Sunday, April 20, 2014

You can tell when diplomacy is breaking down – you start hearing the language of school yard fights: “He made me do it!”
After Russian moves in Ukraine, Eastern Europe shudders, NATO to increase presence
For decades, NATO has expanded inexorably outward, taking on new members and new missions that have carried it far beyond its original mandate in Western Europe and deep into the former Soviet sphere.
But Russia’s intervention in Ukraine has sent shivers down the spines of Eastern European countries from Estonia in the north to Bulgaria in the south. NATO’s newest members have been left feeling vulnerable and wondering whether the world’s most powerful military alliance is truly committed to their defense.
Concerns have been especially acute in the three Baltic nations that were once part of the Soviet empire and now fear that they could be next on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hit list.
NATO has long resisted placing much of a footprint in the Baltics, worried that doing so would jeopardize ever-precarious cooperation with Moscow.
Now that that cooperation is on life support, NATO announced this week that it plans to substantially boost its air, sea and ground presence in the Baltic states.


It just goes to show that once the (genie/incriminating stuff) is out of the bottle, you can't put it back. Making a fuss simply triggers the “Streisand effect.
Turkey’s embattled premier made a formal complaint to the country’s top court on Friday, saying secret recordings spread on the Internet were a violation of his family’s rights.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the Constitutional Court that the failure of social media websites to remove leaked recordings featuring him and his family were a violation of their right to privacy and freedom of communication.
Read more on Turkish Press.
[From the article:
Erdogan's government blocked Twitter and YouTube last month after they were used to spread audio recordings implicating the prime minister and his inner circle in a vast corruption scandal that emerged in December.
One of the recordings appeared to feature Erdogan and his son talking about hiding large amounts of money. The prime minister has denied allegations of corruption and says some of the tapes have been manipulated.


“Statistical Selfie,” I love it! If you can analyze your history, think what the NSA can do!
This Beautiful Browser Add-On Gives You Interesting Stats About Your Browsing
Is there anything more interesting on than statistics? Not the school type, the Internet type. Following your own activity is fascinating, so it’s no wonder that tools that track your Gmail statistics, blog statistics and even Facebook statistics are so popular.
Surfkollen: Get Your Surf Selfie
It analyzes the last 7 days of your activity, and presents the results on a slick, colorful graph. Unfortunately, Surfkollen can only analyze the last 7 days...
… If you’re looking for a service that offers a bit more meat, Give stats dashboard RescueTime a go.


This will eventually grow into a great resource for my students, but it is still a bit clunky to navigate.
Digital Public Library of America Celebrates Its First Birthday
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on April 19, 2014
“This week marks the one-year anniversary of the launch of the Digital Public Library of America, a groundbreaking all-digital library that brings together millions of items from America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. In celebration, DPLA is proud to announce the addition of six major new partners and other significant milestones that attest to the tremendous momentum the project has as it enters its second year. The New York Public Library (NYPL) this week expanded access to the full breadth of its digital collections through its partnership with DPLA, a major increase over its initial contribution of 14,000 records at DPLA’s launch. Over 1 million digitized items from throughout the Library’s research holdings are available, significantly increasing DPLA’s offerings by nearly 20%. The arrival of these new partners, as well as the addition of new items from NYPL, announced for the first time today, further underscore a year of remarkable forward progress for the young non-profit organization.
[Some of these Apps are useful right now: http://dp.la/apps

(Related) This is how Google does it.
– discover exhibits and collections from museums and archives all around the world. Explore cultural treasures in extraordinary detail, from hidden gems to masterpieces. Create your own galleries and share favorite finds with friends.


The ethics of artificial intelligence (bad programming?) What could possibly go wrong?
If the Robots Kill Us, It's Because It's Their Job
In the movie Transcendence, which opens in theaters on Friday, a sentient computer program embarks on a relentless quest for power, nearly destroying humanity in the process.
The film is science fiction but a computer scientist and entrepreneur Steven Omohundro says that “anti-social” artificial intelligence in the future is not only possible, but probable, unless we start designing AI systems very differently today.
Omohundro’s most recent recent paper, published in the Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, lays out the case.
Autonomous technology and the greater human good

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