Lemkin

"It’s a self-eating watermelon of despair."

Tue, 14 May 2013 14:03:17 -0400

“It’s a self-eating watermelon of despair.”

- Adam Steltzner, leader of the entry, descent, and landing team for the Curiosity mission, describing the difficulties of scaling an airbag-based landing system.

"As we move into the connected age and build a quantified society, Facebook’s dark shadow looms over..."

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 10:25:28 -0400

“As we move into the connected age and build a quantified society, Facebook’s dark shadow looms over us like a menacing monster.”

- Om Malik leading into his review of Facebook Home. Don’t mince words, Om, tell us what you really think.

"Obama is still trying to win over the Serious People, by showing that he’s willing to do what they..."

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 11:04:42 -0400

“Obama is still trying to win over the Serious People, by showing that he’s willing to do what they consider Serious — which just about always means sticking it to the poor and the middle class. The idea is that they will finally drop the false equivalence, and admit that he’s reasonable while the GOP is mean-spirited and crazy.

But it won’t happen. Watch the Washington Post editorial page over the next few days. I hereby predict that it will damn Obama with faint praise, saying that while it’s a small step in the right direction, of course it’s inadequate — and anyway, Obama is to blame for Republican intransigence, because he could make them accept a Grand Bargain that includes major revenue increases if only he would show Leadership (TM).”

- Paul Krugman gets it right on the rumored Obama budget.
This is the classic misstep; sure, it’s purely symbolic, but it moves the discussion to the right, damages what should be a through-line about the worth (and therefore the inviolability of) Social Security, and sets the stage for a Grand Bargain that is even further to the right than this “symbolic” proposal. After all, this is now Obama’s starting position. Any “compromise” will by necessity “hurt” Obama a little more in exchange for exactly zero GOP concessions and, additionally and without regard to any possible outcome, hands the GOP a readymade 2014 advertising campaign about Democrat cuts to your Social Security.
It’s just the way Washington works now. And Obama’s people still haven’t figured it out and, apparently, never will.

Yglesisas Answers it All

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 12:10:00 -0400

Matt Yglesias asks:

There’s no mystery as to why the National Republican Campaign Committee hates Nancy Pelosi, but their dislike for San Francisco is a bit puzzling.

Almost directly, and seemingly without realizing it, Matt Yglesias also provides the answer:

[San Francisco is] an enormous economic success story. The San Francisco metropolitan area has the fourth-highest median household income in the country, with its Bay Area partner San Jose coming in at number three. Metro San Francisco is in a tie for having the third-highest-pay for low-wage workers, its fourth in median wages, and third in 90th percentile wages.

GOP orthodoxy requires “government” of any kind to be an abject and self-evident failure. Few citizens of the US would dispute the sense that San Francisco is the liberal bastion of the United States. Therefore it must be an urban hellhole and not be visited by any kind of success. Where success exists, it must be ignored. Similarly, old Taxachusetts must be forever suffering under the yoke of ludicrously high taxes (and one must never acknowledge the reality: that MA’s effective tax rates and collective tax burden generally trend lower than those of old Live Free or Die itself, that glibertarian heaven called New Hampshire).

Much like the Post Office and many other examples, any functioning example of government, large or small, must be (at a minimum) denigrated. If possible, it must also be actively undermined such that it may then be pointed to as an example of the impossibility of government intervention, large or small. All evidence to the contrary must be marginalized. And that is why the GOP “hates” San Francisco and largely assumes it to be barely survivable smoking ruin.

"I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as..."

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 10:57:21 -0400

“I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.”

- Flannery O’Conner, as clear on her theoretical 88th birthday as on any other.

"I was disappointed when Speaker Gingrich ultimately decided against [forming a Santorum/Gingrich..."

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 11:50:16 -0400

“I was disappointed when Speaker Gingrich ultimately decided against [forming a Santorum/Gingrich Unity ticket in the GOP primary], because it could have changed the outcome of the primary, and more importantly, it could have changed the outcome of the general election.”

- Rick Santorum wistfully recalls what might have been.
He’s right, though, a Gingrich/Santorum ticket would have changed the general election outcome into much more of a 50-state stomping than the merely-wide-margin Obama win that we got. Something for Turtledove to look into, to be sure.

Gee, mail?

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:05:24 -0400

Ezra Klein:

I’m starting to worry a bit about Gmail, which is at the core of pretty much my entire life. I know, I know — Gmail is safe. The data it feeds into the Google mainframe is extremely valuable to the search giant. They won’t let anything happen to it.

You should be worried and they will, inevitably, let “anything” happen to it. While Reader had far fewer aggregate users than GMail has, think of what the underlying dataset was. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of savvy users collecting the the feeds they were interested in and then ladle on top what they actually read out of that list. Back in the old days, it was also what they starred and shared with friends. But that’s not allowed anymore, hasn’t been for a long time now…so, uh, there went that little nugget of highly actionable advertising information right down the toilet.
Many of the biggest sites around still garner huge fractions of their incoming hits from Reader feeds, and this is a product that has (at best) been ignored and (at worst) progressively disabled by a parent company ever sure that Reader’s just not “social” enough and therefore not anything people would ever be interested in. This, of course, after they killed the social functions in Reader. Nothing at all worth seeing in there for a massive advertising company, what with all the hits and all. Outgoing hits, don’t you know. One should expect to stay at Google. Kinda like AOL. You know, the early 90’s and the high excitement of “portal” sites. Which were pretty great, I think we’ll all agree. “You’ve got GMail!” is really something they should look into with the doodle. Get somebody’s 10% time assigned to that, Grace.

But the fact is, Google saw nothing worthwhile in that Reader data, or they wouldn’t be killing Reader. Yes, I understand that they think all that hot, linking action will automagically move into Google+, where no one is, and that the same massive group of nobodies will laboriously (and mostly manually) create the equivalent feed(s), one entry at a time, and just go back to enjoying all that great Google+ product when they’re not doing so. But, you know, manually. And in front their pals who also aren’t using the service.

So it should be pretty plain that the moment some corporate bozo decides that GMail is the problem with Google+ (or whatever the idiotic corporate bozo windmill Google is tilting at come the day), GMail will end. And no amount of “but I paid for more space!” will save your email, Ezra. This too shall pass.

So enjoy the grand convenience of being advertised to based on your emails while it lasts. Quite frankly: I love it too. Were it legal, I might marry it. Again, for the first time. And but also buy the biggest hard drive you can afford every couple of years and back up all your Google data to it. Because all of it will go away. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. And for a long time.

Up words

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 10:00:56 -0400

Up words:

Chris Hayes moves to msnbc weekday prime time. Nice. But I can’t help but notice this:

“Up” doesn’t have a huge audience […] but it consistently beats CNN on Saturday and Sunday mornings, and it has been praised by media critics for allowing long, thoughtful conversations about politics and public policy, the kind rarely seen elsewhere on television.

These conversations usually project a liberal worldview, in line with MSNBC as a whole. But Mr. Hayes and his producers also try to book guests who don’t often get on television, including conservatives; a recent discussion with Mr. Hayes and four conservatives lit up the blogosphere. “Add this segment to the list of reasons Chris Hayes’ Up has become the most interesting weekend political show in America”

Emphasis added to help me ask exactly which feature of Up do you assume is the least likely to survive the massive transition to a “prime time audience”? Right this very second in some boardroom somewhere, somebody is saying “all that thoughtfulness may work on a Saturday morning, but…”

Breaking: GOP Won Big in 2012

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:44:36 -0400

Breaking: GOP Won Big in 2012:

At least they won it in every way possible that doesn’t involve, you know, actually winning:

[The GOP thinks] they lost because their get-out-the-vote technology failed on Election Day. They think they lag the Democrats in data mining and use of social media. They think media bias defeated them. They think they kinda-sorta won because they won the white vote and the elderly vote. They think a tiny number of anomalous, atypical Republicans spoiled everything for the rest of the party by scaring women with off-putting abortion rhetoric. They think they just haven’t found the right messenger who can explain to Hispanic voters that they’re “natural Republicans.” They think Obama and Democrats win among low-information voters who are too dumb to realize what’s really happening to them and what the two parties really stand for. Or those same voters are being bribed with “Obamaphones.” And, yes, Republicans are still claiming voter fraud.

Oh, and besides, they won the House (even if they lost the total House vote and won only because of gerrymandering, and even if Democrats retained the Senate), so 2012 was a split decision right? Heck, Paul Ryan won — he won reelection to his House seat.

So it’s all good for the GOP! Their ideas are what America wants! It’s obvious!

Exactly.

"Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is an interesting world I find..."

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 11:32:00 -0400

“Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!” This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise.
I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for. We all know that at some point in the future the Universe will come to an end and at some other point, considerably in advance from that but still not immediately pressing, the sun will explode. We feel there’s plenty of time to worry about that, but on the other hand that’s a very dangerous thing to say.”

- Douglas Adams, who would be 61 today, speaking at Digital Biota 2 in 1998.

Four Real but Rejected Names for the Edsel

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 10:17:21 -0500

First: Intelligent Whale
Second: Ford Faberge
Third: Mongoose Civique
Fourth: Utopian Turtletop

"Hey, Bob, I saw the movie you just released last night, and it sucked."

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:53:31 -0500

“Hey, Bob, I saw the movie you just released last night, and it sucked.”

- Steve Jobs, at the time Disney board member and majority share holder, in periodic calls to Disney CEO Bob Iger.

"Republicans have very decidedly not agreed to any kind of tax reform that raises federal revenues...."

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 14:47:15 -0500

“Republicans have very decidedly not agreed to any kind of tax reform that raises federal revenues. This is the whole crux of the debate. They have never agreed to anything other than revenue-neutral tax reform.”

- Kevin Drum, saying what should be printed in the maximum size possible, laminated in armor-strength plastic, and posted on the wall of every news agency large and small. Every single news outlet gets this simple, straightforward fact utterly and completely wrong every single time they venture here. Wishing hard and clapping louder will not make the GOP sensible. Neither will acting as though they want a “sensible” deal when they have made no such overtures, large or small.

Reporting this as though both parties are equally at fault is doing The Republic no favors.

Faceplant

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 15:36:11 -0500

Sergey Brin: [Smartphones are] emasculating. You're standing around and just rubbing this featureless piece of glass.
John Gruber: I can see the argument that dicking around with our phones in public is not cool, that we should pay more attention to our companions and surroundings, and less to our computer displays. Strapping a computer display to your face is not the answer.
Lemkin: Yep. File Google Glass away with "Because everything is waterproof, the housewife of the future will clean the living room with a hose."

"If you stabilize the debt in some reasonable way, we’re going to have growth. The unemployment rate..."

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 14:20:00 -0500

“If you stabilize the debt in some reasonable way, we’re going to have growth. The unemployment rate should come down.”

- Bob Woodward, very serious person, opines on the economic situation during a Meet the Press appearance.

While I certainly don’t anticipate David Gregory will ever produce a substantive followup, one could at least assume anyone in the employ of a major media conglomerate could muster the five whys. You wouldn’t even have to break out all five to demonstrate that Woodward is comically wrong and furthermore has not one fucking idea about what he’s saying.

We’ll have to leave it there…

Photo

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 11:51:16 -0500

Subway "Foot" Long

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 16:26:10 -0500

Subway "Foot" Long:

What’s next? A dramatic, four part report that blows the lid off of the 2x4 aisle down at the Home Depot?

"[David] Brooks begins [his column today] by noting that the Grand Bargain on the deficit, which he..."

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 14:57:54 -0500

“[David] Brooks begins [his column today] by noting that the Grand Bargain on the deficit, which he has spent the last two years relentlessly touting, is not actually possible. Why is it impossible? Because, he writes, “A political class that botched the fiscal cliff so badly are not going to be capable of a gigantic deal on complex issues.”

Oh, the political class? That’s funny. In 2011, Obama offered an astonishingly generous budget deal to House Republicans, and Brooks argued at the time that if the GOP turned the deal down, it would prove their “fanaticism.” Naturally, they turned it down. Obama continues to offer a bargain including higher revenue through tax reform in return for lower spending on retirement programs, but Republicans refuse to consider higher taxes. So, in summary, this proves “the political class” is to blame.”

- Jonathan Chait thoroughly destroys David Brooks. You should really treat yourself to the whole thing.

"[The Hastert] rule is completely dead. The Democrats now effectively control the floor because..."

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 15:20:52 -0500

“[The Hastert] rule is completely dead. The Democrats now effectively control the floor because nothing ‘big’ will come to the floor without knowing in advance that lots of Democrats support it. That gives the Democrats tremendous power in a body where the minority is not designed to have much power.”

- Unnamed Republican Aide, likening the appropriate and intended function of the House to “tremendous power.” How we can have an MSM that drones on and on about “reaching across the aisle” in the face of a reality that includes a de facto rule stating that nothing moves unless it will pass with only majority votes is and long has been beyond me.

Even still, former Speaker Hastert’s own reaction to the weakening and even ending of his “rule” is all the more telling:

Maybe you can do it once, maybe you can do it twice, but when you start making deals when you have to get Democrats to pass the legislation, you are not in power anymore.

So, then, making a deal at all is tantamount to surrendering all power. Breathtaking.

Any Reasonable Definition

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 11:39:00 -0500

Any Reasonable Definition:

Dear media, please read and understand every word of this before your next utterance re: Aaron Swartz:

MIT operates an extraordinarily open network. Very few campus networks offer you a routable public IP address via unauthenticated DHCP and then lack even basic controls to prevent abuse. Very few captured portals on wired networks allow registration by any vistor, nor can they be easily bypassed by just assigning yourself an IP address. In fact, in my 12 years of professional security work I have never seen a network this open.

In the spirit of the MIT ethos, the Institute runs this open, unmonitored and unrestricted network on purpose. Their head of network security admitted as much in an interview Aaron’s attorneys and I conducted in December. MIT is aware of the controls they could put in place to prevent what they consider abuse, such as downloading too many PDFs from one website or utilizing too much bandwidth, but they choose not too.
MIT also chooses not to prompt users of their wireless network with terms of use or a definition of abusive practices.

At the time of Aaron’s actions, the JSTOR website allowed an unlimited number of downloads by anybody on MIT’s 18.x Class-A network. The JSTOR application lacked even the most basic controls to prevent what they might consider abusive behavior, such as CAPTCHAs triggered on multiple downloads, requiring accounts for bulk downloads, or even the ability to pop a box and warn a repeat downloader. Aaron did not “hack” the JSTOR website for all reasonable definitions of “hack”. Aaron wrote a handful of basic python scripts that first discovered the URLs of journal articles and then used curl to request them. Aaron did not use parameter tampering, break a CAPTCHA, or do anything more complicated than call a basic command line tool that downloads a file in the same manner as right-clicking and choosing “Save As” from your favorite browser.

Aaron did nothing to cover his tracks or hide his activity, as evidenced by his very verbose .bash_history, his uncleared browser history and lack of any encryption of the laptop he used to download these files. Changing one’s MAC address (which the government inaccurately identified as equivalent to a car’s VIN number) or putting a mailinator email address into a captured portal are not crimes. If they were, you could arrest half of the people who have ever used airport wifi. The government provided no evidence that these downloads caused a negative effect on JSTOR or MIT, except due to silly overreactions such as turning off all of MIT’s JSTOR access due to downloads from a pretty easily identified user agent.

I cannot speak as to the criminal implications of accessing an unlocked closet on an open campus, one which was also used to store personal effects by a homeless man. I would note that trespassing charges were dropped against Aaron and were not part of the Federal case.

These facts are just not that complicated. Do us and yourselves a favor and look into them. Understand them. Then report.