Posts by Bart Janssen
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Hard News: The United States of Surveillance?, in reply to BenWilson,
Just laying my own credentials on the table
Not doubting your experience.
Just saying that the datasets we access, genomic data, are very similar to the kind of large datsets of metadata that are being described. To give an idea of scale the bioinformatacists routinely describe genome datasets as the second largest datasets in existance (behind marketing datasets). The data is also mostly uninterpretable by humans, meaning humans don't naturally "read" sequence data. You can't stare at sequence and recognise any content, it is essentially a language nobody is native in. That's probably the biggest difference to spam.
I've sat and listened to morons in suits spouting off about what this data will provide and they are full of shite. Not because the data doesn't contain information but because they usually have no understanding of biology and hence propose things that are biologically implausable. They also lack imagination. Those are your technocrats.
But meanwhile the biologists and the bioinformaticists are developing methods/algorithms to extract information. Faster and faster. Complex systems are being understood because with sufficient data and good algorithms it's possible to extract and see patterns, patterns that are NOT visible by any human. Not only can't humans read the languages those patterns are written in but we can't hold all the connections in our heads. No team of spam searchers can do this, it simply is not possible for a human. And yet it is happening, right now, in my field of research, in the journal papers I read, in the conference talks I attend.
So to imagine that smart folks can take large datasets of communication traffic and extract patterns is an easy thing to believe. Whether those patterns reveal criminal or terrorist activity has less to do with the ability to extract patterns, than with the presence of patterns in that dataset. In other words the only reason it won't work is if the biology is wrong.
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This seems appropriate given the discussion some science about studying social media
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Hard News: The United States of Surveillance?, in reply to BenWilson,
That’s not really the same thing.
Agreed, but 20 years ago even that would have been a laughable suggestion.
I've worked with big datasets and modern biology is now a mixture of combining large datasets with in depth detailed knowledge to make progress. As important as the in depth understanding of the detail is, there is now real value in the patterns identifed by the algorithms used to examine the big data.
It's easy to dismiss the value of the large datasets because it is currently hard to extract information from those datasets. But that is changing rapidly. It doesn't diminish the value of the individual with detailed understanding (in my case someone who looks at the plants, but in your case the beat cop). But to argue that it won't happen because it's too hard now is something I've learned not to do.
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Hard News: The United States of Surveillance?, in reply to BenWilson,
It’s just the kind of thing technocrats would think of.
Stupid technocrats. Next thing they'll be promising computers predicting crimes before they happen
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Hard News: The United States of Surveillance?, in reply to nzlemming,
I said “I can read your files and email. How do you know you can trust me?”
The look on his face have been a thing to behold.
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Hard News: The United States of Surveillance?, in reply to Christopher Nimmo,
I loved that logo. It screamed to me of some of the actual geeks (the ones doing the work) designing a logo by which everyone in management would ultimately be embarrased.
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Just as a side note. While I love the fact that Dunne has had his pay cut, given his history of doing whatever it took to keep his cushy job, it seems a little odd to ses him thrown out for doing something I'd want more from our government.
Essentially what Dunne did was what should have happened in the first place. An open public enquiry. All too much of our government operates in secrecy. Either specific secrecy or simply important actions buried in mundane trivia.
We actually want to know explicity what our government is doing, and why, and oddly Dunne is being kicked to the curb for (allegedly) giving us more access to information, not less.
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Legal Beagle: D-Day for Dunne (updated), in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I guess it’s totally beyond the realms of possibility that Winston’s feeding a load of bullshit to inexplicably credulous hacks
A politician saying things that are not true???????
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Speaker: Generation Zero: Let's Grow Up, in reply to Islander,
but very bloody few of ’em actually CREATE
He's probably referring to the history prior to the mid 20th century. In those times the only people with the time available to create, invent, discover were the rich. Everyone else spent every waking hour staying alive (usually with mixed success).
As you point out even then only a few of the rich bothered, or were able to create. But because they were the only ones with opportunity then all the inventions etc came from the rich.
In the early to mid 20th century that changed. The entire middle class had time, even the poor had more time. As a consequence the generation of ideas, discoveries, art etc started to come from all levels of society. Again most folks didn't create anything significant but now the few that did could be poor or middle class rather than only the rich having that time.
It's a really interesting change in culture and not one many folks see. Even those who look at the history of science sometimes miss that change. It has impacts on where people applied their talents, the rich tended to be random in their efforts, the poor often had very specific goals. Hence art suddenly depicted a broader swath of society, science targetted needs of the poor, since it was ebing by folks who grew up poor.
All of which is completely off-topic. And all of that applies to Western culture and history and is not entirely true elsewhere.
Oh and as a side note, you borrow against savings if your return on investment is greater than the cost of the money. It's how the genuinely talented rich have succeeded - the ones who have built empires from scratch rather than being gifted them by parents or buddies.
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Speaker: Generation Zero: Let's Grow Up, in reply to Danielle,
you don’t really see the many good bits of Houston by driving on freeways, Bart
Oh I agree, they have the most amazing natural history museum, possibly the best mineral collection I have ever seen, I think slightly better than the smithsonian collection!
And other bits of Houston were neat too, but compared to Auckland it was not pretty. Some of that is size but a lot of it was urban planning.