I think you are being paranoid if you refused the permission level settings when the linked-in facebook app connection screen came up. But watch out for selective memory; don't rule out the possibility that you gave permission. Also possible that you didn't think you were giving permission, but were, because the facebook connect privacy options are needlessly (intentionally, IMHO) obfuscated. I'm just postulating of course, no idea or accusations regarding you did.

But it's heavily in FB's best interest to respect the privacy settings they offer, particularly with regard to 3rd parties. Their stock is still suffering, they have earned a very bad public image as untrustworthy, and I predict legislation targeting them is almost certainly coming down the line. Even anti-trust action against them isn't that outlandish in a few years assuming they continue to integrate more and more of the population and integrate their 3rd party services more and more. FB connect is on a fast course to be the primary authentication method of the internet, at least in the United States.

IANAL, but I doubt being shady with this information would result in anything more serious than a class action suite. But the stakes are too high for them to want to risk that intentionally. All of their privacy screw ups have been due to incompetence.

And LinkedIn is a big competitor for them! It is in a different niche, but it's still a place people can go and do social networking other than FB. Less eyeball time on FB is less ad revenue.

So yeah. Put the tinfoil back in the drawer my man. :)

Loving the Halloween hubski theme. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3RAI8Ntamw

Pretty good tldr summary of the singularity theory. For my part I was first exposed to it through "The Age of Spiritual Machines" which I stumbled into after listening to Our Lady Peace's concept album of the same name. The band even recruited Kurzweil to voice several excerpts. The interesting thing to me is that album has a fairly dark tone to it. This is in stark contrast to the very optimistic outlook Kurzweil argues for in his books.

I would consider myself a 'believer' in the concept of the singularity, although as more time goes on I become more skeptical of Kurzweil's timeline. His predictions continue to be quite spot on, so maybe it's just the inevitable conservatism that comes with age or the difficulty of understanding/accepting exponential trends that humans seem to have, but as neuroscience advances we seem to keep finding more complexity to the human brain rather than less. The rate at which we find new questions outpaces the rate at which we find answers. Such is science.

At the same time we seem to be hitting some limitations in our advancement of microprocessor technology. Laws of physics type limitations. We can't keep scaling processing potential vertically so now we are going horizontally. Given the difficulty of massively parallel programming and the lack of benefits it poses to the vast majority of consumer applications the rate of advancement seems to have slowed down to me. But again, maybe I'm just getting older and more jaded? :)

I do think I will live to see the singularity though, even if it misses it's 2040's deadline. Kurzweil's book "Live Long Enough to Live Forever" makes a pretty compelling argument as such.

There are a massive shitload of interesting moral questions that will arise from all of this. AI civil rights. When you copy your complete consciousness into a machine which 'you' is you? Is deleting copies of a transcended consciousness murder? In a world with no resource scarcity how will we occupy our time? Etc etc etc...

It's an exciting topic.

The definition of the singularity is that we don't know what how our world and civilization (both technologically and socially) will be affected by higher than human intelligence AI. Of course we don't know for sure anything about the future, but I suppose we are reasonably good at having some kind of an idea, as Kurzweil's track record shows.

The one thing that we can reasonably predict is the impact will be pretty massive. The invention of agriculture type massive. Anything from Terminator-esque genocide to essentially heaven on earth is conceivable. Guiding this toward a beneficial outcome for the human race this is exactly the the point of The Singularity Institute

Kurzweil's books "The Age of Spiritual Machines" and "The Singularity is Near" take the basic format of spending half the book explaining the singularity theory and making a case for it's validity, and the second half talking about how crazy awesome the outcome could potentially be. He's pretty optimistic about it and makes good arguments for his optimism. They are great reads.

Centralized communication systems may always lead to censorship and snooping. And for-profit centralized communication systems? Seems inevitable.

It's gotta be distributed, encrypted, and open source.

Using this with Hubski sounds like good times to me. :)

edit: Arg it's chrome only. I'm on firefox. I wonder if there is something similar that is cross-browser?

It's pictures of fender benders like this one which make me most nervous when I am riding on my motorcycle. At times I have ridden somewhat recklessly, but even if I am being an entirely safe and responsible defensive rider something as common as a fender bender could be the end of my life. It's scary.

One big reason I wish Texas would legalize lane splitting. If I could crawl up to the front between two lanes when traffic is backed up at a red light I would be protected by a fortress of a steel. That it would ease congestion and shorten my ride time are nice bonuses too.

I've only been one accident as the driver. Not at fault. Was sitting at a stop light in the far right lane with cars behind and ahead of me also at a stop when a distracted lady on a cell phone decided she needed to turn right and turned into my stopped car. Very low speed collision, no injury.

Haha very interesting, I learned something new.

Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game" was the first to pop into my mind. Card did another series (The Maker Series) which is another great one. There is a Korean Historical Drama called "Jumong" that I would have to choose as well.

Side note: I suggest re-evaluating your view on the misuse of 'epic'. The common meaning has certainly expanded. Third definition from Urban Dictionary: "Being unusually large, powerful or wonderful. On a grander scale than the modified word would otherwise imply."

The cool thing about language is there is no 'correct', just consensus. It keeps evolving.

I love this idea.

Digital Antique is a local Austin band that needs more love. Wonderful cinematic/post-rock feel with three classical strings in addition to the standard rock setup. Most of the band work day jobs as music teachers, which makes me love them more for some reason.

Thanks, that was a good read. On a side note I decided to think twice about my post. Sadly

I would guess it's due to young voters and educated voters disproportionately voting for Democrats. They seem more likely to even be aware of the ability to vote early and more likely to have difficulty getting time off on voting day (more likely to work 'shit jobs'.)

"It's convenient" mostly sums it up I'd say. Some strong Republican demographics (retired for instance) seem less likely to be aware of this option or find it no more convenient to vote on election day than early.

edit: This is 100% postulation.

The article does say a condition of surrender is for the kid to get psychological help. I've got to applaud the author for his actions. That is done serious wisdom to seek to help rather than destroy someone after that. I don't know if ir would be capable.

To quickly answer the questions you posed: It's up to you if it's worth the effort, but for me it would not be. The entire value of a social network is who you can connect to. I actually have made new friends online using Facebook (as well as other social services, but Facebook would be the most 'fruitful').

I am a fairly avid user of Facebook. I upload photos very regularly. I check in at locations. I tag people and am tagged by people. Nearly all events I organize and/or attend are through Facebook. After text messages Facebook is my primary method of direct communication and it is my main method of passive/broadcast communication.

To say it's a highly integrated part of my life is an understatement. It's both the primary hub of my social life as well as my life journal. The life journal aspect has been so useful to me that I will occasionally post entries visible only to myself. Why keep a separate journal elsewhere, when I can just augment a timeline of nearly everything I am doing?

About a year and a half ago I started to get interested in EDM (electronic dance music.) Finding out about all the local events was difficult at first. I also quickly recognized that the local EDM scene was fairly small and status driven. Being socially connected (high status) had a lot of utility value. So I tackled both problems by starting a new Facebook group dedicated to promoting local EDM events and artists. At first I tried making connections the old fashioned way of meeting people at events/clubs; even going so far as to make little business cards for my group. Quickly I realized I could 'friend spider' my way into a populous group. I would just friend request with people in the scene and add them to the group, always with a polite message... better to ask forgiveness than permission. Quickly the 'people you may know' sped up this process. If it said I had 100+ mutual friends I knew it was someone who would accept my request and was involved in the scene.

In the end I have over a thousand 'friends', of which I have met perhaps 200 and would consider perhaps 50 real friends. But my scheme worked. I now know everything going on and gained enough status to accomplish some things that would have been impossible otherwise. On reflection I wish I had done all this with a secondary profile and left my primary profile to only connect with people I am close with, but the signal-to-noise ratio is surprisingly easy to manage when you don't mind hiding posts.

After all that you might think I am a fan of Facebook. I'm not. I don't trust them and I don't like how reliant I am on them. If my profile were deleted it would have a big impact. I know I am the product being sold to the real customers (advertisers) and privacy is a secondary concern. I would love to switch to a secure decentralized social network such as what Diaspora promised. Something which allows me control my own data.

But that won't happen. Facebook is here to stay and thus I will continue to be a part of the machine. The reason is pretty simple. Facebook has the social graph. Moving a social graph of Facebook's size is an event I think impossible without something drastic happening. The value in a social network is the social graph.

I didn't buy an FB stock yet, but that's because I don't have any spare money to gamble with at the moment. If I did and I was looking for a good long term investment I would feel pretty comfortable dumping it in FB. Anyone who thinks a company that knows that much information about that many people is not going to be able to turn that into a huge profit center strikes me as short sighted. I'm not talking about them selling data to other companies either... Eventually I think Facebook will know what you want to buy before you do. Google has good reason to be afraid.