〰 Tidal, Archiloque's feed reader

If you think the private messages you send over Skype are protected by end-to-end encryption, think again. The Microsoft-owned service regularly scans message contents for signs of fraud, and company managers may log the results indefinitely, Ars has confirmed. And this can only happen if Microsoft can convert the messages into human-readable form at will.

With the help of independent privacy and security researcher Ashkan Soltani, Ars used Skype to send a four Web links that were created solely for purposes of this article. Two of them were never clicked on, but the other two—one beginning in HTTP link and the other HTTPS—were accessed, by a machine at 65.52.100.214, an IP address belonging to Microsoft. For those interested in the technical details, the log line looked like this:

'65.52.100.214 - - [16/May/2013 11:30:10] "HEAD /index.html?test_never_clicked HTTP/1.1" 200 -'

The results—which were similar but not identical to those reported last week by The H Security—prove conclusively that Microsoft not only has ability to peer at the plaintext sent from one Skype user to another, but that the company regularly flexes that monitoring muscle.

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Marissa Mayer, on her Tumblr:

I’m delighted to announce that we’ve reached an agreement to acquire Tumblr!

We promise not to screw it up. Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going. We will operate Tumblr independently. David Karp will remain CEO. The product roadmap, their team, their wit and irreverence will all remain the same as will their mission to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve. Yahoo! will help Tumblr get even better, faster. […]

I’ve long held the view that in all things art and design, you can feel the spirit and demeanor of those who create them. That’s why it was no surprise to me that David Karp is one of the nicest, most empathetic people I’ve ever met. He’s also one of the most perceptive, capable entrepreneurs I’ve worked with. His respect for Tumblr’s community of creators is awesome, and I’m absolutely delighted to have him and his entire team join Yahoo!.

Humanely written. Love the “We promise not to screw it up”, because it’s a direct acknowledgement of every Tumblr user’s primary concern. That’s a weird sentence to put in a billion-dollar deal announcement, but I like it.

§ Everything you wanted to know: JavaScript Regular Expression Enlightenment.

§ AWS Redshift: How Amazon Changed The Game.

Having vanilla SQL along with a familiar data model, and the added speed of a system built for these types of queries is probably justification enough to pick this over Hadoop+Hive if BI is what you’re after. The hosted/as-a-service aspect is just frosting on the cake at that point.

§ Free coffee, next exit:

No, your solution doesn’t have to be simple or obvious. But the story about what it accomplishes does.

§ Here’s Why I Don’t Read Your Resume:

What matters is the public persona that you have full control over. No disappointing job or office politics or bad manager is preventing you from contributing out in the world.

§ Looks like Web components are the new single-page app MVC frameworks. Here’s Polymer is a new type of library for the web, built on top of Web Components.

§ An interesting option for debugging Node.js and Chrome applications, from Adobe. Yes, I did just say that.

§ isaacs:

OH: “there are no side effects from knowing haskell”

A Russian spacecraft containing 45 mice, 8 gerbils, and 15 newts returned to Earth on Sunday. The spacecraft, a modified Bion-M life sciences satellite, was launched in April 2013 and was intended to study the biological effects of long-term weightlessness. However, due to a combination of equipment failure and what scientists referred to as "the stresses of space," fewer than half the mice (and none of the gerbils) remained alive after their month in space. The newts were fine, though.

The mission's Bion-M life sciences satellite being prepped for launch.

Russian Federal Space Agency

The low survival rate among rodents "was to be expected," according to Vladimir Sychov, deputy director of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems, the agency conducting the experiment. The Bion-M satellite was equipped with internal cameras so that scientists could visually monitor the animals during flight, which orbited at an altitude of about 357 miles (575 km). This is far higher than the International Space Station's orbit of 250 miles (410 km).

That most organisms, including humans, undergo physical changes in prolonged microgravity is already well-understood; the United States and the Soviet Union (and later Russia) have been conducting long-duration manned space flights as far back as the early 1960s, and there is a plethora of data on the subject. However, conducting detailed experiments on the biological deficits incurred through long exposure to microgravity—including skeletal and muscular deterioration—is ethically difficult because at least some amount of the damage could be irreversible. Astronauts and cosmonauts undergoing multi-month missions on the International Space Station follow a rigorous exercise schedule intended to stave off microgravity-induced health problems.

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The Jolla running Sailfish OS exists out there, but it will be a while til it gets to consumers' hands.

Jolla

The Finnish mobile phone company Jolla unveiled on Monday its first smartphone running Sailfish OS, the spiritual successor to Nokia’s MeeGo. The phone, which is also named “Jolla,” will retail for €399 and features a user-replaceable battery and the ability to run Android apps.

A number of Nokia employees splintered off from the company last July with the intent of taking MeeGo to the heights they thought it was destined for. MeeGo had been jointly developed by Intel and Nokia as a combination of the two companies’ Moblin and Maemo projects.

Sailfish OS is based on Mer, an open-source OS that was part of MeeGo. The developers unveiled a concept device back in November, and the Jolla represents the actual product the company intends to ship.

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/124330160/23764566/sizes/l/in/photostream/

A team of Croatian researchers are training honeybees to sniff out unexploded mines that still pepper the Balkans.

Nikola Kezic, a professor in the Department of Agriculture at Zagreb University, has been exploring using bees to find landmines since 2007. Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, and other countries from former Yugoslavia still have around 250,000 buried mines that were left there during the wars of the early 90s. Since the end of the war, more than 300 people have been killed in Croatia alone by the explosives, including 66 de-miners.

Tracking down the mines can be extremely costly and dangerous. However, by training bees (which are able to detect odors from 4.5 kilometers away) to associate the smell of TNT with sugar, the researchers can create an effective way of identifying the locations of mines.

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I'll admit, I was not immediately drawn in by a recent hands-on demo of the upcoming Batman: Arkham Origins, currently scheduled for an October 25 launch on PC, Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii U. Though the PR team presented the prequel to the first two Arkham games as a new experience that presents a "rawer, scarier Batman" that's "more energetic, athletic and aggressive," the gameplay seemed incredibly similar to the games that came before it.

That's not a bad thing, really. In Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City, Rocksteady Games created what's probably the best system of third-person, open-world exploration and melee combat we've seen this generation. Warner Bros. Montreal hasn't messed with this formula for Origins, keeping the feeling of gliding gently from rooftop to rooftop and the timing-based, improvisational punch-and-dodge battles that made the first two games so enjoyable.

Stil, the demo felt quite a bit familiar. PR reps took pains to highlight a new enemy type that features heavy armor and takes mighty, easy-to-avoid swings and another that can actually counter Batman's moves, but battling these didn't feel especially different from taking out the kind of thugs that Arkham fans have already taken out hundreds of times.

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All of the anti-counterfeiting features of the new Canadian $100 bill are resulting in people not bothering to verify them.

The fanfare about the security features on the bills, may be part of the problem, said RCMP Sgt. Duncan Pound.

"Because the polymer series' notes are so secure ... there's almost an overconfidence among retailers and the public in terms of when you sort of see the strip, the polymer looking materials, everybody says 'oh, this one's going to be good because you know it's impossible to counterfeit,'" he said.

"So people don't actually check it."

I just stubbed my toe on a linguistic thread on reddit (as one does): what sentence can you come up with that would be completely incomprehensible (without a detailed explanation) ten years ago?

Some examples, culled from reddit, to get you started:

hang2er: "I can't get a 4G signal here, I'll skype you on my droid as soon as I hit a hotspot, I need a coffee anyway."

Retinence: "The headline, 'Galaxy Nexus: Android Ice Cream Sandwich guinea pig.'"

(But tech is easy ...)

YesRocketScience: "She started out pure Kate Middleton but then she went all Amanda Bynes on me."

Anon: "Check your cis privilege!"

(That would probably be comprehensible, but only to a much narrower audience — certainly not mainstream in places like reddit)

My reason for being interested in this phenomenon should be obvious: flip it upside-down and you've got incomprehensible phrases to decode from ten years into the future. Or leave it where it was and stretch the horizon out and you've got incomprehensible phrases from twenty or thirty years ago. ("Hello, I'm on the train!" — how much sense would that make in 1983? Much less "FAA proposes to relax ban on tablets, laptops, and smartphones during takeoff and landing"?)

Most of the ten-year sentences focus on the ephemera of technology and, to a lesser extent of pop culture (Beeeeeeber!). (Yes, pop culture is more durable today than tech.) Politics probably cuts in as an agent of temporal disorientation somewhere in the 10-20 year range: feed someone in 1993 a line like "Department of Homeland Security proposes relaxing ban on toenail clippers" and they'd surely have grounds to worry about their future. Cultural drift is ... well, the state of play of gay marriage today, wrt. the gay rights situation 20 years ago, is close to unrecognizable. The major political and social shift over the recognition and suppression of rape culture seems to be going the same way (and a good thing too). But SF authors have been using finely-crafted soundbites from the future to alienate their readers from their assumptions for a long time: "the Pope realized it was going to be one of those days when she realized she'd forgotten to take her Pill the night before."

But, anyway: can you come up with some examples of sentences that would be incomprehensible (without explanation) to a denizen of 2003 that don't revolve around ephemeral tech or pop culture churn? And can you provide and deconstruct some sentences from 2023 that, if we had sufficient foresight, we ought to be able to understand and interpolate a context for?

The last decade was arguably one of the biggest in terms of progress for the Game industry: The rise of digital distribution, Sega bowing out of the console market, Microsoft stepping in and much more.

Achievements were another major development that since has become universally adopted by AAA development. But speaking with some designers about achievements, has this mechanic overstayed its welcome?

Gold Star Design:

The act of having an extrinsic reward for playing video games has been around since the arcade era: From earning extra lives that saved money to the high score list.

But in the last decade, achievements came onto the scene thanks to the Xbox and had two major differences. First, was that they were connected in a meta-way thanks to profiles. Unlike in the arcade era where high score lists were only linked to one machine, achievements became associated with your account.

Secondly, was that achievements provided a way to incentivize a variety of play styles and provide increased replayability. Achievements varied in difficulty from using a specific weapon, to getting through a level without getting hit and so on.

At the beginning, achievements lived up to their names as designers provided the player with trials to unlock the elusive marks on their profile. Valve with Team Fortress 2 took things a step further and tied them originally to their item unlock system: requiring players to earn a set # of achievements for a specific class to unlock items.

But as time went on, these rewards that were meant for the hardcore became more streamlined and casual. Today, many games give out achievements for simply getting through a tutorial or beating a level.

Bioshock Infinite, for all the talk about it being the next step in game design, fell back on some of the most generic achievements possible: such as kill 30 enemies with a specific gun.

Now calling out just Bioshock Infinite is not fair, as this has become a common trend in AAA games. What has happened was that “the monster has turned on its creator” in a manner of speaking.

It has gotten to the point that a lot of gamers have become obsessed with achievements in their games. This has reached the point that some of them criticize any game that is released without them.

The major publishers have heard these pleas and have made it a requirement for their games to have achievements, no matter if the game supports them or not. Encase you are not aware, Microsoft had a mandate that required all XBLA titles to have achievements on them, or they would not be allowed on the service.

If you were wondering why games like Braid or Limbo had achievements, there you go.

Besides regular achievements, Borderlands 2 has in-game achievements that can be traded in for character spanning bonuses.

Achievements have taken off in social games as another controlling tool to keep people playing.

These titles usually have an achievement page where the first set could be unlocked through regular play, but the rest would require the player to spend actual money.

What was once supposed to be a reward for the best players has turned into participation trophies and some designers aren’t happy about this.

Where’s the Reward?:

Over the last two weeks, we had two designers on our podcast: Kevin Forbes from Klei Entertainment and Zach Barth from Zachtronics Industries. During both casts, we got on the subject of achievements and we were all in agreement about the state of achievement usage.

Achievements should not be a required element of game design as not every game supports them. I found it incredibility silly that The Walking Dead from Telltale Games had achievements for playing through each chapter on Steam (and I assume on PSN and XBLA.)

Kevin on our chat commented that shouldn’t playing the game be the reward? During the development of Don’t Starve, he got a fair share of comments from forum visitors on the very topic.

With a title like Don’t Starve, creating meaningful achievements would be difficult, due to the design of the game.  There is an issue with achievement design that designers are facing today.

It is that most of the time they get in the way of the design. This means that most designers just create throwaway achievements and leave it at that, but this conflicts with story based or serious games.

If a designer does try to put some thought into their achievements then they run the risk of upsetting their fans with poorly designed achievements. During the original release of Team Fortress 2‘s items and achievements, Valve made some crazy requirements to unlock achievements. Several of which actually went against playing the specific class: such as focusing on getting kills as the medic.

It was the complaints against the achievement system that made Valve transition away from it and changed to a random drop system as an alternative for unlocking items.

This matter leaves developers in an unusual situation: Do they create meaningless achievements that clash with the game, or try to create better integrated ones and risk making them too demanding and get complaints from?

When we talked about achievements a simple question came up: What is the point of achievements? On the consoles, trophies on the PS3 or gamerscore on the 360 serve no purpose. So why are they considered a requirement in every retail game?

“I’m fine with challenging games having regular achievements. The designers didn’t get too creative with Dark Souls, but then again accomplishing anything in Dark Souls was in of itself an achievement.”

A basic answer is that they are another way to convince people to buy games and go after them. Even though they have no value, the players are giving them a value, regardless of their actual worth beyond just playing the game.

As with our guests, I don’t believe that every game should include achievements and the ones that I do like are those that have value. Now when we use the term “value” that can mean several things, one of which Steam has recently introduced.

Achieving Achievements:

Personally I don’t go achievement crazy in most games, due to the as mentioned fact that they don’t mean anything. Now if it was something that I was planning on doing or something challenging within the realm of possibility, then I’ll try it.

To me, the best kind of achievements is those that add value to the game, and the best example of that would be The Binding of Isaac.

In a post on his site, Isaac designer: Edmund Mcmillen said that he didn’t want to add achievements into Isaac on the reason of “just because.” Instead he tied the progression of the game directly to the achievements. Every achievement in Isaac unlocked something new that influenced the gameplay.

They could be anything from making the game harder, to new bosses, items, enemies and more. The point was that the achievements directly influenced the game and made you want to go after them even more.

Another way of giving achievements value is making them extrinsic to the game itself. This is the point Ken was talking about on the last few casts: That achievements could be used to unlock content outside of the game, either related to the game or not.

The achievements in The Binding of Isaac were challenging, but also provided the player with a variety of rewards.

Incidentally for all the hate aimed at Uplay, they were the first digital client to provide actual rewards for getting achievements.

Each game that required Uplay allowed the player to earn tokens for completing specific achievements within the game.

Usually two of them are for getting through the tutorial and beating the game. The other ones are skewed towards mastering the game.

The tokens could be used to unlock anything from new game content, soundtracks, and wallpapers and so on. The tokens themselves were not locked to a single game: I could use my tokens I earned from Anno 2070, to unlock content from The Settlers 7 for example.

Of course we cannot ignore the recent release from Valve: Steam trading cards and Meta game profiles. For the people who got in the beta (like me), playing specific games now gives you the chance to earn trading cards. Completing a set can give the player a badge that levels up their actual steam account, which Valve has said will eventually give them special discounts and rewards.

Now this is actually Valve’s second attempt at creating a meta-game around the store. A few years ago during one of the summer sales, you could unlock tickets by earning game specific achievements tied to the sale that could be traded in for additional content.

Personally I find this both a genius move and something that sounds insanely evil: gamifying digital accounts. Some people have already predicted that we are a few steps away from the end of the world… naturally.

But they do have a point by the fact that a system like this is so easy to be abused by the people in charge to “convince” people that they need to buy certain games. If regular achievements have trained some people that they are important, a part of me is worried about the repercussions of such a system.

Lastly, I’m fine with challenging games having regular achievements. The designers didn’t get too creative with Dark Souls, but then again accomplishing anything in Dark Souls was in of itself an achievement.

As we prepare for the next generation of console development and Steam’s upcoming plan, it will be interesting to see where achievements will go. I personally hope that we return to a time where getting an achievement was hard won and not by getting through a tutorial or watching a cut-scene.

And before I forget, here’s your reward for getting through this entire post:

The post Debating Achievements appeared first on Game Wisdom.

Ads by Project Wonderful! Your ad could be here, right now.

We have two delightful new prints available in the QC Store!

VanCaf is this weekend! I will be there! You should also be there!

Aurich Lawson

Thirty-party apps didn't exist when the iPhone first launched in 2007. At that time Apple offered its own set of built-in iOS apps and users were relegated to Web apps if they wanted tools made by someone else. Luckily things have changed since; we now have hundreds of thousands of apps to choose from for our iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches. Many of them even offer similar or better functionality than the default apps from Apple.

Users still can't delete Apple's default apps from iOS devices (grumble grumble…) but there are plenty of useful alternatives out there for people hoping to use something other than the default. Readers are always asking about which apps the Ars staff uses when they choose to ditch the Apple's camera, mapping, music, or other apps. I put out a call to our editors and writers to find out just what does the Ars staff use for the major app categories (and why)? Here's what we came up with:

Maps

Google Maps

I never upgraded my iPhone 4 from iOS 5 to iOS 6 so I can't say if the new Apple Maps are as bad as people claim. However, I rushed to download the new Google Maps when it hit the App Store and haven't been disappointed. The underlying map technology is the same as the one in my stock app since iOS 5's pre-installed app also relies on Google. But the spoken, turn-by-turn directions and traffic data make the new version of Google Maps far superior.

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§ Yes, you can send server-side events to Google Analytics.

§ The real issue is not skeuomorphism: Tail wagging:

The reality is that skeuomorphism enshrines and validates a failure of vision, and even worse, a failure to capitalise on the medium. That’s a betrayal of a designer’s implicit duty of trust to make something that is the best, and to treat all other goals as secondary. I think that’s a responsibility that Ive feels very strongly. I doubt that anyone has ever had to remind him of it.

§ Everyone needs to have this at the top of their backlog — Dan Williams:

As a user, I would like to use the back button in my browser

§ Two Models of Computation: or, Why I’m Switching Trains:

I used to say at interviews that my best skill was holding the whole system in my head. Now I recognize that this was a crappy way to reason. It doesn’t scale, and I can’t pass that understanding on to others as a whole. The wiser goal is to eliminate a need to load everything into one head.

§ Insights from Hosain Rahman, Josh Reich, Heather Payne, & More at the 2013 99U Conference:

Don’t structure your team in a certain way just because everyone else does. At Simple, there are no designers, “just a bunch of people who make shit.”

§ Introduction to SEO and Content Indexing: beyond the meta keywords.

§ Peter Richardson:

These machine learning jokes write themselves. Eventually.

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Julian Assange is the man in the middle of Alex Gibney's documentary, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks.

Focus World

Warning: plot points of We Steal Secrets: the Story of WikiLeaks are discussed in this Q&A.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney doesn't shy away from controversy. In fact, he may gravitate towards it. His previous works cover the fall of Enron (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), the Elliot Spitzer saga (Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer), and torture during the war in Afghanistan (Taxi to the Dark Side).

For his latest documentary, Gibney focused on the story of WikiLeaks—from its successful beginnings in Iceland all the way through Julian Assange embracing Ecuador. The film itself is an extremely thorough look at a complicated tale that still hasn't finished, with both Assange and Bradley Manning currently existing in a sort of legal limbo. It challenged Gibney to craft an ever evolving narrative and inspired him to consider doing a dramatic film about Manning in the future ("We're working on it, I wouldn't say more than that," he told Ars).

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In the previous article, I set the context of a personal journey of health within the backdrop of larger issues of quality of life in our industry. In this article, I continue that journey with my own personal experience of burnout and depression and what it took me to regain my own health, vitality, and enthusiasm for the work that we all do. My personal wish is to not see any more bright, creative people suffer from work-related stress. Extended stress has odd effects on both the body and the mind.

NOTE: Please consult with a health professional before making any changes with your own health. I am certainly not a doctor and will assume that you are an adult that will ultimately be responsible for his or her own health. I’ve done my best to portray this post as personal truth and not accepted science. I realize that every person’s body is different and therefore may respond differently to a specific health regimen.

Background

I grew up playing role-playing games (RPGs) like other hackers, geeks, nerds, and escapists out there. However, fantastical worlds like that of Dungeons & Dragons didn’t grab my interest as much as sci-fi did. Although I remember getting lost in the dark, gritty world of Shadowrun on my Super Nintendo (based on the RPG), for some reason I chose Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. (a different RPG) when it came time to run a campaign. I loved the idea of a futuristic world where man and machine could meld. Through Cyberpunk, I became acquainted with the use of the term “meat,” crassly used to describe the human body. “Cyberspace” was the place where netrunners existed, while their “meat” resided in “meat-space,” otherwise known as the physical world. Essentially, a netrunner could bring consciousness into an alternate world without reliance on the body.

I connected with Cyberpunk as a teenager mainly because of my growing interest in computers. As I tried to figure things out with computers, I found that my mind gravitated towards combing through my thoughts to better process them, as a memory manager might do to defragment allocations. I also found that I was entertained simply with thought itself, traversing different paths to see where my mind would end up. I realize that these behaviors are what primarily distinguish introversion from extroversion and as a result, believe that they lend the identification of self to the thoughts and processing of the brain. Instead of “I am what I can do” it becomes “I am what I can think”. I also think that those same behaviors help us become better software engineers. Even though I enjoyed skateboarding, football, baseball, paintball, and other physical activities, I somehow managed early on to form a mental model where the brain/mind and body had little, if nothing at all, to do with each other.

Oddly enough, my naivety around health later in life didn’t stray far from that teenage fascination with cyber-augmented posthumanism. In the last article, I mentioned that after starting to work out w/ co-workers at lunch, I was able to get into the best physical shape that I had been in since high school football (hey, in Alabama, we did two-a-days). Unfortunately, even with having increased strength, my energy, mood, and mental health were declining. At age 25, I thought that health had more to do with the way I looked than how I felt. In all honesty, I’d rather have a sexy mind rather than trying to look sexy. Well, during the summer of 2005, in the midst of my third extended crunch for a console game, I finally hit rock bottom and decided that I needed help.

Depression

I used to think that it was shameful to talk about depression and/or any mental impairment. I believed that this was one thing that I was supposed to figure out on my own. In my judgment, sitting with shame around depression let me run circles around questions of “Why?”, rather than looking at the “What?”. As I wrote in my previous article, I did notice the warning signs of feeling chronically tired, feeling “heavy” to move around even though I wasn’t grossly overweight, and starting to think that most things I had to get done were weighty tasks. For me, this was a dramatic change from how I remember feeling when I got my first internship in the industry. I went to a general practitioner for a check up and when the blood work came back inconclusive I decided that I just had to push on. I continued that way until things got worse and I didn’t know what else to do, so I finally decided to see a psychologist.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), “depression is caused by a combination of genetic, biological, environmental, and psychological factors”. In other words, we don’t quite know the causes. Trying to answer those questions of “Why do I feel this way?” or “How did I come to this place?” resulted in many years of sitting with different psychologists. I think a good psychologist can provide temporary help to calm acute anxiety or depression with talk-therapy, but dialogue is less useful at resolving any root physiological cause(s) of emotional disturbance when they exist. While I’ll agree that psychotherapy has its own benefit to healing emotional wounds and looking at long-standing issues, on a practical level of my day-to-day experience it didn’t provide the answers.

Let’s be clear about one thing: I am not saying that stress in our industry causes depression for everyone. Some level of stress is actually healthy in helping us to achieve our goals. Chronic stress, on the other hand, seems to show up in different ways for different people. Separate from major health problems, I have seen stress have impact in minor ways, too, such as frequent irritability or negativity, relationship problems, or motivational challenges to name a few. What I can say is that, at the time I experienced depression, I was working more (including weekends), sleeping less, had little time to socialize, and eating outside for most of my meals if not skipping them altogether. My worst night was working until 6 am on a build that we had to send off to magazine reviewers and being asked to come back in around 10 am. Most crunches I experienced at different companies from 2003-2008 lasted for more than 4 months out of the year. Even though there was some time off and a slower pace following the release of a game, somehow my batteries were not getting recharged.

Moving past the shame allowed me to see the questions of “What can I do?”. Well, in parallel with psychotherapy, I also met with a psychiatrist to hear another point of view. I worked through different SSRIs, SNRIs, and anti-anxiety medications; battling different side-effects in an effort to find the “right one for me”. My judgment of these drugs are that they can work as a crutch, but in the same way that caffeine can keep me operating out of touch with my natural energy levels. The drugs provided relief and got me back on my feet, however, in the end they pale in comparison to my current experience at a holistic level.

When I experienced depression, it was damn near impossible to distinguish that I was not my thoughts. At work, I was unhappy with most of what I was tasked with doing, irritable with requests from others, not motivated to get my work done, and negatively thinking about what the company was doing and the manner in which we were doing it. Now, I’m not saying that some form of each of those thoughts/feelings/behaviors aren’t welcome in order to alert me to doing or suggesting something better. However, preponderance of these thoughts/feelings/behaviors as my M.O. led me to believe that I am a negative, unhappy, and unmotivated person. My invitation to you if you’re in that space: don’t draw conclusions there. From my experience, I can attribute more of the ways I was thinking at that point in my life to my overall physical health.

After experiencing a gradual decline in my state of being over the years, I realize now what negligence towards health in the face of stress has afforded me. I also carry deep concern for any others that, like me, are/were not as well equipped to deal with stress. As an employer, I think it is ever important to protect our employees from burnout. In the process of learning about my own health, I’ve come to a rudimentary understanding of how stress works in the body.

Stress

The PAT (pituitary-adrenal-thyroid) axis is an important system that regulates the hormones in the body in order to keep the body in balance. I think of them as good friends who have my back during good and bad times (regulators, mount up!). When stress comes and goes, each gland does their part. Everything I encounter in the day impacts my PAT axis from my alarm clock in the morning to the traffic on the way to work to the tasks I’m trying to complete on any given day. Additionally, how I choose to react to those stressors can also tax my system. All of these stressors deplete the stores of hormones and endorphins in my body, which is why I’m sometimes exhausted by the end of the day and not able to handle much more. The food I eat helps replenish what has been used after being digested and synthesized into what the body needs. However, under chronic stress the body is producing elevated and continued levels of hormones and endorphins in an attempt to keep the body in balance. Unfortunately, the immune and digestive systems are suppressed, among other things that are affected, which can lead to a non-optimal state for both energy absorption and perception of well-being.

I mentioned perception in the previous article because I wanted to allude to the possibility of being stuck in a fearful, anxious, doubtful, exhausted, etc. state that elevated stress levels can help bring about. To put this in perspective, I consider what happens when adrenaline rushes through my body and how much my thinking can change in the moment. I’ve experienced this while driving when I am in a happy, easy-going mood and with a flash of a potentially dangerous situation with another car I have both a physical and emotional/mental reaction. The world I was seeing as beautiful only moments ago has now become “out to get me.” In a similar way, I see elevated levels of stress having effects on my perception of how I’m performing, the relevance or efficacy of what I’m working on, how others are doing, and so on.

Beyond Depression

Even though I got back on my feet eventually, I somehow never felt as good as I did when I entered the industry. I no longer felt terribly bad, but I didn’t feel energized or great either. Unrelated to energy levels, stress, depression, or any other things I’ve spoken to already, about a year and a half ago I had started working with a nutritionist in preparation for a surgery. The belief was that I would have a quicker recovery from the surgery if I was in a healthier state. So, laughably now, I considered “getting healthy” as something I’d do for a short while up until the surgery. Gradually, I changed my diet, started drinking more water (which was up from almost none at all), reduced my caffeine intake, took tailored supplements and started to feel radically different in the first three months. I think it is more a testament to the shoddy state I was in more than any one thing that I was doing in particular. I started noticing that when I woke up I had energy to boot and was ready to take on the day. I also noticed that my brain function seemed to change. I no longer would get stuck worrying about something incessantly. My brain processing was becoming razor sharp again and my focus improved. When I started to feel the anxiety that I carried around ease up and become more manageable, I became dumbfounded. I realized only after feeling much better that the one question I recall none of the health professionals asking me from 2005 all the way up until 2011: what was I actually eating?

Food for Thought (and Energy!)

If I try to remember what my meals looked like when I started working professionally in 2003 (and to some extent all the way back to 1999 at GaTech) up until a year and a half ago:

Breakfast

Cereal w/ milk, muffin, or bagel w/ peanut butter or almond butter; pancakes or eggs, bacon on the weekends

Lunch

Usually Mexican/Indian/Thai food (varied over the years depending on where I was working), burger w/ fries, occasional salad, sandwich with chips

Dinner

If working late, then whatever food was brought in if the company catered; otherwise, whatever food was close around (likely the same places I ate at during lunch); or skipping dinner and eating some kind of snack at home later in the evening (usually another bowl of cereal or PBJ or whatever could be made quick)

When not working late – frozen pizzas or pre-packaged food that could be warmed up (sometimes in microwave, sometimes in oven, sometimes in saucepan); pasta w/ tomato sauce; mac and cheese; thai/indian take-out

Fluids

Orange juice in the morning
Coffee many times throughout the day, which also killed my appetite
Very little water if none at all (would drink water during workout sessions)
Occasional soda

Certainly anyone can look at this and say, yeah, that doesn’t look like the healthiest diet, but at first glance I wouldn’t think someone would say there was anything particularly wrong with it either. However, there is one thing that is missing in significant quantity – vegetables. There would rarely be any sort of vegetable or green on my plate unless it snuck onto the plate (luckily, Thai or Indian food usually has vegetables).

Fast forward to today and I now consume the following:

Before breakfast

10 oz. of carrot juice (used to buy this in the store and then decided to simply buy my own 5 lb bags for the week and get a juicer); I recently started juicing the leftover stalks of whatever green I’ve been eating in addition to the carrot juice

Breakfast

Two eggs, parsnips w/ cinnamon or seasoned cauliflower / rutabagas w/ diced onions + some sort of green sauteed in butter (chard, spinach, kale, or collard), two slices of toast

Before lunch

I usually try to drink 1-2 quarts of water before lunch. I have a stainless steel water bottle that is close to a quart that I keep filled at my desk. I don’t usually have any liquids when I’m eating a meal to aid in digestion. I’ll drink something before or an hour after my meal.

Lunch

Usually, this is some form of leftover from dinner the previous night(s) that I bring to work and warm up in a toaster oven. Occasionally, I eat something from around the office, but this was difficult initially because I find that most places don’t include fresh vegetables or greens with a good sized portion of protein

Dinner

• Two small lamb loin chops (pan-fried, then broiled) w/ brussel sprouts (sauteed)

• Ground lamb and sweet potato (steamed and mashed w/ butter) tacos w/ onions, garlic, and chard, collard greens, or kale (sauteed) in a brown rice or corn tortilla + additional sweet potato, onions, garlic, and greens on the side

• Turkey burger w/ broccoli, cauliflower, beets (both gold and purple), or whatever else I have left in the fridge

• Seasoned, baked chicken breast w/ blanched and then sauteed green beans

• Turkey meatloaf w/ kale chips, baked cauliflower or turnips/rutabagas

Miscellany

• Occasionally, I mix whole grains in: brown rice, quinoa, millet

• I’ll eat fish and beef occasionally

• Dairy products come and go in my diet and when I do eat them I go for the whole fat, raw versions when available (or at least vat or low-heat pasteurized)

• I’ll have fruits occasionally as a dessert or a snack

All of these meals are makeable in about 30 minutes. When I am eating later than I like or have to run to Whole Foods to pick up groceries, then I’ll usually grab stuff from the hot food bar — again, loading up on vegetables; including ones that I don’t buy regularly, such as bok choy.

The key here is that I eat vegetables now in significant quantity due to the mix of vitamins and minerals present. Two-thirds of my plate will be vegetables and only a third will be a hand-sized amount of protein/fat (some vitamins that come from vegetables need fat to be absorbed) and occasionally some starch such as brown rice or quinoa. If I’m eating out somewhere, I’ll usually request for them to double whatever vegetables come on my plate.

My cupboard is bare for the most part – no more cereals, potato chips, dry pastas, crackers, etc.

My fridge is full of organic vegetables and meat.

I’m mindful of sugar.

I cook with butter usually for breakfast and olive oil (on low/med heat; there are better oils for high heat) for all other meals.

I drink lots of water (3 quarts) and usually only water during the day (occasionally a kombucha or decaf tea) — not during meals.

I use a rice-cooker w/ a steam basket to steam most of my vegetables (quicker and easier than the stove top) – I bought one from a Japanese food store

I still enjoy an occasional coffee, sweets, pasta, pizza, etc. from time-to-time, however, the key is that I keep none of that in the house.

My grocery bill for the workweek is roughly $75 with some carry-over to the weekends. The most expensive items are meat, eggs, and carrots (because I’m buying those in 5 lb bags). Vegetables are for the most part cheap in their individual quantities.

I didn’t eat this way before because I considered food to be a nuisance. Even though I had enjoyed great meals in restaurants or cooked by others, I treated that as a luxury. My relationship with food was that I needed to be doing something else other than preparing a meal or taking time to enjoy it calmly. So, when I was hungry, my intention was simply to eat something as quick as possible and get back to what I was doing. One way I could characterize my prior understanding of food is that I could eat anything and produce anything. My new understanding is garbage in == garbage out. Now, that’s not entirely true because I know that I was still able to develop working code under extreme stress even though I was not eating well. However, I also know now that I was not producing at my optimal performance.

I see food as potential energy. Whatever food I am taking into my body is, ultimately, a stored form of energy from the sun. It goes through millions of chemical processes to reach the stage that it is at when I ingest it. That potential energy gets used either for physical or creative work. To me, a calorie is no longer a calorie and I don’t view things in a simple “bad” food vs “good” food dichotomy. I choose organic because I’m looking to maximize the nutrients in my food, not simply because non-organic is “bad” (and yes, I’m aware that the term “organic” is prone to abuse in efforts for companies to make more money). I choose specific foods over others for the same reason. I prepare my food and use whole ingredients because I like knowing what I’m putting into my body.

Summary

I could go on about a lot more things, such as how the body needs healthy levels of certain amino acids and minerals for the optimal functioning of the brain, the glycemic index, or what foods are nutrient rich. However, the most valuable guiding strategy that I have learned from all of this is that nutrition is more about how I feel and less about how I look, which is why I misunderstood and took no interest. I knew that eating healthy was important; however, I had never experienced first-hand the effects, nor did I have a reason to. I think that nutrition is even more important than exercise and that physical activity comes naturally as an effect of having more potential energy in my body. My invitation to you is to find out what works for you. Become the patient observer. Pay attention to how you feel after meals. Notice what improves your moods. Take time to prepare your own food and enjoy it stress-free, so you can maximize the nutrients you are taking into your body. What motivates me to continue is twofold: I don’t want to go back to feeling the way I used to feel and, more importantly, I want to see what’s possible.

I’ll also add that everything isn’t perfect today. I get irritable at times. I wake up on the occasional morning and feel sluggish. I still battle with anxiety. I’m exhausted sometimes at the end of the day. I’m frustrated occasionally with the performance of my own work or with what we’re doing as a team. However, all of those things are blips now where before they were part of my routine, daily experience. Having a programming background, I simply see this as an optimization problem to figure out what can be done better. However, optimizing the human body is a bit more difficult than shaving cycles off of a routine. Maybe in a cyber-augmented posthuman world of the future, we’ll have the equivalent of a software profiler for the human body.

In the next article, I’ll shift focus to the changes I’ve made that impact how work gets done both at a studio and individual level, talk a bit about what I’ve changed in regards to sleep, some practical things I do to conserve willpower throughout the day, and tie up any loose ends with this series.

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The Open University

Invasive species have become a problem on nearly every continent, where native species that may have had millions of years to adapt to their environment are somehow trivially displaced by a species that originated somewhere else. How is it that the invaders can be so phenomenally successful against what should be a well-entrenched competition?

A new study shows that in at least one case, some insect invaders engage in a bit of biological warfare, carrying a fungus that kills their competitors (the host can tolerate the fungus). The fungus spreads because of a nasty habit the insects have—namely that they tend to eat each others' eggs. Somewhat ironically, all of this goes on in a species that tends to have a friendly reputation: the ladybug (or ladybird, for the anglophiles among us).

The invasive species in question is an Asian ladybug, the harlequin ladybird Harmonia axyridis. Because of its fondness for agricultural pests (fondness in the same sense that I have a fondness for lobster) Harmonia has been introduced to some countries where it wasn't native. When the invaders were introduced, the native ladybug species dropped like flies (pun intended), being easily displaced by the new arrivals.

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Suite et fin de ma série sur la nouvelle stratégie de cybersécurité de l'UE (1ère partie, 2ème partie). Cette partie vise à "peser" la stratégie, en analysant ses atouts, ses faiblesses et ses oublis. Version non définitive, mais il faut bien avancer....

source

III Appréciation, limites et marges de progrès

31/ Un texte novateur qui marque une vraie prise de conscience et des ambitions solides

Le texte a dû faire face à trois séries de difficultés : tout d’abord, le cyberespace est polymorphe, et inclut aussi bien des questions d’infrastructures, de logiciels, d’opérateurs spécialisés ou non, et de contenus. Dans le même temps, une « cyberstratégie » doit évoquer aussi bien des aspects civils que des aspects militaires : les questions de défense proprement dites, les exigences de protection des droits en même temps que celle des citoyens (selon le dilemme classique liberté/sécurité), et enfin des dimensions économiques (principe de concurrence, de sécurité des échanges, de protection des entreprises). Enfin, le document doit faire face à la mécanique institutionnelle de l’UE, et couvrir la gamme allant du communautaire à l’intergouvernemental, du niveau national jusqu’à celui des acteurs privés.

C’est compte-tenu de cet environnement qu’il faut apprécier ce document, qui doit de plus manier une certaine prudence d’expression (avec un langage qui pourra paraître à certains technocratique) et intégrer enfin les principes et valeurs de l’UE.

Compte-tenu de ces exigences diverses, le document constitue une réelle innovation et n’est pas aussi creux qu’on aurait pu le craindre. Il est un réel progrès et témoigne d’une prise de conscience qu’il faut saluer. Pour dire les choses d’un mot, l’UE affirme à la fois son idéal et sa lucidité, et trouve une voie moyenne pour assurer des tâches de protection, de sécurité et même de défense.

Ainsi, l’articulation des trois domaines (sécurité des réseaux, maintien de l’ordre et défense) constitue une innovation heureuse. De même, l’affirmation de responsabilités partagées entre le niveau national et le niveau européen est mentionnée, tout comme l’incorporation des acteurs privés, qu’ils soient spécialisés dans l’industrie numérique ou non. Les organes d’exécution sont mis en place et renforcés, ainsi que les instruments juridiques qui soutiennent l’ensemble (proposition de directive). Par ailleurs, cette stratégie conjugue à la fois des actions de court terme et des objectifs de moyen terme, selon une méthode opératoire qu’il convient de mettre en valeur.

Enfin, un point crucial consiste à avoir placé la stratégie de cybersécurité sous les auspices de l’article 222 du traité sur le fonctionnement de l’UE, instaurant une clause de solidarité européenne. Cet « article 5 européen » trouve ainsi un champ d’application dans un domaine émergent, non couvert ou mal couvert par les autres organisations de sécurité. C’est probablement l’innovation majeure de ce texte.

A ce constat général, qui est favorable, il convient d’ajouter les points inachevés.

32/ Des ambiguïtés sémantiques demeurent

Ainsi que nous l’avons remarqué au cours de l’analyse, si certaines définitions sont données, d’autres sont oubliées. Nous n’évoquerons que pour mémoire la notion même de stratégie : s’agit-il en l’espèce d’une politique ? Ou de la mise en œuvre d’une volonté dans un environnement clairement perçu comme conflictuel, passant donc par l’expression d’un diagnostic, la fixation d’un objectif, la détermination des voies et moyens cadencés dans le temps pour y parvenir ? Mais alors, s’il y a un environnement conflictuel, quels sont les acteurs de cette conflictualité ? Quelles sont les menaces ? S’agit-il seulement d’acteurs individuels ou collectifs ayant des objectifs privés (militantisme, fraude, enrichissement, mafias et autres bandes criminelles, voire firmes commerciales aux méthodes peu regardantes) ? Ou s’agit-il aussi d’Etats ?

Nous touchons ici à la distinction entre cybersécurité et cyberdéfense. Il y a donc désormais une cybersécurité, mais le texte mentionne une cyberdéfense sans la définir, ni même sans donner son cadre d’emploi . Autrement dit, la cyberdéfense consiste-t-elle à assurer la défense de l’UE ? Celle des Etats membres ? Et la défense de quoi : des infrastructures critiques ? Mais y a-t-il des infrastructures qui seraient critiques pour l’UE et pas pour tel ou tel Etat membre ? Et réciproquement ? Un des critères de la cyberdéfense est-il la présence du niveau étatique comme partie prenante (qu’il s’agisse d’un Etat ou de l’UE) ?

De même, la variation des termes pour évoquer les infrastructures critiques, et l’absence de définition ou de catégorisation sont extrêmement gênantes à la compréhension. Il reste que ce flou n’est pas propre à l’Union et à sa stratégie, car on retrouve des imprécisions similaires dans des textes stratégiques nationaux…

Enfin, le texte omet quelques définitions essentielles : qu’est-ce, pour l’UE, qu’une cyberattaque ? S’agit-il d’un acte objectif ? D’un acte qui se caractérise par sa cible ? D’un acte qui se caractérise par son intention malveillante ? Quid du cyberespionnage ?

Il reste, à la décharge de l’Union, que beaucoup de ces notions ne font pas l’objet d’un consensus parmi les spécialistes, quand même elles sont discutées.

33/ Une répartition des responsabilités qui demeure discutable.

Comme souvent en matière européenne, le débat s’élève sur la question de la répartition des responsabilités. Dans le cyberespace, faut-il ainsi une action nationale (souveraineté) ou action commune ? Au-delà, qui est responsable des modalités d’application : les Etats-membres ou la Commission ?

Sans aller jusqu’à ces questions de principe, on peut mentionner la critique du Sénat français au sujet de la notification des incidents. Son principe n’est pas remis en cause, mais la question de l’autorité destinataire de cette notification demeure problématique. Faut-il en effet communiquer tous les incidents privés (donc, ceux des entreprises soumises à l’environnent concurrentiel) non seulement à une autorité nationale, mais aussi à la Commission et aux autres Etats-membres ? Il y aurait tout d’abord une incontestable lourdeur bureaucratique, mais cela poserait également des difficultés au regard de la sécurité nationale. Ainsi, selon la proposition de MM Bockel et Berthou, tout dire revient à dévoiler des secrets. Jusqu’où peut-on faire confiance aux autres ? La Commission assurera-t-elle le secret ? Peut-on garantir un secret à 28 ?

Cette question du partage d’information pose implicitement la question de la gouvernance européenne. Comme le note Mme Morin-Desailly, cette stratégie fait face à la dispersion des acteurs européens : « la direction générale de l’information et des médias (DG Connect) qui pilote la stratégie numérique, doit composer avec l’intervention de la DG « Marché intérieur » et de la DG « Affaires intérieures » pour le volet relatif à la cybercriminalité. En outre, la coordination est délicate entre les actions menées par la Commission dans le cadre communautaire et celles qui touchent à des matières intergouvernementales, comme la PSDC qui relèvent du Haut représentant de l’Union et de son service, le service européen pour l’action extérieure (SEAE) ». Au fond, qui est vraiment responsable ?

34/ Les gros et les petits ont-ils les mêmes intérêts ?

Ceci amène à poser une question de fond : l’UE est-elle une zone cyber optimale ? En effet, la stratégie européenne part du principe non seulement d’un intérêt commun, mais aussi de l’égale disposition et capacité des Etats membres à mener une action de cybersécurité, ou de cyberdéfense. Force est de constater que ce n’est pas le cas, ce que le texte constate d’ailleurs, lorsqu’il mentionne l’inégalité des réactions nationales sur le sujet.

A cet égard, on peut ainsi tenter une catégorisation des réactions (forcément imparfaite) en décrivant trois types de réponses : d’une part, il y a des Etats membres conscient de l’ampleur des défis, ayant mis en place des réponses nationales et disposant d’une gamme de moyens relativement complète leur permettant d’assurer leur souveraineté numérique. L’Allemagne, la France ou le Royaume-Uni appartiendraient à cette catégorie. D’autre part, il y aurait des Etats ayant conscience des défis, ayant mis en place des réponses mais ne disposant pas de l’ensemble des outils. Les Etats baltes, la Finlande ou la Suède appartiendraient à cette catégorie. Enfin, un autre groupe réunirait les Etats qui soit n’auraient pas réellement conscience de la question (au-delà des déclarations de principe et de l’approbation de textes internationaux) soit n’auraient pas les moyens ou la volonté de mettre en œuvre des dispositifs nationaux.

Il est évident que les intérêts des uns et des autres diffèrent, et que la stratégie européenne doit trouver l’équilibre entre les trois situations. Elle s’adresse tout d’abord au troisième groupe, pour l’inciter à prendre ses responsabilités. Elle s’adresse également au deuxième groupe, qui est celui qui a le plus intérêt à ce partage de compétence, afin d’obtenir une taille critique et donc une efficacité que les seuls moyens nationaux ne garantissent pas. La question se pose de l’intérêt des pays du premier groupe, qui se sentent capables d’assurer seuls leur souveraineté, et qui voient un excès de partage comme une dilution de leur propre protection. Or, une alliance est sensée apporter un gain de protection à tous les membres, y compris les plus puissants. Peut-être faudrait-il inciter les dits Etats membres de considérer les opportunités de direction et d’influence que le système européen pourrait leur apporter. Il faudrait de ce point de vue mieux apprécier la balance entre les contraintes et les atouts potentiels d’un tel partage. La réponse doit être considérée à l’aune de plusieurs critères : celui de l’efficacité (et au-delà de la souveraineté), mais aussi celui de l’influence et au-delà, d’une efficacité ultérieure qui serait, peut-être, augmentée par un partage européen. La réponse ne va pas de soi et l’on peut comprendre la prudence de certains. Encore faut-il qu’il s’agisse d’une prudence d’attente et non une posture de splendide isolement.

Mentionnons, pour conclure sur ces questions de souveraineté et d’alliance, le silence du texte sur la coopération éventuelle avec l’Otan, ou sur un éventuel partage des tâches. Là encore, le non-dit est lourd de signification. La prudence diplomatique suggère de vrais différends, qui reposent peut-être sur des intérêts profonds. Les celer n’est pas forcément la meilleure façon de les résoudre. Il reste toutefois qu’a priori, l’Union dispose d’une gamme plus étendue d’instruments pour répondre aux défis du cyberespace, et qu’elle n’a donc aucune préséance à respecter sur la question.

Conclusion

Ainsi, ce texte est incontestablement novateur et constitue une vraie avancée. Il a le grand mérite d’aborder avec lucidité un domaine où l’Union était incontestablement en retrait. Le texte et la proposition de directive réussit à ménager de grand équilibres tout en traçant des objectifs de court et de moyen terme, et en plaçant le domaine sous l’égide de l’article 222. Pour toutes ces raisons, il faut s’en féliciter.

Il présente bien sûr un certain nombre de limites et de silences, laissés là soit à dessein, soit par ignorance. Ce n’est peut-être pas le plus handicapant. En effet, au-delà de ces questions de cybersécurité, l’Union fait face au grand questionnement de sa souveraineté numérique. La souveraineté est un mot que les institutions n’aiment pas. Pourtant, c’est probablement là où elle pourrait faire preuve d’une vraie capacité d’innovation. Cela renvoie au rapport de Mme Morin-Desailly qui interroge : l’Europe n’est-elle pas une colonie du monde numérique ?

Notes

• Par référence à l’article 5 du traité de l’Atlantique nord, mais aussi de feu le traité de l’Union de l’Europe Occidentale, qui tous deux assurent –assuraient pour l’UEO – une clause de défense collective entre alliés.
• On peut ici rappeler la définition donnée par l’ANSSI : « Ensemble des mesures techniques et non-techniques permettant à un État de défendre dans le cyberespace les systèmes d’information jugés essentiels ».
• Rapport sénatorial Morin Desailly, op. cit., p. 84.
• L’auteur remarque également que le CERT est une structure « très légère et n’est pas encore en mesure d’assurer la sécurité de ces réseaux ».
• Mme Morin-Desailly, rapport d’information du Sénat n° 448, « L’Union Européenne

Lexique

• AED : Agence européenne de défense.
• CERT-UE : Computer Emergency Response Team. Equipe de réaction d’urgence informatique.
• E3C : Centre européen de lutte contre la cybercriminalité.
• ENISA : Agence européenne chargée de la sécurité des réseaux et de l’information
• PIIC : Protection des infrastructures d’information critique
• SRI : Sécurité des réseaux et de l’information.

O. Kempf

Ten years ago, my part of the world was full of valiant opposition to the new wars being launched far away and at home -- and of despair...

The foc.us headset.

Ars Technica

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—Earlier this week, Ars showed up at a demo day for the painful-to-read HAXLR8R (pronounced hack-celerator). It's a startup accelerator program that takes ten teams of entrepreneurs, gives them $25,000, and flies them between San Francisco and Shenzhen to work on a hardware-based product of their design.

Most of the products were still in progress so many teams spent demo day courting VC funders or imploring the crowd to visit their Kickstarter campaign. But Foc.us, a company founded by mechanical engineers Michael Oxley and Martin Skinner, actually had its product launch that day. Their foc.us headset is a device that’s meant to shock your brain with electricity—and make you a better gamer because of it.

The headset is a red or black band that goes around the back of your head with four disks that are placed on your forehead, just above your eyebrows. The disks contain electrodes beneath small circular sponges soaked in saline solution. When the headset turns on (via a physical button in the back or a companion iOS app), you get a shock to the prefrontal cortex that can rage from 0.8 to 2.0 mA. For context, a hearing aid usually runs on about 0.7 mA—but you’re not directing that electricity into your head.

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Kara Swisher:

As part of the deal, Tumblr CEO David Karp — who got a windfall of cash from the deal — will stay at Yahoo for four years at least and retain much control over the service, much in the same way Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom does at Facebook. But, as there, Yahoo will undergird Tumblr’s nascent advertising business with its large and established infrastructure.

If they treat Tumblr the way Facebook has (so far) treated Instagram, I think this will work out well.

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Each year, the race to get a ticket for WWDC is on. Even with early warning, the window of ticket availability shrinks with every passing year. 2013 being no different: 2 minutes.

Capping the number of tickets is a classic Apple move: we're going to create a sense of exclusivity by creating an artificial constraint. Moscone Center is huge. Apple could blink and triple the size of the event, but I can't think of the last time the ticket ceiling at WWDC went up. 5000 attendees - that's it.

WWDC is a great event. I've been going for years without a ticket and I still have amazing nights spending time with dear friends debating the state of Apple. Logic would dictate that increasing the number of tickets would increase the "product": the army of foaming-at-the-mouth fanboys'n'girls who, I believe, are one of the best (and cheapest?) organic marketing assets in the industry.

Nope. 5000. That's it.

This type of constraint reeks of Steve Jobs. The rumor at Apple was that Steve capped many of the teams in Cupertino. Mac OS X and Marketing Communications being two successful teams that had their headcount capped. During the 2000s, while Apple was gaining traction across the planet, the team responsible for getting the word out, Marketing Communications ("MarCom"), was allegedly capped at 100 heads. The reasoning I heard was that Steve wanted to keep the teams feeling small, but, more importantly, I think he wanted to keep them knowable.

Of course, with the amount of work they had to produce supporting WWDCs, MacWorlds, product launches, and all the other advertising, they relied on expensive external vendors to do the bulk of the heavy lifting. While back in Cupertino, the 100 represented a small, well-understood group where I believe Steve could not only easily understand every single story being told by Apple, but, more importantly, the 100 could know each other.

When you talk about change or optimum team sizes, Dunbar's number is usually thrown down as scientific evidence of something you already know in your bones. Shit gets weird somewhere between 100 and 200 people. You can no longer keep the individual state of each of the other people in your team or company in your head. Which means communication becomes more taxing. Rather than walking up to Fred and saying, "What's up?" you cautiously walk up to a person you don't know and sheepishly ask, "Yeah... who are you?"

What was easy becomes hard. What used to be maintained in your head now involves an extra email or an additional meeting. What was familiar becomes unfamiliar and frustrating. Culture is diluted, communication becomes taxed, and people start saying, "I remember when..."

Capping the headcount of a team necessary to shaping the story of an increasingly successful company seems counter-intuitive. We're doing well, we should invest more. This type of thinking puts a big discount on the taxes associated with rapid team growth with, in my opinion, being able to easily discern what is going on in a team of people being number one.

Apple's MarCom department being capped at 100 achieved two very different objectives. First, it made the work the team was doing knowable - you could discern who was doing what because there just weren't that many full-time people. This allowed for dictatorial control that has given Apple clear and consistently messaging. Second, the constraint meant that every single person counted. While I never worked on the team, I'm certain they were much quicker in dealing with low performers because you could still discern the difference one additional high performing person would make. While this could certainly be viewed as a constant threat of being fired, it could also make for a high performing team.

The effects of capping WWDC tickets are different because you're talking about a larger population, but some of the effects are the same. Each year, WWDC is held in Moscone West. You know that the big Apple logo will be emblazoned on the side of the building. You know the names of the conference rooms, you know where the snacks will be. But, for me, I know who will be there. I end up in the same bars with the same dear friends and we get foamy at the mouth about Apple because we feel like we know it.

The cap on WWDC tickets means it won't go the way of SXSW - a wildly successful conference that has grown consistently since its inception. I used to go every year until one late night we looked around a huge sea of strangers and decided that we no longer knew this conference. The experience had become diluted. It had become unfamiliar, full of strangers, and unknowable.

Read on Ars Technica | Comments

Hey, remember when I said I’d finish Confident Ruby by September 1, 2012? Ha ha! That was a funny joke!

Seriously though, this book has taken much longer than intended, partly as the scope grew, but mostly because of other projects getting in the way. Such as the launch of RubyTapas. I’m hugely appreciative of all the early-access buyers who supported the project and have been patient through this process.

Those early buyers have already heard the news, but now I’m letting the rest of the world know: as of now, Confident Ruby is finally content-complete and entering a Beta phase. That means that while there is plenty of editing, clean-up, and tweaking to do, all the major content (a little over 150 pages’ worth) is now in place.

I intend to spend one month getting Confident Ruby into shape for a final release. At the end of that month, I will be raising the price to $35. Until then, you can still get it for $25. As always, if you don’t have the scratch you can send me a postcard instead.

Curious about what’s inside? The nutshell version is that this is a patterns book, focused on the method level of code. It’s all about how to make methods that are “confident”: that is, they tell a clear, straightforward story without a lot of distracting provisos and digressions. In order to get you from “timid” code to confident code, I lay out 32 patterns for collecting input, delivering output, and handling failure within a method. There’s a strong emphasis throughout on removing the scourge of nil values from code, and replacing them with more semantically meaningful constructs.

Here’s the current table of contents, if you’re curious:

• Introduction
  • Ruby meets the real world
  • Confident code
  • A good story, poorly told
  • Code as narrative
  • The four parts of a method
  • 3.times { rejoice! }
  • Collecting Input
• Sending a strong message
  • Conditionally call conversion methods
  • Define your own conversion protocols
  • Define conversions to user-defined types
  • Use built-in conversion functions
  • Use the Array() conversion function to array-ify inputs
  • Define conversion functions
  • Replace “string typing” with classes
  • Wrap collaborators in Adapters
  • Use transparent adapters to gradually introduce abstraction
  • Reject unworkable values with preconditions
  • Use #fetch to assert the presence of Hash keys
  • Document assumptions with assertions
  • Handle special cases with a Guard Clause
  • Represent special cases as objects
  • Represent do-nothing cases as null objects
  • Substitute a benign value for =nil=
  • Use #fetch for defaults
  • Use symbols as placeholder objects
  • Bundle arguments into parameter objects
  • Yield a parameter builder object
  • Receive policies instead of data
• Delivering Output
  • Write total functions
  • Call back instead of returning
  • Represent failure with a benign value
  • Represent failure with a special case object
  • Return a status object
  • Yield a status object
  • Signal early termination with =throw=
• Handling Failure
  • Prefer top-level rescue clause
  • Use checked methods for risky operations
  • Use bouncer methods
• Refactoring for Confidence
• MetricFu
• Stringer
• Parting Words

And here’s a video of the talk that started it all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8J0j2xJFgQ

And here’s that big friendly “buy now” button again!

Go 1.1 is released

Polyamory and Respect, by Luke Palmer. One of the best things I read about the matter. “Where does the idea that love is a finite resource come from?”

Major arcs for Goldbach’s theorem, by H. A. Helfgott. “The ternary Goldbach conjecture, or three-primes problem, asserts that every odd integer N greater than 5 is the sum of three primes. The present paper proves this conjecture.”

XORing Elephants: Novel Erasure Codes for Big Data, “Our modified HDFS implementation shows a reduction of approximately 2x on the repair disk I/O and repair network traffic.”

Least efficient packing shapes, by Yoav Kallus.

How to Learn Emacs: A Hand-drawn One-pager for Beginners, by Sacha Chua. Best thing: it doesn’t recommend a preconfigured setup.

QCC: A Quick C Compiler written in Ocaml.

ocaml-bitstring adds Erlang-style bitstrings and matching over bitstrings as a syntax extension and library for OCaml.

Terra is a new low-level system programming language that is designed to interoperate seamlessly with the Lua programming language.

CoVim is a Vim Plugin that adds real-time collaboration to your favorite text editor.

Bunny is a wireless. meshing, darknet that uses 802.11 to hide its communications.

The axTLS embedded SSL project is a highly configurable client/server TLSv1 SSL library designed for platforms with small memory requirements. It comes with a small HTTP/HTTPS server and additional test tools. BSD licensed!

Reforth is small, familiar, still a Forth. Contains some interesting ideas.

PDP-11/70 CPU core and SoC running 5th Edition UNIX or 2.11BSD UNIX on a FPGA.

Utopien, “Am Ende mündet jede Utopie in Erschießungskommandos, egal ob linke oder rechte, und so gut gemeint sie auch gewesen sein mag.”

On the Constant Moment, essay by Clayton Cubitt.

“Poohenge”, unusual inflatable sculpture graces Hong Kong park.

Leaf Me Alone, very nice little Flash game.

Orobus

Il y a bientôt 20 ans, j’ai passé plusieurs mois à traquer des snipers dans une ville fantôme de l’ex-Yougoslavie. J’ai d’abord tenté de les prendre en « flagrant délit » en faisant observer en permanence tous les environs.

Il me fallut plusieurs jours et plusieurs nuits pour m’apercevoir que cette méthode était à la fois épuisante et stérile. Je décidais donc de changer d’approche et de ne plus chercher à punir des agresseurs mais à réduire l’espérance mathématique (probabilité d’occurrence x effet) de leurs tirs. La tactique devint ainsi algorithmique.

Je considérais que le groupe des agresseurs était une collection d’acteurs isolés venant de tous les camps pour nous tirer dessus pour des motifs très variés mais le plus souvent sans grande coordination. Je ne m’attachais pas au comportement de chacun mais à celui de la masse. Estimant que ces dizaines d’individus se répartiraient sur une courbe de Gauss en fonction de leurs compétences, je décidais de me désintéresser des « extrémistes ». Ceux du coin gauche, les « imprudents », ne nécessitaient pas d’effort particulier. Leur incompétence suffirait à les éliminer rapidement face à n’importe que dispositif antisniping un tant soit peu efficace. Il y eut deux cas de ce type. Ceux du coin droit, les « invisibles » qui tiraient de loin, à travers plusieurs petits trous de mur et quittaient les lieux immédiatement après, nécessitaient en revanche trop d’effort. Les éliminer aurait nécessité d’augmenter de manière exponentielle la prise de risque en allant les traquer au cœur de zones particulièrement dangereuses. En même temps, les précautions qu’ils prenaient étaient telles qu’ils tiraient peu et, s’ils maintenaient une menace permanente pénible, ils n’étaient statistiquement pas très « létaux ». Alors que ma mission n’était pas de tuer le maximum de snipers mais de sauver le maximum de soldats français, je considérais que face à eux l’action la plus efficace était justement de ne rien faire.

Entre ces deux extrêmes restaient les tireurs occasionnels qui s’efforçaient juste de ne pas être vus quand ils nous tiraient dessus et qui peuplaient la grande bosse centrale de la courbe de Gauss, Sachant que je ne verrais sans doute jamais aucun d’eux, je décidais de me concentrer non pas sur chaque individu mais sur leur action d’ensemble.

Je commençais par une analyse précise de l’environnement urbain pour déterminer les zones d’où il était possible de tirer. Chaque nouvel impact de balles fut observé pour essayer de trouver des angles de tir. J’expliquais également à mes hommes comment analyser les phénomènes sonores des balles qui passaient à proximité d’eux pour essayer de trouver la zone d’origine (il faut comparer le bruit du bang supersonique et celui de la détonation de départ). En se renseignant auprès de la population, on apprit également que ces snipers « centristes-gaussiens » ne se mélangeaient pas avec la population, ce qui réduisait encore les zones de tirs et augmentait notre liberté d’action en éliminant le paramètre de la présence possible de civils. Simultanément, l’analyse des horaires des tirs fit apparaitre des périodes privilégiées comme les fins de matinée et d’après-midi et d’autres largement délaissées comme les horaires de repas et la nuit.

En croisant patiemment toutes ces données, il fut donc possible de déterminer quelques « agrégats » de probabilités évoluant dans l’espace et le temps et de proportionner face à aux les moyens de surveillance et surtout de frappe (fusils 12,7 mm et canon de 20 mm). Sans voir qui que ce soit, ou presque, chaque agression provoquait ainsi en quelques secondes une riposte puissante sur une plusieurs zones probables.

Je me rendis compte alors que quand on tire sur des probabilités et non sur des hommes, rien ne ressemble plus à un tir après agression qu’un tir avant. Je décidais donc de glisser de la réponse à l’anticipation et de m’efforcer ainsi par un tir préventif d’empêcher la montée de l’espérance mathématique plutôt que de la forcer à descendre par un tir de représailles. J’interprétais donc le concept de menace avérée des règles d’engagement (qu’est-ce qu’une menace avérée sinon une menace hautement probable ?) pour effectuer des tirs a priori sur les points où j’estimais probable la présence d’un élément hostile. A la manière des Précogs de Minority report de Philip K. Dick, mais sans avoir les freins législatifs et culturels des policiers, je traquais l’ « hostile » avant qu’il le devienne ou prouve qu’il l’était.

Au bilan, cette méthode fut efficace. Tant que ce dispositif « algo-tactique » fut en place, les tirs adverses diminuèrent en nombre et surtout en précision. Aucun soldat français ne fut touché par un tir d’arme légère à l’intérieur ou à proximité de la base. Il est en revanche très difficile combien de snipers adverses furent touchés puisque nous tirions sur de l’invisible probabilistique. Il y eut bien quelques confirmations (y compris par des adversaires admiratifs) mais peu importait.

Ce type de combat, systémique, n’était pas une nouveauté en soi. Il l’était cependant à cette très petite échelle. Il esquissait sans doute, avec des moyens primitifs, les possibilités de l’algorithmique, possibilités désormais considérables grâce aux nouvelles puissances de calcul. Déjà le programme PredPol (pour Prédictive Policing), un logiciel qui permet de déterminer les lieux et les temps où les crimes ont de fortes chances d’apparaître, se diffuse dans les grandes villes américaines et depuis peu au Royaume-Uni. Il est temps pour les armées de s’y intéresser avant de le subir.

Michel Goya, la Voie de l’Epée

The Arduino Yún (Yún means "cloud" in Chinese.)

Arduino

At today’s Bay Area Maker Fair, Arduino announced its new board, the Arduino Yún. The board is an Arduino Leonardo running Linino, a Linux fork based on OpenWRT. The board is Wi-Fi capable, which Arduino hopes will encourage people to use the boards to make cloud-ready projects.

In an official statement the company explained: “Historically, interfacing Arduino with complex Web services has been quite a challenge due to the limited memory available. Web services tend to use verbose text based formats like XML that require quite a lot or ram to parse. On the Arduino Yún we have created the Bridge library which delegates all network connections and processing of HTTP transactions to the Linux machine.”

Earlier this week, another company called Spark Devices also launched a similar idea on Kickstarter called Spark Core, putting forward a Wi-Fi capable board for Arduino projects that permits wireless programming and the ability to interface with Web services. The company had originally asked for $10,000, and has since raised over $300,000. (The campaign ends June 1).

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"Europe's Sensational Wild Animal Trainer, Fearless Daughter of Russia's Mad Monk."

I learned about this existence of this wonderful artifact and wonderful kook from Bess Lovejoy's Atlas Obscura talk at DNA Lounge last week, which you should surely attend in the future.

She also later co-authored a cookbook, which includes recipes for jellied fish heads and her father's favorite, cod soup. She also worked as a cabaret dancer in Bucharest, Romania, and then found work as a circus performer for Ringling Brothers Circus. During the 1930s she toured Europe and America as a lion tamer, billing herself as "the daughter of the famous mad monk whose feats in Russia astonished the world." She was mauled by a bear in Peru, Indiana, but stayed with the circus until it reached Miami, Florida, where she quit and began work as a riveter in a defense shipyard during World War II.

Our past can be summarized as a sequence of increasingly fast eras: animals, foragers, farmers, industry. Foragers grew by a factor of about four hundred over two million years, farmers grew by a factor of about two hundred over ten thousand years, and the industry economy has so far grown by a factor of about eight hundred over three hundred years. If this trend continues then before this era grows by another factor of a thousand, our economy should transition to another even faster growing era.

I saw the latest Star Trek movie today. It struck me yet again that such stories, set two centuries in our future, imagine a unlikely continuation of industry era styles, trends, and growth rates. At current growth rates the economy would grow by another factor of two thousand over that time period. Yet their cities, homes, workplaces, etc. look quite recognizably industrial, and quite distinct from either farmer or forager era styles. The main ways their world is different from ours is in continuing industry era trends, such as to richer and healthier individuals, and to more centralized government.

While this seems unlikely, it does make sense as a way to engage the audiences of today. But it leads me to wonder: what if past eras had set stories in imagined futures where their era’s trends and styles had long continued?

For example, imagine that the industrial revolution had never happened, and that the farming era had continued for another twenty thousand years, leading to a world population of perhaps a trillion, mostly farming at subsistence incomes within farmer-era social institutions. Oh there’d be a lot of sci/tech advances, just not creating much industry. Perhaps they’d farm the oceans and skies, and have melted the poles. Following farmer era trends, there’d be less violence, and longer term planning horizons. There’d be a lot more thoughtful writings, but without much intellectual specialization having arisen. Towns and firms would also still be small and less specialized.

Or, imagine that the farming revolution had never happened, but that foragers had continued to advance for another two million years, reaching a population of ten billion. They’d still live in small wandering bands collecting wild food, but in a much wider range of environments. Maybe they’d forage the seas and the skies. Their brains would be bigger, their tools more advanced, and their culture of participatory dance, music, and stories far more elaborate.

These sound like fascinating worlds to imagine, and would make good object lessons as well. Our future may be as different from the world of Star Trek as these imagined worlds would be from our world today.

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Avis, news et bric-à-brac

Un des grands débats actuels concerne la "cartographie" du cyberespace. Cela a l'air simple ? pas tant que ça. En effet, souvent, les cartes représentent les câbles sous-marins : c'est d'ailleurs celle-là que j'ai utilisée pour illustrer le sujet dans "Introduction à la cyberstratégie". Mais il manquait une visualisation convenable du cyber, à tout le moins d’Internet, qui constitue une bonne approximation du cyberespace. Voici donc le résultat que vient de produire un chercheur anonyme, qui a utilisé des outils simples de hacking pour réaliser cette cartographie. Elle vous rappellera la cartographie de la mondialisation que je vous avais montrée l'autre jour, et qui représentait les vols aériens internationaux. On a quelque chose du même effet ici, avec une vie du cyber qui évolue ne fonction du jour et de la nuit. On constate également que l'Inde est extrêmement connectée, ainsi que la Chine occidentale, mais pas du tout l'Afrique. Superbe !

Les Français moins favorables à l'Europe que les Britanniques (ici) : bravo aux dirigeants qui n'ont cessé de nous chanter l'Europe, l'Europe, l'Europe. Beau résultat. Well donne !

Deux vers de Corneille, qui dans Attila évoque le passage d'un certain ordre à un autre :

• Un grand destin commence, un grand destin s’achève,
• L’empire est prêt à choir et la France s'élève.

Dans le cyber, un État peut-il avoir l'ensemble des outils capacitaires nécessaires pur assurer une stratégie intégrale ? hard, soft, influence, .... ? Cela semble peu probable, malgré l'ambition en ce sens des États-Unis.

Inscription de la Polynésie dans la liste des États à décoloniser par l'ONU. D'une part, comment peut-on encore employer c vocabulaire si désuet en 2013 ? passéisme criant. Surtout, pourquoi ne pas mentionner toutes les terres possédées par les puissances de la région : Royaume Uni, États-Unis, Australie, Nouvelle Zélande ?

J’achète par correspondance "Paix et guerre entre les nations", de R. Aron. L'ayant consulté en bibliothèque, je ne le possédais pas. C'est chose faite. Et je reçois un exemplaire neuf : une édition reprenant celle de 1983, et proposée en format "grand livre du mois", ces éditions par abonnement. Son acquéreur ne l'avais jamais ouvert. Tant mieux pour moi, et miracle des ventes par correspondance. Et cela me donne l'idée de l'illustration de ce billet !

Choc géopolitique de la semaine

Pas de choc, cette semaine. Ni la grande conférence de presse, ni l'annonce de la reprise économique au Japon, ni la "grande conférence" annoncée par US et Russie sur la Syrie ne constituent à l'évidence des chocs.

Articles

• La France, agneau de l'espionnage sur Internet. Enregistrement de l'émission de l'autre soir sur RFI. Où l'on a peu parlé d'espionnage...
• Google veut faire la police dans vos mails
• Pas de présence accrue de l'Otan dans l'Arctique, selon son chef
• Ce que Leboncoin.fr nous révèle de l'économie française : Leboncoin.fr donne une leçon de marché à tous ceux qui croient déjà le connaître !
• Hallucinant interview d'E. Todd. Il sort là des énormités. Ivresse de l'intellectuel français. Il me fait penser à M. Onfray. CEs gens perdent la raison. Hubris...

Événements

21mai Le Medef, le Forum ATENA, ARCSI, la Chaire CASTEX organisent un colloque" Les cybermenaces, quels risques pour les entreprise ?" Mardi 21 mai de 14h à 18h30 (accueil à partir de 13h30) Pourquoi les entreprises ont-elles besoin d’une cyberstratégie ?. Événement gratuit (inscription obligatoire). Lieu : au siège du Medef, 55 avenue Bosquet, 75007 Paris. NB : j’interviendrai à ce colloque).

Mercredi 22 mai de 19h30 à 21h00, Amphithéâtre Des Vallieres École militaire. L'ANAJ IHEDN organise : "Géostratégie du crime, crises et crimes financiers à l’heure du chaos". Jean-François GAYRAUD Commissaire divisionnaire interviendra en qualité d’essayiste. Inscriptions;

23 mai L'institut des études sur la guerre et la paix (Paris 1 - Sorbonne) organise un colloque international : DYNAMIQUES DE L’ACTION HUMANITAIRE ET DE LA PROTECTION CIVILE EN SITUATIONS DE CRISES. Le 23 MAI 2013 de 9h00 à 18h00 Amphithéâtre Lefèvre, centre Sorbonne. 9h30 – 12h00 : Table ronde Normes et pratiques de l’action humanitaire en situation de crise - 14h00 – 17h30 : Table ronde « Au-delà des souverainetés nationales, vers une protection civile européenne ? »

23 mai L’Équipe de la revue Perspectives Libres et l’École de Guerre Économique s'associent dans un séminaire de recherche. COnférence sur "La Russie dans la bataille de l'information". Avec Alexandre BEDRITSKIY : Docteur en sciences politiques. Chercheur en chef au centre russe d'analyse stratégique, - Maxime MICHTCHENKO : Docteur en sciences techniques. Président du conseil central de l'organisation "Russie Jeune". Chef du projet "santé" du parti Russie Unie. - André RATCHINSKI : Docteur en histoire. Maître de conférences à l'institut national des cultures et langues orientales. et Christian HARBULOT : Directeur de l'école de guerre économique. Entrée 18H45 1 place Joffre, Amphithéâtre Louis.Inscription obligatoire.

24 mai, Grenoble (car il y a aussi des manifestations intéressantes en province) : Colloque "Face à la guerre : combattants et non combattants dans les conflits contemporains". par le trinôme académique de Grenoble : détails et inscriptions.

27 mai COLLOQUE STRATÉGIE ET RÉSEAU, à l'école militaire, organisé par votre serviteur. Détails et inscriptions. (NB : j’interviendrai à ce colloque)

28 mai La Revue Défense Nationale poursuit son cycle de conférences 2013 par "Évolution des Balkans occidentaux", avec Arta Seiti, chercheur, balkanologue et : Bosko Bojovic (EHESS), Céline Bayou (Questions internationales) Faruk Bilici (Inalco) et Gheorghe Ciascai (université de Bucarest). Mardi 28 mai 2013 de 17 h 30 à 19 h 00, Amphi Louis, École militaire, 75007 Paris Entrée impérative par le 5 place Joffre pour pointage. Inscriptions.

28 mai La chaire Castex de cyberstratégie accueille une conférence de Monsieur Nicolas Ruff, Chercheur en sécurité informatique au sein de la société EADS, le 28 à 17h00 amphi Lacoste (École militaire). Inscriptions avant le 23 mai.

28 Mai : A propos des entreprises de services de sécurité et de défense (ESSD), assister au Colloque organisé par le CSFRS et le CDSE : "ESSD, Quel développements pour la France après le rapport Ménard-Viollet ?". 28 mai matin à l'école militaire (Desvallières), avec :

• 09h00 Introduction : Alain Juillet, président du CDSE - Eric Danon, directeur général du CSFRS
• 09h50/ ENJEUX ET CONTRAINTES
  • Climat d’insécurité et activités des grandes entreprises à l’étranger, par Jean-Michel Chéreau, directeur de la sécurité d’AREVA.
  • La marginalisation des Français sur le marché international de la sécurité, par Eric Delbecque, chercheur à l’INHESJ.
  • La nécessaire certification étatique pour les assureurs des ESSD françaises, par Stéphane Pénet, directeur des assurances de biens et de responsabilités à la Fédération française des sociétés d’assurance.
• 10h35/Débat
• 11h15/DÉVELOPPEMENTS POSSIBLES
  • Perspectives juridiques, par Alain Bensoussan, avocat.
  • Gouvernance et conditions d’agrément étatique, par Arnaud Dessenne, président du Club des entreprises françaises de sûreté à l’international, EFSI.
  • Réaction des auteurs du rapport parlementaire 2012 : Christian Ménard et Jean-Claude Viollet, anciens députés
• 12h30 Clôture.
• Renseignements

29 mai ANAJ IHEDN, Rencontre avec un explorateur des temps modernes, Diego BUNUEL Journaliste – Reporter – Réalisateur Mercredi 29 mai 2013 19h30 à 21h00 Amphithéâtre Desvallières Ecole militaire. Inscriptions.

World Bodypaint Festival

Previously, previously.

Dear Lazyweb, can anyone tell me how to disconnect my Words With Friends account from my Facebook account?

I'm sick to death of it sending me push-notifications that someone I'm friends with on Facebook but have never played Scrabble with has played a word. There seems to be no way to turn this shit off.

Things I have tried:

1. De-authorizing the Words With Friends app on Facebook. This causes the the iOS app to go into a loop demanding that you re-authorize it.

2. Deleting and re-installing the iOS app. That stops the auth-loop, but does not stop the "notifications about non-friends" issue, and also makes it nag you daily saying "Hey, you used to log in with Facebook! Log in with Facebook okay??"

So I guess I can't do this myself, since it's stuck in their DB. I'll just mail them and ask them to delete that. Ha ha ha.

3. This joke appears to be the closest thing to a non-FAQ support page.

4. So I go to their Facebook page hoping to message them. There's no option to message them. There's no option to post a question on the wall except as a reply to a previous post from them announcing an new feature in a different game. WTF.

5. So I waste my time trying to strip my complaint down to 140 characters and ask them on Twitter. To the shock of nobody, I get no reply.

6. Then on a completely different, unlinked web site, I find this page. I get a brush-off auto-reply saying "update to the latest version of the app, which will direct you to the FAQ instead of letting you actually contact us."

The fact that they are still nagging me with updates about my Facebook friends when they no longer have authorization on my Facebook account means that they have stored an offline copy of my friends tree, which I'm pretty sure is against Facebook's application terms of service. I'm sure both parties care about this a lot.

Yeah yeah, that's what I get for dealing with amoral scumbags like Zynga in the first place. I even paid them money to make the ads go away, so I'm part of the problem. But hey, I like playing scrabble on my phone.

Remember when a paying customer could actually email support? Those were the days.

Previously.

We spent the week at I/O sitting in sessions, walking around the show floor, and congregating with developers. After the keynote, things got quieter on the news front but there was still plenty to learn about. This conference is about community, bringing together developers of all types, and connecting people with similar interests and backgrounds. It's also about adorable little Androids, which absolutely overwhelmed downtown San Francisco's convention center, the Moscone Center.

The Google Store

A Google Store employee models the Android Superhero costume, available for a mere $32.80. There was no word on compatibility with the YouTube Socks.

Sean Gallagher

14 more images in gallery

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Owen Good, Kotaku:

At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn’t developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports’ Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as “crap” and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether.

Starting to get silly at this point.

Victorian Organic Solar Cell Consortium

Imagine a future where solar panels speed off the presses, like newspaper. Australian scientists have brought us one step closer to that reality.

Researchers from the Victorian Organic Solar Cell Consortium (VICOSC) have developed a printer that can print 10 meters of flexible solar cells a minute. Unlike traditional silicon solar cells, printed solar cells are made using organic semi-conducting polymers, which can be dissolved in a solvent and used like an ink, allowing solar cells to be printed.

Not only can the VICOSC machine print flexible A3 solar cells, the machine can print directly on to steel, opening up the possibility for solar cells to be embedded directly into building materials.

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Stack Exchange

This Q&A is part of a weekly series of posts highlighting common questions encountered by technophiles and answered by users at Stack Exchange, a free, community-powered network of 100+ Q&A sites.

Dokkat appears to think that databases are overused. "Instead of a database, I just serialize my data to JSON, saving and loading it to disk when necessary," he writes. "All the data management is made on the program itself, which is faster AND easier than using SQL queries." What is missing here? Why should a developer use a database when saving data to a disk might work just as well?

See the original question here.

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Marijuana may make you overeat, but it could be an effective diabetes treatment. Lighting up a bit of weed is often blamed for people going on uninhibited eating binges. So it's a bit of a surprise to find a study saying that regular marijuana use is associated with a slimmer waistline. Perhaps even more striking, however, is the affect it had on metabolism, where it drops resting blood glucose levels. These results are consistent with past indications that marijuana users have a lower incidence of diabetes. The one unusual thing here is that the new study found no indication of a dose response.

An early pregnancy test probably ended up killing lots of North American amphibians. We recently ran a story that suggested that international trade helped take a fungus that infects amphibians and turn it into a global killer. Now we have some idea of exactly what was being traded: raw materials for human pregnancy tests. The raw materials in question? Frogs. Xenopus laevis is commonly used in biology research because it's a prodigious producer of eggs that can then be used to study embryonic development. But, before we knew how to directly detect the proteins in human urine that signaled pregnancy, someone figured out a way to do so indirectly: they made the frogs ovulate.

So, we dragged in a bunch of frogs from Africa to use for pregnancy tests and, one way or another, they established themselves in the wilds of California. Now, a study of samples from frogs found decades ago in California and Africa show that these Xenopus are asymptomatic carriers of the fungus that's now killing other frog species around the globe. There's a very good chance that these hopping pregnancy tests managed to bring it to North America.

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A "Russian Tokarev TT-34 Atomiser" that is "very reliable on the lunar battlefield."

Shannon Ocean

This week, a handful of Ars staffers gathered in San Francisco, CA to see the new Star Trek movie at Starfleet Headquarters. (Ok, just kidding, we saw the movie at San Francisco's Metreon, and most of us were there for Google I/O, the company's annual developer conference.) Besides Google's conference and the rare spotting of more than three Ars employees sharing IRL space with each other, this week also saw notable stories hit the front page. Specifically, we wrote about a Soviet defense satellite that almost came to be and about how the people behind League of Legends are trying to foster a more civil atmosphere in games.

“Bdysch!”

Guest writer Amy Teitel brought us the story of The secret laser-toting Soviet satellite that almost was and commenters wasted no time diving into the specifics of the political and military atmosphere of the early 80's, when our article takes place. Most interesting were the handful of commenters who brought us first-hand experiences. ucla74 wrote:

"I was an Air Force officer stationed in West Germany at the time of this failed launch. We were deploying the Ground Launched Cruise Missile (GLCM) system in western Europe, and our unit had just achieved Initial Operational Capability—we were poised to deliver warheads against both strategic and tactical targets inside the Soviet Bloc.

Following the Polyus failure, the US and USSR signed the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, which banned GLCM, the Army's Pershing II medium-range ballistic missile system, and the Soviet Union's SS-20 MRBMs, which in turn significantly enhanced the stabilization of Central Europe. While I doubt Polyus was the driving factor behind INF, I feel certain it contributed to Gorbachev's readiness to negotiate at least one threat to the Soviet bloc.

AgentSmith40 also gave us his perspective:

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“This stuff matters.”

Jon Lander, the executive producer of CCP Games’ EVE Online, tells me this during an interview on the first proper day of the company’s Fanfest 2013 event in Reykjavik, Iceland last month. He doesn’t seem to mean much by it and at the time I took it as a throwaway comment. We were in the midst of a larger conversation about monetization and his company’s business practices.

However, after three days surrounded by developers and EVE devotees, I came to understand this as the foundational idea and central thesis of the game. All human interaction—be it face-to-face, in an online forum, or expressed through a series of intricate systems and delicate game mechanics—has value.

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Au mois d’août 2003, sur le conseil des services de renseignement algériens, le film de Gillo Pontecorvo, La Bataille d’Alger (La Battaglia di Algeri, 1966) fut projeté au Pentagone alors que l’Empire se débattait dans le foutoir irakien.

Nombre d’officiers impériaux ignoraient tout de la guerre d’Algérie et de la guérilla urbaine qui avait opposé dans la casbah, en 1957, la 10e Division parachutiste (DP) aux membres de la zone autonome d’Alger créée par le FLN. L’affrontement, remporté par les Français, ne ralentit qu’à peine l’inexorable marche de l’Algérie vers son indépendance, finalement acquise en 1962.

À bien des égards, la guerre d’Algérie a laissé de durables traces dans l’art de la guerre occidental, des hélicoptères armés aux méthodes de contre-insurrection urbaine en passant par de terribles débats sur l’usage de la torture et l’inadéquation, douloureusement inévitable, entre les impératifs moraux et les objectifs militaro-politiques.

En 1966, le cinéaste italien Gillo Pontecorvo tourne, à Alger, avec le total soutien des autorités, le film, devenu mythique, relatant la fameuse bataille. Couvert de récompenses, dont le Lion d’or de la Mostra de Venise, il participe même à la course aux Oscars en 1967.

À bien des égards, La Bataille d’Alger est un film qui a vieilli, tant par sa mise en scène, parfois théâtrale, que par ses dialogues, trop écrits. Mais c’est un film qui bien vieilli, comme Le Faucon Maltais (1941, John Huston). Le parti-pris du cinéaste est sans ambiguïté, et il n’a jamais caché son attachement au communisme. Son film est ainsi ouvertement favorable aux indépendantistes algériens, mais qui le blâmerait ?

Joué par une majorité d’acteurs amateurs, mettant en scène Youssef Saadi lui-même, dans son propre rôle de chef de la région autonome d’Alger, le film de Pontecorvo ne doit pas être vu comme le récit scrupuleux de ces mois de guérilla urbaine mais plutôt comme une œuvre engagée, presque de propagande, d’une rare qualité.

La violence y est montrée d’emblée, à la fin d’une séance de torture – une entrée en matière que reprendra Kathryn Bigelow dans son chef d’œuvre Zero Dark Thirty (2012), et qui tendrait à faire penser que torture et contre-terrorisme sont étroitement liés.

Mais la torture, dans ces deux films, est d’abord exposée comme une méthode, un recours technique à une situation précise, pratiquée sans haine par des professionnels froids, finalement bien plus odieux et méprisables que la population qu’ils défendent.

Rafles et attentats sont ici exposés sans fioriture, comme les deux versants d’une guerre asymétrique et du choc de volontés auquel se livrent une puissance coloniale vieillissante et un mouvement indépendantiste porté par le vent de l’Histoire. Interrogé par un journaliste lors d’une conférence presse organisée par le colonel Mathieu, un chef du FLN justifie le recours au terrorisme avec une froide logique : « Donnez-nous vos bombardiers, et nous vous donnerons nos couffins ». Le terrorisme serait donc justifié par la disproportion des moyens et la justesse de la cause qu’il entend servir.

Car La Bataille d’Alger n’est pas tant un film sur l’héroïsme des indépendantistes algériens ou l’extrême violence de la campagne de contre-insurrection française qu’un  plaidoyer pro domo justifiant le terrorisme. On peut d’ailleurs noter que le terme, en 1966, est parfaitement assumé par les personnages algériens du film, tels Ben M’Hidi qui dit :
« La violence ne fait pas gagner les guerres. Ni les guerres ni les révolutions. Le terrorisme est utile pour commencer (la lutte). »

En présentant les parachutistes de la 10^e DP comme des professionnels obéissant aux ordres, en faisant du colonel Mathieu un officier presque sympathique qui met en œuvre une politique décidée à Paris par ses chefs, Gillo Pontecorvo s’en prend, certes, au colonialisme. Cependant, en faisant des soldats français qui raflent, torturent et détruisent les maisons des techniciens sans haine agissant selon une option tactico-politique, le cinéaste ne fait que justifier la propre option terroriste choisie par le FLN.

Du coup, l’affrontement est présenté à l’écran selon un schéma typiquement marxiste délaissant la réalité humaine pour ne s’intéresser qu’à la lutte entre deux forces intrinsèquement hostiles : une armée coloniale de professionnels contre un mouvement irrégulier composé d’hommes et de femmes du peuple, comme Ali La Pointe, prenant tous les risques pour leur cause. L’absence de psychologie des personnages, troublante au début du film, s’estompe ainsi rapidement tandis que se mettent en place les protagonistes.

On entend d’ailleurs peu d’envolées anticoloniales ou révolutionnaires de la part des cadres du FLN, et il faudra, pour ce faire, plutôt regarder L’Avocat de la Terreur (2007), le documentaire consacré à Jacques Vergès par Barbet Schroeder.

La guerre d’Indépendance ne cesse de ternir les relations entre la France et l’Algérie, posant de lancinantes questions au sujet de la violence des belligérants, du sort de la population européenne et des Harkis. À l’autre bout du monde, le Vietnam et l’Empire reprennent des relations plus ou moins apaisées fondées sur la volonté commune d’avancer, de dépasser les horreurs d’une guerre qui a ravagé la péninsule indochinoise de 1945 à 1975. Rien de tel entre Paris et Alger. Dans les deux pays, le refus de poser froidement et presque définitivement les termes de la querelle est alimenté par les nostalgiques d’une France impériale presque disparue des mémoires ou par un pouvoir que le naufrage, presque complet, conduit à ressasser sans cesse une guerre de libération nationale qui s’est achevée il y a un demi-siècle.

À cette époque, l’Algérie fut grande, victorieuse, porteuse d’espoirs. Elle tient fièrement sa place au côtés de l’Egypte de Nasser comme authentique nation tiers-mondiste libérée au prix de sacrifices insensés. Mais la victoire est devenue, plus qu’une glorieuse page, un dogme qui sclérose et bloque un pays qui est, contre toute attente, le principal adversaire des révoltes arabes de 2011. Les libérateurs d’hier sont ainsi, désormais, les alliés des tyrans, engoncés dans de terribles certitudes et confrontés à leurs échecs et leurs ambiguïtés.

La Bataille d’Alger vante, à raison, la geste d’une poignée de combattants inexpérimentés défiant les troupes d’élite d’une vieille puissance refusant son déclin et cherchant à venger Sedan et Dien Biên Phu. Mais elle ne parvient pas, malgré les efforts de Gillo Pontecorvo, à sortir d’une terrible ambiguïté. Que devient, en effet, la posture morale quand la fin justifie à ce point les moyens ? Peut-on tout faire quand on entend incarner un nouvel espoir pour les peuples soumis ?

Au procès de Nuremberg, Hermann Goëring déclara que l’Histoire est écrite par les vainqueurs. Si la France avait vaincu en Algérie, nul doute que la cause des indépendantistes aurait été cruellement dépeinte dans les manuels scolaires. La libération de l’Algérie a eu, comme prévu, l’effet inverse, plaçant sur le même plan les attentats du FLN et ses actions de guérilla. Le terrorisme est ainsi devenu juste car sa cause était juste.

La Bataille d’Alger signe, en quelque sorte, un chèque en blanc aux terroristes des années 60 et 70, engagés dans la lutte du Sud contre le Nord. Mais, que penser alors du jihadisme, des partisans du GIA, d’AQMI, du Jabhat Al Nusra ? Au nom de quoi le pouvoir algérien peut-il les condamner puisqu’il a fait sien le dogme de la révolution par la terreur ?

C’est que le terrorisme, quelle que soit la cause qu’il défend, est une tache morale, et une erreur politique – même si la guerre est finalement gagnée. Et son usage ternit la cause qu’il défend, de l’Irlande au Cachemire, du Caucase au pays basque. Le fait que les services algériens aient conseillé aux officiers de l’Empire d’étudier un film qui montrait leur défaite militaire et leur succès politique est d’une cruelle ironie, alors qu’en Algérie le GIA a, dès le début, organisé son combat comme le FLN le fit trente ans avant lui, les wilayas ayant les mêmes numéros et Alger étant une région autonome. Peut-être les généraux milliardaires au pouvoir refusent-ils de voir que les jihadistes sont les enfants perdus de la révolution qu’ils ont confisquée et de l’indépendance qu’ils ont gâchée ?

(This is going to be a slightly abbreviated discussion, because I discussed the book's ideas at length in the supplementary essay bundled with it, and answered a number of questions about it in the blog entry immediately preceding this one.)

So what's left to say ...?

Rewind the clock to 1993. I was living in Watford, part of the suburban sprawl that surrounds London proper, working for a Californian software multinational and not writing enough fiction. One of my problems was starting stories and not finishing them. One of the starts I made, was this rather weird, chillingly distanced third-person-omniscient vision of a CIA photographic analyst in a world where the cold war produced even more baroque technologies than in our own: his memories of a childhood visit to an air show where nuclear-powered NB-36s were on display (in our universe, the NB-36 program was cancelled before anything flew under actual nuclear power, as with the Soviet Tu-95LAL (the follow-on Tu-119 never flew either)). His memories merge with his angst as he pores over recon imagery of .... what?

Forward to 1997. I'd read a short story by Bruce Sterling, The Unthinkable. It's a short throw-away in which a pair of arms negotiators are reminiscing about how they agreed to back away from the precipice and cut the Cold War horror arsenals by ditching the ICBMs and Hydrogen bombs chained Lovecraftian horrors ... and I suddenly realised what my analyst was looking at. I'd also been re-reading "At The Mountains of Madness" and decided, in classic naive non-metaphorical science fictional mode (where a rocket ship is just a rocket ship every time) to tackle the alienation and ennui engendered by constant exposure to the threat of annihilation, and also to make the Mythos frightening again by linking Lovecraft's horrors (by then reduced to the stuff of silly jokes and plush bedroom slippers) to a terrifying reality that had only receded into the background in the past few years.

The result was a story titled "A Colder War". I sold it, and it garnered quite a bit of attention—I get a reprint request pretty much every year.

Fast-forward to 1999. I'd finished working on "Festival of Fools" (aka "Singularity Sky") and it was on its way to an editor's in-tray. I'd written "Lobsters" and it was doing the rounds ("meritless, vapid, style-obsessed trash" said the rejection letter from the first editor I sent it to, he who had just bought "A Colder War": there's no accounting for taste). I needed a novel-length project and I had bits of the wreckage of "The Harmony Burn" to cannibalize (this was the unpublishable novel from 1994-96—unpublishable for structural/characterisation reasons, not because publishers are stupid). Secret government agencies dealing with the suppression of hard take-off singularities seemed a bit dubious to me by then, but I'd just sold "A Colder War" and, while that particular story was far too bleak to work with, the idea of rebooting the Lovecraftian/spy nexus appealed. So I began writing. And the first thing I came up with was Bob, mentally swearing at his boss as the rain trickles down the back of his neck and he tries to break into an office I used to work at in Watford to steal a deadly thesis.

At which point everything was hopelessly cross-infected by my memories of the Kafkaesque bureaucracy inside that particular company's technical publications department. And then I had Bob go back to work the next day in a grim little civil service office maze not unlike to one I'd spent three months working in as a contractor in 1996. Both jobs were so soul-destroying that you had to view them as black farce in order to work there: the software company, for example, was the one where whenever senior executives came to visit our managers would trawl the cubicle farm first thing in the morning to take down all the Dilbert cartoons pinned to the walls.

I was working in a dotcom startup at the time, and spending too much time reading Slashdot. And it occurred to me that the staid British civil service would have serious indigestion if it tried to swallow a Slashdot-era dotcom geek. But what if the bureaucracy in question wasn't allowed to fire him? There's scope for comedy there, the comedy of dissonance: round peg in a square hole, and so on.

So there you've got the ingredients. Lovecraftian horror; the secret agency dedicated to protecting us from the scum of the multiverse: the protagonist (Bob, a put-upon hacker who is an utterly inappropriate hire but who can't be gotten rid of): the cold war ambiance: the dark humour. I probably ought to mention the novels of Len Deighton, which I was re-reading at the time—one of the most significant of the British cold war thriller writers.

The whole thing snowballed into a short novel. In early 2001 I sold first serial rights to the same small Scottish magazine who'd published "A Colder War" and "Antibodies"; it ran in Spectrum SF issues 7-10 after John Christopher's last novel and was read by maybe a thousand people. (Thereafter, Spectrum SF ceased publication. I like to think I didn't kill it.) This was my first published novel, and I sold it myself; my agent's first reaction when I sent it to her was, "this is great fun but it'll be impossible to sell: it's far too cross-genre". She was, in fact, quite correct ... for a non-name author in 2001.

The rest is history, although it's a rather weird history: at some point I'm going to have to write down the tortured publication track of the first four Laundry novels just to provide some context, just to show that rules are for breaking. This series broke all the rules of publishing and somehow prospered, never mind merely surviving—even though the dice were stacked against it from the beginning.

But that's enough for now. (I've just finished the first draft of a new Laundry novella, set between "The Jennifer Morgue" and "The Fuller Memorandum", and my hands are too sore to continue typing!)

I face-tagged a zillion faces in desktop Picasa while "Store Name Tags in Photo" was unchecked. Now I have checked it and I want it to write all those tags back to the EXIF. How?

Alternately: I just want to extract a map of filename → face-names, and then I can take care of business myself. Where's the API?

Previously.

Déjeuner l'autre jour avec E. Nous parlons du Livre blanc. Si l'article de Ruello l'a fait beaucoup rire, s'il trouve que Tertrais fait un peu trop le service après vente, nous en venons au texte proprement dit.

source

Bien sûr il est insipide et plat, comme souvent ce genre de documents. Nous évoquons sa durée d'écriture. Tout ça pour ça, lui dis je. Il répond que ce délai à probablement été vertueux, car il a permis la prise de conscience que l'on ne pouvait pas obtenir autant de gains qu'espérés : souviens toi de M. Aubry qui avait déclaré qu'il y avait là des réserves. Entre les conséquences industrielles et la faible rentabilité des coupes, c'est ce qui a permis d'éviter l'option Z. Autrement dit, la durée à permis d'échapper au pire.

Certes, mais là, ce sont des options budgétaires, pas de la stratégie, lui dis-je. Oh! C'est toute l'ambiguïté de l'exercice : tenir compte de la crise de la dette qui a des effets stratégiques majeurs. La contrainte budgétaire à été en permanence dans les débats.

Moui. Mais il n'y a pour le reste rien de bien nouveau ? Si, la prise en compte du pivot américain , même si on n'en a pas tiré toutes les conséquences, notamment à dix ans, en termes de réassurance.

Oui, mais aucune nouveauté, objecté-je (j'aime bien l'inversion du présent de l’indicatif à la première personne, où il faut mettre un é pour montrer qu'on a sa grammaire : ça me fait penser à San Antonio, toutes proportions gardées)

Il répond : Mais un Livre blanc est un document officiel, toujours un peu plat...

Non, pas toujours, dis-je. Celui de 1994 avait proposé les scénarios ou le système des quatre fonctions stratégiques (même si elles sont critiquables). Et celui de 2008 avait été innovant par bien des aspects : l'arc de crise (même si c'est une bêtise dont on s'est heureusement débarrassé cette fois-ci), la résilience, la fonction connaissance anticipation, les propos prophétiques sur le cyber ....

Oui, tu n'as pas tort, concède t il. Et je suis aussi d'accord avec toi : la QDRisation est une bêtise. Déjà idiote aux États Unis, ce sera pire chez nous.

Sur cette heureuse conclusion, nous passons à autre chose de plus intéressant.

O. Kempf

Technically, it's a cuttlefish and not a squid. But it's still nice art. I posted a photo of a real striped pyjama squid way back in 2006.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.

The 2013 MacBook Airs may soon be upon us.

Jacqui Cheng

Apple hasn't announced a significant update to any of its hardware since October of 2012, but if you're itching to get your hands on something new the wait may soon be over. AppleInsider reports that supplies of Apple's MacBook Air are beginning to shrink ahead of next month's Worldwide Developer Conference with multiple major retailers listing the high-end 13-inch model in particular as "out of stock." The MacBook Air was last refreshed at WWDC in June of 2012.

Apple's strict command of its supply chain means that it tends not to have a lot of excess inventory sitting around in warehouses—according to a Gartner report from about a year ago Apple can turn over its entire inventory of product in about five days. Reduced inventory for current products tends to indicate that new ones are around the corner.

If that by itself isn't enough evidence for you, consider that Mac hardware refreshes generally tend to be tied to Intel's hardware cycles and that Intel's next-generation Haswell architecture (with its enhanced integrated GPUs) is all-but-guaranteed to be announced at Computex at the beginning of next month. When it launched Ivy Bridge last year low-voltage CPUs intended for thin-and-light laptops were the first to be released, meaning that by the time WWDC rolls around Apple will likely have the CPUs it needs to make next-generation MacBook Airs happen.

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A mosaic of Lady Justice at the 9th Circuit in San Francisco.

Thomas Hawk

Four lawyers linked to the embattled copyright-trolling Prenda Law operation were slapped with a sanctions order earlier this month, ordering them to pay more than $80,000 in penalties and referring them to state bar investigators as well as the Department of Justice.

The only one who has spoken publicly, John Steele, said he will appeal. Now, papers have been filed by Steele's comrade-in-arms Paul Hansmeier, asking the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to stay the sanctions issued by US District Judge Otis Wright while Hansmeier puts together a proper appeal. Hansmeier filed the motion late Thursday, just days before the May 21 deadline to pay the $81,319.72.

"The district court failed to afford Appellant even the most basic due process protections, such as the ability to cross- examine adverse witnesses or to object to the introduction of improper evidence against him, let alone the strict due process protections that would be available in a criminal contempt proceeding," writes Hansmeier in his plea to the appeals court. "The impending actions of the district court threaten to damage Appellant’s reputation in the legal community, in turn damaging his ability to attract clients and to represent them effectively, in a manner that will be irremediable through the normal appellate process without a stay of execution."

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In the episode that aired on May 9th, about eight or nine minutes in, there's a scene with a copy of Applied Cryptography prominently displayed on the coffee table. This isn't the first time that my books have appeared on that TV show.