Lawrence Lessig and Bill Moyers explore how we can protect our privacy when Big Government and Big Business morph into Big Brother.
Larry and Bill discuss the real issue at hand, which is how to arrive at a surveillance operation that protects civil liberties. The discussion should not be centered around Snowden, whether he’s a traitor, where he’s holed up, or what kind of person he is. That should be the least of our concerns, and is a total distraction.
Great video. Blows my mind that string concatenation + eval is faster than object/hash creation + repeated modification.
Now I see why. I’ve run an experiment here.
A couple weeks ago, just after Google I/O 2013 actually, I ceased my Android porting efforts in favor of FirefoxOS. Open and decentralized is the future I want. I don’t fault Google for aggressively pushing its ecosystem (grr Google+), but I want more choice in the matter. So long Android, and thanks for all the code.
Something I learned along the way is that FirefoxOS borrows parts of the Android codebase. If you want to port the OS to a new device, the most common way is to modify some shell scripts to copy down proprietary libraries and the kernel from your working Android install. Kinda neat, but kinda strange all the same. Hopefully Mozilla will be able to forge better partnerships down the road, lessening the need to piggy-back on Android.
So where am I in my efforts?
I’m going to see how far I can get with this device: the LG Optimus Slider, aka VM701. It comes with Gingerbread, and Firefox OS only works on devices that support ICS, so I’ll probably hit roadblocks very quickly. Either way, I’m curious about the hurdles.
The short-list of what I’ve done so far:
I’m finding it an enjoyable project. Not sure when or whether I’ll arrive at something useful, since there are so many closed-source binaries involved.
A ten story tall rocket hovers in the air and then returns safely to the launch pad. The future is now, and I’m amazed.
What I realized in that moment was that the lights of the city, the electric light, has formed a kind of dome over the cities where we live. And it is a protective dome, a protective shield, that shields us from full awareness of how deep and infinite space is. So we sit in our cities, and our electric lights have blanked out the sky, for us, and we no longer have first-hand experience of the existential terror that is available to you at any point in time if you just try and spend one night outside on the beach or in the forest.
The route to thinking about, caring for, and contributing to, the happiness of other people, is found by first loving oneself. Continuous, inward-facing self-hatred helps no one.
That’s my paraphrase of John’s sentiment from Roderick on the Line episode 60, at about 1:08:00. He points specifically to the northwest during the grunge era. But that form of self-reflection continues to this day inside of chronic self-deprecants, of which I have too often been one. Recovering.
John Hartford’s Austin Minor Sympathy. Commence relaxing zone-out session.
Guessing you’d have to construct the skyscraper with this capability initially, with a “cap” at the top that can be lowered as each level below it is dismantled. Very cool.
