Group items tagged

Simulation explains the origin of one of nature's most important organising principles

During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route - by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks - the thumb drive and the first amendment - had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?

The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred - with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. "We can call off the black helicopters," joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.

Whitehall was satisfied, but it felt like a peculiarly pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age. We will continue to do patient, painstaking reporting on the Snowden documents, we just won't do it in London. The seizure of Miranda's laptop, phones, hard drives and camera will similarly have no effect on Greenwald's work.

The state that is building such a formidable apparatus of surveillance will do its best to prevent journalists from reporting on it. Most journalists can see that. But I wonder how many have truly understood

Sarah Harrison is a lawyer that has been staying with Snowden in Hong Kong and Moscow. She is a UK citizen and her family is there. After the miranda case where the boyfriend of the reporter was detained at the airport, can Sarah return safely home? Will her family be pressured by the secret service? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-23759834

I think I start to understand why Italian politics does so horribly bad...

... because they don't follow this rule!

According to the authors we have four types of people in the parlement: 1) intelligent people whose actions produce a gain for both themselves and for other people. 2) helpless/naive people in the top left quadrant whose actions produce a loss for themselves but a gain for others; 3) bandits whose actions produce a gain for themselves but a loss for other people. 4) stupid people in the bottom left quadrant produce a loss for themselves and also for other people. According to the above definition it is clear that their model does not apply to the italian parlament where we only have stupid people and bandits.

This is an idependent organisation reviewing healthcare studies and basically judging the results. Something like the ACT for international medicine. Sounds interesting in the approach. Their suggestion for swine-flu prevention: wash your hands frequently. Nothing helps better.

The futures of space - an arts and humanities symposium. Organised in parallell with IAC

A really cool and powerful tool for creating flow diagrams. I particularly like the layout organising algorithms, really nifty. Anyway, it's installed on the smart board computer now and maybe you'd all like it on your computers too.

Should we organise a workshop PDC like on this? Or a call for ideas?

Interdisciplinary teams of handpicked individuals chosen for their field-leading expertise and innovative mind combine humanitarian questions with state of the art science, cutting-edge technology and endless fantasy. Organised by THE Port Association, hosted by CERN (IdeaSquare tbc) and with partners from other non-governmental organisations, a three-day problem solving workshop hackathon will be devoted to humanitarian, social and public interest topics. Interdisciplinary teams of selected participants will work together in the fields of: communication - transport - health - science - learning - work - culture - data

does any of you know the value/standing of this association?

quite well-reputed, they were founded as the American Association for AI (and only recently cahnged it to be more international). They are partly organizing IJCAI and the AAAI conferences (mostly in the US), which are quite good. Symposia around specific topics are also done and at those mostly professors and researchers with high impact are going.

Thanks Juxi. was contacted by one of the organisers for the Berlin edition of it in 2 years. looking at your answer, it seems having the ACT associated to it is not a bad idea. will check with the team. Would you yourself be interested?

interesting workshop on language here in Leiden ... Luis, Giusi??

interesting indeed, but the lectures I'd be interested in already took place

No good, 80% of these people are top quoted in my research area... I really should have been there. Evidently the organisers need to work on advertising.

Just some ant suff again.

what strategies!!!

"Richard Arvey, the head of the NUS business school's department of management and organisation, has been looking into precisely how genes interact with different types of environment to create such things as entrepreneurial zeal and the ability to lead others."...They are doing experiments with twins...I want to try with my twin!!!:))

who in the group will build the first fabber? bets are open ...

yes! very much so!!! is he in Holland? since would also probably be nice to get some first hand experience from him/her ....

but what would we do with it...? any idea ?

You guys could like this....

why financial planning of big projects fail (http://www.heise.de/tr/artikel/101614/0/0)

Personal (or maybe group) relevant page to manage your literature. Currently I check it out - ask me later. Tobias

Maybe the dutch approach is better? Anyway, reading emails has worse effects on work output than smoking dope.

A method on how to run businesses based on consent (not consensus).

Where Carlo will give his award lecture.

Albeit a bit dated, this is the classical Eric Raymond paper about the self-organizing open source model (the bazaar) compared to the usual closed software development model (the cathedral). Is science today more a bazaar or a cathedral?

funny .... this is exactly the book that Franco mentioned during one of the first meetings I had with him on the ACT, our research, how to organise, the potential of new ways of cooperating etc ...

Science today is a Basilica.