critical to make the argument that the FBI’s request weakens security by compelling something much deeper than merely “unlocking an iPhone.” In other words, given the context of the United States as a whole, an argument for privacy and an argument for security are not a tradeoff at all, but rather two paths to the same outcome: stronger, not weaker iPhones.⁷

1. Specifically, the “key” for the disk is deleted, meaning the content is encrypted forever
2. Not to mention the explicit permission of San Bernardino County, the owner of the phone in question
3. It’s math: just as 2 + 2 can only equal 4, data is secure from everyone or no one
4. We know these exist: they are the foundation of jailbreaks
5. Which, thanks to Bitcoin, are cheaper than ever before
6. That this case is being leveraged is certainly not an accident
7. One final point: Apple may lose, and that will be ok. This case is a close one, and such an outcome — facilitated brute force attacks — may prove to be the compromise that brings law enforcement to peace with encryption. That would be the hope anyways, because legislation limiting encryption would be a devastating outcome for everyone. One hopes Apple’s resistance in this case doesn’t lay the groundwork for an even worse outcome in the future

The post Apple, the FBI, and Security appeared first on Stratechery by Ben Thompson.

When I joined the Wikimedia Foundation there was an operations engineer named Ryan Lane. In most respects, Ryan was just an opsen, but every Friday as work wound down he'd crack open a big archive drawer full of drinks and make everyone cocktails.

It was a nice opportunity for mingling: legal, administration, engineering and global development would all come around and have a cocktail (alcoholic or not) and chat. It broke down barries between departments, sequestered as they are on different floors, and let visiting remote employees meet people they might not otherwise have encountered.

Then Ryan left and nobody bothered organising it any more, and the function went away.

When I joined the Wikimedia Foundation there was an Executive Director called Sue Gardner. In most respects, Sue was just an ED, but she instilled values of transparency outside the organisation and transparency inside it. She created an environment where you might disagree with a decision, but you could still respect it, because you were there for it. She created an environment where everyone, even executives, were answerable for the work they did and did not do. She created an environment where dissent was expected and valued rather than classed as unprofessional.

Then Sue left, and guess what happened next?

Culture is a fragile thing, much more fragile than we expect. When we're in the middle of it, good or bad, it just...fades into background noise. It's taken as a given. And then people leave and you slowly realise both how valuable their presence was, and the fact that the things they were doing aren't anywhere in anyone's job description, or things you were hiring their replacement with an eye to.

When Ryan left, we lost alcohol. And hey, I can deal with an absence of alcohol. Tech and alcohol haven't exactly been the healthiest of friendships. But when Sue left, we lost a lot of our transparency, internally and externally. When Gayle left we lost a boundless love and fierce determination to make us do better and comfort us when we didn't. When Anasuya left we lost steady counsel, an awareness of the width of the world and knowledge of the multitudes it contains.

We hired for none of these values. We tasked for none of these values. And so we have, organisationally, none of these values. The things that always distinguished the Wikimedia Foundation as a workplace are gone, and replaced with an environment that prizes unanimity above confidence and lacks accountability for organisational failures.

Because of that, I am leaving. I don't know what things I did that nobody will organise now, but I do know that I am not looking back. This was a good place to be - I wouldn't have spent half a decade at it otherwise - but it has tarnished and rusted every day of the last year and a half.

To my friends in the wider movement, I would ask you to keep insisting that the organisation do better. Insist until your keyboard is worn down, insist until your lungs give out, insist until the next Board election and the next opportunity to make the people holding the job at the moment actually do it.

To my friends in the organisation - and there are so very many of them, so many wonderful, glorious, loving people - you owe your people trust and respect and protection, and sometimes that is shielding them at your expense. But sometimes it is getting out while you still can, so as to set an example that leaving is a thing that can be done. If you wait to leave until you have pulled everyone out, you'll be consumed by it. I would not wish that on any of you.

If anyone wants me, I'll be at an infosec company whose employees like being there, whose work is interesting, and whose managers are accessible and answerable. Turns out being a security/privacy nerd who likes data is, in fact, renumerative. If you're reading this: I'm sure you can work out where to find me if you need me.

This is amazing. I’m a stickler for profiling, and plotting a spectrum of system call latency is an awesome idea.

Despite having suffered a catastrophic/unrecoverable hard-disk failure on the (unbacked up) machine I had my Twitter harvesting notebooks (and cached data database) on, I did manage to find a reasonably current version of the code (via Github gists and Dropbox) and spent a few evening hours tinkering with over the last ten days or so.

So as a quick to note-to-self, here’s a list of the functions I currently have to hand:

• search for users using a recent search terms: get a list of users recently using a particular term or phrase;
• search for users using a recent hashtag: get a list of users recently using a particular hashtag;
• generate maps of folk commonly followed by users of the searchterm/tag: from the term or tag userlist, find the folk commonly followed by those users and generate a network edge list;
• get members of a list: get a list of the members of a particular list;
• get lists a person is a member of: get a list of the lists a user is a member of; optionally limit to lists with more than a certain number of followers;
• triangulate lists: find lists that several specified users are a member of, thresholded (so e.g. lists where at least 3 of 5 people mentioned are on the list); also limit by minimum number of subscribers to list (so we can ignore lists with no subscribers etc). List triangulation can be applied to lists of users e.g. folk using a particular hashtag; so we have a route to finding lists that may be topically related to a particular tag;
• download members of lists a specified user is a member of: for the lists a particular user is a member of, grab details of all the members of those lists’
• get all friends/followers of a user: this can be limited to a maximum number of friends/followers (eg 5000);
• get common friends of (sampled) followers of a user: for a particular user, get their followers, sample N of them, then find folk commonly followed by that sample; output as a graph edge list;
• find common followers of a set of specified users: for a list of users (e.g. recent users of a particular hashtag), find folk who follow a minimum number of them, or who are followed by a minimum number of them;
• tag user biographies using Thomson Reuters OpenCalais and IBM Alchemy APIs: this tagging can be easily applied to all users in a list, tagging their biographies one at a time

I’ve also started looking again at generating topic models around Twitter data, starting with user biographies (which so far is not very interesting!)

With these various functions, it’s easy enough to generate various combinations of emergent social positioning map. I’ve started exploring various Python libraries for clustering and laying out maps automatically, but tend to fall back to handcrafting the displays using Gephi. On the to do list is to try to automate the Gephi side, at least for a first pass, using the Gephi toolkit, though at the moment that looks like requiring that I get my head round a bit of Java. Ideally, I’d like to be able to see a Gephi endpoint (perhaps from a Gephi headless server running in a Docker container…?:-), give it a graph file and a config file, and get a PDF, SVG or PNG layout back…

I also need to do a couple of proof-of-concept one-off printed outputs for myself, like getting an ESP map printed as an A0 poster or folded map.

As I was looking for documentation for this post, the top result from Google was a link to “Rachel Botsman: The currency of the new economy is trust” (link) followed by an OECD forum with a highlight on “Trust is at the heart of today’s complex global economy.”

While Botsman’s lecture, punctuated with examples of the emerging collaborative economy, is worth viewing, what I challenge is the idea that trust is a new currency or that trust is more important in today’s economy than it was in previous ones. With the exception of war and predatory economies, trust has always been at the very centre of the economy. If something has changed in the economy it is how globalisation has affected trust, its currency.

Trust is at the heart of the economy — and open societies!

In Adam Smith on Trust, Faith and Free Markets (link) Jerry Evensky writes:

In a constructive society, trust and security are based on mutual respect among citizens and between the citizen and the State. It is the maturation of the citizen and of the State together that makes the emergence of a commercial free-market society possible. It is the trust engendered by this maturation of civic ethics and institutions that makes it possible for individuals to enter the market system with confidence that the competition will be a game played by just rules.
When trust is shaken, individuals pull back and the system contracts. Where trust grows, individual energy and creativity are unleashed and the system grows. In Smith’s vision of humankind’s progress, trust is the central theme.

In Top Economists: Trust is Necessary for a Stable Economy … But Trust Won’t Be Restored Until We Prosecute Wall Street Fraud, the Washington Post (link), quotes a 2001 study by Zak and Knack (link):

Our analysis shows that trust can be raised directly by increasing communication and education, and indirectly by strengthening formal institutions that enforce contracts and by reducing income inequality. Among the policies that impact these factors, only education, … and freedom satisfy the efficiency criterion which compares the cost of policies with the benefits citizens receive in terms of higher living standards. Further, our analysis suggests that good policy initiates a virtuous circle: policies that raise trust efficiently, improve living standards, raise civil liberties, enhance institutions, and reduce corruption, further raising trust. Trust, democracy, and the rule of law are thus the foundation of abiding prosperity.

As indicated in a previous post (The Deleterious Effects of Mistaking Security for Trust), there is also a vicious circle, and I am afraid that we are living it: trust in each other and authorities is depleting, creating social problems; as a response to those problems, security policies are implemented that further reduce the trust in each other and the society, leading to ever more stringent security policies. This is the story of France, where the Government with the support of the Parliament has decided to introduce into the French Constitution the state of emergency (“état d’urgence”), i.e. the ability for administrative and police power to take precedence over the judiciary! Not only the French government does not trust his citizens — not exactly fresh news! — but it does not even trust judges — not exactly fresh news either!

Far from being a characteristic of the “new economy,” trust has always been the fuel of open and democratic societies and economies. One change brought with the modern economy and its globalisation might be a greater abstraction of trust: before I could trust my butcher for offering the best meat, now I am asked to trust a label stuck on a package, based on undecipherable standards designed by an agency most likely under the influence of business lobbies complacent parliaments and the very Council of the European Union.

A Transparency International report (link) on 19 European countries and 3 EU institutions shows undue influence on politics across the region and in Brussels:

Moreover, there is a high risk that conflicts of interest can sway decision-making processes. In France, parliamentarians are permitted to carry out lobbying and consulting work while holding office – a situation that is similar in Portugal and Spain.
“Unchecked lobbying has resulted in far-reaching consequences for the economy, the environment, human rights and public safety,” said Anne Koch, Director for Europe and Central Asia, Transparency International. The research highlights problematic lobbying practices across a wide range of sectors and industries in Europe, including: Alcohol, tobacco, automobile, energy, financial and pharmaceutical.

It is interesting to note that the Council of the European Union ranks antepenultimate worst, just before Hungary and Cyprus as institution prone to corruption — for an illustration of the influence of lobbyists one can read Tobacco lobbying warped EU law, British scientists ‘prove’ or Big money and close ties behind Big Pharma’s Brussels lobby efforts.

While, according to an OECD study (link), it is difficult to establish a direct connection between corruption and GDP:

corruption affects other important indicators of economic development such as the quality of the environment, personal health and safety status, equity (income distribution), and various types of social or civic capital (“trust”) – which impact significantly on economic welfare and, in the case of trust, also a country’s development potential […] Recent empirical work by Aidt (2009) shows that the negative effect of corruption on sustainable wealth formation, which adjusts gross fixed investment for resource depletion and human capital formation, is statistically significant and robust. This research also shows that, within the context of such an enlarged definition of growth, no significant “grease effect” of corruption is discernible.

What is the state of Trust in our societies?

An interesting document published by Our World in Data (link) collects a number of data sources related to trust. The figure below represents the interpersonal trust levels as measured by international surveys. It shows a high level of discrepancy between countries. For example, France, the country where I live, the level of interpersonal trust is closer to what is experienced in Uganda and Nigeria than Denmark…

Interpersonal trust levels as measured by the World Values Survey and European Values Study, and the European Social Survey and Afrobarometer Survey – Inglehart & Welzel (2010)

While the difference of perception of interpersonal trust across countries can be striking, there are also differences across generations. According to an Ipsos Mori study (UK) while 73% of the pre­war generation say other people can be trusted to tell the truth only 46% of generation Y agrees. While the cause for this generational disparity probably rests on a wide range of factors from massive youth unemployment (youth unemployment rate is at its worst for 20 years in the UK) to the difference in the perception of politicians impotency and wide spread corruption, notwithstanding the lack of trust society has in the younger generation (the educational system is becoming a gigantic test and accountability machine), we are far from the conditions elicited by Zak and Knack for the initiation of a “virtuous circle” developing trust.

Interpersonal trust levels across generations — Ipsos Mori 2015

The distrust in each other is matched by the distrust in institutions. According to Eurobarometer, a public opinion service of the European Commission, in 2013, sixty percent of Europeans tended not to trust the European Union. That compares to the 32% level of distrust reported in early 2007 before the onset of the 2008/2009 global financial crisis and the ensuing euro zone debt crisis (source).

Intrigued by those statistics, I went to a colleague, Pierre Perot, a sociologist, who recommended reading La Société de Défiance, Comment le modèle social français s’autodétruit ( The Society of Distrust, How the French social model self-destructs), a study by Yann Algan et Pierre Cahuc (link). This book reports a number of studies, in particular the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) and the World Values Survey (WVS).

People responding to the statement “To reach the summit, you need to be corrupted” -Source: International Social Survey Program 1999.

While very few will be surprised to find Russia ranking so high in the corruption scale, I had to understand why France ranked so high. It is when I found another damming statistic: France is penultimate, just after Mexico when being asked whether it is acceptable to buy something known to have been stolen (c.f. chart below).

People responding to whether “buying something you knew was stolen” cannot be justified – Source: World Values Survey, 1980-2000.	People responding that “someone accepting a bribe in the course of their duties” cannot be justified – Source: World Values Survey, 1980-2000.

While the figures in the previous charts refer to a 1980-2000 wave of World Values Surveys, more recent data (2010, c.f. annex) confirm the gap between countries and France’s position… I have to testify that those figures confirm my own experience and reflect the level of apathy and sense of disempowerment I can observe.

How can trust be rebuilt?

If governments have demonstrated their inability, and often their unwillingness, to address the causes of increased distrust, then who should take the lead? Last week I got from Carla Casilli (@carlacasilli) the news about a meeting organised by Citizen’s Initiative Review: “Rebuilding the Public’s Trust Begins with Trusting the Public” (link). How true! How dare politicians ask for our trust when they themselves do not trust us?

While bringing “representative groups of citizens together to fairly and thoroughly evaluate ballot questions and give voters information they can trust” is certainly a worthy effort, the problem of trust goes far beyond ballot issues. Moreover, the lack of trust might be caused by the institutional framework itself, and providing information one can trust might not be enough to bring people back to the ballot stations.

As an educator, my first reflex when defining an objective, here rebuilding trust, is the definition of success indicators: how shall we know when trust is being rebuilt? What are the criteria? How shall we proceed to collect the data? The way trust has been measured until now is through polls and surveys based on a small sample of the population. Is there a means to involve 100% of the population, to obtain a rate of participation even greater than the percentage of the population going to the polling stations?

While the measure of the absolute value of social capital is probably a very complex if not an impossible task, one might be able to measure its relative value, whether it increases or decreases in its different constituents. For example, the trust in political parties could decrease while the trust in fellow citizens increase,s the trust in industrial food decreases while that in local food and fair trade increases.

The power to trust!

And if the solution to re-building trust was to provide every citizen with the means to express their trust, giving citizens the power to trust? Until now, we used ballot papers to invest our trust in representatives, money to express our trust in goods and services. While this might be sufficient in an open society and an open market, we have to recognise that both political life and the market are rigged. If people do not go to polling stations, it is not unreasonable to imagine that this might be connected with a feeling of disempowerment, a disability acquired through repeated experience…

The recent history of the Open Badges is an iconic illustration of how rigged the system is: while Open Badges are trust tokens, the infrastructure has been designed in such a way that it is almost impossible for ‘normal’ individuals to issue Open Badges — unless one is a geek or ready to pay for access to an issuing platform. Of course, it is clear that at no point in time the designers of the Open Badge infrastructure stopped their work and asked: “how shall we make it as difficult as possible for the average punter to create Open Badges, so that only institutions will find the will and strength to issue them.” They probably did not say either “and to make it even easier for the institutions, they will not to have to prove their credentials, therefore institutions will not need to have a Backpack.”

If the infrastructure is designed that way, it is not because of a faulty design nor the will of wicked designers. It is simply the manifestation of the power of the superstructure, the pressure of institutional frameworks and mind-frame. The current Open Badge Infrastructure was designed competently to instantiate in a piece of software the asymmetry between authorities that have the right to trust and the vulgum pecus who has the right to beg to be trusted. This superstructure is also reflected in the numerous narratives where institutions are glorified as the natural credentialing authorities and individuals as those in need of being guided through pre-digested pathways to reach the Valhalla of formal recognition!

It is a fallacy to pretend that individuals are “empowered” with Open Badges when it is the institutions that are in control and are the main beneficiaries. That does not imply that individuals are “loosers”, and do not gain any benefit, but that individual benefits are ancillary to institutional benefits. The brilliant presentation of David Leaser during last week’s community call (c.f. etherpad, recording and the picture below) is an impressive illustration of the beneficial impact of Open Badges have had on IBM and its employees. One of the main benefits is probably the creation of a level playing field by making visible information that would have been previously kept hidden within human resource information systems silos. By making it public, new processes have emerged to plan and recognise development and organise teamwork.

Yet, the Open Badge system presented during the call is clearly asymmetrical with the organisation defining and issuing the badges while employees collect and exploit them. It partially reflects how businesses operate and how employees’ interests are subordinate to those of the organisations paying their salaries. Employees might not have (yet) the power to trust by issuing and endorsing their own badges, but a community has many means to establish trust networks — trust networks existed long before the invention of Open Badges! And the power to trust using digital technology might come sooner than expected, starting with the endorsement of Open Badges then with the adoption of the personal ledgers, a means to record and value even more granular data to create an intelligible life log, a path pioneered by Steve Mann.

Impact of Open Badges at IBM — source

The BoT economy

In previous posts I introduced the Bit of Trust (BoT) a “currency” representing an elementary trust bond between two nodes in a Web of Trust (WoT). Imagine a network where every entity (person, organisation, product, service, etc.) is represented by a node and each node has a public distributed ledger recording the BoTs received and issued, we would have:

• BoTs I have issued: my trust capital investment — a credit lent to those I trust
• BoTs I have received: the trust invested in me — a debt owed to those trusting me

We could define the individual’s trust capital as the sum of the trust received and trust issued and the social capital as the sum of the investments in others.

• Individual (Trust) Capital = debts + credits
• Social (Trust) Capital = ∑debts = ∑credits

Contrary to currencies, there is no need for a “central bank of trust” to control the number of BoTs issued, as every node in the network should have the ability to trust and therefore to produce BoTs. While increasing the number of banknotes leads to inflation and sometimes to the collapse of an economy, trust works the other way around!

NB: The time is long gone where money was created by central banks. 97% of the money in today’s economy is created by banks (through loans), whilst just 3% is created by governments (link). The Web of Trust just pushes the logic one step further: every node is its own trust bank and produces as many BoTs as required!

The value of the BoT will be relative to a context of interpretation. It is the glasses through which the reader visualises a collection of BoTs across multiple ledgers that a value can be assigned. While a BoT is a generic construct, it is the account where it is invested that transforms a general meaning (trust) into something more specific such as “I trust that you are a competent cook.” This is done by “investing” the BoT in the “competent cook” entry of the personal ledger. But that information is of little value if there is no contextual information, such as recent endorsements by other members of the Web of Trust, collection of recent evidence of cooking-related activities. It is an opportunity to explore the potential of moving from an analytical approach (against a competency framework) to an analogical approach (against the position of a subject in relation to other subjects in a domain or community of practice.)

Conclusion (provisional)

With distributed ledgers and BoTs we would have the means to establish a new kind of generalised trust index, based not just on a sample of individuals but on all the participants in the Web of Trust. This index could be exploited through different contexts providing different communities with a mirror to reflect and improve their trustworthiness. Just like the Bitcoin did not wait for the approval of monetary and regulatory authorities, there is no reason to wait for the approval of policy authorities to implement the means to rebuild trust, bottom-up, bit by bit, using the Bit of Trust as the 21st century’s ballot e-paper for building an open society!

This post has hardly scratched the surface of the potential benefits of BoTs as the translation of Open Badges and open credentials with the distributed ledger technology. In a next post, I will explore trust from a micro, meso and macro perspective challenging the value of the dominating interpretation of micro-credentials to advocate the value of “microlevel-trust.”

NB: Salava, the Open Badge Passport Community Edition will soon provide the sandbox to explore new approaches to issuing and exploiting Open Badges for building bottom-up trust networks. We will do so by exploiting the current Open Badge Infrastructure and as soon as possible develop a distributed ledger extension (c.f. #badgechain!).

Stay tuned!

Previously published in HASTAC

Annex

Trust in Others — source Eurostats

People responding that “accepting a bribe in the course of their duties” cannot be justified – Source: World Values Survey 2010.

Data is available through the European Values Study (EVS 2010) accessible at the Leibniz Institute for the Social Science (link).

To the question “Please tell me whether you think that claiming state benefits which you are not entitled to can always be justified, never be justified, or something in between,” only 30.2% of French respondents replied “Never” (they were 40.8% in 1999!) against 62.8% in Finland and 79.8% in the Netherlands and 67.9% in Italy —so much for the French citizens who tend to justify their shortcomings for being a “Latin country” — what could be more “Latin” than… Latins!

The fact that the number of French respondents that would never claim an undue state benefit decreased from 40.8% to 30.2% in 10 years time might be the price to pay for the toll of the economic crisis and the inability of the governments to take adequate measures to resorb massive unemployment and rampant corruption.

Mark:

Ironholds will look at a charging bull with TNT strapped to its ass and a countdown detonator set for 30 seconds and be like shit, I can deal with this, no problem.

Ironholds will get blackout crossfaded, wake up in Montana on Monday morning, get home with two separate paternity suits in his mailbox and be like, pfft, no sweat.

If Ironholds has said fuck this, this place is awful, I'm out.

When I struck out on my own, I vowed to do only work that I found rewarding. If I could do that, I would have an enviable and satisfying work life. So far, I have succeeded. The most rewarding work for me involves spreading the gospel of writing without bullshit. I’ve found two ways to do that. I … Continue reading How you and your company can start writing without bullshit →

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The 5se needs to be something very different but it is unlikely to.

• The fact the two companies that make almost all of the profit in the mobile handset industry continue to shun MWC has not stopped the endless rumours and questions.
• Foremost of these is will the iPhone 5se push iOS further into the mass market eating into the traditional Android market.
• This has been spurred by rumblings from the supply chain that Apple is gearing up to ship 50m units of this device.
• It is important to bear in mind that these same rumblings also predicted that the Apple Watch would ship 100m units in its first 12 months.
• Furthermore, this is exactly the same question that was asked about the iPhone 5c which had almost no impact at all.
• The problem with the iPhone 5c is that it was not cheap enough to appeal to the mass market meaning that most users either paid up for the real thing or bought the much cheaper 4s.
• The net result was that Apple’s iPhone ASPs barely moved and many operators ended up with far more stock of the 5c than they had bargained for.
• The iPhone 5se looks set to take the same path unless Apple does something radically different and of this I see no sign.
• Looking at the rumoured specification of the iPhone 5se, it is almost certainly not going to be a mid-range product and hence I think it will be a non-event when it comes to volumes.
• There are two problems that prevent Apple from cracking this problem.
  • First. By its own admission, Apple does not do cheap well and almost every attempt (except iPod) it has made has failed.
  • Second. To make 40% gross margin on a much lower priced product, Apple will have to meaningfully reduce the specification of the device which risks breaking the ecosystem.
  • In RFM’s 7 Laws of Robotics which measure the quality of an ecosystem, Law 7 refers to software consistency.
  • Apple’s software consistency across its entire ecosystem is second to none and this is a major reason why the user experience is so good and why developers are able to earn excellent returns from iOS.
  • A lower end product would mean that apps would no longer run consistently across all iPhones adding complexity, cost and difficulty for developers.
  • The lack of software consistency in the Google ecosystem and all of the other ecosystems based on Android is a major reason why the user experience is second rate and why developers earn less money from targeting these devices.
  • Hence I think that gaining a few points of market share is simply not worth the risk of fragmenting the incredibly consistent ecosystem that is iOS today.
• This why I think that the iPhone 5se will be a non-event as far as Android handset makers are concerned as I see nothing in this product that will make it perform any differently to the iPhone 5c.
• Hence I see no change to the status quo where Samsung is the king of Android outselling every other handset maker by at least 2 to 1.
• Samsung remains by top choice amount the Android handset makers although it needs to be extremely wary of Huawei which is showing that it is prepared to spend the big bucks to become number 1.

When I first heard about the news of a serious security vulnerability in glibc I thought that I would soon see a lot of programs of my Linux distributions being updated. That’s because I faintly remember that I once read somewhere that in Linux, libraries are often compiled into the application instead of dynamically linked at runtime. But I guess that was not quite true, at least not for glibc anyway. So far I’ve only seen an update of the glibc library itself. Since then no other programs have been updated due to statically linking that library. So if that holds true we might have been luckier than I thought. Would be nice for a change!

Anbang Insurance, the privately owned Chinese firm that was last week reported to have made one of Vancouver’s most significant real estate purchases in years, boasts global ambitions and astonishingly deep pockets.

Printing to PDF with 3D Touch.

Note: this tip was first shared with Club MacStories members over a month ago in issue 16 of MacStories Weekly. We are sharing it today as a one-off sample. Subscribe now and don't miss out on more iOS tips and workflows.

A hidden option of iOS' Print feature I've recently discovered is a way to export a PDF file from the Print preview screen using 3D Touch. I haven't been able to replicate it without 3D Touch on the iPad, which makes the option available exclusively on the latest iPhones.

When viewing a page you want to save as PDF – say, a webpage in Safari or a note in the Notes app – open the share sheet, find the Print extension at the bottom, and tap it. This will open a Printer Options screen with a page preview in the lower half. You can swipe on pages to scroll through them, but what I didn't know is that you can also press lightly on a page and then pop it open to get a Quick Look preview of the PDF file that's going to be printed. Because it's a PDF file, you can share it with other apps and action extensions, saving it elsewhere.

You can also generate PDFs from the Notes app.

Thanks to this hidden feature, you'll be able to share PDF files generated natively by iOS with other apps, including Dropbox and Workflow, without having to save the PDF to iBooks. I wish this could also be done on an iPad.

We’ve spent 80 hours of research and testing to figure out that the best place for most people to get their photos and film scanned is Memories Renewed, an online scanning service based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We came to this conclusion after researching 37 different scanning services; shipping out slides, negatives, and prints to the 12 most promising contenders; and then submitting a set of damaged family photos in need of restoration to our final three picks. Memories Renewed consistently delivered great-looking digital files throughout our testing process, offering the best combination of price, quality, and turnaround time of any service we tested. Their order process was simple, communication was prompt and personal, and our originals were safely packed for return, things we couldn’t say for all of our contenders.

• Read more about Rapier: Cut Through the Tedium of API Specification

for the last 2/3 weeks the keyboard acted up a bit on some of the keys (锑zersdwx). I had to either hit them very hard or twice to get some input, also they where making strange noise when pressed.

I got my machine serviced today. I’m amazed at the amount of stuff the technician went thru to change the keyboard. He had to remove, the battery, the motherboard, disconnect the screen in order to change keyboard plus mouse-pad (as they come within the casing). Also amazed at the amount of duck tape involved in having all the component hold together in the machine.

All in all I think I was surprised by how much the hardrive looked like some Ram banks from 20 years ago. Took a few pics :

Taking a step beyond 2-D glyphs, Codeology depicts GitHub user activity based on what they have contributed as 3-D objects made of ASCII characters.

The application pulls data from GitHub's public API and creates visuals using WebGL, Three.js, and GLSL Shaders. Shape and color represent an individual language, with size being proportionate to how many characters of code were written.

I don't know if it was intentional, but every visual looks like a microorganism. Pretty cool. [via Waxy]

Tags: code, GitHub

Why I’m Secretly Rooting For President Trump

I was an early adopter of digital scanners to start converting my family’s old photo albums and personal travel images into something I could view on my computer – over a decade ago.

After some initial elation at the possibilities, the problem soon became clear: scanners sucked. At 30 seconds or more per scan, plus the time it took to take the image out of its plastic cover and center the photo just right, it was going to take forever.

Even worse, the digital version always seemed to lack something in quality – most of the time, with too much glare. And so, my passion project would wait for a time when technology could make for a substantially less annoying experience.

Vancouver-based startup Sepio has thrown itself into the photo-digitizing game with gusto this month — and finally it seems there’s a solution that the digital elite and regular folks can actually use. With their initial launch at TED Vancouver through gift-bag online invites to 3,000 early users, the company has come full-circle in a way. Sepio co-founder Ali Kashani noted that it was back in 2013, as he was attending a TED conference, when the company got its start.

“I was thinking about my next startup, realizing I wanted it to be something that matters when I stand up in front of this crowd,” he said. “The initial idea was presented by a mentor in the Valley that we really respect.

He mentioned it because he has a lot of old photos. That was part of the appeal. It’s so easy to present this idea in 10 seconds because everyone relates to it. Even if you are 10 years old, there are still analog photos of you.”

There’s already a fair bit of competition in this space from other apps that let you scan images instantly from your phone. Those competitors tend to advertise ease of use, social sharing capability, and the speed factor – but Sepio seems to be differentiating itself in terms of quality. “In the blind tests we’ve done, users pick our photos 70 percent of the time over scanners and over 95 percent of the time over other apps,” said co-founder Steve Jones. “We’re the only game in town when it comes to high-quality results.”

While demo-ing the product live, Kashani showed how he could snap a shot from his smartphone of an old, tiny passport photo still underneath plastic, blow it up online and even turn it back into a print version on a sizeable piece of wall art, all without any of the glare or fuzziness you might typically expect from the process.

The co-founders see a big market for their offering, as the technology has finally caught up to the needs of casual consumers. “Historically, the solution for this (which didn’t work optimally) was the scanner, but most people don’t even have a printer anymore,” Jones noted. “It’s quite labor intensive and you can also risk damaging the photo during scanning.

Another way was to mail off family photos, sending a box to get scanned – but very few people trust the postal service with their cherished family memories. This is just an easier, more comfortable option – and for the 3.5 trillion print photos from the 180 years before the digital era, this is the solution.”

This article originally appeared on our sister site BetaKit

Since Samsung announced its latest pair of flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge, on Sunday, there’s been some confusion over what version of the two phones Canadians will be able to buy when they go on sale in March.

As a refresher, after deciding not to include Qualcomm’s then latest chip, the Snapdragon 810, in its S6 lineup, Samsung announced this week it will sell two different variants of the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge.

When the phone goes on sale next month, the majority of consumers around the world will be able to buy a S7 or S7 edge that runs on Samsung’s latest Exynos 8890 processor. In the U.S., however, the two phones will come with Qualcomm’s latest SoC, the Snapdragon 820. Samsung’s decision to dual source the processor for its two latest devices is the result in part of the fact that are still several carriers in the U.S. that operate extensive CDMA networks. The company’s Exynos line does not support the standard, whereas Qualcomm’s latest chip does.

While national carriers like Bell continue to operate CDMA networks, they do so for subscribers who are content with their old feature phones, making the CDMA concern a moot point here in Canada. There was reason to believe Samsung may have decided to treat Canada and the U.S. as a single North American market. With the U.S., wireless market being significantly bigger, Samsung could have just shipped its extra Qualcomm stock to Canada in the interest of keeping things simple for itself.

Indeed, when we did a hands-on with the two phones in New York, our writer there was lead to believe Canada would get the Qualcomm variant.

We’ve since asked Samsung Canada to confirm what we were told in New York. In an email statement, a Samsung spokesperson today told us that the Exynos 8890-equipped S7 will be sold in Canada.

Moreover, several of the major national carriers, including, Bell and Telus, has since gone live with their S7 pre-orders, and they list the Exynos 8890 as the included processor in the phones they plan to sell.

In some way, the initial interest in what version of the S7 we’ll get in Canada was mostly academic. Neither processor has made its way to a smartphone that’s available to buy right now, making it impossible to compare and contrast the two chips.

With the S6, though, Samsung’s decision to use only its own processor turned out to be a wise one. The Exynos 7420 outperformed the 810 in benchmarks and real world testing, and suffered none of the overheating issues that came to define the latter processor. We’ll have to wait and see if that trend repeats itself this year, but it’s not unreasonable for Canadians to want the best version of an upcoming device.

With smartphone sales consistently waning over the last few years, LG and Samsung have adopted two decidedly different strategies when it comes to vying for consumer attention at Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona.

One is safe, iterative, and will likely resonate with longtime fans of the company, while the other takes chances, and could make or break the company’s smartphone business.

While I haven’t gone hands-on with either the LG G5 or Galaxy S7/S7 Edge for an extended period of time, here’s a breakdown of my early hands-on impressions of both smartphones.

Samsung and LG: Two different narratives

Each smartphone is impressive in its own right, with LG opting for a complete revamp of the G4, thanks to the introduction of accessories the company calls “Friends.” Samsung is taking a more iterative approach with the S7 and S7 edge, though the company has utilized feedback from the S6 and S6 edge to improve its latest smartphone in a variety of minor ways.

It’s hard not to be fascinated by LG’s marketing tactic, placing emphasis on the G5’s various accessories over the phone’s others features. This is one of the few times in recent memory that a smartphone manufacturer has managed to build excitement around the future of a device, displaying clear intentions for the G5 to live past its first few months on store shelves. If third-party manufacturers take advantage of the LG G5’s modular port, the smartphone’s lifespan could be extended considerably.

My main issue with the G5’s wash of accessories is some seem considerably more useful than others. For example, the ability to slide the bottom panel of the phone off and replace the G5’s standard battery with a higher capacity power source is a welcome addition to the smartphone. Other accessories such as the LG Cam Plus are also great, while the LG HiFi Plus with Bang & Olufson Play, doesn’t appeal to my personal preferences. But beyond these devices, LG hasn’t shown off further upcoming modular accessories for the smartphone.

Other “Friends” accessories like the LG 360 VR, LG 360 Camera and the LG Rolling Boy (which will be great for annoying my cat with) are fascinating diversions, but don’t make use of the LG G5’s expansion module in a meaningful way.

Still, with that said, LG is taking a chance with the G5’s expansion port and it could hold a tremendous amount of potential for the company. No other manufacturer has attempted this before to my knowledge, which could be a disaster for LG, or result in an industry changing shift.

LG needed to make noise with the LG G5’s reveal, and that’s exactly what the company did.

Winner: LG G5

The look: Overhaul vs. iteration

The G5 is an undeniably beautiful and sleek looking smartphone, as well as a clear upgrade over the G4 in nearly every way. LG’s G4 suffered from a variety of issues, but rather than iterate, the G5 is a complete overhaul. The phone’s volume buttons have been shifted to the side of the device though the power button remains on its rear, which also doubles as a fingerprint scanner. This shift is a direct answer to fan complaints and is a refreshing change from the minor updates we typically see in the smartphone industry every year. LG clearly realized it made mistakes with the G4 and did its best to solve them.

Not to be outdone, Samsung also listened to criticism of S6 and learned from its past mistakes. Both the S7 edge and S7 feature the often-requested Micro-SD card slot fans have been clamouring for, as well as a return to a waterproof casing (the G5 also features an Micro-SD port just like its predecessor).

But even with these shifts, at least at the outset, upgrades to the S7 and S7 Edge feel iterative when compared to their predecessors. But if there was nothing wrong with the S6’s aesthetic, Samsung likely feels little need to overhaul their flagship smartphone with the S7. While the G4 was a relatively well-received phone, it was far from perfect and was heavily criticized, whereas the S6 edge and S6 were almost universally praised. As a result, LG needed to shake things up with the G5, whereas Samsung can rest on its laurels to some extent.

Which phone appeals to you will come down to taste, and for me, there’s a clear aesthetic winner – the Galaxy s7, with the slightly larger 5.5-inch S7 edge trailing closely behind.

With the S7, Samsung continues with the metal and glass unibody construction direction it started with the S6, but also borrows elements from the Galaxy Note 5, including curves along the device’s sides and back (with the S7). The fact S7’s camera module doesn’t stick out of the phone’s rear is also a welcome shift from what we usually see in smartphones.

Selecting between the S7 and the S7 edge continues to be just as difficult a decision as it was with the S6 and S6 edge, only now there’s another variable – size. If you prefer larger phones, and also opt into how Samsung utilizes the side of its flagship devices to give users additional information, the edge is likely still your best bet. Those who enjoy smaller, more compact devices will likely opt for the 5.1-inch S7.

Winner: Galaxy S7 and S7 edge

The display: LCD vs. AMOLED

Samsung is widely regarded as the top display manufacturer in the market, whether it’s with its smartphone screens, computer monitors or even televisions. The company stays true to this reputation with the S7’s 5.1-inch 2560 x 1440 pixel (5.5 with the S7 edge) Super AMOLED Quad HD resolution display. The display featured in the company’s latest smartphone looks stunning and many will likely notice an increased colour contrast between the S6 and the S7.

On the other side, the G5’s 5.3-inch 2560 x 1440 pixel IPS LCD display is also great looking, but during my brief hands-on time with the device, seemed to lack the colour depth featured in the S7 and S7 Edge, though it’s possible some may prefer the G5 thanks to the company utilizing LCD over LED technology (this ultimately comes down to preference).

Where the screens differentiate is their heavily touted “Always-On” feature, which, despite higher capacity batteries featured in both Samsung ‘s and LG’s devices – 2800 mAh in the G5, 3000 mAh in the s7, and 3600 mAh in the S7 edge – will likely suck the life out of both phone’s power sources (I need to spend more time with this feature to know for sure)

It’s worth noting, however, that the Galaxy S7’s Always On display seems more customizable than the G5’s, which will make it considerably more useful.

Winner: Galaxy S7 and S7 edge

The hardware: High-end performance war

Under the hood, the S7 and S7 edge come equipped with an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820, or a Samsung Exynos 8 processor (it’s looks like we’re getting the Qualcomm version in Canada) and 4GB of RAM. During my brief hands-on time with the device, it worked incredibly well, but the same can also be said about the G5 and its Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, powered by an Adreno 530 GPU and 4GB of RAM.

When it comes to processor power, this is the type of decision that’s difficult to call given I haven’t had extensive hands-on time with either device, and the fact the demo units I tested for both phones seemed to feature heavily streamlined software and apps.

On the battery side of things, the S7 comes with a 3,000 mAh (or 3600 mAh in the S7 edge) compared to the G5’s 2,800 mAh, giving Samsung’s device a distinct advantage in the power source category. All three smartphones are capable of fast-charging, but only Samsung’s devices feature wireless charging.

Both smartphone’s cameras are also equally impressive. The S7 comes equipped with a 12 megapixel rear shooter with a f/1.7 lens, as well as ultrapixel technology, which allows the phone to take better pictures by allowing more light into its sensor. This results in great images when photographs are shot under low light or darker conditions. On the other hand, the G5 features an 8 megapixel wide angle lens accompanying its 16 megapixel primary shooter, giving the smartphone a wider field of view when using its second lens. After snapping a few photographs with the G5 and S7, the battle of picture taking, again, is another one that’s just too early to call. However, the ability to shoot wide angle photographs with the G5 is impressive.

Then there’s the G5’s modular design, a direction that is both exciting and risky for LG. When this feature is discussed years from now, it will become the deciding factor in the G5’s success or failure.

With the hardware competition so difficult to call given the minimal amount of time I’ve spent with both devices, I call this one a clear draw, at least for now.

Winner: LG G5 and S7 and S7 edge

Overall victor: Don’t fix what isn’t broken

As stated before, it’s still too early to call this war, especially with the HTC One M10 still looming on the horizon. My early impressions, however, lean towards the S7 and S7 edge over the G5. While LG’s smartphone’s accessory gamble is admirable, the lack of third-party developers producing peripherals for the module is concerning. This could change in the very near future, but the company, at least so far, hasn’t indicated that it will, showing off no future plans for other accessories.

Samsung knows it was onto something with S6 and S6 Edge and has opted for an iPhone 6s/6s Plus style iterative update with the S7. For most people, subtle changes like an SD card slot, as well as the clear size difference between the S7 and S7 edge, adapting to the market’s divisive taste for both large and small smartphone, will be enough to perk interest in the device over the G5.

Winner: S7 and S7 edge