The poor don't work because they are economically rational

It’s a fairly pervasive myth within the US that the poor work very hard at unpleasant jobs. But this is nothing but a myth - according to the BLS report A profile of the working poor, 2009, as of 2009, only 24% of people below the poverty line were in the labor force (this means working or looking for work) for at least 27 weeks/year.

Out of these 24%, just under half work full time and another 20% are involuntary part time employed (i.e., they would like to work full time, but are only able to find part time employment) - see table 1 of A profile of the working poor, 2009.

This means that in total, about 17% of people below the poverty line are willing to work full time for at least 27 weeks/year. If you exclude children from the numbers (number of poor children and children as a whole taken from here, specifically Table Pop1 and Econ1.A.), then 36% of poor people work at least 27 weeks/year, and 25% work full time.

For comparison, for the population as a whole, 65% of people age 16 and older were in the labor force according to BLS stats].

This data begs the question - why don’t the poor work? Are they simply irrational, choosing to live in poverty when they could do better? Do they simply have flat utility functions, and not care about goods and services above a low minimum threshold?

I propose an alternative hypothesis. I propose that the poor are economically rational.

I’ll make the following assumptions:

Work provides a non-zero amount of disutility - all else held equal, the poor would rather not work than work. (This trait applies to most people - I don’t know anyone who doesn’t enjoy a day off.) I propose that utility is a monotonic function of spending - this means that people prefer to increase the amount of goods and services they consume. A green piece of paper doesn’t make me very happy, but the burrito I trade it for does. If we accept these two assumptions, we can derive the following result: whenever the increased utility from spending does not outweigh the decreased utility from working, people will choose not to work. In particular, if increasing work does not increase spending, then people will choose not to work.

Now for some data (taken from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey (for 2009)):

On the X-axis I plotted earned income - the amount of money a person has earned via work or investment [5]. On the Y-axis, I plotted consumer expenditures. I also plotted spending vs earning in a theoretical world where income = expenditures.

The graph shows that utility (see Assumption 2) slightly decreases as you earn more money. People earning $5-10k actually spend $2k less than people earning $0-5k, and people earning $10-15k spend $1k less. By increasing your earned income to $20k, you still only get to spend $1000 more than if you didn’t work.

So this presents you with a tradeoff. You can have no job, consume leisure in your free time, and your expenditures will be $22731. You can have a job and consume less leisure, and you’ll only get to spend $23706. This means that if your work opportunities pay only $20k/year, every hour spent working only allows you to spend 97 cents. If the $20k/year job is actually 35 hours/week, then each hour spent working only enables 56 cents worth of expenditures.

In fact, even if you could increase your wages to $30k/year, you would only get to spend about $3.80 per hour worked (again assuming a 35 hour work week)

This means that it is completely rational for any person who values their time at more than $0.56-3.80 not to work as long as their work opportunities pay less than $30k/year.

Economic rationality seems to be a plausible explanation for the work habits of the poor.

A note on coding

For each interval, I chose the x-coordinate to be the midpoint. E.g., the interval $5-10k is coded as $7.5k. The top interval ($70k+) is coded as $85k.

Update, as of Jan 17 2014: Turns out my rough calculations were in the right ballpark. Apparently a year after I wrote that the CBO did more careful calculations, and they are in general agreement. CBO report and John Cochrane’s blogspam version.

PRESS RELEASE

English, Simplified Chinese (简体中文), Traditional Chinese (繁體中文)

For viewers in some region having problem seeing the above YouTube video, the contents is here: Powerpoint (简体中文), Youku Video (简体中文). NavSpark 点名时间上中文說明: http://dwz.cn/navspark_demohour

WHAT IS IT?

NavSpark is a small, powerful, breadboard-friendly, 32bit development board that is Arduino compatible, with a world class GPS receiver as on-board peripheral, and under $15. 

There is also NavSpark-BD, a variant model having world-class GPS/Beidou receiver as on-board peripheral, that enables you to adopt new GPS/Beidou satellite navigation technology when Broadcom Qualcomm just recently came out with solution supporting Beidou to their tier-1 smartphone customers like Apple and Samsung.

NavSpark puts leading edge satellite navigation technology in the hands of the makers.

...

Up until now, adding GPS to an Arduino requires additional GPS shield, which adds cost and size. NavSpark has GPS built-in, so there is no need for an additional GPS shield. And it's cheap enough to leave in any project.

This little NavSpark board packs big features: 100MHz 32bit RISC/FPU, 1024KByte Flash, 212KByte RAM, high-performance GPS, many peripherals and I/O pins. With 32bit processing power, number crunching capability, and very large memory, NavSpark takes your projects to a whole new level.

THE STORY

We have been developing GPS related products for some years. The GPS chipset nowadays are quite powerful. Seeing many small development boards on the market with limited memory space and low computation power, we believe a small low-cost 32bit development board using our new more powerful Venus 8 chip, integrating GPS library into Arduino IDE, offering at near 8-bitter price and with GPS functionality, may serve as an useful and attractive building block for the maker community. 

The Venus 8 chip is built with enough MIPS and memory to process signal from combination of 34 GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, and Galileo satellites in parallel simultaneously. It is the reason why it has more memory and computation MIPS than most popular low-cost embedded microcontrollers on the market.

Unsure if there will actually be sufficient interest in small low-cost development board built from powerful satellite positioning processor chip (like GPU used in non-graphic applications), this Indiegogo campaign is our approach to find out. 

If you like the idea and find it could be useful for your applications, please support this campaign to let us know. With sufficient interest, NavSpark will go into production and be made available.  

The NavSpark is essentially an easy to use, breadboard-friendly version of our Venus838FLPx GPS module with GPS library SDK integrated into customized Arduino IDE.

ARDUINO COMPATIBLE

NavSpark is designed to run Wiring, the same simple code as the Arduino platform. There is no need to learn any new programming language or environment. Your standard Arduino sketches run on NavSpark.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION:

GENERAL SPECS

·  Support Arduino IDE (custom integration of Wiring libraries, Windows platform)

·  GPS on board

·  Breadboard compatible

·  38mm x 18mm size

HARDWARE SPECS

·  100MHz 32bit LEON3 Sparc-V8 + IEEE-754 Compliant FPU

·  1024KB Flash Memory + 212KB RAM

·  ~80uA/MHz @ 3.3V

·  Powered and programmed by mini USB connector

·  1 full duplex asynchronous UART

·  1 asynchronous UART transmit

·  2 SPI with master/slave mode configurable

·  1 I2C

·  1 24bit PWM

·  17 digital I/O pins (shared with above functional pins)

·  Atomic clock synchronized P1PPS time reference with +/-10nsec accuracy

DESIGN FILE AVAILABILITY

NavSpark hardware design files (schematic, board design, and bill of materials) will be released and made available to users. Source code of the customized Arduino IDE will also be made available; the GPS / Beidou / GLONASS navigation kernel library integrated will remain in library file format. Users are free to extend, adapt and redistribute the hardware and software for any projects, commercial or non-commercial. 

POTENTIAL APPLICATION EXAMPLE

Data Logger: Log the position, velocity, time information to an external SPI Flash; later read out the logged data to find out where it has been. With UAV, R/C plane, or paragliding, you can replay the flight path. For marathon running or skiing sporting event, each contestant’s performance behavior can be analyzed. It might also help answer question of where the dog has gone during the day…

Outdoor GPS Clock: When gotten position fix, the date and time is always accurate, in sync with the UTC or GMT time. One never needs to manually adjust time once properly programmed, even when turn on after power loss.

Time reference: After getting GPS fix, the P1PPS 1Hz pulse is synchronized to atomic clock within +/-10nsec. Date and time in the NMEA sentence corresponds to occurrence of the rising edge of just occurred P1PPS pulse. Thus for under $20 you have a precision time reference nearly as good as atomic clock to +/-10nsec! For hardware in different locations that need to be time synchronized in operation, this provides a low cost method to achieve it.

Below is a data logger back track device using something equivalent to NavSpark without extra microcontroller. Instead of Venus 822, previous generation 0.13um Venus621 chip is used inside; it has 60MHz 32bit RISC, no FPU, 512KB Flash, 96KB RAM.

http://www.znex.de/

http://wandermagazin.de/downloads/wander/88-93_Service_Praxistest_163.pdf

Above is a long term 3 ~ 6 months test by a famous German hiker magazine. Competing against 3 big and expensive GPS devices, Garmin Etrex 30, Magellan Explorist 610 and Falk Ibex 40. Eventually Garmin Etrex 30 and Venus621-based miniHomer convinced jury and received test seals; published in March/April 2012 edition.

NavSpark uses latest generation low power 55nm Venus 822 chip; could design into more complex devices such as fitness GPS watch like applications.

NavSpark provides accurate position, velocity, and time for applications in need of this information. Even if used without GPS, NavSpark’s 100MHz RISC/FPU + 1MByte Flash + 212Kbyte RAM + UART + SPI + I2C + GPIO hardware has less restrictive use than a typical 8bit development board.

DEVELOPMENT TIMELINE

HARDWARE DEVELOPMENTS

NavSpark is a shrink down version of the bigger Venus 822 development board. With Venus 822 board already working, the design of NavSpark hardware is rather straight forward.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENTS

We are currently customizing the Arduino IDE to work with the Sparc-V8 compiler and Venus 822 hardware; it is expected to be finished before end of January, 2014.

MANUFACTURING

If the NavSpark funding campaign is successful, we will:

Place order for BOM to manufacture NavSpark on Feb 7, 2014

Send BOM to factory for production, March 17, 2014

Ship out NavSpark, March 27, 2014

PROJECT HISTORY (Updated When New Application Developments Available)

The 55nm Venus 8 returned in May of 2013. It has been packaged into small 5mm x 5mm QFN40 package, with very limited I/O, for standard global navigation satellite positioning module applications. 

The 7mm x 7mm QF56 packaged Venus 822 has more I/O pins, suitable for small global navigation satellite positioning application development. The earlier model of Venus 822 development board for internal use is much larger in size as shown below:

For NavSpark, optimizing the circuitry and moving some components to the back-side, we reduce the size to 38mm x 18mm. Below is the 1st hand-made NavSpark prototype:

NavSpark prototype receiving GPS signal:

NavSpark-GL prototype:

NavSpark-GL prototype receiving GPS+GLONASS signal:

THANKS TO OUR SUPPORTERS

Thank you for taking time to find out what NavSpark is. We hope you're excited about NavSpark and will back our project for us to make it available for the maker community.

PERKS

4 major types:

NavSpark: with GPS receiver, max 10Hz update rate

NavSpark-GL: with GPS/GLONASS receiver, max 10Hz update rate

NavSpark-BD: with GPS/Beidou receiver, max 10Hz update rate

NS-RAW: carrier phase raw measurement GPS receiver, max 5Hz update rate, RTKLIB supported S1315F-RAW in the form of plug-and-play NavSpark

USD$15   Early Bird 1pcs Set (with Antenna)

Choose this if you never used GPS in your project before and want to give it a try. You’ll receive 1 NavSpark and 1 active antenna* at early bird special price.

USD$17   Early Bird 1pcs Beidou Set (with Antenna)**

Choose this if you never used satellite navigation in your project before and want to give GPS/Beidou a try. You’ll receive 1 NavSpark-BD and 1 active antenna* at early bird special price.

USD$17   Early Bird 1pcs GLONASS Set (with Antenna)**

Choose this if you never used satellite navigation in your project before and want to give GPS/GLONASS a try. You’ll receive 1 NavSpark-GL and 1 active antenna* at early bird special price.

USD$29   Early Bird 2pcs Set (with Antenna)

Choose this if you feel the NavSpark processing power and memory capacity alone might come in handy and worth checking out. You’ll receive 2 NavSpark and 2 active antennas* at early bird special price.

USD$33   Early Bird 2pcs Beidou Set (with Antenna)**

Choose this if you feel the NavSpark processing power & memory capacity alone might come in handy and worth checking out, and like to try out with GPS/Beidou technology. You’ll receive 2 NavSpark-BD and 2 active antennas* at early bird special price.

USD$33   Early Bird 2pcs GLONASS Set (with Antenna)**

Choose this if you feel the NavSpark processing power & memory capacity alone might come in handy and worth checking out, and like to try out with GPS/GLONASS technology. You’ll receive 2 NavSpark-GL and 2 active antennas* at early bird special price.

USD$35   Regular 2pcs Set (with Antenna)

Choose this after Early Bird Sets are gone. You’ll receive 2 NavSpark and 2 active antenna* at Indiegogo promotional price.

USD$39   Regular 2pcs Beidou Set (with Antenna)**

Choose this after Early Bird Beidou Sets are gone. You’ll receive 2 NavSpark-BD and 2 active antenna* at Indiegogo promotional price.

USD$39   Regular 2pcs GLONASS Set (with Antenna)**

Choose this after Early Bird GLONASS Sets are gone. You’ll receive 2 NavSpark-GL and 2 active antenna* at Indiegogo promotional price.

USD$50   NS-RAW 2pcs Set (with Antenna)

Due to numerous requests asking availability of carrier phase raw measurement output capability, we decided to add an additional perk, NS-RAW, a 5Hz capable S1315F-RAW (RTKLIB compatible) carrier phase raw measurement GPS receiver module with USB interface in the same form factor as NavSpark. NS-RAW is to be used as it is without Arduino programability, due to some technical issue yet to overcome and we prefer not to over-promise. You’ll receive 2 NS-RAW and 2 active antenna* at Indiegogo promotional price.

Note *: The active antenna receives GPS / GLONASS / Beidou signals. 1”x1” ceramic patch internal active antenna, 10cm length, UFL connector. 

Note **: Yes! NavSpark-GL and Nav-Spark-BD are for those of you wondering "My iPhone and Galaxy phone has GPS/GLONASS. Why isn't there GPS/GLONASS for my Arduino projects?"  NavSpark-BD allows you to jump ahead of your iPhone and Galaxy phone and early adopt GPS/Beidou technology!

SHIPPING

All perks has airmail postal shipping fee included, to be shipped from Taiwan. Postal shipping is not trackable. Please additionally choose the $20 FedEx shipping perk if you want your selected perk to be trackable.

RISK and CHALLENGES

We at SkyTraq have years of experience bringing GPS/GNSS chipset and module products to the market, shipped over 7 million pieces to-date globally. We have working prototype of NavSpark, so there should be little chance for surprises later on. That being said, no contract manufacturing could be guaranteed without hiccups or delay beforehand. It could due to other sudden large order shortening originally planned capacity, or delay in receiving ordered materials, and so on. We have sufficient experience to reduce such risk to minimum. If there is a delay that will shift our shipping timeline, we will update you. We'll bend over backwards to get NavSpark to you.

BIGGEST CHALLENGE

Currently the biggest challenge we have is only at 25% of the funding goal with 33 days passed and 27 days to go, as of today Jan 11, 2014. We’ll continue trying to generate publicity, but we do need your help to spread the words via Facebook, Twitter, related discussion forums,…etc of your social media circle, in order to have enough backing supporters allowing us to bring you NavSpark, our GNSS Software Development Kit product in form of Arduino compatible development board at fraction of our regular SDK price. 

The short link to this NavSpark Indiegogo webpage ishttp://bit.ly/1dBpits or http://t.cn/8FvCEX7 

Thank you for all the helps you can provide!

Debian Bug report logs - #727708
tech-ctte: Decide which init system to default to in Debian.

Full log

Message #3546 received at 727708@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox):

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Friends,
Spotify, an online streaming music service, is a significant user of Debian
GNU/Linux. We have some 5000 physical servers and well over a thousand
virtual servers using both public and private clouds running Debian
GNU/Linux serving millions of songs to our users every day.
We would like to take this opportunity to endorse systemd as our preferred
init system and we would like to see it as default on Debian GNU/Linux
moving forward.
Our main reasons for this preference:
- We believe that the dependency model of systemd is easier to understand,
explain and work with than the event based counterpart of upstart.
- We believe that the various features built on top of the way systemd uses
cgroups, notably mechanisms for resource limitations, would be very useful
in a highly scalable highly available environment such as ours.
- We believe that systemd will have the stronger community momentum moving
forward when it comes to seeing close integration between modern init
system features and upstream projects.
With kind regards
Spotify infrastructure and operations
via
Noa Resare, Free Software ombudsman

[Message part 2 (text/html, inline)]

Send a report that this bug log contains spam.

The New York Times reports today on the passing of Ken Landwehr, the Wichita homicide detective responsible for solving the case of the BTK (Bind, Torture, Kill) murders that had plagued the Wichita area for decades. He was 59.

The murders began in 1974, when the BTK killer, Dennis Rader, brutally tortured and killed four members of the Otero family. Over the next two decades he killed six more. Following the murder of Dolores Davis in 1991, Rader seemed to disappear. The case was cold.

The winds began to change following a 2004 report in the Wichita Eagle which speculated that all the years since a murder suggested that the killer was either dead or in prison. Seeking attention, Rader sent a letter to the Eagle, taking responsibility for an unsolved 1986 murder. Over the next year, he continued to send letters, puzzles, and other miscellany to local media outlets. Landwehr led the strategy of "exchanging coded messages placed in newspaper ads" to elicit more clues out of Rader.

Landwehr's big break came in early 2005 when Rader sent a message to a Wichita TV station inquiring about a package he claimed to have left at a Home Depot. An employee there told police that his girlfriend had found an odd package—a cereal box—in the back of his truck, but, not knowing what it was, they had thrown it away.

Police were able to find the box in the trash. Inside were documents describing planned murders. There was also one document with a question: Would it be secure for the murderer to communicate with police via a floppy disk? "Be honest," the note urged. It instructed police to place a classified ad in the paper with the message, "Rex, it will be OK," if it were, in fact, safe.

Investigators, recognizing the opportunity, ran the requested ad. Two weeks later, on February 16, 2005, a package containing a floppy disk arrived at KSAS-TV in Wichita.

Detectives got to work:

They finally had their suspect.

From there, police were able to confirm that Dennis Rader was in fact the BTK killer by DNA testing.

On February 25, 2005, police arrested Rader. 

The New York Times credits Landwehr with the skill and strategy that eventually undid the case:

During interrogations, Rader "couldn’t get over the fact" that Landwehr had lied to him. He had trusted Landwehr.

“I need to ask you, how come you lied to me? How come you lied to me?” Rader asked.

“Because I was trying to catch you,” Landwehr answered coolly.

In the end, Rader's misplaced trust in Landwehr led to his downfall.

MB E-Filing Site   These FCC/MB forms MUST be electronically filed: FCC Forms 301, 301-CA, 302-CA, 302-FM, 302-DTV, 302-TV, 303-S, 314, 315, 316, 318, 319, 323, 323-E, 337, 340, 346, 347, 349, 350, 381 EEO Forms 395-A and 395-B have been suspended by Commission Order FCC 01-34. CDBS Users Guide or call (202)-418-2662 CDBS System Status Call Sign Reservations & Authorizationsfor broadcast station call signs Antenna Structure Registration via ULS

Easy, one-stop access to all online U.S. Federal Government resourceswww.USA.gov

Every FM center frequency ends with a decimal extension of .1, .3, .5, .7, or .9. To convert FM channel numbers to/from a corresponding frequency, you may use the conversion tool at http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/audio/findvalues.html.

In the AM band, each AM station has a maximum bandwidth of 10 kHz, extending 5 kHz above and 5 kHz below the assigned center frequency. The AM band in the United States covers frequencies from 540 kHz up to 1700 kHz, in 10 kHz steps (540, 550, 560 ,,, 1680, 1690, 1700). 530 kHz in the United States is not available for broadcast use, but is reserved for the use of low powered Travellers' Information Stations. AM band stations do not have assigned channel numbers.

AM and FM station assignments in other countries may not be made according these procedures. In some countries, an FM station may be assigned a frequency with an even decimal such as 106.2 MHz. In many places, AM broadcast stations are assigned on frequencies with a 9 kHz bandwidth (531 kHz, 540 kHz, 549 kHz, etc.). (Links to other countries' regulatory agencies are listed at http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/world-govt-telecom.html.) There are a few AM stations assigned in the United States in this manner, in Guam, theMarianas Islands, andAmerican Samoa.

Earlier this week, Google bought Nest, a connected devices company, for $3.2 billion. This might seem like an ungodly sum for a company that makes thermostats and smoke detectors, but it makes absolute sense. Nest’s products are beautifully designed, their team is overflowing with talent, and they were the first company to figure out what the “Internet of Things” means to consumers and deliver products that people actually want.

But in order to do this, Nest had to spend millions of dollars on R&D to build the basic infrastructure behind the product. The high cost made it impossible for anyone but the extremely well-capitalized to enter the market and create connected things.

Well, we want to change that. At Spark, we’re making it easier to bring connected devices to market with the Spark Core, our Wi-Fi development kit, and the Spark Cloud, our cloud service for connected devices. And to prove it, we built our own approximation of the Nest Learning Thermostat in one day — and we’ve open sourced everything. In this process, we’ve come to respect the incredible technical challenges that Nest has solved while also coming to understand how much the game has changed since they first started.

Fair warning - we’re not claiming to have matched the Nest thermostat in a day; far from it. But remember — every polished product starts as a rough prototype. As Alexis Ohanian said last week, “The first version of everything you love is janky!”

Hardware

First, you need hardware. In our case, that means sensors for temperature and humidity, plus a motion sensor to figure out whether you’re home, and relays to control the furnace and the fan. We also need a display so you can see the current temperature, and an enclosure to protect the messy bits.

The first thing we did this morning (after whiteboarding our attack plan) was to breadboard the hardware. Breadboarding is a non-permanent way to create an early hardware prototype. We chose a number of components for this product:

• The Spark Core served as our connected brain.
• We display the temperature on a few Adafruit 8x8 LED matrices. The interface for the displays is a common I2C bus.
• The primary sensor is a Honeywell HumidIcon temperature and humidity sensor, which shares the I2C bus with the displays.
• For our MVP, we decided a couple LEDs could represent whether the heat and fan were on. In the end the same pins would be connected to relays instead of the LEDs.
• If you want to save energy when a person’s not home, then you need a way to know when they are home so you can err on the side of comfort again. We added a Panasonic PIR motion detector.

All in all, it took about an hour to throw together this breadboarded prototype, although we had to order the components a couple of days beforehand. It took another couple of hours to pull together working firmware (see the software section below).

The next step is to build an enclosure. The Nest enclosure is glass and aluminum, which are both very pretty but not very handy for prototyping. Instead, we chose acrylic and wood.

First, we CNC milled two wooden rings: one to act as a stationary base, and other to spin freely as a temperature controller (turn the ring clockwise to increase the temperature, and counterclockwise to decrease the temperature).

Next, we laser cut three acrylic disks: one to act as the faceplate (which we later sanded to make it frosty), a second to act as the wall mounting plate, and a third connects the spinning wooden ring to a potentiometer.

Once we completed the enclosure, we converted our breadboarded circuit into a more permanent design by permanently soldering the components.

Software

Next, you need software. Some of this software runs on the thermostat (often called ‘firmware’), reading data from the sensors, controlling the relays, and displaying data on the screen. But since this is a connected thermostat, we also want a web interface so that it can be controlled from your smartphone or computer. And since it’s a learning thermostat, we also want to do some machine learning so that we can over time improve your comfort and energy efficiency. This software will run in the cloud.

‘Firmware’ is called firm because it’s traditionally more locked down than software, since it runs on a little chip that usually is never accessed again after the product is delivered to the customer. But adding an internet connection changes things pretty significantly. Firmware is no longer firm when you can update it from anywhere with the click of a button. With a Spark Core, you can flash new code onto your chip using our web IDE.

Our thermostat is complemented with a cloud-based web app that handles all of the complex logic of the thermostat. By doing this in the cloud, we can iterate faster using high-level programming languages and frameworks like Ruby on Rails rather than low-level embedded C.

The Spark Cloud exposes your connected device through a REST API. That means that you can interact with it from any language that can generate HTTP requests, which is basically anything.

The beauty of a connected device is that it can be constantly improving, whether it’s by updating the firmware, updating the cloud software, or by using machine learning to optimize and improve the logic of the device.

Our user interface is a simple web app with a javascript knob that lets you select the desired temperature. The UI also includes a graph of historical temperatures, because data.

Connectivity

Once you’ve got your hardware and your software, it’s time to link the two worlds.

Somehow you’ve got to get your thing online, and there are dozens of ways to do this. The simplest method is by adding a Wi-Fi module, so your product can act as a client on your local Wi-Fi network.

The Spark Core has a Wi-Fi module built in, and because it’s integrated with the micro-controller, ‘connectivity’ is made easy. The Core automatically connects to the Spark Cloud through an encrypted tunnel, so you’ve got a secure connection to a cloud gateway out of the box. No programming the Wi-Fi module, and no finding or building communications protocols.

Putting it all together

Once our thermostat was complete, it was time to assemble it all together into the final package and mount it on the wall.

All in, we spent about $70 on components to put this together (including $39 for the Spark Core); the wood and acrylic were free. We started working at 10am and finished at 3am, with 3.5 engineers involved (one went to bed early), and the only work we did in advance was order the electronic components.

Get excited, crazy things are possible.

We’re not saying that you can build a $3.2 billion company in a day. But we are saying that you can build a $3.2 billion company, and it’s easier now than it’s ever been before.

Connected devices/Internet of Things/M2M/Industrial Internet is a certified big deal, and the Nest acquisition proves it. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a software developer with no hardware experience, an embedded designer with no web experience, or a psych major with no experience whatsoever. This is the next frontier, and it’s time to check it out.

Your billion dollar company starts with a million dollar product, and your million dollar product starts with a hundred dollar prototype. So what are you waiting for?

To download the open source files for the Spark thermostat, visit our Github page.

Follow us on Twitter, discuss at Hacker News, and get a Spark Core at spark.io.

None of my various bright ideas — a social network for sneaker collectors, customisable artwork of your bicycle, a recipe sharing platform, a book about designers turned entrepreneur (OK, that last one I am actually set on doing) — have come to fruition yet.

And whilst CycleLove might be building momentum, I still have a huge hangup about creating the ebooks or information based content about cycling or whatever it is that I've been talking about for months and months. It's still a blog, not a business, and costing me money instead of making it.

 I chickened out of the work.

You need graft, or grit, or gumption, or whatever you want to call it.

Whether it's by actually blogging on your blog, or starting your startup, value is created by doing. 

Dial down the resolution(s)

When I looked back at the list of goals I'd set out for 2013 the other day, I felt pretty embarrassed. Especially as it's published in plain sight on the internet. I didn't come close to achieving any of my resolutions. Not one thing on the list.

But I know that beating yourself up about this kind of stuff is stupid. (Make changes, not criticisms).

So... I haven't made any New Year's resolutions this year.

You don't want high resolutions anyhow — you want low resolution.

You want to let go of the fear of fucking up, of it not being perfect, of what other people think, of things that probably won't ever happen, and just crank that stuff out, baby.

Instead of trying to finish everything, try to finish one thing.

Today if possible.

And then another...

And another...

And...

(I think I just finished this blog post).

What are you going to finish today?

Before

Thursday into Friday, my head cold got worse, so on Friday morning I walked down to a bar-cafe-restaurant in my neighborhood. I had been there for a few hours when youthful, vigorous men and women wearing Business Semi-Formal started quietly going one by one among the customers sitting near me. They would crouch, adopt an expression of deep sympathy, and say something. The customer would look a little confused, pick up laptop and coat, and move to another table.

Next to me, cafe staff had made a long table by pushing three smaller tables together. Five Millennials sat around it. They were well-dressed like Ryan Seacrest is well-dressed, and they seemed nervous. The head of their table hadn’t been filled. I had assumed someone important, someone hoity-toity, would be coming, someone like a foundation executive director.

This was a little bit annoying, but my legs ached and the Internet was spotty and I wanted to go to a different, better coffee shop, so I asked for the check. 

Then a man, another of the handsome ones, came by.

“Hey,” he murmured. “Will you be leaving soon?”

I said I wasn’t sure. I’d asked for the check.

“Okay,” he said. “I just wanted to let you know the president will be stopping by.”

Oh, I thought. The president of what?

“You’re welcome to stay, but one of our agents will be coming around to swipe you.”

Then I understood. An agent came around to swipe me.

The world is made of people: I get this. Our republic only works if we know our leaders are fallible humans. I disagree with the Obama Administration about plenty. None of this kept me from experiencing immediate, full-on, feverish anxiety.

During

When the president arrived, 40 minutes later—stepping out of his SUV, smiling, with a little wave—the nerves subsided. The cafe is split into two long halves, and he first turned to visit its opposite half, smiling, shaking hands, shaking more hands.

And then—for the first time in nearly an hour—I could work. I found that I was so accustomed to his voice, how he holds his body, his aura, that ignoring him in person is as easy as ignoring a TV. Easier, in fact. He stops being the president and starts being That Guy Who You See In Tweets, That Guy Who Gives Speeches, That Guy.

That Guy shook exactly half the hands on the other side of the restaurant. He came back to our side. He addressed the five people sitting adjacent to me—who were, indeed, apparently there to talk to him.

That Guy said he would save our whole side of the restaurant for after the meal. But then, next to me, on my other side, he spotted a baby.

He apologized to the group. He could not resist, he said, a baby.

Concerning the Baby

He picked up the baby. The baby’s mom told him about the baby. Before, I had asked her if she would like pictures of them meeting, so I got out my phone and documented the event. One of those pictures is above.

Pete Souza, the official White House photographer, was also there. He documented the event a little better than I did.

There is little else to say about the baby. He was adorable. Obama really seemed to appreciate holding him, and bounced him for probably a minute. The baby's mom told him that their family had just been stationed in Kenya, that that’s where the baby was born.

He seemed to stumble for a second, as he realized he could not phrase a joke in exactly the way he could phrase it in private.

“That’s, that’s where Donald Trump thinks I was born,” he said.

Then he handed the baby back to his mom. It was then that I made my only physical contact with the president. 

My Only Physical Contact With the President

The president hands the baby back to its mom. The president makes eye contact with me.

“Great to see you,” says the president.

The president extends his hand while simultaneously pivoting on his right foot.

His hands grasp mine. They feel like the rough surface of your favorite baseball.

Eye contact was broken mid-handshake. His hand trailed his turned body *which has already turned on the pivoted foot.* He greeted a couple across the way from me.

This concludes my communication with the president of the United States.

My Only Source for This Section Is What I Eavesdropped

Obama sat down at the head of the table. There was a brief photo op at the opposite end of the table. I surreptitiously took a picture to remember what being on the other side of a wall of cameras felt like, but now it seems more remarkable that I can see the president’s undershirt.

He had come to my local cafe to meet with five young people. According to White House background, provided to me after he left, they met to discuss how to get more 18-34 year-olds to sign up for the coverage under the Affordable Care Act. (The law depends on 18-34 year-olds signing up for healthcare.) One of the five was a navigator, someone employed to help families sign up; another helped explain the law at a mall over the holidays.

They talked about health care stuff for the first 20 minutes. The five shared their experiences, and some of them spoke quietly, so I couldn’t hear them that well.

At one point the president said, “Now, this isn’t public yet.” I perked up.

“Thirty percent of somethingsomethingsomething is mumblemumble,” he said.

I didn’t hear. I had failed as a journalist, so I went to the bathroom.

Failure

When I got back, they were talking about music. Circumstantial evidence indicates that, while I was in the bathroom, they talked about Beyoncé. 

The conversation moved on. They talked about cell phones, and Obama mentioned how Malia did not receive one until she was 16. One of the young people pointed out that, unlike most parents, the president could always argue that he’d know where she was.

They segued to talking about social media (I couldn’t hear their exact words). Now, I thought. Now I could do tech journalism.

The president said something—I could not hear all of it—about new social media apps that were for messaging, new apps that only somethingsomething’d for eight seconds.

“Snapchat,” said one of the young people.

The president made a comment about how different apps were now popular. Someone—it might have been the president—said the word “Instagram.” 

I guess that they were talking about the difficulty of doing political outreach on Snapchat or one of this newer, less textual ilk? I’m not sure. Then the president drops this:

“It seems like they don’t use Facebook anymore,” he said.

Facebook is so uncool even the president of the United States knows it.

I am not sure who the they is. A White House representative I talked to afterward hypothesized that it might be the 18 to 34 year-olds whom the President hopes will sign up for the healthcare law.  Maybe it was the third-person singular, gender-neutral pronoun. I don’t know.

It is a question of high hermeneutic importance.

The Only Other Thing I Overheard

Michelle has begun watching Scandal.

“It’s not that exciting,” said the president, of the White House. Staffers “don’t have enough time to engage in too much scandalous behavior.”

Then the meal was over. Obama got up and took a photo with the five. He put his jacket back down, walked past me, and greeted the rest of the restaurant’s customers. He turned at the end, said good-bye to the baby again as he passed (tousling his hair), rounded the corner, and was gone.

A crowd had gathered across the street. It cheered as Obama got back in his SUV.

After

The Millennial closest to Obama, and therefore also closest to me, asked who I was. They asked me if I had photo-bombed. I had not, really. In this, I missed the greatest photobombing opportunity of my life.

I had, however, won Snapchat. Forever.

By Marty Graham

SAN DIEGOThu Jan 16, 2014 8:26pm EST

The case, which raises new questions about distracted driving, made headlines when technology entrepreneur Cecilia Abadie, one of thousands of people testing the device for Google Inc, was stopped for speeding in October by the California Highway Patrol on Interstate 15 in San Diego.

The officer then gave her a second citation for using a visual "monitor" in her car while driving, in what the Highway Patrol said was a violation of state law.

Court Commissioner John Blair said he was dismissing the citation against Abadie, 44, on the grounds of a lack of proof that her Google Glass was turned on at the time.

"There is no testimony it was operating or in use while Ms. Abadie was driving," he said during the hearing.

Blair also dismissed a speeding ticket against Abadie, because an expert did not appear to testify to the calibration on the officer's speedometer. Blair said there was a lack of evidence to establish Abadie's driving speed.

Google Glass, which projects a small screen in the corner of a wearer's eye, is expected to become a major catalyst for what many believe to be the next big trend in mobile, wearable computing devices.

Developers are already crafting apps to try to position themselves if the devices, which can be voice- or motion-activated, prove popular with consumers. Abadie said she is developing such apps, and she said she transmitted live video of herself talking to reporters outside court on Thursday.

EXPLORER ON A MISSION

Highway Patrol Officer Keith Odle testified that he estimated Abadie had been driving her Toyota Prius at 85 miles per hour (137 km/h) in a 65 mph (105 km/h) zone when he pulled her over.

Odle said he had not been planning to cite Abadie for wearing Google Glass, but that he did so because of her reaction to his questions. "She got a little argumentative about whether or not it was legal for her to wear them," he said.

Abadie, a Southern California entrepreneur who works independently to develop Web and mobile apps, gained widespread attention in October when she quickly posted the news of her ticket on social media.

"A cop just stopped me and gave me a ticket for wearing Google Glass while driving!" she wrote on the Google Plus social networking site.

She said outside the court after the ruling on Thursday that Google Glass does not give drivers any "blind spot."

"I believe we have to start experimenting with devices like this," Abadie told reporters. "As a hands-free device it is safer than a cell phone."

Blair had said during the hearing that Google Glass "falls within the purview and intent" of the ban on driving with a monitor enacted by the California legislature.

The device is not yet available for sale to the general public, although the company is testing the product with the help of thousands of so-called "Explorers" who have been given early access to the technology. It is expected to come to market later this year.

"Glass is built to connect you more with the world around you, not distract you from it," Google said in a statement.

Explorers should "always use Glass responsibly and put their safety and the safety of others first," the company said.

(Additional reporting by Alexei Oreskovic in San Francisco; Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Sharon Bernstein, Cynthia Johnston, Ken Wills and Eric Walsh)

The criminal jury trial is a vital check against prosecutorial excesses, police misconduct, and arbitrary state power. But over the last three decades, criminal justice policy has transferred enormous amounts of power to prosecutors and away from juries and judges. Judges once had wide discretion in weighing the facts and circumstances of each case prior to sentencing. Mandatory sentencing laws give control of sentencing proceedings to prosecutors instead, leading one federal judge to describe the process of sentencing someone to years in prison as having “all the solemnity of a driver’s license renewal and [taking] a small fraction of the time.”

For example, when United States Army veteran Ronald Thompson fired two warning shots into the ground, he intended to scare off his friend’s grandson, who was attempting to enter her home after she denied him entry. He never imagined his actions would leave him facing decades in prison.

He was charged“with four counts of aggravated assault with a firearm” under Florida’s 10-20-Life mandatory minimum gun law. Prosecutors used the minimum twenty years in prison he faced to try to avoid a trial by asking him to accept three years in prison. While the deal remained on the table throughout the trial, he was ultimately convicted and sentenced to twenty years in prison.

Ronald Thompson’s case, and so many others, reveals that prosecutors don’t think that twenty-year sentences for shooting into the ground constitute justice. Why else would the plea bargain stay on the table.

The case is an example of the trial penalty in action. Utilized by prosecutors to scare accused citizens into pleading guilty, the trial penalty threatens severe sentencing outcomes if found guilty at trial compared to the plea. And the the last thirty plus years have shown that it works.

Prior to 1980, the percentage of cases resolved by guilty pleas was anything but consistent. But since then the trend has risen sharply from seventy-seven percent to, according to a recent Supreme Court case opinion, “[n]inety-seven percent of federal convictions and ninety-four percent of state convictions are the result of guilty pleas.”

By passing laws with fixed-minimum sentences for almost all crimes, legislatures, beginning largely in the 1980′s, removed discretion over offender sentencing from judges and handed prosecutors the power to determine which sentence a defendant will receive.Judges have no power to override the mandatory prison terms these laws carry, regardless of the individual circumstances of each case. This is especially troubling because of the overly punitive penalties these laws carry. Even worse, when a case does goes to trial, the jury doesn’t even know how much time a defendant faces.

The prosecutor alone chooses whether to charge the accused, which charges to file, whether to drop charges, and whether or not a plea on lesser charges will be offered, outside of any judicial oversight. These unilateral discretionary decisions“often predetermine the outcome of a case since the sentencing judge has little, if any, discretion in determining the length, nature, and severity of the sentence.” This results in radically different sentencing outcomes between the sentence a defendant receives who loses at trial compared to one who pleads guilty.

These enormously different outcomes effectively coerce criminal defendants into pleading guilty. Mandatory minimum sentencing laws give prosecutors the leverage and superior bargaining position needed to coax accused citizens, many of whom are completely innocent, into surrendering a fundamental right for a perceived benefit– a significantly lesser sentence for forgoing a jury trial and pleading guilty.

Well before the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were even an idea, the jury trial was held as an inherent right – representing a great protection against government oppression and tyranny. And in the 1968 case of Duncan v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court affirmed and made clear that the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial is absolutely fundamental to the bedrock principles of liberty and justice, stating that the jury is “an inestimable safeguard against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor . . . .”

So what does it say about the current state of American criminal justice where those who exercise this fundamental right are actively punished for doing so, while others are coerced from exercising it altogether?

With an out-of-control prison population and burgeoning criminal codes full of laws that punish a host of non-violent consensual behavior, it’s far past time to end the one-size-fits-all mandatory minimum sentencing laws the 1980′s drug war fervor brought us. Doing so will allow the role of the criminal jury trial to at least be restored to a modicum of its intended status – a check on the largely unconstrained and arbitrary police power of the state. A truly free society requires it.  As 19th century American intellectual Lysander Spooner so aptly wrote back in 1852, “if the jury have no right to judge of the justice of a law of the government, they plainly can do nothing to protect the people against the oppressions of the government; for there are no oppressions which the government may not authorize by law.”​

The page students inside Yale saw when attempting to access a student creating online class planning service earlier this week. (CourseTable.com)

A pair of Yale students and brothers, Peter Xu and Harry Yu, built a site that let students plan out their schedules while comparing class evaluations and teacher ratings for the past three semesters. Thousands of Yale students used it, apparently finding it a better resource than similar sites run by the university. But this week, as the "shopping period" where students are able to try out classes and finalize their schedules began, Yale not only blocked the Web site from campus networks, labeling it "malicious," but forced the brothers to take it down or face disciplinary action.

"We found that it was really hard to find and compare courses when we first arrived at Yale," said Yu,"and given the amount of freedom that Yale gives students to take courses, we found it really frustrating." So they created their own personal tool to help them use average class and professor evaluations to make informed decisions about their course selections.

The information they used was already available to students through internal systems. But there was no centralized database that allowed students to perform comparisons at a glance. So they started collecting information from internal resources and programmed an interface that would compile everything in one place. As it evolved, they thought that other students might be interested in their system as well. So they launched it as "Yale Bluebook+" -- a riff on an officially sanctioned course planning tool. And they were right: According to their data, 2,094 students have used the site, with 1,871 students creating worksheets last semester. That's a significant chunk of Yale's roughly 5,000-person undergraduate student body.

As first reported by the Yale Daily News, representatives of the registrar's office contacted Yu and Xu last week asking how they had obtained their data, with whose permission, and where it was hosted. Officials also expressed concerns that the site was making course evaluation information available to individuals not authorized to view the information. While the site required Yale credentials to log in, it did not have a way to sort between undergrad students and other members of the academic community. In later correspondence, the administration cited concerns about the prominence of evaluation information and unauthorized use of the words "Yale," "Bluebook," and the Yale logo.

At a meeting Friday, the brothers say they were told they needed to shut down the site due to these issues. "They seemed to be panicking a little bit about it," Xu said in an interview. But the brothers countered with proposals aimed at addressing the university's concerns and they rushed to implement changes over the weekend -- including changing the name to CourseTable and adjusting how they displayed rating data. "We thought we could work out all of these issues," says Xu, "up until Sunday night."

Then, without further warning, Yale blocked the page from university networks -- effectively cutting off students who intended to use their service to guide their shopping period. Xu and Yu said they scrambled to e-mail out saved worksheets to students and tried to get in contact with the administration to talk through the situation further. In response, they received a written notice that they would be referred to the Executive Committee for disciplinary action if the site was not taken down by 5 p.m. Tuesday.

So they took down the site. "We're disappointed, but we're afraid of compromising our degree," said Yu. Both students expressed their continued affection for the institution, but they also saw its actions as contradicting the values like a "drive to promote innovation" and "academic freedom" that they believe are central to their education at Yale.

The brothers were especially surprised that the university was unwilling to cooperate with them because the administration's existing course selection software — which Yu and Xu's product was meant to improve — was itself a student-created product, eventually bought out by the university. In fact, the brothers say, the original Yale Bluebook used some of the same methods to scrape its data, and they worked with a member of the app's team to help create the process.

But their conversations with the administration and the content of the sites led them to believe the sticking point was the way they displayed course evaluations, which was different from Yale Bluebook because it averaged the ratings and made them easily comparable. "The registrar said that originally when Yale faculty agreed to put that information online, they didn't want it to be displayed that prominently," said Yu.

The brothers don't find that a very compelling reason to limit the way the information could be displayed. "First, we don't think that helps professors that much,"said Xu, saying that the ratings for most classes were positive. "And second, we think it hurts students by limiting their ability to understand information about the classes they want to take."

But the administration appears to disagree: A response sent by the Yale IT department to students who filed tickets about the blocking of the site specifically cited the its use of ratings as among the reasons the site was blocked, saying "the design of the site focused on a few ratings never intended to be used for this purpose." It added, "Yale takes advising and course selection seriously and has given students digital resources to help them design their schedules, such as syllabi, course descriptions, and thoughtful narrative responses written by students."

Yale declined Washington Post interview requests for this story, but did share a short statement about the situation from Yale College Dean Mary Miller. The statement did not directly address their blocking of the website or the threat of disciplinary action, or the site's use of course ratings.

"Yale's policy on free expression and free speech entitles no one to appropriate a Yale resource and use it as their own," the statement read. It further stated its main priority at this time was supporting its own resources, "not others created independently and without the university's cooperation or permission," and that "all the information on the website remains remains available to students on the Yale site."

Since the blocking of the Web site and the forced takedown, the brothers say they have received "radio silence" in response to attempts to meet in person with the dean's or the registrar's office -- a situation they find frustrating, but not particularly surprising. "They want this to blow over," argued Yu. "In another few weeks, students will be enrolled in classes and it won't be a be a big deal anymore."

But they still believe "Yale as a whole remains a great place for technology. " And they say they've received a lot of support in conversations with faculty and members of the administration outside of the dean's and registrar's office. Plus their online petition asking the university to allow the site has attracted over 500 signatures. "We think that Yale as a whole does not try to stifle innovation," they explain. "Rather, the overly cautious dean's and registrar's office has just really mishandled this specific case."

Related -- GALLERY: They were teachers before they celebrities

GALLERY: 19 photos that make you appreciate America

Announcing The Matasano/Square CTF

We've teamed up with Square to run a joint Capture The Flag contest.

What is it?

Your target is a small embedded device; a microcontroller running compiled C code.

You get access to the device, disassembly of its code, and a low-level debugger and assembler. We "run" the devices, you interact with them via a vanilla web interface.

At each level, you'll get a simple input that, owing to some C software bug, can be used to own the target. You'll use the debugger to reverse the target, find the input, and then deliver it to a "production" instance to beat the level.

You'll face a series of revisions of the target, starting from "comically broken" and proceeding vendor-fix by vendor-fix through basic memory corruption, stack overflows, randomization, memory protection schemes, allocator vulnerabilities, and DRM-style software protection.

All this happens on an architecture you've probably used, but likely never have written any code for. Have you ever reverse-engineered a program from its assembly code to understand what it's doing? That'll happen too.

We're keeping a leaderboard, by completion time, CPU cycles, and input size. Part of the fun of a challenge like this is to see how others are doing in real-time.

If you've done a lot of exploit development, you won't have much trouble. But we hope the real fun is reserved for the people who haven't: you'll get to play with concepts that, in the real world, involve tedious toolchain installs and comprehensive knowledge of the memory layouts of gigantic browser library codebases. You won't need any of that here: we're looking forward to seeing people who have never written a line of assembly beating people who've been doing this for years.

How do I start?

Visit microcorruption.com.

Assuming the reports are right, Obama won’t dismantle a single N.S.A. program, not even those that have been involved in spying on the leaders of America’s allies and hacking into the databases of companies like Google and Facebook without any court approval. He won’t end the practice by which the N.S.A and other government agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, can obtain access to Americans’ data records simply by issuing a so-called National Security Letter, which doesn’t require the rubber stamp of the FISA court.

“If the speech is anything like what is being reported,” Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Times, “the President will go down in history for having retained and defended George W. Bush’s surveillance programs rather than reformed them.” Evidently, the President’s only concessions to privacy concerns will be the establishment of a public advocate in the FISA court, the introduction of new rules modestly restricting the number of metadata records that the N.S.A. can look at, and the recognition that overseas citizens have some limited privacy rights.

It is frequently reported that Obama, a former lecturer in constitutional law, has been shocked to learn that so many Americans don’t trust him on this issue. A front-page piece in today’s Times, by Peter Baker, repeats this suggestion, quoting his advisers. But isn’t the public’s skepticism perfectly justified? Having run for President in 2008 as a strident critic of the Bush Administration’s intelligence ambitions, and not hesitating to label some of its domestic spying programs illegal, the President has emerged as the most prominent enabler and defender of the current system.

Opinion polls show that almost two-thirds of Americans don’t like the federal government collecting data about online communications and Internet-browsing histories. The President says it’s necessary to protect the national interest. Technology companies express outrage about the N.S.A. breaking into their data centers and collecting information at will. The President does nothing to stop it. Civil-liberties advocates say that, at the very least, intelligence and law-enforcement agencies should have to seek court approval before they can order telephone and Internet companies to hand over personal information. Obama, according to the Times, has “decided not to require court approval in every case, but might still require it in some cases.”

In his speech on Friday, the President will probably follow his usual tack and seek to portray himself as a reasonable man hewing to the middle ground between opposing views. In this instance, though, such a depiction doesn’t withstand inspection.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whom Obama appointed to the Supreme Court, is a moderate. She has questioned the official line that phone and Internet logs, as business records, aren’t covered by the Fourth Amendment right to privacy. In a 2012 case, she wrote,“I would ask whether people reasonably expect that their movements will be recorded and aggregated in a manner that enables the Government to ascertain, more or less at will, their political and religious beliefs, sexual habits, and so on.” Patrick Leahy, the Democratic Senator from Vermont, is a moderate. He has co-sponsored a bill that would end the N.S.A.’s bulk collection of metadata. Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former director of policy planning at the State Department, is a moderate. She has called Snowden a “whistle-blower.”

It would be a bit of a stretch to describe all five members of the president’s Review Group as moderates on this issue: one of them, Michael J. Morell, is a former acting director of the C.I.A. I noted last month, when the Review Group’s report was published, that it didn’t go far enough in many areas, such as restricting the N.S.A.’s hacking, and preventing it from spying on aid agencies and other harmless international groups. But it did confront the central issue of whether the government should routinely requisition the personal communications records of virtually every American. And it acknowledged the obvious: “some of the authorities that were expanded or created in the aftermath of September 11th unduly sacrifice fundamental interests in individual liberty, personal privacy, and democratic governance.”

Obama used to make this argument all the time. But when Snowden presented him with the chance to do something about it, he didn’t do very much. Why not? One possibility is that he was always more sympathetic to the Bush Administration’s policies than he let on, and he was just using the civil-liberties argument to gee up his liberal base. Perhaps, as Baker suggests, sitting in the Oval Office and having access to daily intelligence reports changed his views. Or maybe he fears being second-guessed if he makes substantial reforms and there’s another terrorist attack.

The second and third explanations sound the most plausible. In this area, as in others, the President is adopting a safety-first attitude. From his perspective, that’s understandable. Some, though not I, would say it’s justifiable. But please, let’s not hear any more about how we can trust him to protect our privacy.

Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty.

Many people I’ve talked to say managing their diabetes is like having a part-time job. Glucose levels change frequently with normal activity like exercising or eating or even sweating. Sudden spikes or precipitous drops are dangerous and not uncommon, requiring round-the-clock monitoring. Although some people wear glucose monitors with a glucose sensor embedded under their skin, all people with diabetes must still prick their finger and test drops of blood throughout the day. It’s disruptive, and it’s painful. And, as a result, many people with diabetes check their blood glucose less often than they should.

Over the years, many scientists have investigated various body fluids—such as tears—in the hopes of finding an easier way for people to track their glucose levels. But as you can imagine, tears are hard to collect and study. At Google[x], we wondered if miniaturized electronics—think: chips and sensors so small they look like bits of glitter, and an antenna thinner than a human hair—might be a way to crack the mystery of tear glucose and measure it with greater accuracy.

We’re in discussions with the FDA, but there’s still a lot more work to do to turn this technology into a system that people can use. We’re not going to do this alone: we plan to look for partners who are experts in bringing products like this to market. These partners will use our technology for a smart contact lens and develop apps that would make the measurements available to the wearer and their doctor. We’ve always said that we’d seek out projects that seem a bit speculative or strange, and at a time when the International Diabetes Federation (PDF) is declaring that the world is “losing the battle” against diabetes, we thought this project was worth a shot.

Posted by Brian Otis and Babak Parviz, project co-founders

Hoefler & Frere-Jones, the preeminent digital type foundry, has broken out into civil war.

Type designer Tobias Frere-Jones claims he has been cheated out of his half of the company by his business partner, Jonathan Hoefler. In a blistering lawsuit filed today in New York City, Frere-Jones says he was duped into transferring ownership of several fonts, including the world-famous Whitney, to Hoefler & Frere-Jones (HFJ) on the understanding that he would own 50% of the company.

“In the most profound treachery and sustained exploitation of friendship, trust and confidence, Hoefler accepted all of the benefits provided by Frere-Jones while repeatedly promising Frere-Jones that he would give him the agreed equity, only to refuse to do so when finally demanded,” the suit claims. Here’s the full complaint:

Hoefler couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. Messages left at the offices of HFJ weren’t immediately returned.

Frere-Jones joined the company that would come to be called HFJ in 1999. The suit portrays Frere-Jones as the firm’s design genius, and Hoefler as the business and marketing man. In public, the pair have generally been regarded as equals. But the contract that made it so, according to the lawsuit, was never written down and signed. Frere-Jones claims he had an oral contract with Hoefler that entitles him to half the company.

The dispute came to a head last year. ”Stop it. I’m working on it. Stop harassing me,” Hoefler allegedly wrote to Frere-Jones last summer. The suit claims, “On October 21, 2013, for the first time, Hoefler explicitly reneged on his personal agreement to transfer 50% of HTF to Frere-Jones.” (HTF refers to the Hoefler Type Foundry, the company’s original name.)

Frere-Jones’s lawyer, Fredric Newman, a senior partner at Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney, said in a phone interview, ”The two partners tried to resolve it, but couldn’t, and so Mr. Frere-Jones had no choice but to sue to enforce his rights.”

The firm is perhaps the most important type designer of the 21st century. Its fonts have graced the branding of billion-dollar companies, and the covers of glossy magazines. Movie-trailer warning labels in the United States are set in Gotham, an HFJ typeface that was also famously used by Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

GothamHoefler & Frere-Jones

HFJ’s typefaces have won admiration from designers by taking advantage of the limitless environment of digital design. Where most typefaces only had two weights and two styles in one width, HFJ became known for creating typefaces with several weights and several styles in several widths that included advanced features like alternate characters, and support for multiple alphabets.

WhitneyHoefler & Frere-Jones