You Are Your Social Graph(s)

Let's, for a moment, oversimplify the philosophical basis of identity and just say you are your social graph, that is, your identity can be found at the nexus of your personal connections.

But, really, do you have just a single identity?

The Google engineers who build Buzz seem to think so. Wouldn't it be neat, they thought, if we could prepopulate your social graph with your contacts? It's save all that darned typing, bootstrap you into Buzz, and buzzing away you go.

Didn't anyone in the room where they made that decision have, say, secrets? An affair? A job overture from Microsoft? Something? Or were they all Ozzie and Harriet, when much of the world has gone Mad Men. Don't they remember this?

The truth is that few of us have but one identity. And, many times, we really want those identities siloed. And our reasons for wanting those silos, and the technological choices we make to implement those silos are my own to make. Or, to put it another way, just because those silos merge in my Gmail inbox doesn't mean I want them to know anything about each other. And, sometimes, the reason for secrets is so beyond reproach that all you can do is nod and hope that the Google folks who made these choices are really living life in all its messiness.


Google, to their credit, seem to have realized

Bush Denial Syndrome

In an otherwise good column about the foreclosure crisis, Joe Nocera writes:

Inexplicably, the Bush administration ignored the mounting foreclosure threat.

"Inexplicably"? Really?

Yes, some things the Bush administration did remain inexplicable. But this is not one of them. We know that the administration had no effective crisis response mechanism (see: New Orleans), and we know that the administration had a pathological abhorrence to intervening with important corporate interests. What more remains to be explained about their non-response to the imminent mortgage crisis?

I don't think that word means what you think it means

Let's do a little deconstruction, shall we?

"Local". Locally farmed and fossilized dinosaurs? Locally drilled? Refined? Locally owned? Ok, maybe the guy in the middle of the billboard, but who the hell is he?

"Loyal". To whom? Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A?? Venezuela? Hugo Chavez?

Now, don't get me wrong. I understand that the multinational economy trumps the tired notion of nation-states. And anyone who suggests that there was a whiff of sulfur on George Bush, while promoting a book by Noam Chomsky has earned a small sliver of my respect. One can also argue that Venezuelan petroleum is less morally compromised than, say, Persian Gulf petroleum.

But local and loyal? And don't give them credit for that free oil giveaway to the American poor. It doesn't exist anymore.

iPod Jailbreaking for Unix Geeks

As an employee of an academic institution, a new Macintosh this summer comes with an iPod. Who could resist an iPod Touch? And who can resist the urge to jailbreak it?

Not me.

1. So what's jailbreaking anyway?
   Jailbreaking is the process of installing a new package manager onto your iPod. Apple's App Store is the first package manager. redsn0w installs Cydia, which is a graphical front end to APT. With Cydia installed, you have access to a number of different package repositories from which you can install software.
2. Why can't I just install software?
   Remember Trusted Computing? Your iPod is running something like that and will only execute signed code. Jailbreaking modifies your iPod's firmware so that unsigned code (like that installed via Cyida) will execute.
3. Why is this so hard?
   It isn't. redsn0w is point and click. The hardest part is holding down the iPod's home and power buttons simultaneously and redsn0w even has little countdown timers so you get the right sequence.
4. How well does it work?
   Surprisingly well. Underneath this cryptographically-protected shell is OS X, and, as a Unix implementation, it takes a lot of abuse and keeps on working.
   
5. Why would I do this? Isn't being able to ssh into a shiny little slab in your pocket a good enough reason?