Jure Cuhalev

Saturdays are the days for hacking (after having a great run earlier of course). This time I’ve been preparing a network data set for a friend. The idea was to take a look at who follows who on Koornk.

Tools used: their API, Python scripts and Pajek to draw the results.

This is what I’ve got after a productive afternoon:

Koornk network (click on image for a bigger version)

I’ve only followed nodes that can be found by starting with Matija as initial node. Quick look at the resulted graph, we can see that their is a well connected group of people in a middle, with another group that is only partially connected to the first group. There are of course many others who are not well connected.

As this is only first prototype, there are a few more things to do on some other nice Saturday:

• figure out a way to get list of all nicknames (one way would be to just go through the list of messages)
• weight different connections, based on who’s talking to who
• interpret the data (but since that’s not my homework, I hope the recipient of data set will want to do a guest-blog about this)
• draw even prettier picture

Further reading Arabesk book (it does have 850+ pages), I’ve stumbled upon another concept - emotional institutionalization. The idea is that, together with assimilation with local culture, you also have to change the way you perceive your own emotions in relation to what’s happening in your new world.

Image by UniqueOo Mania via Flickr

The reason for this concept in the book is that the main character comes from USA, while living in middle-east and he has to adjust his behavior. He’s especially troubled by the fact how rank works and the fact that being of royal heritage, he is expected to not do anything all day and just sit around bars and drink cappuccinos.

Where’s the social media aspect?

Feeling pretty social today, I’d say that social media aspect of this is that each community that you form and participate in has different norms and ideas about how people should behave. Together with these, you also get emotional expectations that you have to follow, otherwise you won’t be able to fully feel part of that community.

You can also take an extra step. Once you think you figured out how the community works, locate the borderline community members that are just trying to figure it out. Be their friend and help them understand how it works. They’ll be forever grateful to you, while you’ll be able to fully appreciate the little subtleties that makes it so special to be with that group of people. 

In the last few days, there have been a number of stories about Twitterank and the way it asks you for your Twitter username and password in order to calculate something it calls “PageRank for Twitter”.

Image by ecstaticist via Flickr

The issue here, as you might have guessed already, is that the service requires you to enter a password and is in this way essentially a phishing site.

As a solution to this problem, everyone in the debate is calling for an use of OAuth, authentication protocol that doesn’t require one to disclose authentication tokens.

So that’s what we already know and the industry essentially decided on - OAuth is good for breaking walled gardens. Yet there’s another point to this story, that I haven’t seen being presented - there is no real need for any authentication in this service.

Twitter has an excellent API, that allows you to see who a (public profile) person follows without any need for authentication. You can either parse microformats on the page or use their API. It’s even bidirectional as you can see both “friends” and “followers” depending on direction of connection you are interested in.

Oh, an that “viral” tweet, that service allows you to post after you’ve checked your Twitter rank? You can do it with a piece of Javascript.

The big point

So the issue we should be debating about here is how to build more services like Twitter that allow you to access information in computer readable formats using Microformats, RDFa or just RESTful API and not how to authenticate into overly closed gardens.

Brendan McCollam [http://www.withoutatraceroute.com/] is a 2008-2009 Watson Fellow [www.watsonfellowship.org]. Here are my notes at his Haip 2008, lecture - Without A Traceroute - Traveling the world hanging out with hackers

Image by ekai via Flickr

What is the Watson Fellowship?

Basically, you make up some crazy project that you’re really interested in, and they give you $28,000 to do it.

Examples of Watson projects:

• Spanish sports slang in South America
• Evolution of outrigger canoes in Polynesia
• The effect of four ant species’ behavior
• The culture of ultimate frisbee

Cool physical hacking places he visited:

• PUSCII, Utrecht, Netherlands - http://puscii.squat.net
• EU Data Retention Conference, Budapest
• Italian Hackmeeting, Palermo, Italiy - Ask 191
• http://noblogs.org/ - blog hosting provider for lots of activist blogs in Italy
• C-Base, Berlin, Germany
• Kiberpipa, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Image via Wikipedia

The types of people he met

Pure/’true’ hackers:

• Concerned with technology for its own sake
• Generally less-political
• Intuitive understand of “hack value” without the need for application

Tech Activists:

• “That’s great, but how does this bring about the revolution?”
• Generally way more paranoid and harder to get in touch with
• Tend to be narrowly focused: security, communication, organization

Image by ekai via Flickr

Artists:

• Also concerned with application of technology
• Generally the easiest group to get in touch with
• Usually are trying to say something, to communicate an idea

Future

Something along the lines of Croatia, Poland, France, back to Berlin, then Argentina, Chile, Mexico and maybe Brazil.

He’s looking for ideas for his future travels, so get in touch via his blog - http://www.withoutatraceroute.com/

Image by tomswift46 via Flickr

For reasons beyond me, it’s really foggy in Ljubljana in past few days. Some even commented that we could introduce our own version of Jack the Ripper, as the visibility is so low.

Having an opportunity to drive in this fog at 5am, I started to realize that driving school didn’t really prepare me for such environmental backslash, so I went online to dig up some resources and tips about driving.

I especially liked the article on Smart Motorist, that concludes:

The best advice we can give to drivers confronted with thick fog is to get off the road as soon as possible.

Essentially the point of this and many other articles on topic of driving in fog is that you can’t see and that in consequence also can’t be seen. As such you need to plan for that, use your fog lights, drive slower and keep your safety distance.

While this is actually common sense, it often helps to hear such obviousness several times, to really slip into your subconsciousness.