liedra

Not sure where you're living but I'm in a lovely 3br for a bit more than that and only 20-25 mins out from Bank on the tube.

Everyone in London knows that if you don't want to pay through the nose don't live in the centre!

I really like f1fanatic.co.uk for pretty good analysis and updates (and, of course, gossip and drama! :). There is a pretty good forum on there for people to chat too, and it has a lot of very knowledgeable people who hang around.

... I just realised that this article was on f1fanatic, DUH. But yeah, it's definitely the best site I've seen for F1 news.

I was at the Bank of England museum checking out the first "notes" the other day, and they date back to 1694. That's a little older than 100 years.

I'd say you're probably right. I usually only need 8 hrs sleep, but when I'm sick, for example, I often find myself easily sleeping for 12+ hours (like this morning, oops! :).

Additionally to the very spot-on dissection of Skype in the article, what I find amazingly frustrating about this version is the list of recent calls in the left-hand menu thing. I call a lot of numbers in Australia, and where it used to show the full number, now it only shows the first 2-3 digits (i.e. the +61). When I click on that to hopefully see more about which damn number it is, the title of the right hand chat/history screen thing is "+61..." ARGH. NOWHERE does it show the full number. How am I supposed to know if it was my mum, my sister, or my brother I called? Very frustrating.

I discovered more recently that if I mouse-overed the number in the left hand menu it would eventually pop up in a tooltip, but eventually is the operative here. I have to wait a full 5 seconds or so for it to show up, and that's a long time in annoyed-liedra time.

I hope they fix a lot of this up, because at the moment it's just rubbish.

My boyfriend just graduated with a PhD in computer science, and his mother sent a congratulatory email to him (with me in CC) saying "Congratulations on your PhD in IT!"

Much good-natured jibing was had after that. :)

... to its detriment, at times. I have a very good app on my iPhone that plots out bike paths around London for me. Sadly, when I have reached my destination, and "close" the window, it continues to use the GPS and other battery sucking things to the point where I have to manually go and kill it via the kill-menu (which is all I ever use the fast-switch menu for).

I'm not saying this is Apple's fault, but that it's very hard to work out when someone has "finished" with an app that could continue to, say, provide information about what the user is doing to a third party, or sucking battery life, or making annoying noises, for example. And apps that do this after I'm "finished" with them annoy me to no end. I'd consider that "broken" :)

There's probably as much alcohol in your Rochefort 8 as there is in that entire six-pack too :-)

What's often not said in these discussions is that college/university time is a great time to work out what you want to do for a bit. I certainly had no idea what I wanted to do coming out of high school. I wanted to be a veterinarian, but didn't get the marks to get into that degree programme, so I ended up doing bioinformatics, and then eventually wound up doing a computer science degree double major with history and philosophy of science. And I love my job now, working as an academic in technology ethics. But if you'd asked the straight-outta-highschool me about what I'd be doing in 10 years time, she would have had no idea I'd be where I am now. Going to university helped me to work out which path I wanted to take. Granted, I didn't go to an American university, and it somewhat depresses me to hear about how university is pointless etc. because I had some amazingly good courses and learned a lot at my university. But that was back when it was still well funded by the Australian government and less of the corporate entity it's become. So who knows, really?

Anyway my point is that university is not just about coming out with a piece of paper, it's about exploring possibilities and different paths. And if you go to a good university that focuses on actually teaching interesting stuff rather than churning out pieces of paper, then you'll actually get something worthwhile.

Well, if you want to let them tell their story, that's great! But perhaps keep the cash incentive out of it. Perhaps offer something else, like a meal or a cup of coffee or something tangible they can use. Also, establish a really really interactive informed consent policy. Make sure they really understand what you're going to do with their information and story. A standard form probably won't be good enough, since you have to be particularly cautious when it comes to potential for coercion.

The problem with the Ted Williams story is that although he got the big breaks, the story didn't stop with the happy ending, and his life spiralled back down again. He went into rehab but checked himself out after only 12 days. I'm not saying that homeless people are not able to be helped, but that it takes a much more structured support system than a video going "viral", and there are lots of good people working to help homeless people back into work, building up their skills, etc. I'd recommend, if you still want to concentrate on homeless people, to go volunteer/work with a charitable organisation for a while and get out amongst the people so you can get a bit more of a perspective on things.

To be honest though, I think the more general approach to interviews is a much better idea.

I'm always happy to chat about ethics, since it's something I am quite passionate about (especially research ethics, vulnerable populations, and informed consent - so you really hit all the targets for me with this project! heh) :)

Check my profile :)

No worries, always happy to help! If you or your friend have any more questions about ethics-related concerns feel free to send me an email :)

Sure! This is why I suggested writing them up :) But I think it's also very important to respect the people you're interviewing. They're a vulnerable group for a reason, and you need to take particular care with vulnerable people.

Here are some useful articles on the subject:

* http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/social_scienc... (homeless young people suggest that offering cash incentives is not a good way to go about research)

* http://www.homelesshub.ca/(S(yoldjoie4yd15x45fir1sn3t))/Reso... (a set of research guidelines for dealing with homeless people)

If you really want to help homeless people out, share their stories, and contribute to improving their quality of life, you should respect that there are some serious ethical principles that you need to be aware of and keep in mind. Otherwise, all you're doing is "entertainment".

I'm sure the intent wasn't to be demeaning, but surely you can just go down and talk to people, if you're interested in this sort of thing? Do you have to video them and publish them to the world?

My recommendation would be to interview them, but then anonymise and write them up as a series of blog entries rather than have a series of published videos.

I have to agree with you. There's a whole area of study when it comes to research ethics and vulnerable people. Especially when you start publishing such interviews to the internet. It also bothered me that the project owner mentioned that it was for our "entertainment", which is just awful. Noone should ever be our entertainment by societal position alone. One of the highest ethical principles is of human dignity, and this project strips that away from these vulnerable people.

Hi! I just signed up, and I thought I'd go see who was about to help a potential me - and it signed me up as needing help without any sort of confirmation! Now I'm in an embarrassing situation where I need to explain to my poor buddy that I don't actually want his help, I was just poking around :( Perhaps you should add some sort of confirmation to the "need help" thing :)

ETA: some sort of "undo" button (i.e. no longer needing help) would be nice :)

It's interesting you mention this. I distinctly remember signing up for OKC because it had fun quizzes and stuff -- I wasn't really thinking it was much of a dating site at the time, and that it was more of a social networking site in the days before Facebook :) So finding an interesting angle on that sort of thing could be a way to avoid the chicken/egg thing, and I think that's how OKC did it to start with.

I just sent a link along to my mother, who has been wanting a no-frills big-numbered mobile phone that has a long standby time. I think it's perfect for those, like my mother, who don't use SMS, electronic address books, or any other "fancy" features of modern mobile phones. The numbers being big so that she doesn't need to take her glasses out is also very good. The only down side I can see is the review on engadget that said the switches are a bit finicky. But then again, it's not like it's $400 either :)

Effective from whose point of view? There's a lot to be said from a fresh perspective on things, especially when it comes to identifying potential problems. I've done a lot of interviews with engineers and worked in industry myself and when you're within the box you don't tend to be able to carry out the necessary reflection very well, if you even think about doing it at all :)

Of course it does help to understand what's going on in a company to be internally effective, and it might take a while before an external person is accepted (as always), but in order to identify potentially negative social and ethical impact it can really help to have someone who is open minded and not tied to the particular traditions of the group.

One day I hope to see a company like this advertise for a technology ethicist. :-)

edit: okay, perhaps I should explain: not because I'm looking for a job (I'm happily employed!) but because it would suggest a desire to actually be proactive about social and ethical issues, which, sadly, so many companies are not (or deliberately avoid).

I'll be interested in seeing how this goes. I use Streetcar in the UK and it's been pretty good, but like a lot of posters I've seen a lot of damage done to these cars (particularly damage underneath the front of the cars from going too fast over speed bumps etc., which the casual observer might not find), though mostly they're pretty good.

The thing that makes Streetcar for me though is the customer service. I've gone to car drop places and it's not been there (parked on another street due to some idiot parking in the carshare spot), had problems in-car with the stereo (and in one case, working out how to put the damn thing in reverse!), and the CS reps have always been super helpful and proactive about helping me (and in the case with the moved car, gave me an extra half hour of rental time).

I guess you would have the actual owner on hand to help you with that sort of thing, but it's not quite the 24hr support and detailed knowledge about the cars I would get from the streetcar people.

This is exactly what I do, which is why it frustrates me so much when some authors/publishers/wives of dead authors (like with the Wheel of Time series) won't allow the release of the ebook until well after the hardcover. Instead I resort to piracy because the whole reason I got a kindle was to avoid buying physical novels and particularly hardcovers, since I travel/move countries so much.

Publishers and authors and whatnot who do this are just insane. You should tap into the fact that many fans of popular fantasy/science fiction are also gadget freaks, and allow them to buy your books when they come out instead of losing sales due to piracy.

A lot of this will go to help poorer people unable to insure their homes and/or contents, or to help relief efforts feed, clothe, and house evacuees. It may not be a poor country but there are still poor people. Just like Hurricane Katrina in the US -- though our government seems to do a better job than the US when it comes to disaster response.

There seems to be a lot of generalisation going on in these sorts of articles. The situation in the US might be bad for humanities doctorates but if you're going into academia there's almost no chance you'll be able to find a job near where you grew up. You have to have an open mind and be willing to travel or diversify by finding applications of your chosen subject. Then it's down to networking, building your portfolio (publications), and creating your own research projects (taking advantage of things like early career research grants). People who succeed in academia make their own way, they don't wait for things to be handed to them on a silver platter.

I just signed up the other day! :( Oh well. I'm happy now that I have a local datacentre (UK). Also that my new server hasn't been added to SORBS' DUHL (the 3 weeks it's been taking Slicehost and SORBS to work things out there has been killing me, and finally gave me the momentum to move to the lower cost provider for the same specs).

Thanks, I must have missed that! I also saw an additional claim on the "Gnosis explains" article:

"The actual database size is 1,247,897 rows, which is 80+% of their database." - http://www.mediaite.com/online/exclusive-gawker-hacker-gnosi...

I wish I could win a raffle with that sort of luck though! ;)

I have an io9 account (that's a Gawker site) but my email isn't showing up in a grep of the db dumps. Perhaps this is not the entire database after all? (I didn't use Facebook Connect.)

I must admit I'm a bit intrigued as to why mine's not there. Anyone else in this boat?

Well, like some of the open source community, they don't really like to see people profiting from the hard work they put in to release things to the community. It's not business to them, it's idealism.

It's a trusted computing type lock down AFAIK, so not software update-able. I think they can try the latter of your suggestions, but the same process could just be used to discover the new key, or they'd need to do some serious re-engineering.

Well the answer to that is on the page. Apparently last time it came out a bunch of people commercialised it by making dongles and selling them, and the scene wants to avoid that happening again before an open source thing is released.

PSGrade (as mentioned in the post) is open source: http://www.ps3exploits.com/2010/11/open-source-downgrade-on-...