We’ve been doing the animal badge. My favourite animal is Mr Giraffe.

Yesterday I went to a Firestarters talk. Firestarters are talks held for planning types at Google in a bid to make the search engine look hip and cool, in short. The actual talks are organised by a chap called Neil Perkin. Very exciting.

It was different to most of their previous talks – previously they’ve had three talks from inspiring people (e.g. the chap who runs The Do Lectures, or app developer Toby Barnes). This one was a very quickly spoken 45 minutes from one guy in which we were bombarded with the history of general purpose computers and concerns about copyright around them and data – in the past, and in the future.

The talk was from Cory Doctorow. See above.

I made a few notes on what he said, so thought I’d stick them up here (other people have had far more insightful thoughts about this than me, so make sure you to read them. I’m still digesting). His ability during the Q&A to make concise, smart mini-speeches in response to questions in the Q&A was probably the most impressive bit. I can’t regurgitate everything because a) he said a lot and b) talks very fast.

It was along these lines: “Given the increasing ubiquity of digital technologies, their integration into just about every device, and the so-called ‘internet of things’, Cory will be talking about how in the coming decades, restriction and regulation of general computing could threaten to undermine the capabilities and security of not just communications, but many other corners of modern human society.”

History.
He talked about way back when in the floppy disk era, manufacturers realised they had to do something. Introducing copyright, and the story behind that – how it benefitted pirates but not individuals (e.g. freelancers) and how sneakernet, crack files and cracked files came to be. He’s also pretty big on the information economy and the way companies started charging for movies (could they charge for a day, could they install something on all computers to make sure their files acted in a certain way, and pondering the virtues of scrambled files). Conclusion: renting information’s a flawed fantasy. Especially when people are so bitTorrent smart.

And from around 1996 copying got easier. A lot easier. And the reaction to stop this was equally dramatic.

Examples.
He showed Sony BMG $sys as an example of flawed efforts to control information use (going terrible wrong in a public way), and the way the Nintendo DS checks for hacks (it auto updates across wifi, checking to see if you’ve tampered with the software) as an example of a worrying move in culture. ‘Censorship is now surveillance.’ The spying software used in ‘spy-like scenarios’ (think Libya) is now that which people advocate to use on personal computers.

And he consolidated this down in about 25 minutes. He talked very fast.

His main point (or one of the most interesting) was that Copyright has gone so far despite Tom Watson calling it “the most technical bill’ he’d ever seen” – because they’re seen as so trivial and not a big deal. People forget to vote/debate and care in parliament and elsewhere.

Thoughts on the future: All computers are controlled and made specialised by software. All computers are general purpose and can do anything… How do you regulate that? Our next concern may be regulation on 3G printers and other specialised peripherals. E.G. How do you stop someone making a gun, and how would the sex toy industry react if everyone started downloading their own?

The stakes around copyright are going to get higher.

To sum it up:
• ‘When we’re older hearing aids will be computers (unless you’re super retro). But when we have that in us and get into a computer/organised car, don’t you want to know there’s no spying software and that these computers are our honest servants?’

• If you want your kids to be safe, get your kids to jailbreak everything and be in control of it. To question cookies and data.

• In the Q&A he made an interesting point about data in apps. Devices haemorrhage info without us wanting it/allowing/understand that it does. Unless consumers can make choices about disclosing their location, this information will be seen as cheap (to both companies and consumers). E.g. A lot of the time it’s obligatory to reveal your location. The only way to fix this is intelligence, and if we have meaningful ways to control our data, we might get a more competitive marketplace.

I wrote this up and sent it around our team. And then by coincidence and with the best timing, 30 seconds later this email was sent around the agency:

“Last week the UK High Court ruled that several of the country’s leading ISPs must block subscriber access to The Pirate Bay. The decision is designed to limit traffic to the world’s leading BitTorrent site but in the short-term it had the opposite effect. Yesterday, The Pirate Bay had 12 million more visitors than it has ever had, providing a golden opportunity to educate users on how to circumvent blocks. “We should write a thank you letter to the BPI,” a site insider told TorrentFreak.” (Source)

From tiny chicken pot pies to rolly-polly biscuits, I’ve found myself using Foodgawker more and more recently. It’s essentially a recipe aggregator website & app with lots of sexy slathersome photos. It’s easy to scroll through for ideas – though often you find yourself having to sift out a strange American penchant for Pillsbury biscuits and a large amount of vegan-based meals.

The tiny pies were easy and amazing, even for someone who’s snobby about the idea of putting soup anywhere near pastry. Sounded like they’d be average – were in fact amazing.

UK recipe version:
Ingredients:
1 chicken breast, poached and diced
1 can cream of chicken soup
Handful of mixed frozen vegetables
Some grated cheddar
Mixed herbs/Oregano
Garlic (puree, best for laziness)
Roll of shortcrust pastry

How to:

Preheat oven to 200c.
1. In large bowl mix everything together (minus the shortcrust)
2. Grease muffin tins
3. Cut shortcrust pastry into squares (8-10cm square) and place into muffin tin
4. Spoon in mixture
5. Haphazardly squeeze pastry sides up
6. Cook for 15 minutes
7. Devour

I went skiing in February. To a tiny little place called La Tania that sits just to the side of some rather bigger places – the Trois Valleés. Lots of flats built in the 80s, and rather good mogul fields – enough to scare you and make your legs realise they’ve got muscles hidden inside them, but in no way actually dangerous.

I didn’t have a mounted head camera (very on trend this year) but I did have a regular camera (see above). And a little snippet of skiing made it into my ‘Month in 60 seconds’ video. Have a watch, pretend you’re skiing, etc.