Wadler's Blog

Jews for Justice for Palestinians reports that on 16 December 2013, the American Studies Association voted, 66% to 33%, to join a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

Labels: Israel, Politics, University

As a Professor of Theoretical Computer Science, I have few qualifications that relate to the debate over independence for Scotland. But I do have one: like all who work in computing, I am familiar with FUD.

From The Jargon File:

FUD: /fuhd/, n.
Defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company: “FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering [Amdahl] products.” The idea, of course, was to persuade them to go with safe IBM gear rather than with competitors' equipment. This implicit coercion was traditionally accomplished by promising that Good Things would happen to people who stuck with IBM, but Dark Shadows loomed over the future of competitors' equipment or software. After 1990 the term FUD was associated increasingly frequently with Microsoft, and has become generalized to refer to any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon.

Much FUD has been slung by the opponents of independence.

The opening salvo was Jose Manuel Barroso's announcement, in December 2012, that an independent Scotland could not presume admission to the EU. Really? As Scottish Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said, “No serious person can argue that it is anything other than in the interests of the EU to keep Scotland in continuous membership”.  Barroso's statement was pure FUD (or bunkum), prompted by Cameron and by Spain's concern that Scottish independence might strengthen Basque aspirations.

Another example is when George Osborne and Danny Alexander reiterated, in April and November 2013, that Scotland could not rely on England agreeing to a currency union. Really? Yet even Alisdair Darling, head of Better Together, had aleady admitted in January 2013 that “Of course, it would be desirable to have a currency union... If you have independence, or separation, of course a currency union is logical.”  Alexander's and Osborne's statements don't go so far as to rule out monetary union; their purpose is to trowel FUD over the future of Scotland.

And when the SNP released its White Paper this month, it was another occasion for opponents to cast aspersions. Danny Alexander immediately claimed a £1.6 billion gap in funding. Really? Finance Secretary John Swinney responded “The No campaign's numbers are all over the place. If we go back to September, they were alleging a £32bn black hole in the finances of an independent Scotland. That came down in November to £10bn and we have now got a claim of £1.6bn. When you look at the Treasury analysis there is no account taken of the positive impact on the economy of any of the measures we have set out to boost growth within the Scottish economy.” Critics of the White Paper need not engage seriously with its premises. Spreading FUD is more effective.

Which is not to say that the future is certain. Any large change such as independence of necessity makes the future harder to predict. But we can see some consequences of independence clearly. We will avoid the £25bn cost of Trident. We will maintain free tuition for students, free prescriptions under the NHS, and free nursing for the elderly, benefits Scots enjoy and the English are denied, and which without independence we will face pressure to revoke. We will be free to maneuver in an uncertain future based on the vision of the Scots rather than the conservatism of the Tories.

Let's examine our choices clearly, and recognise FUD for what it is: the way the Powers That Be, whether IBM, Microsoft, or the UK Government, seek to keep others from considering better alternatives.

Labels: Politics, Scotland, Yes!

My sister spotted my likeness on a loaf of organic bread.

The real wages of academics have fallen by 13% since 2008, one of the largest sustained wage cuts any profession has suffered since the Second World War. 

University administrators offer 1% and refuse to negotiate. Faculty struck on 31 October and a second strike is called for 3 December.  As usual, our students put the case more eloquently than our union (the UCU, University and College Union). The leadership of EUSA (Edinburgh University Student Association) write:

Tensions are high within the University, as the second day of strike action draws nearer and many continue to work to rule. At such times we may hear the oft-quoted: “For the sake of students, don’t go on strike!”
We write on behalf of EUSA and our 32,000 members, to actively encourage you to take strike action. In the short term this will indeed affect our education, but the long term benefits are significantly vaster.
It is critical that students and staff struggle collectively. Not only to ensure that the sector continues to attract the highest calibre of people, but also so staff are able to focus on the job – not worrying about the rocketing cost of living. Needless to say, colleagues at the start of their career are hardest hit, including the thousands of EUSA’s postgraduate members who help teach.
The demands are reasonable, and the more effective the action now the sooner we can get back to the reason we’re all here – education.
It is for this reason that EUSA’s academic reps, who aren’t exactly our most radical bunch, have voted overwhelmingly in favour of actively supporting the on-going strike action. This decision has been met with broad approval from across the student body. Dozens of our reps and countless other students were out on the picket lines at 7am the other week, and have vowed to be there next time.We are actively encouraging our members not to cross the picket lines and to study from home.Education continues to be progressively marketised, fees continue to rise, power continues to shift away from ordinary staff and into the hands of the overpaid in Old College. At times like these it is vital that the university acts as a community and reasserts its stake over the corporate body. We do this by working together, and recognising that our struggles are in common.
So again, we implore you, on behalf of your students, not to undermine the strike. And hopefully we'll be seeing you on the picket lines!
In solidarity,Hugh, Nadia, Alex and KirstyThe EUSA Sabbatical Team

The photo above shows me picketing the Informatics Forum, surrounded by students during a previous strike in 2011.

Labels: Politics, UK, University

The following will be the subject of a talk at Edinburgh on Thursday. I won't attend, because it's Thanksgiving, but it looks interesting.

Amdahl's law for predicting the future of multicores considered harmful

 

B.H.H. Juurlink , C. H. Meenderinck, ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News, Volume 40 Issue 2, May 2012, Pages 1-9.

Several recent works predict the future of multicore systems or identify scalability bottlenecks based on Amdahl's law. Amdahl's law implicitly assumes, however, that the problem size stays constant, but in most cases more cores are used to solve larger and more complex problems. There is a related law known as Gustafson's law which assumes that runtime, not the problem size, is constant. In other words, it is assumed that the runtime on p cores is the same as the runtime on 1 core and that the parallel part of an application scales linearly with the number of cores. We apply Gustafson's law to symmetric, asymmetric, and dynamic multicores and show that this leads to fundamentally different results than when Amdahl's law is applied. We also generalize Amdahl's and Gustafson's law and study how this quantitatively effects the dimensioning of future multicore systems.

Labels: Computing, Concurrency

Please circulate the following to those who might be interested.

We are recruiting for one PhD student to work on design and implementation of programming languages. The post is on the project "From Data Types to Session Types: A Basis for Concurrency and Distribution".

The project has particular emphasis on putting theory into practice, embedding session types in a range of programming languages and applying them to realistic case studies. The research programme is joint between the University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow, and Imperial College London, and includes collaboration with Amazon, Cognizant, Red Hat, VMware, and the Ocean Observatories Initiative. We have a programme grant funded by EPSRC for five years from 20 May 2013.

The successful candidate will join a team responsible for extending the functional web programming language Links with session types to support concurrency and distribution. We will test our techniques by providing a library to access Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing infrastructure, and perform empirical experiments to assess how our language design impacts the performance of programmers.

You should possess an undergraduate degree in a relevant area, or being nearing completion of same, or have comparable experience. You should have evidence of ability to undertake research and communicate well. You should have a background in programming languages, including type systems, and programming and software engineering skills.

It is desirable for candidates to also have one or more of the following: a combination of theoretical and practical skills; experience of web programming or cloud programming; knowledge of the theory or practice of concurrent and distributed systems; knowledge of linear logic; or training in empirical measurement of programming tasks. We especially welcome applications from women and minorities.

We seek applicants at an international level of excellence. The School of Informatics at Edinburgh is among the strongest in the world, and Edinburgh is known as a cultural centre providing a high quality of life.

The successful candidate will receive a studentship covering tuition and subsistence. Students from the UK or EU are preferred, but studentships may be available for overseas students with strong qualifications. Applications should be received by 13 December to be eligible for the full range of scholarships. Consult the University of Edinburgh website for details of how to apply.

Enquiries can be addressed to: Prof. Philip Wadler (wadler@inf.ed.ac.uk), Principal Investigator of the ABCD project.

 http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/abcd-phd-advert.html

Labels: Computing, Distributed Computing, Functional Programming

Brent Yorgey captures the problem with many monad tutorials: they start with monads, rather than with concrete examples of the abstraction that monads capture. Dan Piponi's introduction to monads avoids this pitfall, as does, I hope, my reprise of The First Monad Tutorial, to be presented at YOW! in Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney next month.

Labels: Functional Programming, Haskell

Would Scotland be better off or worse off under independence? I've often been told that England subsidises Scotland, that Scotland already gets "more than its fair share", and that independence would bring that to an end. Is it true? Before buying independence, I'd better perform due diligence.

I'm in favour of independence, so I wanted to examine the figures provided by someone against.
I found this report by Brian Ashcroft, an emeritus professor of economics from Strathclyde, who argues Scots would be better off remaining with the English. (His collected posts on independence are here.) Examining his argument for dependence leads me to the conclusion that independence is essential.

The graph above, taken from Ashcroft's report, shows that in recent years, Scottish spending has exceeded Scottish revenues (including from oil). Uh oh! However, he mentions briefly, and a web search confirms (see graph below, from The Guardian) that UK spending has exceeded revenue by a far larger amount.

I think this shows that Scotland is in better shape for independence than the UK as a whole, because we would have less debt, assuming it was fairly allocated. Ashcroft argues that Scotland has gotten back what it contributed in oil revenue, so that everything is hunky dory, but that doesn't ring true if one considers that over the same period the UK margin of spending over revenue was far greater than Scotland's.

Ashcroft's most significant point, in my view, is that going forward Scotland may have to pay a higher rate for borrowing than the UK, but if the Scottish economy is better managed for growth than the UK, then this would pale into insignificance.

As the graphs show, we have a problem: but it is a smaller problem than the UK as a whole, and we have a better chance to solve it on our own. Better together? I don't think so.

Labels: Independence, Scotland, Yes!

Politizane's gripping video explains not just the wealth gap, but the understanding gap: most American's understand there is a gap between rich and poor, but vastly underestimate its size. Cory Doctorow writes:

This 2012 video from Politizane does an excellent job of illustrating the massive, well-documented gap between the wealth-distribution that Americans believe they have, the distribution they would favor (regardless of political affiliation), and what America actually has: a system that rewards CEOs at 380 times the rate of their average employees.

Spotted via Boing Boing.

Labels: Politics, US

The IEEE recently agreed a statement on appropriate use of bibliometrics.

Recently, citation counts and proxies thereof have risen in importance as fundamental elements in the determination of the scientific impact of entire departments or universities and research centers [8], funding evaluations of research proposals and the assessment of individual scientists for tenure and promotion [9], salary raises [10], or even to predict future career success [11]. While the first use is technically appropriate, provided it relies on data collected from a sufficiently large set to provide a statistically meaningful analysis, this condition is never satisfied when applied to individual scientists.

Labels: Computing

Perl users in our study performed notably poorly, not only performing less well than Quorum, but no better than a language designed largely by chance.While Perl has never had a particular reputation for clarity, the fact that our data shows that there is only a 55.2 % (1 - p) chance that Perl affords more accurate performance amongst novices than Randomo, a language that even we, as the designers, find excruciatingly difficult to understand, was very surprising. This is especially true, we think, considering we chose to test only the syntax in Perl that is relatively common across a number of languages (e.g., if statements, loops, functions, parameters). Considering that Java syntax, which many would arguably consider to be easier to understand than Perl, uses similar syntax, we are curious how it would perform. Given this interesting first result, we plan to test a number of additional languages using the same procedures. 

Labels: Programming Languages, Science

Yesterday, Andrew Parker, the new head of MI5, spoke out (though not by name) against Edward Snowden and the Guardian.

‘GCHQ intelligence has played a vital role in stopping many of the terrorist plots that MI5 and the police have tackled in the past decade.
‘It causes enormous damage to make public the reach and limits of GCHQ techniques. Such information hands the advantage to the terrorists.
'It is the gift they need to evade us and strike at will. Unfashionable as it might seem, that is why we must keep secrets secret, and why not doing so causes such harm.’

It's interesting to contrast the above with information emerging in the US about the efficacy of the programs whose existence Snowden leaked. Yochai Benkler writes in The Guardian:

In a 2 October hearing of the Senate judiciary committee, Senator Leahy challenged the NSA chief, General Keith Alexander:

Would you agree that the 54 cases that keep getting cited by the administration were not all plots, and that of the 54 only 13 had some nexus to the US? Would you agree with that, yes or no?

Alexander responded:

Yes.

Leahy then demanded that Alexander confirm what his deputy, Christopher Inglis, had said in the prior week's testimony: that there is only one example where collection of bulk data is what stopped a terrorist activity. Alexander responded that Inglis might have said two, not one.
In fact, what Inglis had said the week before was that there was one case "that comes close to a but-for example and that's the case of Basaaly Moalin". So, who is Moalin, on whose fate the NSA places the entire burden of justifying its metadata collection program? Did his capture foil a second 9/11?
A cabby from San Diego, Moalin had immigrated as a teenager from Somalia. In February, he was convicted of providing material assistance to a terrorist organization: he had transferred $8,500 to al-Shabaab in Somalia.

Labels: Politics, Security, UK, US

Stop Climate Chaos is running a campaign to double funding for cyclists and pedestrians in Scotland. Write to your SMP (takes under two minutes) and attend the demo at lunchtime on Wednesday 30 October.

Labels: Cycling, Politics, Scotland

Vrije University is hosting the SCRIPT Workshop.

Workshop on Secure Cloud and Reactive Internet Programming Technology

When and where?
The workshop will take place 12 to 13th of November 2013 at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Brussels, Belgium.

Theme and Goal of the Workshop
With the advent of JavaScript as a mature and powerful programming language running in the web browser, the web has changed for good from a mere document delivery service to a true distributed computing platform. Scripts now regularly use asynchronous message passing to send complex, structured data back and forth among distributed machines.

Unfortunately JavaScript was never designed to serve as a language to build advanced reliable and secure distributed applications. This has recently given rise to a number of language design initiatives that use the JavaScript infrastructure as an advanced virtual machine on top of which new web languages can be implemented.

We feel that we have only seen the tip of the iceberg on this subject and that many new language design initiatives will follow. The goal of the SCRIPT workshop (Secure Cloud and Reactive Internet Programming Technology) is to gather expert language designers and to let them present their view on the state of the art in this domain. SCRIPT is a workshop, not just a symposium, and the audience is more than welcome to actively engage with the speakers during and after the talks.

Speakers include:

Eelco Visser (Delft U., NL)
Daan Leijen (MS Research Redmond, US)
Manuel Serrano (INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, FR)
Adam Koprowski (Google, US)
Sébastien Doeraene (EPFL, CH)
Mario Südholt (Ecole des Mines de Nantes, FR)
Philip Wadler (U Edinborough, UK)
Gavin Bierman (MS Research Cambridge, UK)
Shriram Krishnamurthi (Brown U., US)
Adam Chlipala (MIT, US)

I'm looking forward to it!
 

Labels: Functional Programming, JavaScript

Charging Israel with 'apartheid' against Palestinians is controversial, so I was interested to discover this speech by Desmond Tutu from April 2002, reprinted in the Guardian under the title Apartheid in the Holy Land.

In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were Jewish people. They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression and evil. I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron of a Holocaust centre in South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to secure borders. 

What is not so understandable, not justified, is what it did to another people to guarantee its existence. I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.

Labels: Israel, Politics

Congratulations to Greg Morrisett, Tarmo Uustalu, and the entire team that assembled ICFP 2013. One session stood out in my mind, ''Fun in the Afternoon'', 15.30—16.30 Wednesday 25 September, chaired by Jeremy Gibbons.

• Fun with Semirings [Functional Pearl], Stephen Dolan
• Efficient Divide-and-Conquer Parsing of Practical Context-Free Languages, Jean-Philippe Bernardy and Koen Claessen
• Functional Geometry and the "Traité de Lutherie" [Functional Pearl], Harry Mairson

Labels: Functional Programming, Haskell, Scheme

And as if staring in XKCD wasn't enough (see previous entry), functional programming also features in Blondie, of all places. Does this mean FP has really gone mainstream? Spotted by Andrew Tolmach.

Labels: Comics, Functional Programming

XKCD tackled functional programming last week. The title text nails it: ''Functional programming combines the flexibility and power of abstract mathematics with the intuitive clarity of abstract mathematics.''

Was it a coincidence that this panel appeared on the last day of ICFP? ICFP was in Boston this year, and Munroe lives nearby in Somerville.

Labels: Comics, Functional Programming

38 Degrees writes:

In three weeks, MPs have their final vote on the gagging law - a law that would mean ordinary people, campaigning groups and charities would be severely restricted in how they can campaign in the year leading up to an election.

The most recent debate was last Tuesday, and we lost a key vote by only a whisker - if just 16 more government MPs had switched sides, a key part of the gagging law would have been defeated. [1]

The growing MP rebellion was in part thanks to you - tens of thousands of 38 Degrees members flooded MPs with emails, phone calls and tweets. 80 local groups of 38 Degrees members went to see their MP face-to-face. Together, we proved that ordinary people are prepared to fight for their right to campaign on important issues.

Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs are clearly feeling the heat: a growing number of them have started trying to fob us off. They’ve started making all sorts of claims about what the law will and won’t do. They say we have nothing to worry about.

Ros Baston, an independent political law and election solicitor, has taken a look at some of the most common lines MPs have been using when responding to 38 Degrees members and written a detailed document. [2] Here's 38 Degrees take on that document and why we still think we have something to worry about.

Myth 1: The new law will stop "big money" buying / influencing elections.
The government claims that this law is needed to stop US-style "super-PACs", run by millionaires, flooding the airwaves with negative political advertising. But they can't point to any examples of millionaire-backed "super-PACS" in the UK actually existing. Perhaps that's because we already have laws banning big money radio and TV advertising.

The way "big money" actually influences elections in the UK is through massive donations to political parties. That's a huge problem, with wealthy donors basically buying influence and peerages. The gagging law does nothing to stop this - millionaire party donors like Lord Ashcroft or Lord Sainsbury can continue to funnel as much cash into their chosen party as they like.

If the government really wanted to stop "big money" influencing politics, they could introduce a maximum donation limit for both political parties and independent groups. That would tackle the current problem and prevent any future rise in "super-PACs", and it's a measure 38 Degrees members would certainly support. Why are they instead targeting charites, community groups and campaigners?

Myth 2. Civil society will still be allowed to talk about issues - as long as they don’t get involved in party politics.
Important issues which ordinary people care about, like trying to protect the NHS, will be a key election issue for most of the political parties.The gagging law would apply to campaigning on most issues that are being contested by different political parties - i.e. any big issue of the day! For example, if one political party made privatising NHS services a key part of its manifesto, then a 38 Degrees campaign against privatising the NHS would be considered ‘for election purposes’ and be subject to the gagging law. [3]

Myth 3. £390,000 is a lot of money. Why should organisations be allowed to spend more?
In a free society, charities, local groups and ordinary people should be able to come together and campaign effectively. £390,000 is only 2% of what political parties are allowed to spend. Also, the new law says that charities and campaign groups will have to include core staff costs in this limit - something political parties aren’t expected to do.

Groups like 38 Degrees don't need as much money as political parties - we rely on people power rather than expensive advertising agencies. But organising people power does cost some money. 38 Degrees currently costs around £1.1 million per year to run - money spent on maintaining a powerful and secure web site, a small office, a staff team of 15, printing leaflets and posters, hiring church halls for member meetings, and so on. That's all funded by small donations (average donation £10.78) and reported in full in the annual audited accounts. [4]

Banning 38 Degrees from spending more than £390,000 would mean big people powered campaigns like Save our NHS or Save our Forests would be impossible to run.

Myth 4. Charities are happy now that some concessions have been promised
This isn’t true. A wide range of organisations including NCVO, Oxfam, Christian Aid, Countryside Alliance and Friends of the Earth are still warning that the gagging law will have a huge impact on what they can campaign on. [5]

MPs have been claiming that NCVO are now happy with the amendments the government has committed to drafting. In fact the NCVO wrote a piece in The Guardian last week highlighting the problems they still think need solving [6]:

“NCVO and the wider voluntary sector have made it clear that the legislation remains ambiguous and potentially damaging in a number of places. In particular:  

• The proposed list of activities that could count towards controlled expenditure remains neither clear nor workable
• The expenditure thresholds proposed in the new bill, both for registration with the Electoral Commission and as a maximum cap allowed, will be damaging
• The question of how to sensibly regulate groups working in coalition remains to be addressed.”

The government is rushing the gagging law through parliament, but we now have just over two weeks to try to convince MPs to vote the right way. The office team are working hard to pull together some ideas of ways to beat this law and you’ll get an email about this soon. But if you want to get back in touch with your MP and ask him or her about some of these myths, please click the link below.
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/gagging-law-email-mp

If your MP has replied to your email about the gagging law and sent through a different claim you'd like help answering, or if you have some ideas on what we should do next in the campaign, then please get in touch at emailtheteam@38degrees.org.uk.


Thanks for being involved,

Belinda, Susannah, Maddy and the 38 Degrees team

P.S. Earlier this year thousands of 38 Degrees members joined forces with the Children’s Society to call for more children to be given school meals. Yesterday, Nick Clegg announced that children aged 4 - 7 years would get free school meals. That is 1.4 million more school children getting a hot, healthy lunch. Another brilliant victory 38 Degrees members were involved with, proving just how important campaigning is.


Notes:
[1] The Public Whip: Clause 27 - changes to existing limits: vote breakdown: http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/division.php?date=2013-09-10&number=82
Twitter: Labour Whips twitter posts, 10 Sept: https://twitter.com/labourwhips
[2] Mythbuster document written by Ros Baston, independent political law and election solicitor, and was formerly Lead Adviser on Party and Election Finance at the Electoral Commission: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/page/-/Ros%20Baston%20MP%20replies%20mythbuster.pdf
[3] Daily Mirror: Lobby bill: Doctors face being gagged from concerns about NHS privatisation:http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/lobby-bill-doctors-face-being-2263099#.UjiWppM9XMo.facebook
[4] Read our donations policy and see our accounts here: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/pages/donations-to-38-degrees
[5] Oxfam: Lobbying Bill represents a real threat to quality of debate in this country: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/blogs/2013/09/lobbying-bill-represents-a-real-threat-to-quality-of-debate-in-this-country-says-oxfam
Christian Aid: Christian Aid remains deeply concerned at Lobbying Bill: http://www.christianaid.org.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/september-2013/christian-aid-remains-deeply-concerned-at-lobbying-bill.aspx
Countryside Alliance: The Alliance’s concerns over the Lobbying Bill: http://www.countryside-alliance.org/ca/communities/the-alliances-concerns-over-the-lobbying-bill
Friends of the Earth: U-turn? Nope, the Gagging Bill still gags us: http://www.foe.co.uk/news/gagging_bill_41124.html
[6] The Guardian: The problems posed by the lobbying bill are not completely solved: http://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2013/sep/13/charities-lobbying-bill-problems-not-solved

Labels: Politics, UK

Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Glen Greenwald, David Miranda: now the powers that be are going after another whistleblower/journalist, Barrett Brown. Digital Trends writes:

In 2010, Brown launched Project PM, a group effort billed as a crowdsourced investigation into the “surveillance state.” When Lulz Sec hackers stole some 70,000 emails from security firm HB Gary Federal and posted them online in February 2011, Brown and fellow Project PM members went to work, uncovering a coordinated campaign to discredit Wikileaks and journalist Glenn Greenwald, among other serious revelations. Later, in December of that year, Anonymous posted more than 5 million emails swiped from intelligence contractor Stratfor Global Intelligence, which were read and mined for information by Brown’s Project PM. Those emails contained a slew of revelations, including talk among Stratfor employees of renditions and assassinations.

During the Stratfor investigation, Brown shared a link to the stolen company emails in an IRC chat with other Project PM members. The documents contained some 5,000 credit card numbers and other personal information of a slew of individuals.
...
Two months later, prosecutors charged Brown with 17 crimes, 12 of which are related the identity theft – all because of that link he shared.
...
Brown did not hack any computers. He did not steal any information. And none of the charges he faces allege that he did. Brown simply shared a link that contained stolen data – something journalists, and many other people, do online every day. He faces up to 105 years in prison.

Digital Trends: Can you be arrested for sharing a link? Maybe.
Rolling Stone: Introducing America's least likely political prisoner.
Demand Progress: Tell the Justice Department: Stop the war on journalists, free Barrett Brown.

Labels: Politics, Security, US, Web

The Transparency of Lobbying Bill sounds innocuous but threatens to prevent any organisation, other than a political party, from taking a stand on any political issue in the year leading up to an election. It has received little scrutiny in the media, but may be passed as early as next week.

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace, said the bill is "the most pernicious assault on campaign groups in living memory".

Angela Eagle, shadow leader of the Commons, said "This bill amounts to a sinister gag on charities and campaigners in the year before the election."

Even the Electoral Commission, which would be charged with enforcing the law, writes:

the Bill creates significant regulatory uncertainty for large and small organisations that campaign on, or even discuss, public policy issues in the year before the next general election, and imposes significant new burdens on such organisations [emphasis in original]

Take action now, before this pernicious bill slips into law. Next week may be too late.

Write to your MP, via 38 Degrees
We urgently need your help to stop disastrous campaigning proposals, says NVCO
Coverage in The Guardian
Coverage in The Independent

Labels: Politics, UK

At the end of the performance of Vivaldi by the Palestine Strings, a group of musicians aged 12 to 23 from the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music,
violinist Nigel Kennedy remarked “It’s a bit facile to say it, but we all know from the experience of this night of music that giving equality and getting rid of apartheid gives a beautiful chance for things to happen.” His remarks were applauded by the audience and went out live over Radio 3, but the BBC said it would remove the remarks from a rebroadcast on BBC Four.

The BBC has often acted as a mouthpiece for Israel and rarely given Palestinians a voice. The BBC should allow Kennedy's short remark to stand as part of the record of the event; others can make up their mind as to whether they agree or disagree.

Kennedy's use of the word apartheid is not too harsh. While the exact actions differ from those of South Africa, both suppress a people on racial grounds, and both require the condemnation of the world to bring about their end.

Sign the 38 Degrees petition opposing the censorship
Report from Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JFJFP) 
Report in Telegraph
Report in Jewish Chronicle
Additional links from Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JFJFP)

From the letters page of the Telegraph:

SIR – Some of us were present at the exhilarating celebration of musical artistry of Nigel Kennedy’s Four Seasons Prom, with the Palestine Strings. We congratulate the BBC for giving young players from the Edward Said Conservatory an all-too-rare opportunity to demonstrate the vitality of Palestinian cultural life, despite all the obstacles they face.

It now appears that the BBC intends to censor tomorrow’s broadcast of the concert, redacting a statement by Kennedy in which he hinted at the harsh conditions under which Palestinian musicians live. He said the Prom performance showed that “given equality and getting rid of apartheid gives a beautiful chance for amazing things to happen”.

The BBC said these words do not “fall within the editorial remit of the Proms as a classical music festival”. Kennedy responded with a statement condemning an “imperial lack of impartiality”. We note the Jewish Chronicle’s report indicating that the BBC has been subjected to pressure from pro-Israel advocates.

As Jewish campaigners for equality, justice and freedom for all in Israel/Palestine, we urge the BBC to acknowledge his comments as an integral part of a performance which was warmly received by an enthusiastic Proms crowd. The BBC owes television viewers the right to see the event uncensored, in its entirety.

George Abendstern
Seymour Alexander
Craig Berman
Linda Clair
Mike Cushman
Nancy Elan
Pia Feig
Deborah Fink
Tony Greenstein
Abe Hayeem
Rosamine Hayeem
Riva Joffe
Leah Levane
Rachel Lever
Dr Les Levidow
Prof Moshé Machover
Beryl Maizels
Miriam Margolyes
Dr Simon Pirani
Renate Prince
Roland Rance
Prof Jonathan Rosenhead
Chair, British Committee for the Universities of Palestine
Leon Rosselson
Dr Joan Safran
Sabby Sagall
Alexei Sayle
Miriam Scharf
Stanley Walinets
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi
Secretary, Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods
Devra Wiseman
Naomi Woodspring
Terry Yason

Labels: Israel, Politics

Images by Giuseppe Colaruso. Spotted via Boing Boing.

Labels: Graphics

Bjarke Ingels Group, the folk who wrote Yes Is More, are building a museum for Legoland in Denmark. A reason to visit Billund in 2016! Reported in the Smithsonian, spotted via Boing Boing.

Labels: Architecture, Lego

Yes is More is one of my favourite books. In the form of a comic, it describes a series of architectural projects by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). My son Adam accompanied me to ICFP last year, in Copenhagen, just so we could visit some of BIG's projects in person. We had a ball!

Labels: Architecture, Comics

Mark Steele's commentary nails the absurd state of modern Britain, taking as a starting point Caroline Lucas's recent arrest for protesting fracking.

Labels: Environment, Politics

I find these paintings by Simon Stålenhag disturbing and alluring.Spotted via Boing Boing.

 

Labels: Graphics, Science Fiction, Sweden

Jeremy Yallop spotted a recent comment on Haskell by Albert Y. C. Lai on a paper we coauthored with Sam Lindley, Idioms are oblivious, arrows are meticulous, monads are promiscuous.  Cheers!

I much recommend this paper. Underrated, underknown, pinpointing, unifying.

Labels: Functional Programming, Programming Languages, Theory

David Miranda (right) was detained at Heathrow for nine hours yesterday (Sunday 18 August 2013) under Section 7 of the Prevention of Terrorist Act. He was in transit from Berlin to his home in Brazil, and in the UK only to change planes. Miranda is the partner of journalist Glen Greenwald (left), who interviewed Edward Snowden (below) and has played a key role in the ongoing revelations about the NSA and GCHQ. Miranda had his phone and laptop confiscated, and has not been told when they will be returned. The photo shows Greenwald and Miranda at the airport in Rio di Janiero, today.

Glen Greenwald, responding to the arrest, wrote today:

It's bad enough to prosecute and imprison sources. It's worse still to imprison journalists who report the truth. But to start detaining the family members and loved ones of journalists is simply despotic. ...

If the UK and US governments believe that tactics like this are going to deter or intimidate us in any way from continuing to report aggressively on what these documents reveal, they are beyond deluded. If anything, it will have only the opposite effect: to embolden us even further. Beyond that, every time the US and UK governments show their true character to the world - when they prevent the Bolivian President's plane from flying safely home, when they threaten journalists with prosecution, when they engage in behavior like what they did today - all they do is helpfully underscore why it's so dangerous to allow them to exercise vast, unchecked spying power in the dark.

First report, from the Guardian.
Greenwald's response.
Live blog of ongoing reaction.

Labels: Politics, Security

August is Festival Time in Edinburgh.  But despite the wise words from XKCD above, this year I am forced to give out five stars, twice, because the shows are that good.

Pajama Men (five stars): excruciating physical comedy. Possibly the funniest thing I've seen, ever. Favourite line: `We seem to have strangely reached a limit' (you'll understand why it's funny when you see it).

That is All You Need to Know (four and a half stars): Physical theatre about the history of Bletchley Park, alternating between the war years and attempts to preserve the park in the nineties. They get right the bits about Turing, but there is much more here than just Turing.

Solfatara (four and a half stars): alternately hilarious and heartrending. In Spanish, with English surtitles that take on a life of their own ...

Festival of the Spoken Nerd (five stars): As they explain, being a nerd is about being open to saying 'oooh' to the universe, and this show made me 'oooh' more than once, as well as laugh from start to end.  Yes, those are gliders from Conway's Game of Life on the flyer below, and they feature in one of the 'ooohs', a stunning demonstration of recursive nesting.

Labels: Computing, Edinburgh, Science

Carl Warner, noted in an earlier post for his Foodscapes, is now creating Bodyscapes.

Labels: Graphics

Last April, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Cycling released a report, and a petition called for a parliamentary debate. The debate is upcoming on 2 September.

Some cities are performing well. Having put cycling closer to the heart of transport for decades, Oxford and Cambridge boast continental levels of journeys made by bike (17% and 30%).

In 2009, the six cycling demonstration towns, including Exeter and Darlington, recorded an increase in cycling of almost a third. This boost was delivered at an average cost of just £3m per town.

We should not be daunted by how far we still have to go to reach the levels of other European cities. Cycle commuting in New York doubled in four years thanks to investment in high-profile cycling improvements, and further expansion is planned. Seville recently managed a ten-fold increase in cycle use in just three years - from 6000 to 60,000 cycle journeys per day between 2007 and 2010.

 Recommendations include:

• "Create a cycling budget of at least £10 per person per year, increasing to £20."
• "Revise existing design guidance, to include more secure cycle parking, continental best practice for cycle-friendly planning and design, and an audit process to help planners, engineers and architects to think bike in all their work."
• "Strengthen the enforcement of road traffic law, including speed
  limits, and ensuring that driving offences - especially those resulting
  in death or injury - are treated sufficiently seriously by police,
  prosecutors and judges."
• "The government should set national targets to increase cycle use
  from less than 2% of journeys in 2011, to 10% of all journeys in 2025,
  and 25% by 2050."

Labels: Cycling, Politics

Invitations to attend a press conference at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport came from edsnowden@lavabit.com. Now, the secure e-mail service has shut down in mysterious circumstances. The message on their web site makes chilling reading:
The story breaks on Boing Boing
Silent Circle, a similar service, closes a day later
Lavabit founder tells Forbes `If you knew what I knew, you'd stop using e-mail'
Coverage in the Guardian (and a light-hearted summary)

Labels: Computing, Politics, Security

Mostly Functional, a one-day event under the auspices of the Turing Festival, comes to Edinburgh on 22 August. Talks by Richard Carlsson, Dan Macklin, Duncan Coutts, Jose Valim, Eric Merritt, Gordon Guthrie, and others.

Labels: Edinburgh, Erlang, Functional Programming, Haskell