So Very Very Cool: John Kestner's Tableau: nighttable prints photos from Twitter

Description from vimeo:

"As our social circle spreads across a wider geographic area, we look for ways to share experiences. Technology has reconnected us to some extent, but the interfaces are not as simple as handling physical media. My great aunt Olga loves writing letters and shuffling through photos. I, on the other hand, write emails and share photos on Flickr, and as a result, we don’t communicate nearly as much as we’d like.

Tableau is an refinished heirloom nightstand that stores and retrieves memories using a Twitter account. It acts as a bridge between users of physical and digital media, taking the best parts of both. The nightstand quietly drops photos it sees on its Twitter feed into its drawer, for the owner to discover. Images of things placed in the drawer are posted to its account as well.

Tableau is an anti-computer experience. The nightstand drawer becomes a natural interface to a complex computing task, which now fits into the flow of life."

Very Smart: Wikileaks & the monopoly of information... Henry Porter

I have lost count of the politicians and opinion formers of an authoritarian bent warning of the dreadful damage done by the WikiLeaks dump of diplomatic cables, and in the very next breath dismissing the content as frivolous tittle-tattle. To seek simultaneous advantage from opposing arguments is not a new gambit, but to be wrong in both is quite an achievement.

Publication of the cables has caused no loss of life; troops are not being mobilised; and the only real diplomatic crisis is merely one of discomfort. The idea that the past two weeks have been a disaster is self-evidently preposterous. Yet the leaks are of unprecedented importance because, at a stroke, they have enlightened the masses about what is being done in their name and have shown the corruption, incompetence – and sometimes wisdom – of our politicians, corporations and diplomats. More significantly, we have been given a snapshot of the world as it is, rather than the edited account agreed upon by diverse elites, whose only common interest is the maintenance of their power and our ignorance.

The world has changed, not simply because governments find they are just as vulnerable to the acquisition, copying and distribution of huge amounts of data as the music, publishing and film businesses were, but because we are unlikely to return to the happy ignorance of the past. Knowing Saudi Arabia has urged the bombing of Iran, that Shell maintains an iron grip on the government of Nigeria, that Pfizer hired investigators to disrupt investigations into drugs trials on children, also in Nigeria, that the Pakistan intelligence service, the ISI, is swinging both ways on the Taliban, that China launched a cyber attack on Google, that North Korean has provided nuclear scientists to Burma, that Russia is a virtual mafia state in which security services and gangsters are joined at the hip – and knowing all this in some detail – means we are far more likely to treat the accounts of events we are given in the future with much greater scepticism.

Never mind the self-serving politicians who waffle on about the need for diplomatic confidentiality when they themselves order the bugging of diplomats and hacking of diplomatic communications. What is astonishing is the number of journalists out there who argue that it is better not to know these things, that the world is safer if the public is kept in ignorance. In their swooning infatuation with practically any power elite that comes to hand, some writers for the Murdoch press and Telegraph titles argue in essence for the Chinese or Russian models of deceit and obscurantism. They advocate the continued infantilising of the public.

Nothing is new. In 1771, that great lover of liberty, John Wilkes, and a number of printers challenged the law that prohibited the reporting of Parliamentary debates and speeches, kept secret because those in power argued that the information was too sensitive and would disrupt the life of the country if made public. Using the arcane laws of the City of London, Alderman Wilkes arranged for the interception of the Parliamentary messengers sent to arrest the printers who had published debates, and in doing so successfully blocked Parliament. By 1774, a contemporary was able to write: "The debates in both houses have been constantly printed in the London papers." From that moment, the freedom of the press was born.

It took a libertine to prove that information enriched the functioning of British society, a brave maverick who was constantly moving house – and sometimes country – to avoid arrest; whose epic sexual adventures had been used by the authorities as a means of entrapping and imprisoning him. The London mob came out in his favour and, supplemented by shopkeepers and members of the gentry on horseback, finally persuaded the establishment of the time to accept that publication was inevitable. And the kingdom did not fall.

Over the past few weeks, there have been similarly dire predictions from sanctimonious men and women of affairs about the likely impacts of publication, and of course Julian Assange finds himself banged up in Wandsworth nick, having neither been formally charged with, nor found guilty of, the sex crimes he is alleged to have committed in Sweden. Making no comment about his guilt or innocence, or the possibility of his entrapment, I limit myself to saying that we have been here before with John Wilkes; and the reason for this is that authorities the world over and through history react the same way when there is a challenge to a monopoly of information.

It is all about power and who has access to information. Nothing more. When those who want society to operate on the basis of the parent-child relationship because it is obviously easier to manage, shut the door and say "not in front of the children", they are usually looking after their interests, not ours.

I don't argue for a free-for-all, regardless of the consequences. In the WikiLeaks cables, knowledge and the editing and reporting skills found in the old media, combined with the new ability to locate and seize enormous amounts of information on the web, has actually resulted in responsible publication, with names, sources, locations and dates redacted to protect people's identities and their lives.

America is sore and naturally feels exposed, but the state department would have had much less cause for regret if it had listened to Ross Anderson, the Cambridge professor often quoted here in relation to Labour's obsession with huge databases of personal information. His rule states that it is a mathematical impossibility to maintain a large and functional database that is also secure. Hillary Clinton must rue the day that the Bush administration built a great silo of cables that could be accessed by three million staff. The Chinese and Russians would never have been so trusting.

There has been more than a hint that China and Russia have empathised with the Americans. The unseen affinities of the powerful may also be responsible for the unforgivable behaviour by Amazon, which pulled the plug on hosting WikiLeaks, and PayPal, Visa and MasterCard, which unilaterally stopped customers making donations to WikiLeaks. There was not the slightest consideration of principles about free information or the freedom of their customers to make up their own minds. What next? Will these corporate giants be blocking payment to the New York Times and the Guardian? It is hard to feel much regret over the cyber attacks on their websites because, in the end, they did not seem much better than Shell and Pfizer, the companies that appear to be running so much of Nigeria like the worst type of imperial powers.

Nothing but good can come from revelations about these companies, and in this brief moment when we have a glimpse of how things really are, we should relish the fact that publication of the cables, as well as the shameful reactions to it, have brought light, not fire.

Angry Birds, Flocking to Cellphones Everywhere - 50 million downloads & counting

It sounds like a tough sell: a game that involves catapulting birds at elaborate fortresses constructed by evil pigs.

Rovio, via Associated Press

Rovio says Angry Birds players spend 200 million minutes with the game daily.

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Fans celebrated Angry Birds Day, the game’s first anniversary, on Saturday in New York and dozens of other cities.

Jill Allison

From left, Devon MacIver, Evan McGee, Kate Gammon and Jordan Finley were Angry Birds for Halloween in Los Angeles.

But Angry Birds, a hit game by Rovio, a small Finnish company, is one of the unlikeliest pop-culture crazes of the year — and perhaps the first to make the leap from cellphone screens to the mainstream.

Angry Birds, in which the birds seek revenge on the egg-stealing pigs, is meant to be easily played in the checkout line and during other short windows of downtime — but some players have trouble stopping. Rovio says people around the world rack up 200 million minutes of game play each day. (Put another way, that is 16 human-years of bird-throwing every hour.)

The game has inspired parodies, homages and fervent testimonials. Homemade Angry Birds costumes were big hits on Halloween. Conan O’Brien demonstrated the game in a YouTube video promoting his new show, and a sketch from an Israeli TV show about a birds-and-pigs peace treaty was popular online. Justin Bieber and other celebrities have professed their love of Angry Birds on social networks.

read full deets on nytimes.com

Fuck You, Penguin - just funny

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"Ferrets have made no secret out of the fact that they are not happy about being so low down the list of favorite pets, hovering way below the classic favorites like dogs and cats and somewhere between a potbellied pig and a chia pet. Instead of taking this like a man, they unsurprisingly take it like a ferret, which means tons of fucking passive aggressive comments about how all the ferret wants is for you to be happy and if it doesn't make you happy, well, then maybe it just shouldn't be around any more....

finish this rant:
http://www.fupenguin.com/

The warped world of Julian Assange - guilty of being a really bad date & here's why

Where’s Stieg Larsson when you need him? This plot was made for him. A crusading truth-teller reveals shocking secrets about the covert operations of the richest and most powerful empire in the world. He is also a legendary hacker. Not surprisingly, the cabal decides he must be taken out. He goes into hiding. His powerful enemies, including the CIA and the Pentagon, launch a dirty-tricks campaign. He’s accused of unrelated, trumped-up criminal charges, and his home country issues an international warrant for his arrest. The bad guys lean on another country to arrest and extradite him. He might even wind up as a prisoner in the United States. Or he could do time in a Swedish jail, where he will be forced to eat large quantities of pickled herring.

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The founder of WikiLeaks has been denied bail - Is Julian Assange being treated fairly?

That, at any rate, is the conspiracy theory that has elevated WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange from hero to martyr. Since his arrest in London earlier this week, armies of celebrities, hackers and leftists have declared that he is essentially a political prisoner. Many are convinced he’s the victim of a CIA plot to entrap him by planting a couple of alluring Swedish blondes to smear him with false rape allegations.

“It is clearly a smear campaign,” Mr. Assange said when the allegations started leaking out last summer. “The only question is who was involved. We can have some suspicions about who would benefit.”

“The honeytrap has been sprung,” said Mark Stephens, his British lawyer. “Dark forces are at work. After what we’ve seen so far, you can reasonably conclude this is part of a greater plan.”

Named in court only as Ms. A and Ms. W, Mr. Assange’s accusers have been thoroughly trashed on the Internet. Their identities are an open secret. One website called Ms. A a “psychotic feminist.” The women’s lawyer says that, like many rape victims, they’ve been doubly victimized. One of the women recently struck back. “The responsibility for what happened to me and the other girl lies with a man who had attitude problems with women,” she told a Swedish newspaper.

Mr. Assange now enjoys rock-star status, with many of the same perks. As one acquaintance told The Guardian, “A lot of women invited him to their beds and he took that opportunity too much.” He said he warned Mr. Assange that his behaviour might get him into trouble.

It’s possible, of course, that Mr. Assange could be both things at once – a heroic champion of transparency and truth-telling, and also a sex offender. Or it’s possible he could be neither.

Sweden has some of the most stringent sexual-consent laws in the world. (The joke is that a man needs written permission to have sex.) But even by Swedish standards, this case seems like a stretch. Mr. Assange met one woman last summer when she invited him to stay at her apartment, the night before a conference he was attending. According to the prosecutor, they had consensual sex. The next morning, they had sex again, and the condom broke.

Mr. Assange met the other woman at the conference. She bought him a computer cable. They had sex. He went home with her to a distant suburb. She bought a train ticket for him because he didn’t have any cash. He ignored her on the train and spent his time tweeting. (“He paid more attention to the computer than to me,” she said in her official complaint, which has been published in both Sweden and Britain.) The next morning, they had sex again. She’d told him to use a condom, but he didn’t. She made him breakfast. He said he’d call her, but he didn’t.

The two women soon ran into each other, discovered what they had in common, and became outraged. They went to the police, lodged a complaint, and demanded that Mr. Assange be tested for various sexual diseases. It’s hard to see what he’s guilty of, beyond being a really bad date.

I relate these tedious details not out of prurient interest (really!) but because the sexual-assault charges are now central to the controversy surrounding Mr. Assange. Although these charges have nothing to do with his activities at WikiLeaks, try explaining that to his legions of defenders. To them, this is “really” about shutting down WikiLeaks. In retaliation, cyberhackers have been launching attacks aimed at shutting down the sites of MasterCard, Visa, Amazon and any other entity that has cut its ties with WikiLeaks.

But just as in Stieg Larsson’s novels, not everything is as it seems. Julian Assange is no champion of openness, transparency and democracy. His stated aim is to bring down institutions of government and business by crippling their ability to communicate internally and share information. He’s no Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers. He’s more like Ted Kaczynski, who didn’t care what he blew up.

Personally, I believe Julian Assange is an extremist who hasn’t obviously broken any law. But is he a rapist? Not by any definition of the word that I can find. A political prisoner, then? Not that, either. He’s a narcissistic, arrogant and unsavoury jerk. A very dangerous jerk.

China Mieville's Rejectamentalist Manifesto 'Letter to a Progressive Liberal Demoncrat'

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Excerpt:

"....We know that the cuts are massively regressive. We know this is a hecatomb of welfare. We know the arts are being savaged in a philistine rampage. We know that all the gorge-raising horseshit about being All In It Together™ is a meaningless tic. So you, like other left-wing LibDems (LWLDs), know - know - that you’re propping up an economic onslaught by those who think it their birthright to rule in wealth against the mass of working people.

When it’s obvious that there are other ways of saving money that don’t punish the poor, are you happy with what you’re doing?"

Read the full post on

chinamieville.net