Miron's Weblog » Social Networks http://hyper.to/blog Fast Forward Sun, 22 Aug 2010 05:33:21 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Eben Moglen’s Talk – Freedom in the Cloud http://hyper.to/blog/link/eben-moglens-talk-freedom-in-the-cloud/ http://hyper.to/blog/link/eben-moglens-talk-freedom-in-the-cloud/#comments Wed, 14 Jul 2010 04:41:42 +0000 miron http://hyper.to/blog/?p=219 A very insightful talk about how we lost our freedom and how to regain it

You can also read the full transcript linked from there.

]]> http://hyper.to/blog/link/eben-moglens-talk-freedom-in-the-cloud/feed/ 0 Motivation and Background for the User Controlled Web http://hyper.to/blog/link/motivation_user_controlled_web/ http://hyper.to/blog/link/motivation_user_controlled_web/#comments Sat, 22 May 2010 21:53:17 +0000 miron http://hyper.to/blog/?p=208 Here are some background pointers:

A list of projects in this space.  The Diaspora project is listed under “deployable on commodity webhosting”.  I was under the impression that they are actually more of a p2p application.

A set of ideas for this space on the GNU Social wiki.

Adriana Lukas talks about the user-controlled web and the mine project.   (She coins a fun acronym: Relationships on Individuals’ Own Terms - RIOT. )

There seems to be quite a bit of activity with 20-30 projects, but the efforts are fragmented.  Different projects have different goals and approaches.  Some focus on a piece of the user experience and others focus on technology.  For example, the Mine! project is a technology piece focused on rich sharing of data (including links, photos) with strong user control.  OneSocialWeb is focused on messaging.  With Elgg you can create social networks – but it’s not really user controlled.

Diversity is great, but one or two well-thought out efforts need to win.   Critical mass is a must in order to win in this space.

]]> http://hyper.to/blog/link/motivation_user_controlled_web/feed/ 1 DNA not Patentable http://hyper.to/blog/link/dna-not-patentable/ http://hyper.to/blog/link/dna-not-patentable/#comments Wed, 31 Mar 2010 07:24:49 +0000 miron http://hyper.to/blog/?p=187 Sanity prevails in federal court!  News at 11.

]]> http://hyper.to/blog/link/dna-not-patentable/feed/ 0 Brain Preservation Tech Prize http://hyper.to/blog/link/brain-preservation-tech-prize/ http://hyper.to/blog/link/brain-preservation-tech-prize/#comments Mon, 29 Mar 2010 07:25:27 +0000 miron http://hyper.to/blog/link/brain-preservation-tech-prize/ As a Cryonics member, I became interested in a new initiative to fixate the brain in a plastic medium: brainpreservation.org

Would be excellent to have a high fidelity preservation procedure that doesn’t require maintenance (such as liquid nitrogen in the case of Cryonics).

]]> http://hyper.to/blog/link/brain-preservation-tech-prize/feed/ 0 Quantified Self: CMS50 Oximeter http://hyper.to/blog/link/quantified-self-cms50-oxymeter/ http://hyper.to/blog/link/quantified-self-cms50-oxymeter/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:23:18 +0000 miron http://hyper.to/blog/?p=162 After attending a couple of Quantified Self meetups, I was inspired to quantify various aspects of myself and my life.  For example, I was wondering if I am breathing well while I sleep, since I have been waking up tired on occasion.

I bought the Contec CMS50-F oximeter from here.

The software that comes with the CMS50 could be more reliable and user-friendly, and only runs on Windows.  I ended up spending a day  reverse engineering the USB protocol and writing a Python program to acquire and graph the data.  The software is on Gitorious.

Here are some of the charts you can get:

Oximeter Review realtime cms50 ]]> http://hyper.to/blog/link/quantified-self-cms50-oxymeter/feed/ 1 Blue Brain Project Documentary – Year 1 http://hyper.to/blog/link/blue-brain-documentary-year-1/ http://hyper.to/blog/link/blue-brain-documentary-year-1/#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 07:12:16 +0000 miron http://hyper.to/blog/?p=156 Noah Hutton’s company Couple 3 Films has released year 1 of a 10 year documentary project documenting the Blue Brain project.  The project includes Henry Markham’s work on reverse engineering the brain, scaling up from rodents to humans by 2010.

The work is funded by the Swiss government.

]]> http://hyper.to/blog/link/blue-brain-documentary-year-1/feed/ 2 $3000 Whole Genome Sequencing Cost http://hyper.to/blog/link/3000-sequencing/ http://hyper.to/blog/link/3000-sequencing/#comments Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:23:05 +0000 miron http://hyper.to/blog/?p=153 Life Technologies announces $3,000 marginal cost (later this year) for sequencing complete human genomes.  This is after Illumina announced the same for $10,000 (now).  So a $1,000 genome early next year?

Here comes personalized medicine.

]]> http://hyper.to/blog/link/3000-sequencing/feed/ 0 Doubling in Incidence of Malicious Data Breaches http://hyper.to/blog/link/breaches-incidence/ http://hyper.to/blog/link/breaches-incidence/#comments Tue, 26 Jan 2010 09:13:58 +0000 miron http://hyper.to/blog/?p=145 CNet reports on Ponemon institute’s survey showing a doubling of data breach incidents.

Average cost per record in the surveyed group is around $200.

]]> http://hyper.to/blog/link/breaches-incidence/feed/ 0 Nasal flu vaccine http://hyper.to/blog/link/nasal-flu-vaccine/ http://hyper.to/blog/link/nasal-flu-vaccine/#comments Thu, 17 Dec 2009 20:13:13 +0000 miron http://hyper.to/blog/?p=121 Alex and I got nasal H1N1 vaccines on Tue. I felt tired on Wed and Alex has a sore throat. Nasal is live-attenuated instead of dead virus.

Apparently symptoms are more likely with the nasal. On the up-side – no preservatives!

Does the nasal-spray flu vaccine LAIV (FluMist) contain thimerosal?

No, the nasal-spray flu vaccine LAIV (FluMist) does not contain thimerosal or any other preservative.

]]> http://hyper.to/blog/link/nasal-flu-vaccine/feed/ 0 How I stopped worrying and learned to love technofixes http://hyper.to/blog/link/how-i-stopped-worrying-and-learned-to-love-technofixes/ http://hyper.to/blog/link/how-i-stopped-worrying-and-learned-to-love-technofixes/#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2009 09:35:36 +0000 miron http://hyper.to/blog/?p=88 Peter Thiel writes regarding the failure of Democracy to preserve freedom and some possible technofix strategies. He includes are thoughts about creating freedom in Cyberspace, Outer space or on the high seas. I think it would be interesting to build certain distributed Internet apps that could change the dynamics of freedom, including reputation systems, gifting/barter systems and user-controlled Internet apps.

Peter’s article resonated strongly with my experience and my interpretation of history. As I see it, Democracies suffer from slow erosion of freedom over time, much like the increase of entropy in a closed system or overgrazing in the tragedy of the commons. Legislated freedom acts like a public good – and as such is under-produced.

I also agree with the thesis that technology seems has strong effect on the production of public good. This is especially true of communication technologies, such as the printing press, phones and the Internet.

There are several technology projects I am interested in that could change the dynamics of freedom:

Distributed reputation systems – such as described in Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom – would allow fluid transmission of reputation information, enabling ad-hoc decentralized organization.  It would reduce the dependence on monolithic institutions / walled gardens, such as eBay, Amazon, credit bureaus and other systems that enable centralized control.

Gift/barter economies with distributed record keeping – such as described in Bruce Sterling’s short story Maneki Neko or as practiced at Burning Man.

User-controlled Internet apps – allowing people to own their data and applications rather than ceding control to third party application providers. It would be a step further in the evolution of open-source, and it would parallel the aims of the AGPL.

Interested in any of these? Please drop me a note.

(Note: the term Technofix is usually used pejoratively, but I like it.)

Update: Michael Anissimov writes about Peter’s article and muses about the differences between socialism and libertarianism being moot once scarcity is reduces by advanced technology.  I tend to agree.

H/T: Nanodot

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