Birds on Water
Originally uploaded by newcoventry
I snapped this picture of two barn swallows in Lucerne, Washington.
June 11, 2009
March 10, 2009
Reinventing Risk Ratings: Notes
Notes from the session titled:
I just don’t trust you: how the Tech Community can reinvent risk ratings.
by: Toby Segaran (Metaweb), Jesper Andersen (Open Data Group)
There are two superpowers in the world today in my opinion. There’s the US and there’s moodyu’s bond rating service… And believe me; it’s not clear sometimes who’s more powerful. – Thomas Friedman 1996
Credit agencies are broken safety net.
Our economy is fueled by debt. Moody is the gatekeeper to that debt. Credit risk measures trust. People are good at fufiling their obligations.
Our system promotes gaming.
4 most important problems facing. Moody’s, S&P, and Fitch provide ratings. You pay to get ratings. Companies will pay to get the best rating. This is a lot like bribery. But it is pricing.
Our Risk Rating System has a patent without the disclosure. They have no incentive to say who’s method is better. They just want us to trust their ratings. What does AAA rating really mean? It doesn’t really tell you what risk factors are involved.
After Lehman declared bankruptcy Moody’s downgraded them from AAA to C. This is not good. We need transparency. We need to know the method. We need full disclosure of how companies get ratings.
Lack of Ecosystems create bad ratings. Risks are hidden. Good predictions are ignored because our system rewards the ignorance of problems until it is too late.
Beverly McClean. Celbrated after the fact. She wrote for Newsweek for 6 months at the rating agency took notice. John Paulsen: He made the single biggest Hedge fund return in 2007. He figured out that the ratings on CDS was wrong. We have incentives for secrecy.
Single Sourced Information Creates Bad Ratings.
$45 Trillion problem. It has to be solved now! A lot of dangerous problems. A lot of big problems. Engineers don’t have problems, they have requirements.
FRS: Rating creation needs to be accessible, open, diverse, and transparent.
Ratings should be a commons. Risk management is way too important to be a competitive advantage for a company.
Freerisk is an… Authoritative Data Source, User Contributed Data Source, Set of Contributed Algorithms, Testing Frameworks.
Open Data: Consume data that’s on the web and publish it for others to use.
Becoming a nationally recognized statistical rating organization requires national recognition. We don’t need cash, we need passionate people.
http://freerisk.org/
I just don’t trust you: how the Tech Community can reinvent risk ratings.
by: Toby Segaran (Metaweb), Jesper Andersen (Open Data Group)
There are two superpowers in the world today in my opinion. There’s the US and there’s moodyu’s bond rating service… And believe me; it’s not clear sometimes who’s more powerful. – Thomas Friedman 1996
Credit agencies are broken safety net.
Our economy is fueled by debt. Moody is the gatekeeper to that debt. Credit risk measures trust. People are good at fufiling their obligations.
Our system promotes gaming.
4 most important problems facing. Moody’s, S&P, and Fitch provide ratings. You pay to get ratings. Companies will pay to get the best rating. This is a lot like bribery. But it is pricing.
Our Risk Rating System has a patent without the disclosure. They have no incentive to say who’s method is better. They just want us to trust their ratings. What does AAA rating really mean? It doesn’t really tell you what risk factors are involved.
After Lehman declared bankruptcy Moody’s downgraded them from AAA to C. This is not good. We need transparency. We need to know the method. We need full disclosure of how companies get ratings.
Lack of Ecosystems create bad ratings. Risks are hidden. Good predictions are ignored because our system rewards the ignorance of problems until it is too late.
Beverly McClean. Celbrated after the fact. She wrote for Newsweek for 6 months at the rating agency took notice. John Paulsen: He made the single biggest Hedge fund return in 2007. He figured out that the ratings on CDS was wrong. We have incentives for secrecy.
Single Sourced Information Creates Bad Ratings.
$45 Trillion problem. It has to be solved now! A lot of dangerous problems. A lot of big problems. Engineers don’t have problems, they have requirements.
FRS: Rating creation needs to be accessible, open, diverse, and transparent.
Ratings should be a commons. Risk management is way too important to be a competitive advantage for a company.
Freerisk is an… Authoritative Data Source, User Contributed Data Source, Set of Contributed Algorithms, Testing Frameworks.
Open Data: Consume data that’s on the web and publish it for others to use.
Becoming a nationally recognized statistical rating organization requires national recognition. We don’t need cash, we need passionate people.
http://freerisk.org/
Low-cost & Low-power computing - Mary Lou Jepsen from Pixel Qi
97% of adolescents alive today live in the developing world. What are we doing to serve them? If you want to change the world we need to figure out a way to give them a chance. Get the cost of computing and access to computing down. OLPC – thought to be impossible (Jobs, Gates, Dell). 1 Million children across the developing world have laptops as a result of OLPC. Who cares what CPU is inside of it, we just need a low cost, low-power machine with decent battery life.
Innovation: High-end, Hight-Tech Research at the top of the pyramid.
OLPC/Pixel Qi: Innovation at the bottom of the pyramid. If you can pull it off you can increase the base of the pyramid. Sort of like trickle down economics is high end innovation. Work at the bottom of the pyramid to help the bottom of the pyramid.
Low power is the real key. ½ the world lives without steady access to electricity. How to design something that can be human powered. 1-watt laptop (10x lower than next laptop up). Redesigning the screen. Why not just self-refresh the screen? Why is the CPU/Mobo/fan on in every computer in the room. Until you get a keyboard event or internet packet. Screen and audio are our interaction point. Human computer interaction.
OLPC is greenest laptop ever made (Someone tell Apple). Keys for designing efficiency are things you would do naturally for the developing world. Make it user serviceable. All screens should not be HDTV quality. Keys for portables – low power, sunlight readability, high res for reading, paper white. You don’t want to stare into a flashlight.
3Qi screen. 3 displays in 1. Full color LCD TV mode. Low –power, highlight color, sunlight readable transflective mode. Very low power, paper-white, sunlight readable, reflective e-paper mode. This is beyond the XO screen. Fully saturated color option. Reflectivity is key.
People want TV even if they don’t have power to sustain it.
The CPU wars are over; it’s the screen wars now. iPhone is basically a screen. That is where the future of hardware.
Innovation: High-end, Hight-Tech Research at the top of the pyramid.
OLPC/Pixel Qi: Innovation at the bottom of the pyramid. If you can pull it off you can increase the base of the pyramid. Sort of like trickle down economics is high end innovation. Work at the bottom of the pyramid to help the bottom of the pyramid.
Low power is the real key. ½ the world lives without steady access to electricity. How to design something that can be human powered. 1-watt laptop (10x lower than next laptop up). Redesigning the screen. Why not just self-refresh the screen? Why is the CPU/Mobo/fan on in every computer in the room. Until you get a keyboard event or internet packet. Screen and audio are our interaction point. Human computer interaction.
OLPC is greenest laptop ever made (Someone tell Apple). Keys for designing efficiency are things you would do naturally for the developing world. Make it user serviceable. All screens should not be HDTV quality. Keys for portables – low power, sunlight readability, high res for reading, paper white. You don’t want to stare into a flashlight.
3Qi screen. 3 displays in 1. Full color LCD TV mode. Low –power, highlight color, sunlight readable transflective mode. Very low power, paper-white, sunlight readable, reflective e-paper mode. This is beyond the XO screen. Fully saturated color option. Reflectivity is key.
People want TV even if they don’t have power to sustain it.
The CPU wars are over; it’s the screen wars now. iPhone is basically a screen. That is where the future of hardware.
WITNESS: Capturing Crises – Sameer Padania (NOTES)
Technology now is more fitting for documenting crises as they emerge. Technology is much more affordable and portable now than it was. Sousveillance vs. surveillance. Building new social media communities for activism is not necessarily the best ways forward. Govt. of Burma used activist videos to track down and imprison hundreds of activists. There is power in stories. It is important to train individuals in developing countries and beyond how to best use social media tools to report on unfolding crises. The Hub
Etech 2009
I am at Etech 2009 in San Jose, California. I plan to post some raw notes from sessions here. Potentially I will tighten them up later.
Notes from Alex Steffen's talk
The following notes are from Alex Steffen's Keynote at ETech 2009. These are raw notes just dumped here. I hope to edit and create a polished post soon.
Alex Steffen from World Changing took the stage for this morning's keynote. Here are my notes from this event:
World Changing – Bright Green: A world changing guide to a future that works. (delivering prosperity to more people)
There are many young people in the developing world. ¼ people in the world are under the age of 18.
Most people who will be alive in 2050 will be living in what is currently thought of as the developing world. In places where prosperity has been kluged together
We got rich by using resources to build the stuff that (a lot of our wealth is societal wealth) most of the problems (environmental have been the result of
We have built our wealth on the problems our children will face. Massive inter generational ponzi scheme.
We are the brittle rich. Many of the things we have built our prosperity on are dependent on the developing world supporting our over-consumption.
The dirty secret is that the American prosperous are demonstrably less happy than people who were here 20,30,50 years ago. Wealth is not serving us well. We are utterly depended on the rest of the world doing the right thing for us to do anything. If we sail ahead we will destroy the planet. We need the world to agree to make changes. World divided into 2 groups “poor and frugal” and “rich and wasteful. “ We need to bring people into sustainability. We need to think of a lifestyle that returns value to the planet. Ecological handprint versus ecological footprint.
We need low carbon clean energy. We need more sustainable food (Local, sun-food, traceability) We need to get off coal... and cows.
Root cause is that we don’t understand our prosperity. It is hidden. We need political transparency. From the people and from the government. FUH2 pictures of people flipping off hummers. Transparency is also holding one another accountable.
Revealed useage: That which is measured and shown is used differently. When you know the backstory, people chose the better thing. Tell good backstories!
Smart – Connect things and people and information flows. A lot of our impact comes from stupid waste. Having to have a lot more things than you need. Wasting energy due to lack of attention.
True costs taxation – Price on CO2. In the next few years. The more carbon costs, the more things start to make sense.
Smart Infrastructure – smart grids to allow detailed control of energy. Allow us to have a more finely grained understandable read out of energy used. Bringing an energy meter into the house reduces energy use by 10%. Just seeing it makes you use less energy. When you see it, you can demand responsive energy. Level out the amount of energy people use through the day. Distributed energy, home energy systems.
Finance for transformation – PG&E sell energy services and not just supply. – Location efficient mortgages, (if you live in a place where transportation is efficient you should pay less on your home). pay as you go – car insurance. Bundle car insurance into mileage and/or gas prices.
Compact – create more dense communities and design them better. When you put people close together you dematerialize things. Shared infrastructure – costs less per person.
10 units per acre would put most Americans within transit supportive density. Affordability is out on the fringe. When you factor in cost of driving (direct cost) to the cost of living, suburban fringe is actually more expensive.
The biggest shift will be smarter buildings. Sunlight for passive heating, breezes for cooling. We are capable of building buildings without thermostats, but we don’t do it. We treat water that hits our roofs as pollution. Big storm means water mixes with waste and gets dumped to sea. That is crazy! We need to harvest rainwater.
Lunar-resonant streetlights.
Preserve natural capital. We are utterly reliant on ecosystem services to support our civilization. We are losing 2-5 trillion dollars in ecosystem services. Climate change is ony 30% of that. We need to think of flows and not stocks.
Nobody realized how depended on bees we were until they went away due to Hive Collapse Disorder. Having to pollinate by hand is pretty expensive. We need bees.
Water needs for Seattle and Portland. Water supply problems are based on lack of beavers.
Topsoil is important.
Shared goods, building lasting quality. Not owning a car takes ecological impact away. Closed loops and zero waste.
Real happiness and knowing what makes us happy is the key. Flying private home theaters.
We need to share innovation across borders. We are all in this together. What is not right
We need a sense of obligation beyond ourselves. If our triumphs are only our own they will turn to dust in our hands.
Alex Steffen from World Changing took the stage for this morning's keynote. Here are my notes from this event:
World Changing – Bright Green: A world changing guide to a future that works. (delivering prosperity to more people)
There are many young people in the developing world. ¼ people in the world are under the age of 18.
Most people who will be alive in 2050 will be living in what is currently thought of as the developing world. In places where prosperity has been kluged together
We got rich by using resources to build the stuff that (a lot of our wealth is societal wealth) most of the problems (environmental have been the result of
We have built our wealth on the problems our children will face. Massive inter generational ponzi scheme.
We are the brittle rich. Many of the things we have built our prosperity on are dependent on the developing world supporting our over-consumption.
The dirty secret is that the American prosperous are demonstrably less happy than people who were here 20,30,50 years ago. Wealth is not serving us well. We are utterly depended on the rest of the world doing the right thing for us to do anything. If we sail ahead we will destroy the planet. We need the world to agree to make changes. World divided into 2 groups “poor and frugal” and “rich and wasteful. “ We need to bring people into sustainability. We need to think of a lifestyle that returns value to the planet. Ecological handprint versus ecological footprint.
We need low carbon clean energy. We need more sustainable food (Local, sun-food, traceability) We need to get off coal... and cows.
Root cause is that we don’t understand our prosperity. It is hidden. We need political transparency. From the people and from the government. FUH2 pictures of people flipping off hummers. Transparency is also holding one another accountable.
Revealed useage: That which is measured and shown is used differently. When you know the backstory, people chose the better thing. Tell good backstories!
Smart – Connect things and people and information flows. A lot of our impact comes from stupid waste. Having to have a lot more things than you need. Wasting energy due to lack of attention.
True costs taxation – Price on CO2. In the next few years. The more carbon costs, the more things start to make sense.
Smart Infrastructure – smart grids to allow detailed control of energy. Allow us to have a more finely grained understandable read out of energy used. Bringing an energy meter into the house reduces energy use by 10%. Just seeing it makes you use less energy. When you see it, you can demand responsive energy. Level out the amount of energy people use through the day. Distributed energy, home energy systems.
Finance for transformation – PG&E sell energy services and not just supply. – Location efficient mortgages, (if you live in a place where transportation is efficient you should pay less on your home). pay as you go – car insurance. Bundle car insurance into mileage and/or gas prices.
Compact – create more dense communities and design them better. When you put people close together you dematerialize things. Shared infrastructure – costs less per person.
10 units per acre would put most Americans within transit supportive density. Affordability is out on the fringe. When you factor in cost of driving (direct cost) to the cost of living, suburban fringe is actually more expensive.
The biggest shift will be smarter buildings. Sunlight for passive heating, breezes for cooling. We are capable of building buildings without thermostats, but we don’t do it. We treat water that hits our roofs as pollution. Big storm means water mixes with waste and gets dumped to sea. That is crazy! We need to harvest rainwater.
Lunar-resonant streetlights.
Preserve natural capital. We are utterly reliant on ecosystem services to support our civilization. We are losing 2-5 trillion dollars in ecosystem services. Climate change is ony 30% of that. We need to think of flows and not stocks.
Nobody realized how depended on bees we were until they went away due to Hive Collapse Disorder. Having to pollinate by hand is pretty expensive. We need bees.
Water needs for Seattle and Portland. Water supply problems are based on lack of beavers.
Topsoil is important.
Shared goods, building lasting quality. Not owning a car takes ecological impact away. Closed loops and zero waste.
Real happiness and knowing what makes us happy is the key. Flying private home theaters.
We need to share innovation across borders. We are all in this together. What is not right
We need a sense of obligation beyond ourselves. If our triumphs are only our own they will turn to dust in our hands.
February 4, 2009
November 16, 2008
Craigs List of the Week - gaming pc - $200 (SW MANNAPOLIS)
I submit this week's most interesting Minneapolis/St. Paul Craig's List posting.
gaming pc - $200 (SW MANNAPOLIS)
original content - (preserved for posterity)
gaming pc - $200 (SW MANNAPOLIS)
original content - (preserved for posterity)
I have a computer. it has issiue with its hard drive, but who cares. That thing was a twat anyway. What is sweet on thie rigg is SLI"d with two 7800gt's They are liquid cooled.... FTW/Perhaps I should end all my posts with "Punch and Pie." I just might...
I can ge the machibn ready in a moments notice.{
Punch and Pie.
And it si a 3.4 GHx P4 machine.
November 13, 2008
Wednesday Video - Christians and the Pagans - Dar Williams
We are nearing Christmas and Solstice. This song makes me think of the Holidays.
April 4, 2008
Simon's Cat - "Let me in"
Another animated cat adventure. Apart from the glass door, this is exactly what mornings sound like at my house thanks to our cat, Billie.
March 19, 2008
Change - Lessig
A great little presentation from Lessig regarding change and where it comes from
Tags:
A History of Evil by Ole-Magnus Saxegard
Thanks to Laughing Squid for pointing this out. I am getting caught up on my feeds today.
I love the animation style and the message is quite interesting as well.
I love the animation style and the message is quite interesting as well.
Tags:
March 6, 2008
February 2, 2008
Yes We Can
I have been undecided for as it relates to this upcoming election. I have been listening excitedly to speeches from Barack Obama and every time he speaks I can feel emotion rise in me. I have never experienced that listening to a politician. There is a hope and an earnest belief that we can become a better nation than we are.
I listened to his New Hampshire speech the night it aired. I loved the tone of his voice, the way the words rolled, and the passion that he invoked. I am sure this speech must have been written by a speech writer somewhere, but the delivery had me captured.
Today I saw the "Yes, We Can" Video through seesmic and it was phenomenal. The fact that Obama's tone, message, and delivery can easily be transformed into a song is excellent.
Here are the links:
http://www.dipdive.com/
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/2/04722/24305/353/448138
I listened to his New Hampshire speech the night it aired. I loved the tone of his voice, the way the words rolled, and the passion that he invoked. I am sure this speech must have been written by a speech writer somewhere, but the delivery had me captured.
Today I saw the "Yes, We Can" Video through seesmic and it was phenomenal. The fact that Obama's tone, message, and delivery can easily be transformed into a song is excellent.
Here are the links:
http://www.dipdive.com/
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/2/04722/24305/353/448138
February 1, 2008
Month of 100 Things: Conclusion
As you may have read, this past month has been my Month of 100 Things. Our friend Dawn Rundman proposed the idea not that long ago and Erin and I have been purging as the weeks have gone on.
Erin gets rid of stuff much easier than I do. I love things, regardless of value or functionality. Erin had no problem completing her list of 100 things, which if she had a blog I am sure she would inform the world of. I made a list of 68 things. As a couple we pulled together a list of 20 things. I know I am behind on my initial list, but I can assure you there still is a giant box of books in the basement that are headed towards half price books.
Here are the highlights of my list:
1 Wireless Router - broken
3 Pairs of Jeans - Old, ripped, faded, and not wearable
4 Alvin and the Chipmunks Waterglasses - I had high hopes for these being antique some day
9 T-shirts
3 boxes of mini-discs - my mini-disk player was stolen years ago
2 CD cases - since I bought my iPod I just don't travel with CDs any longer.
3 belts - every belt buckle I have bought recently has come with a free crappy belt. For some reason I kept them.
There was much much more.
All in all, I would rate this as a great experience. It has certainly added to my goal word for the year of "direction." It has also helped me prepare for our Frugal February.
Erin gets rid of stuff much easier than I do. I love things, regardless of value or functionality. Erin had no problem completing her list of 100 things, which if she had a blog I am sure she would inform the world of. I made a list of 68 things. As a couple we pulled together a list of 20 things. I know I am behind on my initial list, but I can assure you there still is a giant box of books in the basement that are headed towards half price books.
Here are the highlights of my list:
1 Wireless Router - broken
3 Pairs of Jeans - Old, ripped, faded, and not wearable
4 Alvin and the Chipmunks Waterglasses - I had high hopes for these being antique some day
9 T-shirts
3 boxes of mini-discs - my mini-disk player was stolen years ago
2 CD cases - since I bought my iPod I just don't travel with CDs any longer.
3 belts - every belt buckle I have bought recently has come with a free crappy belt. For some reason I kept them.
There was much much more.
All in all, I would rate this as a great experience. It has certainly added to my goal word for the year of "direction." It has also helped me prepare for our Frugal February.
Tags:
January 31, 2008
January 21, 2008
Thoughts on WoW: Two Days In
So, I finally did it. I installed and began a ten day trial in the World of Warcraft. I have developed some thoughts on this universe and felt compelled to share them through the interblags.Disclaimer: These are my immediate reactions. I reserve the right to change opinions at any time, because my brain allows me to do so.I began playing MMORPG's about two years ago through a game called Dofus. It is a relatively simple design, that deals with things in turn base fashioned. This is where my roots are, you must give credit to the roots, no matter how silly they may seem. So some of my initial reactions may stem from the fact that WoW is just different that Dofus. I appreciate these differences.
WoW is clearly a pretty pretty pretty gaming environment. I love to look at it. WoW has an endgame in mind. WoW for me at this point does not require mindless grinding and appears to have a mature community for me to experience.
WoW is difficult to start playing. I selected a character and I don't think it is quite right. I have read descriptions of all the other characters and they just don't seem quite right. How I wish it were fixed: a quiz about how I prefer to play the game. i.e. do you like being a primary damage dealer?, Do you like long range spells? Do you like being relied on as a primary healer? Are you tall, short, bearded, like the cold. etc... People keep telling me to choose a character based on my playing style. I need something to help me figure this out. I know I could create a million and a half characters and test them out, but how do I find the time to do that?
I guess that is it at this point. I know discussing opinions on WoW is probably pretty sensitive, and people might think I am crazy... who knows in 2 years I may still be playing and wishing I could rid the blogoverse of this post. Meh.
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January 10, 2008
January 9, 2008
January 2, 2008
January: The Month of 100 Things
Erin and I both read Dawnline, the blog of our friend Dawn Rundman. Dawn has declared January "The Month of 100 Things" in a recent article. Erin and I will be participating in this exercise in simplification. We are going to each eliminate 100 things from our life as well as 100 things of our families. So essentially we will be beginning this new year without 300 things. I am excited about the challenges that this will bring as I am a person who really likes things.
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