Surveiller et punir
A multinational security firm has secretly developed a software capable of tracking people’s movements and predicting future behaviour by mining data from social networking websites.
Be on the side of the angels. Be a prism.
[I]t’s helpful to remember how banks traditionally make money: They take deposits from the public, which they lend out longer term to companies and individuals, capturing the spread between the two.
Managing this type of bank is straightforward and can be done on spreadsheets. The assets are assigned a possible loss, with the total kept well beneath the capital of the bank. This form of banking dominated for most of the last century, until the recent move towards deregulation.
Regulations of banks have ebbed and flowed over the years, played out as a fight between the banks’ desire to buy a larger array of assets and the government’s desire to ensure banks’ solvency.
Starting in the early 1980s the banks started to win these battles resulting in an explosion of financial products. It also resulted in mergers. My old firm, Salomon Brothers, was bought by Smith Barney, which was bought by Citibank.
Now banks no longer just borrow to lend to small businesses and home owners, they borrow to trade credit swaps with other banks and hedge funds, to buy real estate in Argentina, super senior synthetic CDOs, mezzanine tranches of bonds backed by the revenues of pop singers, and yes, investments in Mexico pesos. Everything and anything you can imagine. […]
Many risk managers will privately tell you that knowing what they own is as much a problem as knowing the risk of what is owned.
Put mathematically, the complexity now grows non-linearly. This means, as banks get larger, the ability to risk-manage the assets grows much smaller and more uncertain, ultimately endangering the viability of the business.
related { In 1900, the Fifth Avenue Bank in New York City featured a special row of tellers’ windows for the ladies. }
Every day, the same, again
A well-funded patent-holding company sues Facebook and seeks a royalty on the “Like” button.
In Spain, paying people to use free texting services.
Extracting Men from Semen: Masculinity in Scientific Representations of Sperm. [Thanks Nathan!]
One of the least understood symptoms in psychosis are hallucinations called cenesthesias. These are ‘inner body’ feelings that often don’t correspond to any known or even possible bodily experiences.
This article examines the conditions under which, in June 1975, a marginalized, stigmatized population -the prostitutes of the French city of Lyon- took the step of collective action, occupying a church for more than a week to protest against police repression. [PDF | via ZunguZungu]
Apple Is Testing Watch-Like Device.
Designer glasses correct red-green colour blindness.
A calculation to see how many cups of coffee you would need to drink in order to kill yourself.
Art-o-mat machines are retired cigarette vending machines that have been converted to vend art.
The Asch Conformity Experiment [video]
‘I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them.’ –Susan Sontag
There is human DNA discarded carelessly all over New York City and one artist has been picking up a little of it and making facial reconstructions of what its owner might look like.
“I’ve worked with face recognition and speech recognition algorithms in the past, but I had never considered the emerging possibility of genetic surveillance; that the very things that make us human: hair, skin, saliva, become a liability as we constantly face the possibility of shedding these traces in public space, leaving artifacts which anyone could come along and mine for information,” Heather Dewey-Hagborg, a self-described information artist, wrote in a blog post introducing the concept that she has spent about a year working on. […]
She has taken DNA samples found on the streets of New York City from cigarette butts and gums and has been able to determine gender, ethnicity (based on the mother’s side) and eye color.
{ The Blaze | Continue reading | The Boston Globe | DNA could be used to visually recreate a person’s face }
Every day, the same, again
Cat survives 35-minute cycle in washing machine.
Family sues Disneyland, claims rabbit character is ‘racist.’
Two Myths and Three Facts About the Differences in Men and Women’s Brains.
What’s really at work in selecting a romantic or sexual partner?
While reformers emphasize the therapeutic advantages of marijuana, the drug stands alone among Schedule I substances in the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 as the only one that did not start out as a medicine. The similarly classified drugs heroin and cocaine both had long histories as painkillers and numbing agents used by doctors and dentists. As the federal government pursued illicit dealing in these drugs, the market for them went underground. In response, the federal government imposed new laws on the District—like mandatory sentencing, asset forfeiture, and no-knock searches—that would later become fixtures of the modern drug war.
What is work? The discussion builds on analysis of two groups whose activities have at best a tenuous connection to conventional notions of work: Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jewish men (engaged mainly in full-time Torah study, not paid employment) and French farmers, whose incomes derive more from public subsidy than from success in markets. The elements of their situations that seem distinctive are found in fact to be quite pervasive, even for activities that are ‘obviously’ work.
Iovine and Dre approached Monster with a dazzling offer: Let’s build electronics. The inside story of one of the all time worst deals in tech.
Two Finnish Journalists Poop Their Pants On A Bus, Write About The Experience.
“Is this for Fashion Week?” “Nah, I just got out of jail. I’ve been wearing this shit for two weeks.” [Thanks Tim]
Earth formed about 4.6 billion years ago and life first appeared here about a billion years later.
‘I used to think I could change the world but now I think it changed me.’ –John Isaacs
Memory is a strange thing. Just using the verb “smash” in a question about a car crash instead of “bump” or “hit” causes witnesses to remember higher speeds and more serious damage. Known as the misinformation effect, it is a serious problem for police trying to gather accurate accounts of a potential crime. There’s a way around it, however: get a robot to ask the questions. […]
Two groups - one with a human and one a robot interviewer - were asked identical questions that introduced false information about the crime, mentioning objects that were not in the scene, then asking about them later. When posed by humans, the questions caused the witnesses’ recall accuracy to drop by 40 per cent - compared with those that did not receive misinformation - as they remembered objects that were never there. But misinformation presented by the NAO robot didn’t have an effect.
After application of the acid test to 5427 anal, axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare her to be virgo intacta
{ This paper presents a new approach on nipple detection for adult con- tent recognition. […] This method first locates the potential nipple-like region by using Adaboost algorithm for fast processing speed. It is followed by a nipple detec- tion using the information of shape and skin color relation between nipple and non-nipple region. […] The experiments show that our method performs well for nipple detec- tion in adult images. | Institute for Infocomm Research | PDF }
Who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug?
Deloitte predicts that in 2013 more than 90 percent of user-generated passwords, even those considered strong by IT departments, will be vulnerable to hacking. […]
How do passwords get hacked? The problem is not that a hacker discovers a username, goes to a login page and attempts to guess the password. That wouldn’t work: most web sites freeze an account after a limited number of unsuccessful attempts, not nearly enough to guess even the weakest password.
Most organizations keep usernames and passwords in a master file. That file is hashed: a piece of software encrypts both the username and password together. […] However, master files are often stolen or leaked. A hashed file is not immediately useful to a hacker, but various kinds of software and hardware can decrypt the master file and at least some of the usernames and passwords. Decrypted files are then sold, shared or exploited by hackers. […]
An eight-character password chosen from all 94 characters available on a standard keyboard is one of 6.1 quadrillion (6,095,689,385,410,816) possible combinations. It would take about a year for a relatively fast 2011 desktop computer to try every variation. Even gaining access to a credit card would not be worth the computing time.
However, a number of factors, related to human behavior and changes in technology, have combined to render the “strong” password vulnerable.
First, humans struggle to remember more than seven numbers in our short-term memory. Over a longer time span, the average person can remember only five. Adding letters, cases, and odd symbols to the mix makes remembering multiple characters even more challenging.
As a result, people use a variety of tricks to make recalling passwords easier. For example, users often create passwords that reference words and names in our language and experience. […] Although a keyboard has 32 different symbols, humans generally only use half-a-dozen in passwords because they have trouble distinguishing between many of them. These tricks and tendencies combine to make passwords less random, and therefore weaker. […]
But non-random passwords aren’t even the biggest problem. The bigger problem is password re-use. The average user has 26 password-protected accounts, but only five different passwords across those accounts. Because of password re-use, a security breach on a less-secure gaming or social networking site can expose the password that protects a bank account. […]
Longer passwords could make systems more secure. Adding just one or two characters make brute-force attacks almost a thousand times slower. A ten-character password has 8,836 more possible combinations than an eight-character password, and the same password-cracking machine cited above would take more than 5 years to crack it. Truly random passwords would also decrease the threat from hackers.
To give an appearance of solidity to pure wind
The tension between experience for its own sake and experience we pursue just to put on Facebook is reaching its breaking point. That breaking point is called Snapchat. […]
The temporary photograph’s abbreviated lifespan changes how it is made and seen, and what it comes to mean. Snaps could be likened to other temporary art such as ice sculptures or decay art (e.g., Yoko Ono’s famous rotting apple) that takes seriously the process of disappearance, or the One Hour Photo project from 2010 that has as its premise to “project a photograph for one hour, then ensure that it will never be seen again.” However, whatever changes in the aesthetics of photographic vision Snapchat is effecting are difficult to assess, given that no one really knows what its self-deleting photos collectively look like. In many ways, this is exactly the point.
Wait, my love, and I’ll be with you
— It’s hard to think of God dying a mortal death.
— Not for me. Actually, I take that back, it’s hard for me to think of him living.
— Right. Well, it’s hard for me to think of him dying. (Laughs.)
Every day, the same, again
Texas woman sues gym over ’sexually suggestive’ exercises.
City in Virginia Becomes First to Pass Anti-Drone Legislation.
The latest Census figures show real earnings for young college grads fell again in 2011. This makes the sixth straight year of declining real earnings for young college grads, defined as full-time workers aged 25-34 with a bachelor’s only.
Three “handy steps” for getting a questionable loan approved by JPM Chase’s automatic system.
One of the most surprising aspects of the Justice Department’s five-billion-dollar lawsuit against Standard & Poor’s, which the D.O.J. accuses of defrauding investors by issuing ratings on subprime mortgage securities that it knew to be misleading, is that the settlement talks broke down.
Baby Boomers Sicker Than Parents’ Generation, Study Finds.
As winter sets in, many animals effectively shut down their bodies in order to survive. Injured humans might benefit from similar techniques. Hibernation for humans.
Goggles That Block Facial Recognition Technology.
Three-legged robot uses exploding body to jump. “By actuating all three legs simultaneously, we caused the robot to jump more than 30 times its height.”
Pundits and the press too often treat terrorism and guerrilla tactics as something new, a departure from old-fashioned ways of war. But nothing could be further from the truth. The Evolution of Irregular War.
Richard Feynman and Ralph Leighton had a hard time at restaurants deciding whether to order the best dish they had tried so far or something new, which - who knows - might be even better. So, naturally, they decided to formalize this as a mathematical problem.
I am the slap and the cheek, I am the limbs and the rack, and the victim and the executioner
Hunger, thirst, stress and drugs can create a change in the brain that transforms a repulsive feeling into a strong positive “wanting,” a new University of Michigan study indicates.
The research used salt appetite to show how powerful natural mechanisms of brain desires can instantly transform a cue that always predicted a repulsive Dead Sea Salt solution into an eagerly wanted beacon or motivational magnet. […]
This instant transformation of motivation, he said, lies in the ability of events to activate particular brain circuitry.
Sharon Stone, who once again lets America know she likes showing us her labia
Interest in sensations from removed body parts other than limbs has increased with modern surgical techniques. This applies particularly to operations (e.g., gender-changing surgeries) that have resulted in phantom genitalia. The impression given in modern accounts, especially those dealing with phantoms associated with penis amputation, is that this is a recently discovered phenomenon. Yet the historical record reveals several cases of phantom penises dating from the late-eighteenth century and the early-nineteenth century. These cases, recorded by some of the leading medical and surgical figures of the era, are of considerable historical and theoretical significance. This is partly because these phantoms were associated with pleasurable sensations, in contrast to the loss of a limb, which for centuries had been associated with painful phantoms. We here present several early reports on phantom penile sensations, with the intent of showing what had been described and why more than 200 years ago.
related { Study of a rare disease making people look like a woman but having male genitals under study }
But the first thing in the morning. (He pats divers pockets.) This moving kidney.
Coca-Cola won’t say how it makes its best-selling Simply Orange orange juice, but one thing is for sure: It’s not so simple. A new investigation by Bloomberg Businessweek shows that the Coke-owned orange juice brand that’s billed as less processed version of Tropicana is in fact a hyper-engineered and dauntingly industrial product. […]
Coke also figured out that people are willing to pay 25 percent more for juice that’s not processed, that is, not made from concentrate. Enter Simply Orange. It is indeed just oranges, but boy have those oranges been through hell and back. Coke calls the process Black Book, because it won’t tell anyone how it works. The consultant that designed the Black Book formula will, however.
Bob Cross of Revenue Analytics explained to Bloomberg Businessweek that Coke relies on a deeply complex algorithm for every step of the juice-making process. The algorithm is designed to accept any contingency that might affect manufacturing, from weather patterns to shifts in the global economy, and make adjustments to the manufacturing process accordingly. Built into the model is a breakdown of the 600-plus flavors that are in orange juice that are tweaked throughout the year to keep flavor consistent and in line with consumer tastes. Coke even sucks the oxygen out of the juice when they send it to be mixed so that they can keep it around for a year or more to balance out other batches.
Every day, the same, again
{ image via Shellie Z }
Between 60 and 80 percent of people’s time on the Internet at work has nothing to do with work. [Thanks Erwin]
Study shows Facebook unfriending has real life consequences.
The psychology of the to-do list.
Scientists may have received millions in duplicate funding.
Does the functionality of your small finger determine your ability to master the violin?
A Diet Mixer Could Make You Get Drunk Faster.
Why are there so many murders in Chicago?
What would be the best place to live if the polar ice caps melt?
Interview w/ Kai, the Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker: Smash, smash, sss-mash.
Vaseline, sir? Orange flower?
In the real world, lending a book to a friend or selling your used music collection isn’t exactly groundbreaking. In the digital world, it’s patentable.
Amazon.com has been awarded what appears to be a broad patent on a “secondary market for digital objects” — a system for users to sell, trade and loan digital objects including audio files, eBooks, movies, apps, and pretty much anything else.
The patent, originally filed in 2009 and granted on Jan. 29, covers transferring digital goods among users, setting limits on transfers and usage, charging an associated fee, and other elements of a marketplace for “used” digital goods.
Stupefies them first. Hospice for the dying.
The annual number of emergency room visits associated with energy drinks increased to 20,000 in 2011, a 36% boost from the previous year. Late last year, the New York Times reported that the U.S. Food & Drug Administration is investigating reports of five deaths linked to Monster Energy drinks and 13 deaths linked to 5-Hour Energy shots. […]
Caffeine safety has proven hard to measure. Although scientists have established the toxic dose to be somewhere around 10 g, they say that the value can fluctuate depending on how a person processes the stimulant. Caffeine gets cleared from the body at different rates because of genetic variations, gender, and even whether a person is a smoker. For this reason, it’s difficult to set a safe limit of daily consumption on the compound.
‘To win the fame, babe, it’s all the same, babe.’ –Michael Jackson
The pursuit of honors and riches is likewise very absorbing, especially if such objects be sought simply for their own sake, inasmuch as they are then supposed to constitute the highest good. In the case of fame the mind is still more absorbed, for fame is conceived as always good for its own sake, and as the ultimate end to which all actions are directed. […] The more we acquire, the greater is our delight, and, consequently, the more are we incited to increase both the one and the other; on the other hand, if our hopes happen to be frustrated we are plunged into the deepest sadness. Fame has the further drawback that it compels its votaries to order their lives according to the opinions of their fellow-men, shunning what they usually shun, and seeking what they usually seek.
photo { Richard Learoyd }
Agree, for the law is costly
How far has society gone in dreaming up new dangers to protect our children from? […]
(A.) An upstate New York school district outlawed soap in its pre-school bathrooms for fear that children might suddenly start drinking it. Now kids must come out and ask an adult to squirt some soap in their hands.
(B.) Unaccompanied children under age 12 were banned from the Boulder, CO, library, lest they encounter “hazards such as stairs, elevators, doors, furniture…and other library patrons.”
(C.) The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a recall of certain fleece hoodies sold at Target because of lead paint on the zipper, which presumably could raise blood lead levels if the zippers are eaten.
(D.) Children under age 18 were prohibited from gathering on the streets of Tucson, AZ, for fear they might “talk, play or laugh” in groups, which could lead to bullying.
(E.) A New Canaan, CT, mom was charged with “risk of injury to a minor,” for letting her 13-year-old babysit the three younger children at home for an hour while the mom went to church.
(F.) A Tennessee mother was thrown in jail for letting her kids, aged 8 and 5, go the park without her, a block and half away from home.
[…]
The message to parents? The government is better at raising your kids than you are. The message to kids? You are weak little babies.
photo { Mary Ellen Mark }
