The Mac World needs an app that will toggle Java availability

Java on the Mac is malware by design. It bypasses the entire security infrastructure of OS X. It's worse than Flash, and Flash is plenty bad.

There aren't many apps that really need it, and most of those have solid Mac alternatives. (Sorry Minecraft fans.)

The problem is corporations. They use VPN products that require Java. (Way to go corporate America -- mandate use of a security product that dramatically reduces network security. Alas, this is so typical.)

So many of us can't go entirely Java free until that problem is fixed.

So we need an app.

An app that disables or enables Java just when we need it. (Ok, Minecraft fans, just for gaming purposes.). An app that only Admin users can run because it needs Root privileges.

Maybe it changes privileges on the Java executable. Maybe it renames it. Whatever, it makes it NOT work, OR work, in a way that Admin users control for an entire machine.

Ideally Apple will provide this, but they might not. Apple, correctly, wants Java on Mac dead.

This would make a great utility. $20 bucks? No problem. I don't see any reason why it couldn't meet Apple's App Store requirements.

Money maker.

Do it.

Pay to Play: Facebook and the attention economy.

Facebook has made some interesting attention economy moves over the past few months.

Last November they created a new feed [1] called "Pages Feed". It seems to be a chronological list of Pages I'm "connected to" [2]. It's somewhat hidden; I'm sure most users will never see it.

Since then [7] Facebook has changed the algorithm for what appears in my "News Feed" [3]. If I sort chronologically ("Most Recent") [4], I see it includes all the "Page Feed" posts, but if I use the default "Top Stories" ranking many Page Feed posts disappear down the screen. Some are still near the top, but some are so far down I'll never see them.

These two changes are related. Unless Page owners pay up [8], their subscribers may not see Page Posts ...

Promoted Posts | Facebook Help Center

... Promoted posts appear higher in news feed, so there's a better chance your audience will see them...

It's not clear if user interactions with a Page post (like, comment, share) still change the ranking of future posts from the same source ...

Posting works the same way it did before. When you share a post it gets delivered to the audience you specify.

If someone you shared with didn't notice your post it's likely because they:

... Didn't scroll down to where your post appeared in their news feed...

My internal lawyer looks at this and thinks "It all depends what you mean by the word works". The Post does get "delivered", it just won't be "seen".

My hunch is that, for the moment, Page engagement still matters. That is, if you interact with a Page post (Like, Comment, Share) you will see similar posts  in the future. If you don't interact however, you'll only see them if the Page Owner pays or if you are the .1% who will notice the Pages Feed.

From my perspective, this is a dual bummer. As a Page subscriber If I didn't want to see Page posts, I'd unsubscribe. Facebook's ranking algorithm is simply an annoyance -- not to mention I prefer the deprecated "Most Recent" sort order. As a Page owner this means my sports teams, clubs and groups are missing news they care about -- like a change in practice schedule.

From a business perspective, assuming interactions still affect sort order, Facebook can win two ways. If Page owners pay then Facebook gets money for placement, if consumers interact more then Facebook learns more about customer interests.

On the other hand this change makes Facebook less useful for its customers. It opens up opportunities for Google if they could, you know, stop shooting their tentacles off. [6]

 - fn -

[1] Facebook, for me, is the commercialization of RSS pub/sub post/feed technology. There are three active feeds - Pages (new), News (Page Owner and Profile activity), and Unnamed Right Side -- Profile detailed Page/Profile activity sorted chronologically.  Incidentally, Pages still have RSS feeds, and Profiles used to have them but that was removed 1-2 years ago.

[2] Subscribed to Via the "Like" action.

[3] Page and Profile feeds I subscribed too via "Like".

[4] This is increasingly hard to do. Facebook will periodically revert sort order to their algorithm-generated "Top Stories". I'm not sure "Most Recent" even exists in the mobile app any more. I expect Facebook to remove it altogether.

[6] Google Reader is (again) rumored to be facing imminent execution. If Google had embraced standards-based pub/sub for G+ instead of killing off RSS (and Reader Shares) the world would be a different today.

[7] In theory the Promoted Page option dates back to Oct 2012. In practice it's been quite subtle until recently, and I think the algorithm changes are newer.  Facebook has figured out how to make big changes in an incremental fashion.

[8] Not all my Pages show the same rates. For my sons' hockey team a promotion $5, for our inline skating club it's $15.

Inherit the Cloud: Who gets your Google Docs when you die?

In the old days digital inheritance was simple.

Say I died in 1999. (BTW, I don't expect to this for decades). Back then my computer was owned by me and it would have passed to my estate [2]. Where the computer goes, so goes its drive and data [1] including tax returns, photos videos,, Financial records, password stores and so on. [3]

Those were the good old days. In 2013 we know that DRM'd media, like software, dies with its owner ...

... this piece of prose from Apple’s legal department says this about apps:

You may not rent, lease, lend, sell, transfer, redistribute, or sublicense the Licensed Application and, if you sell your Mac Computer or iOS Device to a third party, you must remove the Licensed Application from the Mac Computer or iOS Device before doing so.

I’ve scoured Apple’s iTunes Store Terms and Conditions documentation and I haven’t found verbiage specific to movies, music, audiobooks, and e-books, but I’m assuming these same restrictions apply to those media flavors. Given that, Apple seems to be well within its rights to say that when you expire, so too does your purchased media....

So what about the Cloud? What happens when all of the family records and documents and passwords and photos are stored in Dropbox or Google Drive or iCloud? Can Facebook records be downloaded by the estate? Do access rights go through probate?

Wikipedia has a short article ... (emphases mine) ...

... Gmail[1] and Hotmail[2] allow the email accounts of the deceased to be accessed, provided certain requirements are met. Yahoo! Mail will not provide access, citing the No Right of Survivorship and Non-Transferability clause in the Yahoo! terms of service...

... Facebook's policy on death is to turn the deceased user's profile into a memorial...  no one is able to log into the account in the future...

 American states are starting to make laws with a focus on Facebook ...

 Who Has The Right To Our Facebook Accounts Once We Die? : All Tech Considered : NPR

Now, lawmakers in at least two states — Nebraska and Oregon — are considering legislation that would require social networks like Facebook to grant loved ones access to the accounts of family members who have died.

Oklahoma passed a similar law in 2010.

"We have automatically vested in the administrator of an estate the power to act on the behalf of a deceased individual and access these accounts," Ryan Kiesel, a former Democratic legislator who wrote Oklahoma's law, tells Morning Edition host David Greene. "That's not something they have to go to court for. They have that power, just as they have the power to pay debts, to distribute property according to a statute or according to a will. One of their powers in Oklahoma now is to be able to access these online accounts."

Yes, Oklahoma is a technology leader. Surprised me. [4]

Dropbox is clear that content is owned by the account owner, but I couldn't find any references to estate access. Google had nothing on Google Drive, but they do provide access to Gmail. On iCloud I found nothing at all.

This is going to get sorted out, but for the next few years it would be unwise to store important records or your 1Password credential repository solely in the Cloud.

[1] The software is licensed to an individual though, and, technically, is not inherited. That's precedent for the bigger problem.
[2] In fact it's family property, but I'm simplifying. 
[3] Back then we didn't encrypt hard drives or backups btw. 
[4] I'm going to ask my MN state representative to have a look at this post.

Update 4/19/2014: Google has added “Inactive Account Manager” settings to Google.com/settings. It’s under the Data Tools menu currently. You can choose up to 10 trusted people who will be notified when primary account is inactive for at least 3 months - you can set range to 18 months. You have to specify a phone number that will be used to notify the recipient, so there’s a risk that number will not work when needed.

I set this up on my primary account. When i first configured it I was able to specify what went with my account, but afterwords I couldn’t see those choices. I think that’s a bug or a missing feature.

See also:

• Peparing for the inevitable - Google Docs for the "Not available" letter Feb 2013

Preparing for the inevitable - Google Docs for the "Not available" letter

Yes, it happens. We die. Short of death, we can be lost in the wilderness, imprisoned by whackos, captured by space aliens, comatose, or gone.

This has always been inconvenient for those left behind, but in the digital age it's a particularly inconvenient. We don't use biometric authentication yet, but user names, passwords and the locations of things are bad enough. (Imagine when we do biometrics...). 

So how does one communicate this key information 'from the other side'? What method is most likely to work? Where should the information be stored and how should it be shared?

After playing around with a few options I've settled on a basic Google Doc that is shared with my wife [2], my brother, our executor, and several relatives and friends. We all use Google, and I assume access to a shared document will survive my demise. As a document of course it's simple to print a paper or PDF version that can go with our will. The paper version will include the URL of the shared Google Doc and directions on how to access it -- the paper version is a backup. This isn't a legally binding document but it's advisory so it's good to know the "source of truth" and it's handy to be able to see all prior versions and edits over time.

As a shared document it's somewhat private, but potentially public. It won't hold any truly confidential information.

Since it's a Google Doc there will be a synchronized copy on my Google Drive; a copy whose name, at least, is Spotlight indexed. The information is fairly robust -- anything that would take out all copies of the documents for all users would probably make my estate irrelevant.

Lastly, but not leastly [1], it's easy for me to edit. So I can put together an outline and gradually fill in the bits as I think of them. Odds are I'll get thirty years to work on it.

But you never know.

Here's the current outline, I'm sure it will expand.

• Metadata: Title, author, last revised.
• About: Describes use, includes URL on Google.[3]
• Passwords and Combinations: Where my 1Password archive is and how to get to it -- including the location of a backup copy of the global password (paper). Where I keep the simple household combinations.
• Backups: Where my backups are (office and home) in case of need.
• Money: Where the money is. This is most important if both Emily and I are taken out by an errant meteoroid.
• Domains: I own about a dozen domain names. Some are worth money, some provide access to digital content the kids might want.
• Photo archive: How to get the family pictures.
• Media archive: Probably not a top priority, but no reason the tunes should go.
• Kateva: Dogs don't get into wills, but executors look for advice on canine provisions. I suppose I'll say something about the gerbil too.
• What goes to which kid: This is the dangerous part. Who gets the Family domain? Who gets the wedding ring? (Ok, the last one is easy, we have only 1 daughter.) It is something I need to do though.
• Dispensing of "John Gordon" (not my TrueName) - including the blogs.

[1] That really should be a word.

[2] Once it's setup I'll make her 'owner' and I'll keep edit privileges. Helps with survivorship. She can do the same for me of course.

[3] Almost impossible to type. Since the data isn't super-secure I used Google's URL shortening service to create something one could read off a paper version and type in a browser.

See also:

• Gordon's Notes: You're 50 now. It's time to start plan 0. 7/2012 - it's a cheery time of life :-).

Update:

As I worked on this my outline grew. I also realized, with mild horror, that if the server were lost or destroyed my estate would need the passwords to my encrypted offsite backups. "Best" security practices are hell on an Estate. For example -- Google two factor. What if my phone is gone too?!

Hints that your heart needs checking - in memory of Jim Levin

Nobody's perfect. The Jim Levin I knew was pretty good though. Smart, kind, wise, generous, honest. A family man. He had a lot of talent, and he used it to make the world better.

Jim was 54 when he died suddenly, apparently of a heart attack.

Heart attacks in relatively young people are notoriously lethal. Sometimes the first symptom is death. A soft plaque sheers off, and a major vessel is suddenly obstructed. Smaller vessels may be fine, so there's been no slow development of backup "collateral" circulation. A healthy conduction system propagates bad signals. The heart fibrillates. 

There's a good chance Jim had no warning symptoms, or at least nothing meaningful. If he'd had symptoms though, he'd have been worked up. Chances are the problem would have been fixed.

So, because it's the only meaningful thing I've thought of to mark this loss, this post is an informal review of the warning symptoms of heart disease.

I'll start with the set of symptoms that the American Heart Association describes as the Warning Signs of a Heart Attack [1]...

• Chest discomfort. Most heart attacks involve discomfort in the center of the chest that lasts more than a few minutes, or that goes away and comes back. It can feel like uncomfortable pressure, squeezing, fullness or pain.
• Discomfort in other areas of the upper body. Symptoms can include pain or discomfort in one or both arms, the back, neck, jaw or stomach.
• Shortness of breath with or without chest discomfort.
• Other signs may include breaking out in a cold sweat, nausea or lightheadedness.

The American Heart Association (AHA) recommends calling 911 -- "Don't wait more than five minutes"

I think you can see the problem here. I was very short of breath at the end of my swim sprint yesterday. I've been lightheaded or nauseous several times in my life (flu, etc) -- and I'm don't think any of them were heart disease. Taken out of context these symptoms aren't terribly specific. [4]

The AHA doesn't want to get more specific because they'd rather err on the side of over-diagnosis than under-diagnosis - and because they're writing for a wide audience.  I think they can do a bit better for this blog's audience though [3]. So here's a bit of context:

• If these things occur together it's more likely to be heart disease. So shortness of breath AND "cold sweat" [2] AND jaw discomfort all together means more than one of them by itself.
• It's one thing to feel short of breath when you're a healthy person running a 5 mile race, another if you are short of breath doing stuff that is normally easy (like watching TV).
• If symptoms like "arm discomfort" and " nausea" come on with exercise and get better with rest -- that's ominous. (Exercise means the heart needs more oxygen, so it can expose an underlying problem.)
• If your parents died of heart disease in their 40s and your LDL cholesterol is 250 and you smoke and you're male ... Ok. You get the point. Most of us have some heart disease by age 50, but some people have a lot. Weird pains at rest may not mean too much in a low risk 30 yo woman but in a "high risk" person they might be bad news.

In some cases, such as a man in his 50s with chest pains on exercise that get better with rest, the likelihood of serious heart disease is so high there's not much point in doing studies like an exercise stress test - nobody would be convinced by a negative result. [3]

Now you know some things to watch for. In memory of Jim.

See also:

• Cardiac testing: the classic application of Bayesian math to interpreting test results
• Remembering an Informatics Pioneer and Compassionate Friend: Memorial from UPMC.

[1] Technically this is the crummy way our body tells us that the heart is malfunctioning - most often due to lack of oxygen delivery with or without muscle damage (muscle damage = "heart attack").  It doesn't have proper pain receptors because there wasn't any point to it during the past billion years of cardiac evolution. There was no bypass surgery in the paleolithic.

The symptoms may also go completely away by themselves -- which doesn't mean the problem is gone.

[2] Autonomic nervous system freaking out.

[3] There are big debates about how doctors should investigate for ischemic heart disease, but that's way beyond the scope of this post.

[4] Really what we all want is a low cost highly predictive test we can do on everyone aged 50 that will tell us how bad their heart disease is. Or a set of cheap screening tests that we can put together with a risk factor profile to decide how should be imaged even if they have no symptoms at all.

Apple: What it would take for me to like you again.

I'm an Apple customer. If Apple makes a hardware product, I buy it from them. I use most of their Mac and iOS software.

That doesn't mean I like Apple. I just dislike them less than the alternatives.

Which makes me reflect on what Apple needs to do to make me like them again. This has nothing to do with APPL's share price btw, it's completely personal. As my friend Andy used to say, I'm not Apple's customer. (Though I do have influence on people who ARE Apple's customers. I still advise buying Apple if asked, but I no longer volunteer that opinion.)

• iBook for MacOS. Not all books are novels; I want to be able to read textbooks and non-fiction on my Macs.
• iCloud is a 1970s Jaguar. Shiny, expensive, and unreliable. Talk to me about this. Admit that there are problems and explain how the fixes are coming. Back off on driving everything and everyone to iCloud when it doesn't work (Mountain Lion default save to iCloud?).
• Apple, stop basing all of your marketing on things that aren't ready. Just stop.
• Fix your Apple ID problems. We all have multiple Apple IDs, and most of us don't know what they are. Our DRMd transactions and our product and support information is distributed among Apple IDs. Admit there's a problem. Work it.
• iWork was never finished. I run across features that are half-completed or that cause big performance issues. I don't trust it to scale to serious projects. It doesn't need a big UI change or a lot of new features, but it needs serious investment.
• Aperture crashes. It should never crash. It's too buggy. Apple is taking the right path to making Aperture 'iPhoto Pro' but they are only 80% done. They need to invest and fix it.
• Calendar and Contact apps are a bit better in Mountain Lion than Lion, but they are not serious products. They don't scale to my life. It's crazy that Contact to Group relations is MacOS only.
• I know how to use Google Calendar to share calendars across my family. I can even use Google Apps to share Contacts. I can publish calendars and others can subscribe to them. None of this works properly in the iCloud/MacOS world.
• Detox on the luxury addiction. Remember how incredibly important the iBook was. The Mac Mini should have been priced under $300 -- even though that would have resulted in serious shortages. It's insane that the new iMac is so hard to manufacture -- nobody needed that super-thin edge. Personally, I still wanted the built in DVD. (I said I wasn't going to talk about share prices, but I think the Mini's price point had repercussions.)
• If you're going to break the iOS connector ecosystem, then don't sell your A/D converter device with a fat margin. That's stupid greed.
• Look at what worked with RSS (pub/sub) and what didn't. Come up with an open Apple solution.
• Remember the AT&T and Verizon are not our friends. If you can find a way to shaft them, do it.
• Think hard about the problem of bandwidth costs and net access. Look at what Google is doing with Google Fiber. Think big and think small - from partnering on fiber to enhancing iOS to manage bandwidth use.
• Think about people who aren't wealthy. I can afford Apple products, but not all of my family can. Remember the iBook.
• Support your damned developers. Damnit.

I'm sure I could come up with more examples, 

These are fixable problems. They come down to "Talk to me", and "invest in the hard things that don't return glory" and "remember we're not all rich". I've seen a lot of improvement in iOS Maps.app, and it's encouraging that Apple has opened iOS to Google products.

Fixing the problems though may require a change to Apple's famously brutal internal culture. That may take some significant executive turnover. Cook's huge bonuses to the inner circle, and his secrecy obsession, are not reassuring.

So I'm only guardedly optimistic.

High functioning schizophrenia: an academic's story.

"THIRTY years ago, I was given a diagnosis of schizophrenia."

That's a helluva way to start one of the most important NYT OpEd's of 2013 ...

Successful and Schizophrenic - ELYN R. SAKS NYTimes.com 

... I made a decision. I would write the narrative of my life. Today I am a chaired professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law... 

... Although I fought my diagnosis for many years, I came to accept that I have schizophrenia and will be in treatment the rest of my life. Indeed, excellent psychoanalytic treatment and medication have been critical to my success... 

... Over the last few years, my colleagues, including Stephen Marder, Alison Hamilton and Amy Cohen, and I have gathered 20 research subjects with high-functioning schizophrenia in Los Angeles.. 

... At the same time, most were unmarried and childless, which is consistent with their diagnoses. 

... in addition to medication and therapy, all the participants had developed techniques to keep their schizophrenia at bay. For some, these techniques were cognitive... 

... One of the most frequently mentioned techniques that helped our research participants manage their symptoms was work... 

... Personally, I reach out to my doctors, friends and family whenever I start slipping, and I get great support from them. I eat comfort food (for me, cereal) and listen to quiet music. I minimize all stimulation. Usually these techniques, combined with more medication and therapy, will make the symptoms pass. But the work piece — using my mind — is my best defense. It keeps me focused, it keeps the demons at bay. My mind, I have come to say, is both my worst enemy and my best friend... 

Elyn R. Saks is a law professor at the University of Southern California and the author of the memoir “The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness.”

My freshman roommate developed what I believe was schizophrenia. He dropped out for years, then one day returned to school, completed a PhD and started working. I suspect he was not "cured", just as Elyn Sanks is not cured.

Whatever the limitations of the "schizophrenia" as a diagnostic label (they are many), we now know that a few people are able to manage around a grievous and terrible disability. They have shown that it can be done.

That's important. Remember Roger Bannister? He was one of the first Europeans to officially run a 4 minute mile (I suspect other humans had done it before). Before he did it, few tried. Now many men have done it, including one runner in his 40s. It's still hard to do, but it's not news any more.

Succeeding with schizophrenia is the psychic equivalent of running the four minute mile. Terribly hard to do, but once done methods can be refined, goals set, support provided, lessons learned.

Lessons that I suspect will be of value to many persons, not just schizophrenic and autistic adults, but also all inheritors of the 150,000 year old human mind; hacked together in a blink of Darwin's eye. The techniques used to manage severe psychic turmoil can also be used to manage the lesser afflictions we all experience.

Elyn Saks and fellow champions, we salute you.

See also:

• Who were the crazy genius scientists? 5/2012

Parc-nature du Bois-de-Liesse: XC Skiing in Montreal Quebec

My two home towns are Minneapolis and Montreal. They have quite a bit in common, though on this trip I was struck by how much diverse manufacturing Montreal has.

Both cities, for example, have a superb network of bicycle trails and public parks. Minneapolis bicycling is rated #1 or #2 in the US, and Montreal is #1 or #2 in North America. In the winter they both feature extensive urban cross-country ski networks.

On my prior winter visits to the Old Country I have rented nordic skis at Mt Royal (excellent!), but this trip I needed something closer to my parent's home. I chose Parc-nature du Bois-de-Liesse, one of Montreal's 17 "grands parcs".

It was somewhat familiar territory. In the mid 20th century I bicycled country roads and walked wooded areas in this part of the island. Most of that is now industrial park and residential land, but a good section of the forested area became a park in the 1980s.

The park has two attractive chalets, shown on this Google satellite photo as 'A' and 'B':

B is "La Maison" Pitfield on 9432 Gouin West. There used to be a restaurant there but sadly it's been closed. It's an attractive building, I think it was built by the Pitfield family who owned the wooded land I once bicycled through. A is at 3555 Douglas B. Floreani, this is a newer building of a similar style. (I got lost finding it; Nav software is recommended! I use Navigon when I visit Canada as it doesn't require a data connection to work. [1])

Site A has the ski rental operation. For a token fee of $8/hour I got first rate gear, comparable to my own waxless skis. There's a parking fee, but on Sundays you can park on the street and walk a bit. There are no trail fees.

In theory there are about 15km of trails of which 6.3km are "expert", but many of the trails overlap and the "expert" trails is beginner-intermediate. A good skier with decent wax could do the entire system in about 1-2 hours:

The trails are largely groomed for classic skiing; some segments are two way - that can be tricky. I was barreling along when I looked up and realized that a panic stricken family was only 30 yards ahead (easily avoided). Grooming is more than adequate, though not "state of the high tech art".

On a Sunday there are many skiers of all ages but the route is quiet. On weekdays I'm told there are few skiers, but you would hear traffic noise in a few limited sections. I read a review complaining that it felt "urban"; I wonder if they got it mixed up with another system. Yes, there are some houses near the perimeter, but it is, after all, within a city. I thought it was exceedingly pleasant, though I did spend much of the trail racing against a younger rival who was about my speed. (I'm not sure she realized she was in a race - but I think she did.)

There are no ski trails east of Autoroute 13; it's snowshoe only and this park does not allow skis on the snowshoe trails. Alas, there's no skijoring at all (many MN parks allow skijoring on snowshoe trails and some ski trails). There is a small sledding hill by the Douglas B. Floreani chalet. In summer there's mountain biking a mixture of the ski and snowshoe trails.

I had an excellent time.

PS. One of the curious features of Quebec is that the web is fairly sparse -- even in French (English sites are very limited). So this may be the best coverage of this trail on the web!

[1] The phone can't be in airplane mode though, that disables the GPS wireless. Just turn off roaming and turn off cellular data.

Update: I found a list of Grands Parcs that rent XC skis as of Jan 2013:

Jean-Drapeau doesn't really count, it's tiny and it rents for a winter festival. So the parks that rent XC skis include:

• Pointe-aux-Prairies (way out there!)
• Ile de la Visitation
• Bois-de-Liesse (this blog post)
• Bois-de-l'ile Bizard: bit remote, very quiet
• Cap-Saint-Jacques: big park, also quiet, NW end of island.
• Mont-Royal: queen of the park system.

Angrignon, which I remember as a good ski park, doesn't rent. Maybe my memory is off.

Boom market 2013?

The S&P is approaching its 2007 peak, which is basically equivalent to the peak just prior to the .com crash. 

As an essentially passive index fund investor I like to take a look back at times like this:

The market stopped making sense to me around 1995 -- almost two decades ago. So I like to put a ruler on the 1980-1995 trendline and see what the S&P would be today if the market had continued to make sense.

Today I get about 1,000, so we're currently 50% above that old-timer trendline.

For whatever that's worth.

Why ending the war on drugs may have unintended consequences

Imagine you have very limited or no legal employment opportunities. Or perhaps you have some opportunities, but they pay poorly.

Dealing drugs may be a semi-rational choice then. American jails are famously nasty, but if you can avoid prolonged incarceration and drug trade violence you can earn money.

If we end the failed war on drugs though, those income opportunities vanish. Walmart and Philip Morris take the profits, and distribution becomes another high-competition minimum wage option.

Ending the war on drugs, without providing an answer to mass disability, may have unintended consequences.

We might do better to keep drugs illegal, but reform prisons -- turn them into enhanced skills development programs.

Why I love app.net (ADN)

I joined App.net ($5/month or $36/year) about five months ago. Although it's fundamentally a messaging infrastructure it's currently marketed as an ad-free social network.

I paid $50 at launch, and my account was extended when the cost dropped. That was money well spent; I expect to subscribe as long as they are in business. I love App.net because ...

• It has a very robust ecosystem of tools and services including multiple Mac and iOS clients and multiple web apps. I use Wedge, Netbot, NoodleApp and Appnetizen and will soon try Felix. There are multiple integration points to my Pinboard feed, including IFTTT support. Most of my posts start with Reeder.app [1] then go to Pinboard and turn into App.net posts via IFTTT.
• The community I interact with on app.net is exceptional. More on that below.
• I love the mission: a public (pay) communications infrastructure and related services that I purchase. I love paying for things I use.
• The app.net development team is delightful. I mean that literally; it's a joy to see them play and build on the platform - like @duerig's early stage Google Reader Share alternative, Patter-app rooms and private messages (EdChat) and vidcast shared video commentary.
• 128 characters is stupid. 256 is not twice as good, it's eight times better. (Though URL characters count, so I use URL shortener services)
• I'm 50+ and this is a relatively young community (though plenty of 40+ too). I'm old enough to enjoy that. The only young people I otherwise interact with are my kids (10-15) and their friends.
• I have the (illusion) of helping build something good without, you know, actually having to do anything. (Hence the illusion bit.)
• No advertising. Of course that doesn't mean no marketing; it means I choose the marketing I want)

The real hook for me, however, is the community. I follow a very smart and mutually respectful group of people. The conversation reminds me of Google Reader Shares, some of the BBS forums I joined via packet switching networks before there was public net access, but most of all it reminds me of my undergraduate conversations.

 

During my undergrad days I got to know 4 institutions, partly because I wanted to escape from the one I graduated from, partly because in Quebec everyone went to "junior college" (CEGEP) after grade 11. Whether they were elite or accessible I found great conversations everywhere.

 

There were good conversations at graduate school, medical school and residency as well (I spent a long time in school), but the undergrad conversations were the most interesting. App.net reminds me of the best of those. It is, for example, the only place I can learn from the insights of a (gasp) republican.

 

The group I follow is a pretty tough bunch. If I'm sloppy, I get called on it. I love that -- it makes my thinking better. I learn things.

 

App.net won't last forever -- nothing does. But it's a good place now; it succeeds where Twitter failed me. 

 

If you'd like a free trial let me know at jgordon@kateva.org or in comments below -- I can share 3 invites.

[1] Alas Reeder.app may have been sunset. It's very unstable on the iPhone 5. Fortunately there are alternatives I can explore.

See also:

• The Economist's Babbage on two of my favorites: Pinboard and App.net. The Economist doesn't use bylines, but I suspect this is by @glennf.

Supporting sports teams - what I do now

Over the past ten years I've been the manager for a variety of hockey and baseball teams. Along the way I've tried a variety of technologies to try and support the teams, including blogs, wikis, traditional web sites and the like.

I've gradually settled on a handful of overlapping technologies that seem to work well for a diverse audience using Facebook and Google services.

Here's what I use now:

Communication - Gmail and Facebook both

Gmail

I prefer Gmail because of ease of access at work, home and on my phone.

I manually build a group of correspondents; this typically takes a few weeks to get right but then changes little over the course of a season.

I have one structured email for each team I support; I use the last email sent as template for the next. I use a large font and ample white space - not least because I'm 50+ myself. I use a consistent footer with links to a Google Docs team page, Photo album (if any), Team Calendar, and Facebook Page.

The primary limit to email is personal/work access issues and the global problems many people have with email in 2013. Many subscribers do not use email at home, and some do not have work access.

Facebook Team Page

I use Facebook because that's where our people are -- both athletes and families. They don't do blogs, they may have limited email access, but most use Facebook in one way or another [1]. Facebook Pages are always Public, and so web accessible for non-members -- albeit with an obnoxious popup pushing Facebook. Many athletes get SMS notices with Page activity, so it can be a quick way to notify of weather cancellations and the like.

I create a Facebook Page for each team. The UI for managing these pages is awkward and confusing, but by now I'm familiar with it. It takes me about ten minutes to setup a Page.

I copy paste emails into Page status updates, it takes only a minute or so to do that.

It's awkward to associate persistent links with a Facebook Page, but if you play around a bit you can make them show in the Page header; that's where I put links to our Team Page and Calendar.

Reference Page - Google Docs

I've recently started using a Google Doc "Team Page" with basic reference information including a simplified roster (no private information). There's no authentication, I share it using the "secret" URL but typically these pages get indexed one way or another.

Google Docs is easy to update and produces documents suitable for print or web access. It is the current version of the "personal web page".

Roster - Google Spreadsheet

I maintain the team roster in Google's Spreadsheet. Access requires authentication as this can contain private information including email and phone numbers.

Calendar - Google Calendar

I setup a Google Calendar for each team. I don't know of any alternatives. My family subscribes to the team calendar on our phones and devices, but most simply view it online.

Photo sharing - Picasa vs. Facebook

Historically I've shared using Google Picasa web albums and emailing the "secret" URL. I don't think these albums get a lot of access however, which is disappointing since the photos are not trivial to prepare. I liked the idea of full resolution downloads but in ten years I doubt more than twenty images have been downloaded.

I've recently started experimenting with Facebook's improved Albums and these seem to get much more team traffic.

I don't put any namers or other identifying information into shared albums -- just the images.

[1] They don't do G+ either, but then nobody does.

How did the American South feel about losing the Civil War?

The second son asked me: "How did the American South feel about losing the Civil War?".

My first thought was that the South was deeply unhappy, but I immediately realized that wasn't true:

The 1860 Census and Slavery in the United States | Suite101

... Deep South states held the most slaves and this is where most of the larger plantations existed. Mississippi’s slave population stood at 55% out of a total population of 791,305. South Carolina’s slave population represented 57% of the total population. These percentages decrease with upper South states like Virginia (31%), Tennessee (25%), and Kentucky (20%). Border States like Maryland accounted for the lowest numbers (13%)."...

So the correct answer is that most Mississippian's were relatively pleased, if not joyful, that the South lost the war. On the other hand, Kentuckians were mostly unhappy.

White southern abolitionists, aka "Scalawags", would also have had mixed feelings. I couldn't locate percentages, but based on studies of human response to external evils [2]I'd expect about 10% of Southern Civil War whites would be at least somewhat pleased that their society was coming to an end. If I add those numbers to black Southerners then the answer would be "mostly unhappy, but many pleased, especially in Mississippi and South Carolina".

Incidentally, when Americans equate "Scalawag" with German opponents to Naziism [1], we will know the Civil War is coming to its end.

[1] The analog is somewhat stretched, the Nazi response to opposition was far more lethal than the Southern suppression of abolitionism.
[2]  There are always about 10% of humans that seem to resist evil, even when it is a societal norm.

Welcome to the 21st century: The primary themes

To be plausible, I've read, a novel must avoid reality.

What novel, for example, would start the 21st century with al Qaeda's attack on America? What novel would have an American President spend a trillion dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives attempting to recreate Grenada in Iraq while tossing aside the Laws of War?

Reality is not as cautious as writers. And so the 21st century began with the end of American exceptionalism. More than a decade later, we've got the feel of it. Not of the whole century for the whole world, but at least of the years from 2010 to 2040 for America.

What are the main themes? I'm sure I've missed a few, and of course there will be surprises, but here's my starter list: 

• Demographics 1: From 2010 through 2040 America will be divided between an increasingly senile, largely white protestant, cohort born before 1964 and a relatively diverse and secular cohort born after 1964. The many "fiscal cliff" fights to come will reflect this shift.
• Demographics 2: Even Hispanic birth rates are falling. The relative cost of children will continue to increase even as 93% of income growth goes to the top 1%. Given Demographics 1, American will have to attract millions of new immigrants -- even as the American brand struggles to recover from the Bush regime.
• We are in the post-AI era of both great wealth and mass disability.
• China and India - whether they thrive or struggle or both it's their story now.
• Nuclear proliferation: More nuclear weapons, more launch systems, more hackable targets. Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, India ... and so on. [1]
• The cost of havoc will continue to fall. I was really torqued about this in the months after 9/2011; I didn't see how we'd avoid turning into a surveillance society (at best) or an authoritarian state. Well, on the one hand we did turn into a surveillance society, but on the other hand we haven't seen any home-brewed bioweapons yet (except for this one of course)[2]. I still think this problem is not going away, and neither is the surveillance state. 
• Innovation gap: AI aside, there's something wrong with the engines of our ingenuity. Maybe we've done all the easy stuff, maybe it's the NIH and the scientific-industrial complex, maybe it's because so much talent is wasted playing finance games, maybe it's the triumph of the Corporation and its IP laws, maybe it's all of the above and more. This gap is a bigger threat to our future than social security or even  health care expenses.
• Winner take all: It is insane that growth in our economic output is going to such a thin slice of our population -- 37% going to 15,000 households.
• The triumph of the mega-corporation: For better and for worse, but mostly for worse, the large centrally-planned Corporation will rule the American economic landscape for decades to come. Elephants have made the ecosystem of the African Plains, and Corporations have made the laws and accounting systems of America. Citizen's United will shape the decades to come.
• Weather adaptation: The big devastation from CO2 emissions is probably in Book Two, but Book One will have big enough problems. We will eventually adopt carbon taxes; driven both by need to raise revenues (see above) and by the slow acceptance that we've whacked the Earth pretty hard.
• Good enough health care: After exhausting every other option, the US will come to accept good enough health care.
• No more big US wars: Being old and worried about budgets is not all bad.

It's a daunting list, but it's a list of challenges and fixable problems, not of disasters. Spicy food, chewy and a bit green on the edges, but edible with a bit of chewing. It could be worse.

 

- fn -

[1] There are two strong arguments for supernatural entities. One is the arrow of time (entropy low at t=0). The other is that we have not yet had a true nuclear war - despite all our close calls.
[2] Oh, yeah, and what novel would have a bioweapon attack follow 9/11, be used to justify a major war, and then be completely forgotten? 

The Post-AI era is also the era of mass disability

Is Stephen Hawking disabled?

Obviously this is a rhetorical question. Hawking is 70 and retired from the Lucasian chair, but he remains a tenured professor. He is a bestselling author of multiple popular books, has been married twice, and has three children.

He is clearly not disabled.

Is a physically strong male with an IQ of 65 disabled in Saint Paul, MN? Yes, of course. Forty years ago, however, there were many jobs that would pay above minimum wage for a strong back and a willingness to do tedious work. Heck, in those days men earned money literally pumping gas.

Would Stephen Hawking have been disabled in 1860? Yeah, for the short duration of his 19th century life.

Disability is relative to the technological environment. Once a missing leg meant disability, now it rules out only a small number of jobs. Once a strong back meant a job, now it means little.

Technology changes the work environment; it makes some disabled, and others able. It's an old trend, automated looms put textile artisans out of work 200 years ago.

Those artisans had a rough time, but workers with similar skill sets have done well since. Economic theory and history teaches us that disruptive technological transformation can produce transient chaos, but over time resulting economic growth will benefit almost everyone. More or less.

But history only repeats until it doesn't. Economic benefits don't have to be evenly distributed. If fewer jobs require strong backs, then people whose primary talent is the strength of their spine may earn relatively less. If supply exceeds demand, the price of labor will fall below the "zero bound" of the minimum wage. Some backs won't find work; those workers are disabled.

Most people can play in more than one game, but the competition is getting tougher and the space for human advantage is shrinking in the post-AI era. The percentage of the population who are effectively disabled has been rising along with national income and the Gini coefficient. It's not just the pioneers now, Respectable economists are wondering about tipping points.

So enter The Wolverine...

 

Krugman acts as though he's just started thinking about the post-AI economy, but he isn't fooling anyone. We know he grew up on Asimov and the Three Laws. Now that the election is done, and he doesn't have to be a strict non-structuralist any more [1], he's started writing about what the post-AI era means for income inequality using the phrase "Capital-biased technology". He has recently promised us a "future" column on policy implications.

Future - because he's trying to break it to us gently. I, of course, have no such qualms. A year ago I wrote about the policy implications of the Post-AI era (emphases added) ...

The AI Age: Siri and Me

... Economically, of course, the productivity/consumption circuit has to close... If .1% of humans get 80% of revenue, then they'll be taxed at 90% marginal rates and the 99.9% will do subsidized labor. That's what we do for special needs adults now, and we're all special needs eventually...

Or, in other words, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". In the post-AI era we will need to create employment for the mass disabled.

See also:

• Baumol's cost disease: medicine, education and post-AI disruption 10/2012
• Life in the post-AI world. What's next? 9/2011
• Google's A.I. recognizes cats. Laugh while you can. 6/2012
• The AI Age: Siri and Me 12/2/2011
• Causes of the Great Recession: China, GPSII and RCIIIT. Now for Act III. 4/2010
• Unemployment and the new American economy - with some fixes 1/2011

 and from the K (NYT):

• Rise of the Robots
• Capital-biased Technological Progress: An Example (Wonkish)
• Policy Implications of Capital-Biased Technology: Opening Remarks
• Is Growth Over? (K responds to Bob Gordon's essay that deprecates the impact of IT. FWIW, I think Gordon has no idea how much IT has already disrupted, and what is yet to come.)
• Robots and Robber Barons

elsewhere

• Artificial intelligence: Difference Engine: Luddite legacy | The Economist 11/2011

- fn -

[1] Clark Goble made me read a critique of my team's champion. I found hurt feelings (K has claws), but no substantive critiques. That's a shame, I've long wanted to see somebody like Mankiw (who was once readable) engage K on his denial of structural factors in 2009-2012 unemployment. I suspect K has always known of ways to argue the structural case despite the persuasive low global-demand data. I wonder if he was disappointed that nobody dared challenge him.