Stanford and Google
23:17 Thursday, 25 September 2014
Words: 453
There was an interesting piece in Propublica on Tuesday that was headlined "Stanford Promises Not to Use Google Money For Privacy Research." The premise of the article was based on a single sentence in a document filed by Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society (CIS) in a court case seeking some funding from a civil penalty imposed on Google in privacy lawsuit. The sentence was, "Since 2013, Google funding is specifically designated not [to] be used for CIS's privacy work."
Following publication, Stanford representative Jennifer Granick responded in a blog entry on the CIS web site, refuting the Propublica article's premise, and maintaining that Stanford's research is in no way encumbered by the aims or wishes of financial donors, including Google.
The court filing containing the misleading sentence is available online, and read in whole, is at pains to suggest that CIS is independent and its academic integrity is intact, as evidenced by the fact that results of their research have been used against Google in the past. Which is, of course, very encouraging.
Still, it's very curious why that sentence ever appeared in the filing in the first place. Presumably, these are all very intelligent people, and these kinds of documents are very carefully edited and vetted before being submitted to the court. No explanation is offered, apart from "Why I phrased it that way, I don't know. It was six months ago and a completely different context."
If I had to hazard a guess, it might be that they wanted to appear to be a bit deferential to a financial contributor, a bit of a fig leaf. I can imagine that some people at Google might object to their financial contributions to academia being used against them. Why give money to Stanford if they're only going to use it to potentially extort more money from the company in exactly this form? I'd guess that it's a sotto voce aside to Google, "We're not using your money against you. So, you know, keep writing those checks!"
Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society may be independent, and its virtue may be intact; but that sentence seems to suggest that they recognize how it might look, taking money from Google and doing research that might be potentially damaging to Google's corporate interests. It doesn't look good.
The easy fix is simply to find other sources of funding, and accept no money from the likes of Google, Facebook, Apple and so on. But that's where all the money is these days.
So I guess we should all just trust CIS, like we're supposed to just trust Google that everything's all on the up-and-up.
I'm sure that'll be just fine.
In Other News...
05:53 Wednesday, 25 September 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 74.66°F Pressure: 1013hPa Humidity: 95% Wind: 0mph
Words: 188
"Francisco Franco is still dead." (IFYKYK)
Helene is shaping up to kick Florida right in the crotch as a major hurricane. But, "What, me worry?" (IFYKYK)
That's right, Florida's insurance market is up for the challenge! In the immortal words of that fearless leader Dubya, "Bring it on!"
Lawmakers and the industry credit reforms they passed that made it harder to sue insurers. It also could be simply because the state’s recent hurricanes made landfall in rural parts of the state
Yeah, let's see how much post-hurricane media coverage is about policy holders not being able to collect on their policy, and unable to sue their providers! Florida's Republican legislature enacted "reforms" that amount to little more than, "Heads I win, tails you lose," for the insurance industry.
Yes, you can get insurance, so you can get a mortgage. It'll be when uninhabitable homes get foreclosed on and the mortgage industry is left with a lot of unsellable inventory blighting the landscape that we'll see real reform.
There's a lot of needless pain and suffering left between here and there, though.
You read it here first folks.
✍️ Reply by emailWe've Known All Along
06:08 Wednesday, 25 September 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 73.13°F Pressure: 1013hPa Humidity: 95% Wind: 0mph
Words: 298
In my semi-sentient state, I listened to all three episodes of this podcast that Kottke linked to yesterday. It's from a year ago, but as history, it's timeless.
I was a 13-year-old environmentalist. I read The Population Bomb, The Limits to Growth, Future Shock and a bunch of other books about how technology and pollution were threatening our planet. One I can't recall was about the supersonic transport and the risk it posed to the ozone layer.
What I wasn't aware of back then was the guy who developed system dynamics, Jay Forrester. He developed Whirlwind at MIT, invented "core" memory ( genuinely useful randomly addressable memory), and thought deeply about systems.
Perhaps not as genuinely brilliant as someone like Claude Shannon, but I think his contributions equal Shannon's. Or they would have, had we paid attention.
Anyway, a lot of really good, interesting history in that podcast series. Easy to listen to, well produced and very sad.
The one piece of Apple II software I kept when I divested five years ago was Micro Dynamo. You can find very little to read about Micro Dynamo on the web. But it's a version of Dynamo, the modeling system developed for the world simulations in The Limits to Growth. There have been many modeling and simulation platforms developed since then.
Chaos theory added another important dimension to systems thinking, and we now have at least some understanding of complex non-linear dynamic systems, but I think the idea remains foreign to the vast majority of people. It should be a literacy requirement in a technological civilization, but we're probably not going to have one for very much longer, so that problem will solve itself.
As professions go, lawyers seem to get the most disrespect.
Should be economists.
✍️ Reply by emailProgress
09:50 Wednesday, 25 September 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 83.8°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 82% Wind: 9.22mph
Words: 300
Had my second course of Paxlovid this morning. Slept ok last night. (I seldom sleep "well.") No fever or chills, no muscle aches apart from the usual ones. Less of a runny nose, but still, well, runny.
The worst part is my right front tooth. The left one had a root canal in 1977 when a guy who was in a pep rally skit with me kinda failed to pull his punch and hit me in the mouth, breaking the tooth. Instead of evening meal that night, I had a root canal. ("Let's see if the nerve's exposed...")
Awesome.
The right one's been fine since forever, except a corner chipped off some years ago and efforts to bond a little replacement failed successively and progressively made it worse. So I finally went ahead and just had a crown put on it. Tooth was healthy, so no root canal. Except, it's always been a little sensitive after that.
For some reason, Covid ("Not COVID, Dude. Covid is the preferred nomenclature.") has dialed that sensitivity up to 11. Last night I was trying to figure out how to see the dentist while having COVID. I was asking Mitzi to run to the store for the stuff you rub on your gums to numb teeth.
I woke up this morning, and the tooth seemed to feel fine. Drank some water with the Paxlovid and learned it definitely was not. But it's either getting better, or I'm getting more accustomed to the pain. It isn't causing tears anymore, anyway. I'm hoping that as my immune system and the antiviral get a handle on this thing, it'll go back to being just a little sensitive. (I could still eat an ice cream bar, and have the BMI to prove it.)
Anyway, the beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailRetro Recovery
16:13 Wednesday, 25 September 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 83.32°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 82% Wind: 13.8mphWords: 714
Faded a bit after lunch, but rallied later. Feeling a little feverish now, but otherwise ok. Tooth is still a nightmare. Maybe I'll lose a little weight?
Figured I'd spend a little quality time with the //c. I'm stuck on level 6 now, because I let myself get trapped in a room with no way to shoot myself out. I recall there was some keyboard combination that basically exited the game, but I don't think you could record your score. So I'll reboot the computer in a minute, but I wanted to post something here.
I mentioned we'd switched to IQ Fiber for our internet service, and I'm very pleased with the service so far. It comes with an app that lets you see everything that's on your network. I have a Motorola MG8702 cable modem/wifi router that we used when we had Xfinity, and there was this MotoSync iOS app that let you see everything on your network. But a later update basically lobotomized it and it was useless. (Cool. Just remembered to delete it.) But the IQ Fiber app goes a bit further and lets you turn internet access on and off, selectively, by device.
I think you may have been able do that with MotoSync, but it wasn't easily discoverable.
I discovered it playing around with the app yesterday. So I turned off internet access to the TV in the office. It's a TCL 32" LCD with Roku embedded in it. I actually use it to watch streaming in the office when Mitzi's watching something I'm not interested in, or I'm isolating because of Covid. But it doesn't need internet access all the time. And I suspect the little bastard eavesdrops on me. Maybe I'm just paranoid.
Anyway, I'm eluding the Bungeling guards and stealing their gold and this little white light keeps flashing at the bottom of the TV. It's a bit distracting and I'm wondering what that's about. Then it dawned on me, it's probably bitching about the internet! Heh. I'll turn it back on later. New episodes of Bad Monkey and Slow Horses tonight! (Sounds like I'm watching Animal Planet.)
So the foul taste in my mouth fades over time. I suspect that's my liver clearing the antiviral. It's a 2-drug "cocktail" and one of them impairs the liver's ability to metabolize the antiviral, allowing it to circulate longer in the bloodstream. A technique, I gather, developed in the effort to fight HIV.
As the taste fades, it seems my temperature is going up slightly. I don't feel particularly "sick," just hot. I don't know how responsive my immune system is to "viral load," and maybe this is all just in my head, The recommendation is to take the two doses, one in the morning and one at "bed time." Well, "morning" and "bedtime" are pretty ambiguous terms to me. Easy to remember, I guess.
Being an eager beaver, I took my first dose when Mitzi got them home, about 1430 yesterday. I did not take one at bedtime, because they caution you against taking too much. They advise skipping a dose if you miss the regular time by more than 8 hours, and resuming at the normal "morning" or "bedtime," whichever was next.
My second dose was at 0500 this morning. I'm trying to figure out what this 8-hour "window" thing is about. Ideally, it seems you'd want to take the doses 12-hours apart. For an early riser like me, that's at 0500 and 1700. And "bedtime" is usually before 2200. Assuming a notional 2200, "Taps, taps. Lights out. Maintain silence about the decks," that's only a 7-hour interval between the "bedtime" and "morning" doses, but a 17-hour interval between the "morning" and "bedtime" does.
A wiser man would consult the doc, but I'm going with the 12-hour interval. My "second" dose would have been at 0230 this morning. 0500 is only 2.5 hours later, and well within the 8-hour "margin of error." And all subsequent doses will be at precisely 0500 and 1700, because I had a Plebe Year. "Time tide and formation wait for no man."
As of this moment, that's about seven minutes from now. So let me conclude this little chronological ("horological"?) inquiry and post!
✍️ Reply by emailThis and That
08:28 Thursday, 25 September 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 65.62°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 98% Wind: 6.67mph
Words: 754
Coming up with titles is a challenge, and sometimes I'm not up to it.
We got about three quarters of an inch of rain over the last 24 hours, which is welcome as nearly all of New York is under a drought "watch" or "warning." I'm not certain about the use of the word "watch" in this context. Maybe "alert" would make more sense? I guess you can see the effects of a drought, but it's not like you can actually see a drought, unlike a tornado, hurricane or tropical storm. (Though the latter two are such large scale phenomena, it's pretty hard to miss them even if you're not watching.)
In any event, I walked down and checked the grass I'd planted and it's starting to come up pretty well. Patchy still, but starting to fill in and get tall. It might work out.
This afternoon we're going to go and pick up about 10 "Jolly Green Giant" arborvitae trees to plant down in the northwest corner of the property to block some of the headlights coming up the road, and the neighbor's truck lights when he warms them up in the wee hours of the morning. They grow really fast, they're pretty hearty and don't require much in the way of care other than adequate water. (Drought watch noted.)
The drought conditions are also on my mind because of our elevation here. As the water table drops, we'll be among the first to notice as wells run dry. So far there's been no indication of that, there are homes up the road that are a couple hundred feet higher than us, so I think we'll hear something.
I've wanted to put gutters and rain barrels on the house, but got out-voted. Maybe I can get away with it on the garage?
I'd like to complain some more about iOS 26, but what's the point? When we were out visiting Mom, I asked my brother why he thought Apple changed the "Done" button on an edit screen to a HUGE check-mark button? Perhaps I'm old and my brain isn't as agile as it once was, but there was a moment of cognitive double-clutching as I tried to figure out how to close an edit screen. Does "check" mean "done"? I guess it does?
But how did that idea get rolled into the OS? Who pitched it? How is this an improvement for the user?
My brother said he thought it might have some advantages for Apple in terms of resources devoted to localization. "Check" is a universal symbol. (Is it really? In this context?)
So an advantage for Apple, but all us customers have to go "WTF?" when we try to close an edit screen the first time. File that under "surprise and delight." And why the fuck is it so huge?
I haven't installed Tahoe on the MBP yet, because I'm not looking forward to more cognitive disconnects when I try to do something that's nearly muscle memory. I haven't read any in-depth reviews of Tahoe because I'm not as much of an Apple fanboy as I once was.
Kottke pointed to this post at Press Watch. I'd say it's somewhat encouraging, but I'm unwilling to give the Times enough of the benefit of the doubt to re-subscribe. I have no illusions that good faith, hard journalism would have prevented a second Trump presidency, but I don't like paying for bullshit.
Was the 2024 election rigged? I don't know, and I'm disinclined to dive down conspiracy theory rabbit holes. But I did listen to this David Pakman video yesterday, and find it troubling if not compelling. Yet.
Here's the Election Truth Alliance web site. The methodology seems legitimate. They're analyzing an enormous amount of data and so they've only completed three states so far. Not enough to turn the election, but enough to raise some troubling questions. They're using statistical analysis to identify anomalies in voting patterns. I'd welcome a consortium of larger non-partisan organizations to support and vet this analysis. We almost certainly can't overturn the 2024, but we may be able to identify vulnerabilities we might be able to address for the 2026 mid-terms.
Remember how Trump always accused Democrats of rigging elections, and how every accusation is an admission.
Well, Mitzi wants to mop the floor so I've got to get out of here. Probably go work on a shelf in the garage.
The beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailThank the Gods
08:57 Friday, 25 September 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 49.71°F Pressure: 1027hPa Humidity: 93% Wind: 3.98mph
Words: 37
So I heard about this NY Times best 100 TV shows of the 21st Century, and I wanted to see if Battlestar Galactica made the cut.
It did. In the top 50 even!
So say we all!
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