Where Are My Keys?

Fake followers, fake leadership..

Can't say that learning pretty much everything about this Administration is made up of smoke and mirrors surprises me anymore..

The @BarackObama account, now managed by Organizing for Action, leads the political pack in fake followers, according to Barracuda’s analysis. In fact, of the more than 43 million followers when the data were studied last month, just 36.6 percent were deemed “good” under its metrics, while 46.8 percent count as “fake.” An additional 16.6 percent of the @BarackObama followers are labeled “uncertain.”

For @WhiteHouse, the official Twitter handle that boasts more than 4.8 million followers, 51.8 percent notched a good score. But 31 percent qualified as fake and 16.8 percent were uncertain.

Where's my check, Twitter??

How much is your Twitter feed worth?

I'm sure that $62 will be showing up any second now..

Cool new technology for basketball coaches..

Check this out:

But here's the wow part: The clear circles in the video are what the Toronto defenders should have done. Not tracking—analyzing. Predicting. Evaluating. It uses a combination of data analysis and scouting reports for the opposing players, and knowledge of the team's defensive scheme and personnel to spit out exactly how a play is supposed to look, if it's optimized and run correctly. The values for each decision are calculated based on the expected value of a play, which is calculated multiple times per second. So, what is the value of giving up a 3? How about of going under a screen while guarding a good jump shooter? The ghost players make the right decision every time. That's next level, robots-replacing-humans stuff.

The scarier part? It's not even running at optimal efficiency. The computer model still uses the basic Toronto scheme, instead of trying to just come up with some platonic ideal of NBA defense. That's because coaches still aren't sold on computers knowing best, so the data is being offered up in the friendliest version. Sometimes. In other situations they remain at odds, like with 3-pointers, where the data says even below average shooters should jack them up, while coach Dwane Casey has a heart attack every time a sub-par shooter fires a seemingly idiotic 3.

 

Deja vu, all over again..

Mark Steyn lets us in on a lttle secret:

The witness who coughed up the intriguing tidbit about Obamacare’s exemption from privacy protections was one Cheryl Campbell of something called CGI. This rang a vague bell with me. CGI is not a creative free spirit from Jersey City with an impressive mastery of Twitter, but a Canadian corporate behemoth. Indeed, CGI is so Canadian their name is French: Conseillers en Gestion et Informatique. Their most famous government project was for the Canadian Firearms Registry. The registry was estimated to cost in total $119 million, which would be offset by $117 million in fees. That’s a net cost of $2 million. Instead, by 2004 the CBC (Canada’s PBS) was reporting costs of some $2 billion — or a thousand times more expensive.

Yeah, yeah, I know, we’ve all had bathroom remodelers like that. But in this case the database had to register some 7 million long guns belonging to some two-and-a-half to three million Canadians. That works out to almost $300 per gun — or somewhat higher than the original estimate for processing a firearm registration of $4.60. Of those $300 gun registrations, Canada’s auditor general reported to parliament that much of the information was either duplicated or wrong in respect to basic information such as names and addresses.

Sound familiar?

Also, there was a 1-800 number, but it wasn’t any use.

Sound familiar?

So it was decided that the sclerotic database needed to be improved.

Sound familiar?

Read the whole thing.

Ezra Klein weighs in on the debacle that is Obamacare..

From today's Wonkblog:

In the months before the launch almost every senior member of the Obama administration had a little calendar board tacked up in a prominent spot in their office. "75 days until Obamacare" it would say. The next morning they would tear off the page. "74 days until Obamacare" it would say. The message -- to them and to their visitors -- was clear: This was the White House's top priority.

We're now negative 14 days until the Affordable Care Act and most people still can't purchase insurance. The magnitude of this failure is stunning. Yes, the federal health-care law is a complicated project, government IT rules are a mess, and the scrutiny has been overwhelming. But the Obama administration knew all that going in. They should've been able to build an online portal that works.

Early on, President Obama like to compare the launch of the Affordable Care Act to Apple launching a new product. Can you imagine how many people Steve Jobs would've fired by now if he'd launched a new product like this?

So is anybody going to be held accountable? Is anybody going to be fired? Will anyone new be brought in to run the cleanup effort? Does the Obama administration know what went wrong, and are therr real plans to find out?

What's abundantly clear to anyone who reported on the run-up to the federal health-care law's launch is that the White House had no idea how badly the Web site would perform. They expected problems. But the full extent of the disaster was either obscured or ignored. Heads should roll for that. Changes should be made because of that.

Of course, no heads have rolled, and likely none will.  How many people lost their jobs over the Benghazi mistakes?  IRS scandal?  Fast and Furious?

Read the whole thing.

Finally!

After much excitement, and many delays, I got word today that my Misfit Shine will be arriving tomorrow!

 

Misfit Wearables, you may recall, is a cool new tech company started by one of my former bosses.  They are working on new ways to make "wearable technology" to help with a person's overall health and wellbeing.  Instead of going the traditional route and chasing venture capital, the Misfit folks instead turned to Indegogo to do some crowdfunding.

They set all sorts of records for fundraining via that platform, pulling in close to $900k in a month.  We were initially promised product in hand in the Spring, which then turned to mid-July, and now I'll finally get my hands on one August 5.  A few unhappy, vocal folks on both their blog and Facebook page, but I'm guessing they are hoping for those feeling of ill-will to disappear once their backers get what they paid for.

We did find out the Shine is available via Apple stores (don't think that we didn't notice that Apple got product before your earliest backers did, Misfit!) as well.

I'm not going to lie, and say that the process hasn't left a bad taste in my mouth.  I was excited to help get this project off the ground in a small way, but after plunking down a few bucks in November, I'm not happy that the product got out so late.  One the one hand, I can understand delays with a product launch, but the near-complete lack of communication from the Company to those that helped paved the way in inexcusable.  Add insult to injury when We see the device available for sale to the general public before We have what we paid for 10 months ago.  D- on that front, guys..

I'll let you know my thoughts on the Shine after I have had the chance to play with it for a few days.  It's waterproof, tracks sleep, and just plain looks cooler than the other options on the market.  We'll see if the hype matches everyday use.

Finally!

After much excitement, and many delays, I got word today that my Misfit Shine will be arriving tomorrow!

 

Misfit Wearables, you may recall, is a cool new tech company started by one of my former bosses.  They are working on new ways to make "wearable technology" to help with a person's overall health and wellbeing.  Instead of going the traditional route and chasing venture capital, the Misfit folks instead turned to Indegogo to do some crowdfunding.

They set all sorts of records for fundraining via that platform, pulling in close to $900k in a month.  We were initially promised product in hand in the Spring, which then turned to mid-July, and now I'll finally get my hands on one August 5.  A few unhappy, vocal folks on both their blog and Facebook page, but I'm guessing they are hoping for those feeling of ill-will to disappear once their backers get what they paid for.

We did find out the Shine is available via Apple stores (don't think that we didn't notice that Apple got product before your earliest backers did, Misfit!) as well.

I'm not going to lie, and say that the process hasn't left a bad taste in my mouth.  I was excited to help get this project off the ground in a small way, but after plunking down a few bucks in November, I'm not happy that the product got out so late.  One the one hand, I can understand delays with a product launch, but the near-complete lack of communication from the Company to those that helped paved the way in inexcusable.  Add insult to injury when We see the device available for sale to the general public before We have what we paid for 10 months ago.  D- on that front, guys..

I'll let you know my thoughts on the Shine after I have had the chance to play with it for a few days.  It's waterproof, tracks sleep, and just plain looks cooler than the other options on the market.  We'll see if the hype matches everyday use.

Why is it a big deal that the Feds have your cell phone data?

Take a peek at what you can learn when your cell phone records are integrated into another database:

Green party politician Malte Spitz sued to have German telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom hand over six months of his phone data that he then made available to ZEIT ONLINE. We combined this geolocation data with information relating to his life as a politician, such as Twitter feeds, blog entries and websites, all of which is all freely available on the internet.

By pushing the play button, you will set off on a trip through Malte Spitz's life. The speed controller allows you to adjust how fast you travel, the pause button will let you stop at interesting points. In addition, a calendar at the bottom shows when he was in a particular location and can be used to jump to a specific time period. Each column corresponds to one day.

Make sure to go to the website, and play with the interactive map.

Now imagine that data in the wrong hands, or in the hands of a "low-level" employee, who chooses to share that data..

In a related story, Jim Treacher reminds us of when some Verizon guys got canned for accessing some private cell phone records:

Records from a cell phone used by President-elect Obama were improperly breached, apparently by employees of the cell phone company, his transition team said Thursday.

Spokesman Robert Gibbs said the team was notified Wednesday by Verizon Wireless that it appears an employee improperly went through billing records for the phone, which Gibbs said Obama no longer uses…

Verizon Wireless, meanwhile, has launched an internal probe to determine whether Obama’s information was simply shared among employees or whether “the information of our customer had in any way been compromised outside our company, and this investigation continues,” according to [Verizon Wireless President and CEO Lowell] McAdam.

McAdam said that employees who were permitted access to these records will be allowed to return to work, but employees who accessed the account for “anything other than legitimate business purposes will face disciplinary action, up to and including termination.”

Careful where you leave your DNA..

An artist has been using DNA found in public (gum, hair, cigarette butts), and creates the person that left it there:

It started with hair. Donning a pair of rubber gloves, Heather Dewey-Hagborg collected hairs from a public bathroom at Penn Station and placed them in plastic baggies for safe keeping. Then, her search expanded to include other types of forensic evidence. As the artist traverses her usual routes through New York City from her home in Brooklyn, down sidewalks onto city buses and subway cars—even into art museums—she gathers fingernails, cigarette butts and wads of discarded chewing gum.

...

Dewey-Hagborg’s odd habit has a larger purpose. The 30-year-old PhD student, studying electronic arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, extracts DNA from each piece of evidence she collects and enters this data into a computer program, which churns out a model of the face of the person who left the hair, fingernail, cigarette or gum behind.

It gets creepier.

From those facial models, she then produces actual sculptures using a 3D printer. When she shows the series, called “Stranger Visions,” she hangs the life-sized portraits, like life masks, on gallery walls. Oftentimes, beside a portrait, is a Victorian-style wooden box with various compartments holding the original sample, data about it and a photograph of where it was found.

What would be cool to see is how closely her models match up to the real people.

If she is accurate, her methods could be used to replace police sketches with 3D images/models.

How will this weapon be regulated?

I posted on this a little while back, and it now looks like what was only being talked about has come into reality: a gun that can be printed out of plastic on a 3D printer.  No background check, no serial number, no waiting period.  As the low cost and/or access to these 3D printers become more common, what is to stop a bad guy (and not even a well-funded one) from using the existing technology to create?

It also raises the question on what can/should be banned and kept out of the public domain.  Is it censorship if an agency tries to keep the blueprints offline?  Can it truly even be kept offline?  Is it against the law to merely have blueprints of how to buils a weapon?

If so, why?

Technology innovations constantly move the goalposts.  A little over a decade, we had 56k dial-up modems.  Now we get 4G speed in the palm of our hands, and the ability to print 3D plastic things at home on demand.

Criminals will always find a way to break the law and beat the system to further their goals.  Innovative new alarm systems at the bank?  Bribe a guard.  Multiple levels of cyber-security?  Find an idealogue inside the organization to help you with passwords.

Point is, all this political theatre surrounding guns and new regulations today are already outdated with the revelation it is possible to print an operable weapon out of plastic.  Watch how quickly these types of weapons find their way to "gun free" places like DC, Chicago, and London. 

"But WAMK, the Politicians can take bans/regulations to the next level, and ban ammunition!"

If I can build a gun from plastic, you don't think I can buils a bullet or two as well?

These plastic guns don't have to last a lifetime.  With the low overhead cost, and availability of inexpensive materials, I can print them as fast as they wear out.

Politicians need to focus on what they can actually control-enforce the laws on the books, connect the dots between the mental health folks and the police, so we can keep an eye on loose cannons, and better equip those areas more likely to gun violence (like schools, malls, sports venues, etc.).

The 3D revolution has already begun.  It's time to play catch up.