Steven Levy Benefits from Snowden Crisis, gets 2 hrs with NSA executives

Most of us are familiar with Steven Levy and his writing.  Steven is most know for “In the Plex"

From the In the Plex  blog:

The Googleplex Goes Hollywood with “The Internship”

During the months I spent researching In the Plex, I often encountered the term “Googliness.” It was kind of a puzzle from Lewis Carrol. You can’t understand the company unless you grasp the meaning of this term, but of course the term means nothing unless you have a sense of Google’s essence. "Googley" is also as much an aspirational value as a descriptor. When Googlers use the term, they are referring to their optimism, constructive ambition, brains, technical prowess, and 

I have had the chance to sit in media briefings with Steven and met others who worked along Steven.  It is kind of funny to thing that I have researched the writer. :-)  It important to know a writer if you want to interpret what they write.  

Steven just posted on his 2 hour interview the NSA.

I Spent Two Hours Talking With the NSA’s Bigwigs. Here’s What Has Them Mad

• BY STEVEN LEVY
• 01.13.14

What I liked best in Steven’s closing comment on how he thanks Snowden.

Dark times as these may be at Fort Meade, it’s good for the nation that the closed-mouth agency is opening up more to the press. Personally, I owe Snowden some thanks. He finally got to me into the NSA.

What really pissed off the NSA is Snowden triggering the PR crisis.

They really hate Snowden. The NSA is clearly, madly, deeply furious at the man whose actions triggered the biggest crisis in its history. Even while contending they welcome the debate that now engages the nation, they say that they hate the way it was triggered.

Who is Open Compute Summit worth it to attend? Check out the sponsors

It can be hard to figure out what the impact is to Open Compute and its Summits.  The fifth summit is coming up on Jan 28-29, and I have gone to all of them.  

People will many time ask is Open Compute worth it?  Who is using it?  

I don’t have a clear answer.  One way I’ve used to judge the worth is what vendors are sponsor the event.  Here is the current list.

For the data center crowd note that Emerson, IO, Rosedin Electric and Schneider

Changing the news with Statistics - sports, economics, and politics

One of the fun things I’ve learned over the past years is how journalism and media news works in the technology area.  Working on publishing technologies at Apple and Microsoft I used to focus on low level things like printers, postscript language, fonts (a lot), graphics, color systems, and spoke at conferences back when print publishing was big.  Now, with this blog, working with the GigaOm folks, and a variety of other companies I’ve had an interesting view of how the news becomes the news.

The basis of the news are many times the facts, and many times those facts are in statistics.  I ran across this post on eight cool things journalists should know about statistics.

Nate Silver: Eight cool things journalists should know about statistics

by Sandra OshiroPublished Oct. 18, 2013 11:26 pmUpdated Oct. 20, 2013 4:20 pm

Journalists need to bring science and forecasting into their news coverage, despite the fact that predicting outcomes is viewed as “uncouth” in some newsrooms, statistician Nate Silver told a gathering at the Online News Association conference Friday.

My favorite are the last two.

7. Insiderism is the enemy of objectivity. Insider information may not be reliable. A journalist whose circle is too tight may forget there is more outside of it. Silver cited forecasts made on the McLaughlin Group that he called as accurate as “monkeys throwing poop at a dartboard.”

8. Making predictions improves accountability. Silver called on journalists to be more empirical in their coverage. But he also said if journalists state what will happen in the future, they need to think such predictions through and not treat forecasting as a game.

Nate Silver who is the source of the above ideas has started an effort to change sports, economics and politics journalism.

Seeking Lead Writers in Sports, Politics and Economics

by Nate Silver

FiveThirtyEight is conducting a search for lead writers in three of our most important content verticals: sports, politics and economics. 

These are high-profile, full-time positions for people with an outstanding combination of writing and statistical skills. They will principally involve: (i) writing 2-3 feature-length articles per week (typically between 500 words and a few thousand words) and (ii) contributing to long-term FiveThirtyEight projects — that is, assisting in the build-out of our data-driven models and interactive features.

The three principal qualifications for these lead writing positions are as follows:

·         First, candidates must be able to write clearly about complex ideas. Strong prose style and composition represents a major part of the skill set. But we also seek candidates who can display a clear sense of editorial judgment: how to select story ideas, and how to present data-driven content in a way that can be approachable for a smart (but non-specialist) audience.  We strongly prefer candidates who have a demonstrated track record of writing for the broader public.

This may seem hard for a writer, but imagine you have the backing of a data visualization staff.  check out this post.

 

Visual Journalist 

We are looking for one or more Visual Journalists to design and develop graphics, interactive features and web applications for the site. The Visual Journalists will work on a small team in the FiveThirtyEight newsroom in New York City, using information design and web development to help readers explore and understand the data behind the news.

…

Computational Journalist

FiveThirtyEight is also looking for one or more Computational Journalists to join our data visualization team. Our Computational Journalists will create interactive features, models, and systems that collect, process and present real-time data and predictions about sports, politics, economics, science and lifestyle topics.

Changing Operations with Proximity Sensors, iBeacon

I am spending more time in operations, and playing with some what if ideas.

Apple announced iBeacon and most are focusing on retail and consumer type of experiences.  Here is a Washington Post article with a  few.

How iBeacons could change the world forever

• BY MATT MCFARLAND

• January 7 at 10:00 am

Retailers are likely to place iBeacon sensors such as this one from Shopkick around their stores, in hopes of better connecting with and serving customers. (Courtesy of Shopkick)

Apps such as Google Maps and FourSquare have long used location data to try to improve the average person’s mobile experience. But that could be just the tip of the location iceberg as Bluetooth’s latest technology revolutionizes how people interact with everyday objects and places.

The above is about Radius Networks device.

Here is a GigaOm post by Kevin Tofel on Qualcomm’s Gimbal device.

Step aside iBeacon, Qualcomm has low-cost Gimbal Proximity Beacons

by Kevin C. Tofel

DEC. 9, 2013 - 9:02 AM PST

17 Comments

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SUMMARY:

Apple’s iBeacon isn’t the only game in town when it comes to Bluetooth Smart proximity devices for retailers. Qualcomm’s Gimbal Proximity Sensor is now available, supporting iOS today and Android in the future. Get ready for a hyper-personal in-store shopping experience.

It is an interesting exercise to think about how operations can be change with proximity sensors.  This is much more interesting than RFID.  Why?  iBeacon is built on Bluetooth 4.0 which is more ubiquitous than RFID readers.  NFC hasn’t really taken off, and with Apple’s iBeacon announcement bluetooth proximity sensors are hot.

Peer 1 Hosting Surveys Canada and UK users, 25% planning on moving out of US

DataCenterKnowledge has a post on a Survey and the impact of the NSA scandal.

Survey: NSA Scandal Prompting Shift Away From U.S. Providers

January 8th, 2014By: Jason Verge

 

Here is the press release from Peer 1 Hosting announcing the survey.

PEER 1 Hosting Research Confirms NSA Scandal Has Made UK and Canadian Businesses Wary of Storing Data in the U.S.

Wednesday, January 8th, 2014

25% of businesses are moving data outside of the U.S. as a result of privacy scandals; 96% consider security and 82% consider data privacy their top concerns

Vancouver, British Columbia – January 8, 2013 – A new independent survey of 300 UK and Canadian businesses, commissioned by web infrastructure and cloud hosting provider PEER 1 Hosting, reveals that 25 percent will move their company data outside of the U.S. due to NSA-related privacy and security concerns. Canadian companies are even more likely to relocate data than UK companies, with one in three saying they will move away from U.S. datacenters. Despite this trend, the U.S. remains the most popular place for these companies to host data (51 percent) outside of their home countries.

And the survey results are here.

With an executive summary.

One piece of data that got me to believe Peer 1 was talking to the right people is the fact that 80% of the people weren’t surprised of the NSA spying.

And trouble for those who think it is all about latency.  This survey says users are more worried about security than latency.

The closing slide has a bunch of quotes.  It is easier to read this if you go to the survey PDF and go to slide 20.