The Mobile Privacy Hearings: Senators Prod, Apple And Google Defend

When researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden announced at the Where 2.0 Conference in Santa Clara a few weeks ago that iPhones and 3G iPads are storing records of where their users are and where they’ve been, the news created quite a stir. Google also stores a similar list on Android devices, so naturally questions have swirled in the last few weeks around how both Apple and Google are collecting and using this location data and to what extent it encroaches on user privacy.

Yesterday, representatives from both companies were called before a senatorial subcommittee to answer questions from the likes of Senators Al Franken (Minn.) and Patrick Leahy (Vt.) on whether or not our mobile devices are becoming Big Brother 2.0.

During the testimony, the senators were careful to say that the government is well aware of the many benefits of the technology created by both companies and is in no way eager to stifle innovation or create knee-jerk legislation. That being said, in the words of Senator Leahy, while the “digital age can do some wonderful, wonderful things for all of us … American consumers and businesses face threats to privacy like no time before.”

Naturally, even without the information that has recently come to light, there has been a growing concern among lawmakers and consumers alike that both Google and Apple are not doing enough to become guardians of the user’s personal data rather than wholesalers. Leahy told the representatives that he was “deeply concerned” about the reports that iPhones and Android devices were “collecting, storing, and tracking user location data without the user’s consent”.

“I am also concerned about reports that this sensitive location information may be maintained in an unencrypted format, making the information vulnerable to cyber thieves and other criminals”, the Senator said.

As to the basic allegations that lay before the two giants of the mobile space, Apple has previously stated that, though it is partly at fault for not educating its users to fully understand the technical issues with providing fast and accurate location information, the company does not (nor has it ever) tracked the location of a user’s iPhone.

At the time, Apple explained that, while it did find a few bugs in the architecture, it was adamant that it is using the location data stored on its devices to maintain and improve upon a crowdsourced database of WiFi hotspots and cell towers — not to keep a log of a user’s prior location. The geo-tagged data from iPhones, for example, is used to help build data about WiFi networks and cell tower locations, which let location-based services work even when GPS/satellite positioning isn’t available or functioning seamlessly.

Be that as it may, Senator Franken noted that consumers remain confused, so he posed the question directly to Apple’s VP of Software Technology Bud Tribble: “does this data indicate anything about the user’s location, or doesn’t it?”

Tribble’s response was to reiterate the main message to the average consumer: that the data is a record of the location of cell towers and WiFi hotspots, it does not contain any customer information. It is anonymous. However, that comes with a nuance. When a portion of that database is downloaded onto your phone, your phone knows which hotspots and towers it can transmit through, so the combination of the location of those towers and your phone knowing which towers it can transmit through, allows the phone to give you a basic location without GPS.

So, he is essentially saying, yes of course Apple tracks your location. That’s what GPS and WiFi and cell tower positioning are designed to do, and yes it does store location-based information on its devices in order to do that, but no it isn’t keeping a full history of your locations, and while it does know where you are, it doesn’t necessarily know who you are.

Though Apple doesn’t seem to be doing anything intentionally nefarious with this information, the point remains that the laws of this country have not yet come anywhere near to adequately addressing the capabilities of modern technologies. In an earlier panel, Jason Weinstein, deputy assistant attorney general of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Justice Dept, told the subcommittee that once companies have access to consumer info (if you give Apple or Google permission to use your location or something similar), they can legally share that data with third-party businesses.

Only when companies have previously promised not to share something, like your location, can they be held accountable in court. As Justin Brookman, the Director for the Center of Democracy & Technology’s Project on Consumer Privacy, said, “the default law in this country for the sharing of data is that you can do anything you want”, with the exception being any prior promise the company has made not to share specific data.

Franken also asked the representatives from the two companies about the fact that they run the biggest app stores in the world, yet require no privacy policy for their apps, and so asked them if they would consider adding a privacy policy.

Alan Davidson, Google’s director of public policy, said that Google has relied on a permission-based model which requires users to give permission before any sharing takes place, but that the next step is important for Google to consider and is “a very good suggestion”. He said that he would “take that issue back to leadership”. And for Apple, Tribble said that Apple contractually requires third-party developers to disclose if they’re going to do anything with user information, but does not integrate an over-arching privacy policy. He then continued on to say that a general privacy policy would not be enough, that true transparency goes beyond what’s in the privacy policy and needs to be integrated into the user interface of an app, designing feedback to the user about what’s happening to the information into the actual app.

Franken then asked Tribble about why Apple only asks users if they want to share location with an app, while Google asks the user if they want to share location, address book information, contacts, and so on. Tribble responded by saying that a long checkmark box of opt-in sharing options would only confuse the user and be unwieldy both to present and read on a mobile device.

There’s no doubt that Tribble makes two valid points here, but Ashkan Soltani, an independent researcher who has worked with the Wall Street Journal on mobile-privacy investigations, shortly thereafter quickly cut to the heart of the matter. He told the senators that the biggest privacy threat to mobile users today is the simple fact that “consumers are repeatedly surprised by the information that apps and app platforms are accessing”. Users are entrusting their phones and computers with a great deal of personal information, he said, and these platforms are not taking adequate steps to make clear to the consumer that third-parties have access to this information.

Not only that, but the other issue is that platform providers, too, are often caught off-guard as to the types (or amount) of information they’re gathering. Soltani cited the examples of Google Street View collecting WiFi information during Street View surveys and this recent example of Apple’s location storage cache.

So, it seems that not only are lawmakers and legislation slow to catch up to the uses and capabilities of modern technology, so too are the providers themselves. Going forward, Soltani suggested, we will need to begin to formulate solid definitions to questions as fundamental as “What does ‘opt-in’ mean?” and further define oft-used concepts like location. Is a user’s location defined within 4 feet or 100 miles? What is “anonymous” going to mean in a location-crazy world, and how are we going to define “third-party” and what those “third-parties” rightly have access to?

The legislative process is just beginning here, and may well be glacial in its progress. Though there is certainly some questionable thinking to be found coming from these two companies in how they’re thinking about privacy, it’s great to see evidence of their willingness to work with the government to find the best solution for enterprise — and more importantly, the consumer — going forward.

Kudos to the senators and the subcommittee for asking the right questions.

YouWeb Incubated Pluto Plays Music Combines Gaming With Helping Kids Learn Music

Social and mobile incubator YouWeb, who has helped create OpenFeint, CrowdStar, iSwifter and Sibblingz, is announcing its latest venture—mobile ‘edutainment’ startup Pluto Plays Music.

Pluto Plays Music is an educational game and iPad app that combines scrolling gameplay dynamics with musical notes to get the kiddies interested in learning music. The game follows the main character, Pluto, a penguin on a quest to master a variety of songs on different instruments. Children can learn basic songs like Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star as well as more classical pieces like The Magic Flute by Mozart, Ode to Joy by Beethoven, Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky.

While Pluto Plays Music is free to download and play, users can purchase virtual goods via the game’s in-game currency, pearls. Using pearls, players can unlock new levels and instruments including the piano, xylophone, and guitar. Players can also earn pearls to use toward purchases by completing simple tasks like opening the app daily and performing songs. The game also ranks players by their level of apprenticeship, depending on how effectively they complete and learn the songs in the game.

The game itself is using sister company OpenFeint’s plug and play social gaming platform to allows players to compare their scores and ranking with other players around the world.

YouWeb founder Peter Relan tells us that he picked this particular company to incubate because of the tremendous potential of edutainment games for children on tablet devices.

Last month, YouWeb celebrated the first exit with the acquisition of OpenFeint by Japanese gaming company, GREE, for $104 million.

Mike McCue: FlipBoard Is Seeing More Than 10 Million Flips Per Day (Video)

When it comes to publishing apps on the iPad, there are two models: 1) social readers that bring all your realtime news feeds together like Flipboard; or 2) single-title apps from major publishers like the New Yorker, The Daily or the New York Times. Those two models are also dividing along the lines of subscriptions versus ad-supported/free.

In the video above, Flipboard CEO Mike McCue makes the case that in tablet publishing, “the bulk of the revenue will come from advertising.” To make his point, he shares some recent numbers from Flipboard, which is seeing more than 10 million “flips per day”, up from 3 million two months ago. A “flip” in the app is like a pageview (in the video, he says 10 million flips per day, but later he checked the number and it is actually 11.4 million). Of the 2 million people who have downloaded the Flipboard app to their iPads, I’ve heard from other sources that about half are active, which would mean that on average each user flips through 10 pages a day.

McCue thinks there will be a place for subscriptions as well, especially for premium media brands, and would love to be able to place subscription buttons on premium content within Flipboard. My idea is that if you already subscribe to a publishing app on iTunes, the articles should be able to appear in Flipboard, News.me or any of the other general reader apps. But if they are not already a subscriber, some sort of all-you-can-eat subscription model would have to be worked out, with Flipboard doling out the money based on how many times articles from a particular publisher is read. It can get complicated because “people like to see their content atomized,” says McCue.

That’s why he thinks advertising will produce more revenues than subscriptions. It is easier to split advertising revenues with publishers based on readership. His investors agree. They just put in another $50 million into Flipboard, betting that he is correct. Although McCue and I have debated whether he needs that much, I also think that advertising is the way to go with tablet publishing. McCue also hints that Flipboard’s iPhone app will come out this summer. Watch the video to find out more.

Google I/O 2011: Ignite

Brady Forrest, Kyle Machulis, Matt Cutts, Pamela Fox, Jamie Wilkinson, Patrick Davison, Monica Rogati, Annalee Newitz, Joseph Pred

Ignite is back to top off your brain after a packed day. This year we will learn about the Brain API, the similar...

Discovery Channel: Megaquake, hour that shook Japan documentary Part 1 of 3

Discovery Channel's new one-hour special MEGAQUAKE: HOUR THAT SHOOK JAPAN will tell, through the eyes of those who lived it, the story of the moment the 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck northeast Japan on March 11, 2011 and the tsunami that followed, resulting in more than 12,000 deaths. Poignant testimonies and remarkable footage captured that day will reveal what happened in those crucial moments following the quake as a tsunami barreled toward land at 500 miles per hour. The special will also examine scientifically what happened that day and attempt to piece together when Mother Nature may strike again. MEGAQUAKE: HOUR THAT SHOOK JAPAN, featuring exclusive interviews and never before seen footage, premieres on Discovery Channel on Sunday, April 24 at 10PM e/p and will subsequently roll out on Discovery networks around the world.

Discovery Channel and its production partner, Darlow Smithson Productions, includes in its movie an exclusive sound recording captured at the Wake Island hydro-acoustic station 2,000 miles away in the Pacific Ocean. The station belongs to the global monitoring network of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). The recording, made by ultra sensitive hydrophones at a depth of 1,300 meters, was subsequently sped up by 32 times so it could be audible to human ears - enabling people to hear the actual sound of a 600km long section of the fault line in the earth's crust rupturing and grinding against rock with the power of 600 million Hiroshima bombs.

Viewers will also hear the very personal stories of those who experienced events of March 11th. Firefighter Takayama Yukio was inside the nuclear plant when the earthquake struck. He will recall the sense of fear and desperation among those inside. The special also includes footage of Yukio and his fellow firefighters inside the reactor.

In the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami, Japan's Sendai Airport was a nightmare - cars were strewn about the runway, debris littered the terminal and there was no power. Hear about the chain of events in an exclusive interview with the air traffic controller, Kibuna Yoshihiko, who was on duty that day.

The special also features interviews with Americans who were in Japan on March 11th, including Paula Lutze who was teaching school in Sendai. Exclusive footage shows Lutsy in school that day. She was instrumental in rescuing children caught up in the chaos of the tsunami.

Additionally, the new Discovery special will examine the Pacific Ring of Fire - a name given to the region devastated by natural disasters in recent years - to assess whether the earth's tectonic plates are in a phase of increased activity, which could result in further seismic events. Through exclusive interviews with top seismologists and oceanographers, the documentary will piece together where Mother Nature might strike next.

MEGAQUAKE: HOUR THAT SHOOK JAPAN is produced for Discovery Channel by Darlow Smithson Productions, where Tom Brisley and Guy Davies are executive producers and Simon Young is producer. For Discovery Channel, Stephen Reverand is executive producer.

核電變色龍郝龍斌

日本首相菅直人敢停掉濱岡核電, 除了自己的勇氣之外, 一些地方首長的支持也是功不可沒. 靜岡縣知事川勝平太、大阪府知事橋下徹、名古屋市長河村隆之、愛知縣知事大村秀章等等, 都在背後力挺菅直人. 所以, 核電問題雖是中央政府的層次, 地方首長的態度也很重要.

那麼台北市長郝龍斌的態度究竟是什麼呢? 當年陳水扁停建核四時, 郝龍斌曾連署提案倒閣. 光憑這一點, 你會以為他是擁核人士. 但我翻閱一下舊紀錄, 赫然發現他曾在立法院就"立即停建核電廠"一案投下贊成票. 民進黨執政時代, 他當環保署長, 主導通過「環境基本法」，其中第23條明定：「政府應訂定計畫，逐步達成非核家園目標」. 所以蔡英文現在講的非核家園, 郝龍斌也有貢獻.

看來郝龍斌似乎是個反核人士. 但他的立場總是隨著官位而改變. 看我質詢他時的支吾其詞, 就知道他其實是沒有態度的......

Underwater search robot

Touchpanel that don't rely fingertip movement

Pioneer Prototypes Android-based Cyclocomputer (Video)

If you thought Android can be used just to power phones, tablets, TVs or similar devices, think again: Pioneer is now using the Google OS (version unknown) in the development of a “next-generation” cyclometer. It helps users track four main parameters: speed, cadence, heart rate, and power.

The prototype, which sports a 2.2-inch color LCD (non-touch) screen and a trackball, also features a pedaling motor that measure the force on the crank.

Current features include ANT+ support, GPS, a microSD slot, a microUSB port, a thermometer, and 12 hours of battery life. The device weighs 100g.

This video (shot by our friends over at Diginfonews in Tokyo) provides more insight:

A talking dog

Flipboard's Mike McCue at SXSW

Flipboard's Mike McCue at SXSW

Kara Swisher interviews Mike McCue, CEO and Co-founder of Flipboard, the social and news reading app, at the South by Southwest festival in Texas.

Start-up Allows Flash Games, Video on iPad

蕭青陽 - Story Island

3 times Grammy's Award nominated designer talked about the creative process of his latest album in TEDx Guangzhou event.








李欣芸《故事島》風潮音樂11/15正式發行。

影片為精裝版內頁製作過程，費時費工！是蕭青陽與《故事島》相遇後，碰撞出充滿台灣味的設計作品！值得您我一起來品味&收藏！

(請注意：影片備註過程皆為12倍速快轉)

Milestones in AppJudgment's 300 Episode History! - AppJudgment

Poor Wayfaring Stranger - Peter Hollens - Feat. Swingle Singers - A cappella Cover - Beatbox

PressPausePlay Sneak Peek #2 - Dystopia

3d Printing

For The High-Tech Naturalist: LeafSnap Identifies Leaves Using Your iPhone’s Camera

This is just plain fantastic. The LeafSnap app for iPhone identifies any leaf you take a picture of, as long as it’s in their library. Right now it’s limited to trees native to the Northeastern US, but they’re working on expanding that. The best part is it’s free! Hopefully this will get me to finally learn the names of the trees around here. All I know is “pine” if it has pine cones and “not pine” if it doesn’t.

The app is a collaboration between Columbia, the University of Maryland, and the Smithsonian Institute. Thanks, guys.

Man, this is the best reason I’ve heard of yet to get an iPhone. Luckily it’s coming out for Android and iPad this summer. Check it out at the App Store. It’s free!

Cool Ring prototype shows new way to use Tablets

Silk: a great new database powers new Next Web site

Here's a sneak peak at a new database that Silk is helping build for The Next Web. Here the founder shows me what makes it special.

Capitalism, Chinese Style

Orville Schell on China's view of American debt


Bio

Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York. He is a former professor and Dean at the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Schell is the author of fourteen books, nine of them about China, and a contributor to numerous edited volumes. His most recent books are, Virtual Tibet, The China Reader: The Reform Years, and Mandate of Heaven: The Legacy of Tiananmen Square and the Next Generation of China's Leaders. He is also a contributor to such magazines as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Granta, Wired, Newsweek, Mother Jones, The China Quarterly, and The New York Review of Books.



Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay. We're in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, the birthplace of the International Monetary Fund, at the INET conference--hundreds of economists brought together to find a solution or debate solutions to the economic crisis. There's barely a panel or a sentence in this conference that doesn't mention the word China. Now joining us is one of America's foremost China experts, Orville Schell. Orville's the Arthur Ross director of the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York. He's a former professor and dean at the University of California Berkeley School of Journalism. Thanks for joining us. So at the opening panel, George Soros starts by saying: I'm baffled. And he specifically says he's baffled that more corrective action hasn't been taken dealing with the causes of the financial meltdown, more or less the regulation of Wall Street. He says that his framework of looking at the world would have suggested after such a meltdown there would have been a push to take real action. So when China looks at the United States and sees it seem so little has been done to deal with some of the underlying issues, and given how many American T-bills China owns, how do they look at all this?

ORVILLE SCHELL, DIRECTOR, CENTER ON US-CHINA RELATIONS: Well, China has traditionally, I think, looked up to the United States, particularly as it's begun to marketize and to allow its economy to open up. And they've viewed America as sort of the titan of the world, as most countries have also done. So I think it's with some surprise that they saw this titanic country and the world's largest economy just kind of go into implosion. And it's taken a lot of adjustment for them, as it has for us, to kind of adjust to the fact that this country, which for so many years they were against and that they admired, that they loved, they hated, but that was always hugely important and seemingly implacable to them, that it could have been so fallible.
JAY: Now, China kept its cool, and in fact kept buying T-bills and kept sending signals that, well, we have faith in the US economy and it will all work out. They really had no choice but to say those things. But do you get a sense--what do they really think about it? There must have been some shaking of their confidence in where all this is leading.
SCHELL: Well, I think the Chinese leadership was very rattled to find this sort of pillar of the whole financial architecture of the global economic system so unstable. And it's true that they've invested many hundreds of billions of dollars in Treasury bills and other forms of American securities. And they will continue to do so not because they aren't bothered by what they see, by the fragility of our own system, but because there's no other place for them to put it.
JAY: Where else do they put all the capital?
SCHELL: [incompr.] they're collecting huge amounts of foreign exchange, and they've got to park it someplace. And in a certain sense there is a kind of a symbiotic relationship that's almost like some drunk and their spouse, which is they lend to us, we borrow, we spend in a profligate manner, but we buy their stuff, they make the money, get the foreign currency, and give it back to us so that we can go deeper in debt to buy from them. That's what's been going on until the financial crisis. Now that's got to change. China recognizes it, and I think we do, too. They can't just be an export economy. They have to start generating a greater level of consumption within China. But there the Chinese run into a structural problem of their own, that they have a very high savings rate, which means people don't consume as much as they could. Why? Because they don't have a welfare system and a health care system that provides for people in their old age, so people lock up their money. So it's only to say--and one of the reasons why China comes up every other sentence here in Bretton Woods and everyplace else is because the US and China are insolubly locked together now with one set of sort of economic internal organs.
JAY: Now, Soros's point about being baffled was that he was baffled that there wasn't more serious regulatory action taken to control Wall Street. Given how much at stake China has in all this, they must be more than baffled. Are they not concerned that the underlying reasons have not been addressed, this could all happen again, and they own so much American debt that--or do they just think this economy's just too big, that this is an American economy too big to fail?
SCHELL: Well, here I think the Chinese leadership and George Soros are in accordance, strangely. They both believe the United States has been very reckless in escaping and refusing to sort of regulate itself in a way that would make the system safer for everybody. And, after all, it isn't just the Americans that suffer when the American financial system is shaken; it's the whole world, China included. So China looks at the United States with a good deal of trepidation. But it isn't like there are an awful lot of alternatives for them to go to. First of all, to buy T-bills, which are safe, I mean, unless the US defaults, which I think it--very small likelihood of that. Second of all, we're in this whole new world now where China's piling up capital that wants to go someplace, and it doesn't want just these low-yield Treasury bills or other kinds of securities. It wants mergers and acquisitions. It wants high-yield investments. And what better place to invest than the US? But, of course, here we run into a certain ambivalence.
JAY: 'Cause what you're talking about is starting to buy stuff rather than to buy T-bills. In other words, you buy mines and you buy factories, and perhaps you buy banks.
SCHELL: They want brand name, big league companies. They want to run with the big guys. And China's had a very difficult time getting any company to be sort of brand-known on a global scale. I mean, if I ask you how many Chinese companies do you know the names of, you might think of Lenovo [incompr.] IBM, or you might think of parts of IBM, or /haIr/, the, you know, whiteware, white goods company.
JAY: Why would they--why don't they buy Wal-Mart, given that Wal-Mart is essentially--.
SCHELL: I don't think Wal-Mart is for sale, but they might like to. But can you imagine the reaction in America? That would be like, you know, buying the Queen of England. These are very symbolic things that--. And America's not adjusted well at all at this point to the idea that someone else might start owning us, just the way we--.
JAY: But there's no legal way to stop it, really, is there?
SCHELL: No. Legally, one would have to say America is an open market. We believe in allowing foreign direct investment from around the world. It's a great virtue of this country, and also a great strength. However, we have certain neuralgia against certain kinds of countries, like sometimes Arabs, and China, because it's run by the Chinese Communist Party. So what happens is they'll want to buy a company, and there is a review process, but just for national security purposes. It's seldom used. But people just start talking. Congressmen start writing letters, investment bank gets scared, the Chinese investments don't want to have their name dragged through the mud, and poof, the deal evaporates. That's been the pattern--not a healthy one, I should say, for the United States or for China.
JAY: We go back to this issue we were talking about previously, which is, when China looks at the debate in American politics right now, this stimulus versus austerity, all the austerity hawks seem to be winning this debate. The Obama administration seems to have bought into this idea that the idea is pay down the debt. They're debating how much. In China, the issue, they understood there should be stimulus. And the austerity regime there was never their way out of the crisis. So if they look at this American debate, one would think if there's austerity and [incompr.] layoffs coming at the state municipal levels and the likelihood of employment not going down further--many people are saying it's going to go back up again once the real hit hits at the state level--what do they make of this? They didn't follow these policies in China, and they have so much American debt at stake.
SCHELL: I think the Chinese, like many other countries, have a lot of catching up to do to figure out what's going on in America with these Tea Party people. Where did they come from? You know, what's this all about? How in the name--in their view of heaven has the United States of America, land of reason, freedom, scientific thinking, rationality, how has it been seized by people who believe in none of these things? And the Chinese really don't understand this well. They scratch their heads and they look at us, and they need a lot of help, as many Americans do, to understand what is happening to this great country.
JAY: But clearly it's a section of the American elite that's behind the famous--the ones out front are the Koch brothers, but they can't be doing this all on their own. And there's this--you know, Karl Roves and others were all involved in the last November election campaign. There's a whole section of the American elite that sees the necessity, they think, of austerity. They make paying down the debt the big issue, and they're absolutely against paying any kind of taxes. So the Chinese, are they going to weigh in on this in any way? Or is it just too difficult for them to say anything?
SCHELL: They don't believe in interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, because they don't want anyone to interfere in their internal affairs. So they're not likely to give us, you know, a lot of gratuitous advice about how to run our affairs. However, they are worried--as everybody must be worried--about America, because America sits at the center of everything. So as we go, in certain respects, so goes the world. So it's very important, I think, that America figure itself out better. In the meanwhile, it leaves a lot of other people around the world scratching their head. And that's why it's so important that our financial system remain open, as we always have been--that's been our great strength--and receptive to other countries investing in it, because if we begin to get into trade wars, you know, protectionism, tit-for-tat kind of deals--and we're particularly inclined to do that with China--it could be very deleterious not only to our health, but the health of the global financial system.
JAY: Does China have a plan B? If they think the American politics is going to push American economics really into some downward spiral, have they got a plan B not to be drawn into it?
SCHELL: Well, you know, there really is no plan B for anybody. America is too large on the sort of international economic scene. China is, of course, investing very vigorously in Latin America, Africa, Middle East, around the world, particularly in natural resources. But that still doesn't sort of take up the slack. They're doing that for energy security and resource security. But they've piled up, you know, an awful lot of foreign exchange reserves and they've got to do something with it. So the question is: what? The euro is a bit wobbly, and all these crazy countries, and Athens in, you know, Greece, and Portugal on the abyss, and Japan's no great shakes, the yen, where else do you put your money? There are a very limited set of options. So the US is still a good option. So one hopes that that partnership between the US and China can work its way out in a constructive manner, because in actuality the US now could use Chinese investment for job creation and infrastructure building. That's why it's so important. And that's why the US-China relationship simply cannot be ignored, because without it--well, there is no without it. There's only with it. So you've got to get it right.
JAY: Thanks for joining us.
SCHELL: Pleasure.
JAY: Thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
End of Transcript

Keen On… Ze Frank: Why We All Need to Go Back to Kindergarten (TCTV)

Ze Frank wants to send us all back to kindergarten. Star.me, Ze’s soon-to-be fully public startup, which raised $500,000 from star-struck investors including Gary Vaynerchuk and Ron Conway, is an attempt to reinvent the kindergarten’s star system of rewards.

As Ze told me when he came into the TechCrunchTV studio earlier this week, “stars are good.” They make us human, they allow us to display our emotions and become children again. But the funny thing about Ze is that, in building his new online kindergarten, he’s had to become an adult – fancying an idea, raising capital, developing a business model, leading a team. And, as he confessed to me, becoming the CEO of a funded startup hasn’t always been as easy as he first imagined when he founded Star.me.

This is the first part of my conversation with Ze. On Monday, he tells me why the future of play is a “hot thing.”

(Green B.A.C.O.N, in the video above, wants to use natural sunlight to reduce lighting costs.)

(Green B.A.C.O.N, in the video above, wants to use natural sunlight to reduce lighting costs.)


Around eighty entrepreneur hopefuls gathered at NASA AMES last week to pitch their ideas for breakthrough technological products, with the hopes of gaining the funding to make their dreams a reality. But this wasn’t part of the application process for a new fangled startup accelerator program, and the teams weren’t comprised of Valley visionairies in their 20s and 30s but rather high school kids between the ages of 14-18.

To compete in the Conrad Foundation’s Spirit of Innovation Awards, each team of high schoolers had to create a business plan, technical report, graphical representation and elevator pitch for their product, presenting their invention to a panel of judges for 10 minutes. All in all 27 finalists competed in the Aerospace, Clean Energy and Cyber security categories to win $5,000 and the community support and mentorship to develop their product commercially.



While their peers were pitching on stage, I interviewed ten of the most promising teams about their product vision, what it was like to be so ambitious at young age and their thoughts about young entrepreneurship. Three of our interviewed teams went on to win the competition (Unisecurity, Ouroboros and West Philly EVX Team) but every participant won in the long run as they got to spend four days at NASA surrounded by other nerdy kids excited about changing the world.

From Ouroboros (a team focused on a “perpetual nutrition system” or a mechanism that would turn organic human waste into compost that can be used to grow crops) to S.A.R.A. (safe word activated mobile app designed to stop sexual assault by notifying the police) the level of professionalism and passion exhibited by these students was impressive.

And more importantly, none of their ideas was on this list of startup ideas destined to fail. Hooray for the future.





(Green B.A.C.O.N, in the video above, wants to use natural sunlight to reduce lighting costs.)



Ouroboros is a composting system for human waste.




UniSecurity wants to create a smartphone app that acts as a heart rate monitor for the elderly or others with cardiac issues, reacting to heart rate irregularities by alerting emergency contacts if there’s an issue.






Air-Ease built a solar powered fan, because many on their Montezuma Creek Indian reservation




West Philly EVX Team actually built a light weight, market ready electric car.





S.T.A.R. wants to make glasses for augmented reality.





SARA is an iPhone app designed to respond in the case of sexual assault.





R Squared is building a mobile app that lets users easily notify their friends when they need a safe ride.





Lennox Aerospace wants to build a space scaffolding structure designed to provide astronauts with privacy.





Kinergy is a mobile phone charger that runs off of the kinetic energy created from human movement.

Skydeck Quietly Becomes Mr. Number, Hits 2 Million Users, Brings Status Alerts And More To Mobile

You can shine

Ben Brown: Wainui River

Vikram Pamdit

http://buttonwood.economist.com/

The World Cyber Games Special

The World Cyber Games Special from Emergent Order, LLC on Vimeo.

This one hour special, which I produced and co-edited together with Bobs Your Uncle takes a look at the world of international professional video gaming.

Pulp Culture

Pulp Culture from Emergent Order, LLC on Vimeo.

Keynes vs Hayek Rap (VIDEO)

http://econstories.tv/



Hayek and Keynes Battle at The Economist’s Buttonwood Gathering

On October 25th, an audience of financial managers and CEOs, politicians, central bankers and Nobel Prize-winning economists at The Economist’s Buttonwood Gathering were treated to an unusual experience: a live rap battle between John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek.






Part I: Keynesianism

It’s All About Spending

Is our prosperity derived from a continual circular flow of spending? Is it impossible for a society to increase it’s total savings? Can deficit spending by a government step in to replace private activity in order to maintain full employment and restore lasting economic growth? What is a liquidity trap and what does it mean for the economy? What did Keynes really mean by “in the long run, we’re all dead”?

Facebook's new energy efficient data center

Cloud technologies power some of Internet's most well-known sites—Picasa, Gmail, Facebook and Zynga, just to name a few—and cloud companies are striving to make the computer processing behind these sites as energy efficient as possible. With that in mind, Facebook, Dell, HP, Rackspace, Skype, Zynga and others have teamed together to form the Open Compute Project to share best practices for making more energy efficient and economical data centers.

To kick-start the project, Facebook unveiled its innovative new data center and contributed the specifications and designs to Open Compute. "Cloud companies are working hard to become more and more energy efficient...[and] this is a big step forward today in having computing be more and more green," explains Graham Weston, Chairman of Rackspace.

A small team of Facebook engineers has been working on the project for two years. They custom designed the software, servers and data center from the ground up.

One of the most significant features of the facility was that Facebook eliminated the centralized UPS system found in most data centers. "In a typical data center, you're taking utility voltage, you're transforming it, you're bringing it into the data center and you're distributing it to your servers," explains Tom Furlong, Director of Site Operations at Facebook. "There are some intermediary steps there with a UPS system and with energy transformations that occur that cost you money and energy—between about 11% and 17%. In our case, you do the same thing from the utility, but you distribute it straight to the rack, and you do not have that energy transformation at a UPS or at a PDU level. You get very efficient energy to the actual server. The server itself is then taking that energy and making useful work out of it."

To regulate temperature in the facility, Facebook utilizes an evaporative cooling system. Outside air comes into the facility through a set of dampers and proceeds into a succession of stages where the air is mixed, filtered and cooled before being sent down into the data center itself.

"The system is always looking at [the conditions] coming in", says Furlong, "and then it's trying to decide, 'what is it that I want to present to the servers? Do I need to add moisture to [the air]? How much of the warm air do I add back into it?'" The upper temperature threshold for the center is set for 80.6 degrees Fahrenheit, but it will likely be raised to 85 degrees, as the servers have proven capable of tolerating higher temperatures than had originally been thought.

The servers used in the data center are unique as well. They are "vanity free"—no extra plastic and significantly fewer parts than traditional servers. And, by thoughtful placing of the memory, CPU and other parts, they are engineered to be easier to cool.

Now that these plans and specifications have been released as part of the Open Compute Project, the goal is for other companies to benefit from and contribute to them. "Open source, crowd sourcing, Wikipedia—these are all capitalizing on, or enabled by, the same force," explains Weston, "which is that when things are open, there's more innovation around them."

More info:

Facebook announcement: http://tinyurl.com/4x67au9
Open Compute Project web site: http://opencompute.org/

NAVTEQ True(TM) Platform at Where 2.0

Jeff Raimo, Product Manager at NAVTEQ, describes NAVTEQ True, the next generation vehicle for collecting raw data as well as the customized tools for automating the extraction of this data. Jeff points out the 3 primary categories for collecting data, including LIDAR, imagery and positioning.

VUFind lets people play and share around their visually-recognized interests

t's a real life game. http://www.vufind.com/ You play this game on a real-life map, but it's a mix of virtual and reality. Sort of like Risk and Stratego board games. Here I talk with the founder, Moataz Rashad, about it.

Rich Fulcher's Tiny Acts of Rebellion: BB Video Interview

Looking back at Look Around You with Popper and Serafinowicz

WikiWecaps

Cosmonaut's Day celebration (inside the Kremlin)

The Decemberists by Scott Compton (Boing Boing Video)

Max Mathews, electronic music pioneer, RIP

In 1961, Mathews arranged the accompaniment of the song "Daisy Bell" for an uncanny performance by computer-synthesized human voice, using technology developed by John Kelly of Bell Laboratories and others. Author Arthur C. Clarke was coincidentally visiting friend and colleague John Pierce at the Bell Labs Murray Hill facility at the time of this remarkable speech synthesis demonstration and was so impressed that he later told Stanley Kubrick to use it in 2001: A Space Odyssey, in the climactic scene where the HAL 9000 computer sings while his cognitive functions are disabled.

Chernobyl disaster, 25 year later: commemoration around the world

It's early morning on April 26 in Kiev, Ukraine, where the Chernobyl nuclear disaster happened exactly a quarter century ago. On this day in 1986, reactor number four at the plant exploded, setting off a catastrophe that still reverberates far beyond the 30-kilometer exclusion zone.

Demonstrations are taking place throughout Europe. In Tokyo, anti-TEPCO protests mark the occasion and its parallel to the still-unfolding disaster at Fukushima. The "liquidators" who were sent in to clean up the radioactive mess at Chernobyl back in 1986 received medals Monday from Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, but controversy still surrounds the health impact of the dangerous work they performed. The so-called "sarcophagus" surrounding the disaster site in Kiev is leaking, and world leaders have pledged "to provide $780 million for the construction of a shelter designed to house the toxic remains for another century." But even if and when that new container is finally in place, the radioactive mess will remain active—and hazardous—for many thousands of years more.

When Comics Attack… At The White House Correspondents Dinner

Who Gave The G-20 Commander His Commands?

TRNN Replay: Paul Jay - Was the prime minister the hidden hand behind the G-20 fiasco in Toronto?



Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: A room filled with police officers stare at pulsating screens. Feeds from 85 cameras cover most of Toronto's downtown core. This was the command center for the G-20 integrated security unit. There was another ISU command center in Barrie, Ontario, just a little north of Toronto. In charge was RCMP Chief Superintendent Alfonse McNeil. It may have been Toronto police on the streets, but the feds ran the show. At some point over the weekend, the operational commander watched the action unfold on the monitors in front of him and made two fateful decisions. The first was not to immediately move some of the thousands of available police officers into position to stop 100 or so people from breaking store windows—more importantly, not to quickly stop the trashing of several police cars. CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) had decided there was no credible terrorism threat. The whole rationale for all the security was that a small segment of protesters, known for the day as the "black bloc", would cause some property damage and might try to storm the security fence. Yet when the windows broke and the police cars burned, for perhaps as long as an hour there were no police in sight.

UNIDENTIFIED: As the end of the protest reached Queen and Spadina at around 3:00, somewhere between 75 and 100 black bloc members rallied. They left the main protest and started quickly back down Queen Street, heading east. On the way, they encountered two police cars with police in them, which they attacked, broke windows. There were riot police at the intersection of each street that went south from Queen Street into the financial district, but they didn't engage the protesters; they just watched them go by, smashing windows and spray painting. From there they turned south on Bay Street and started into the financial district. There were three police cars abandoned in the intersection at King and Bay. The black bloc started smashing the police cars and set one of them on fire. After around 15 minutes they walked north on Yonge Street, smashing windows along the way, and there were no police to be seen anywhere.
JAY: Watch the CP 24 coverage of police cars on fire Saturday night on Queen Street. The journalists ask over and over again: where are the police?
~~~
PRESENTER, CP24: And, Farha, tell me what police are doing right now.
REPORTER, CP24: I don't see any police here [inaudible] They dispersed down Peter Street. So, again, there's—and smoke coming out of this vehicle.
PRESENTER: What happened to the two lines—or several lines—?
REPORTER: They dispersed. They dispersed down Peter Street. So, again, there's no police officers here.
~~~
JAY: Superintendent McNeil told his hometown paper, The Cape Breton Post, quote, "'We have the ability through our video feed to see everything that is going on.' There are even helicopters and planes providing video feed. 'We can see them from the air, we can see them from the ground, if there's anyone trying to interfere, we would see that.'" Well, we know the police had infiltrated the black bloc. Now, we know the cameras could see everywhere. So why couldn't the police defend their own vehicles? Was this part of a plan? Or a lack of available resources, as the police have said? Only a public inquiry can answer this question. Television images of police cars ablaze set the stage for mass arrests. The decision to order the arrests of around 900 mostly peaceful protesters was the second major decision made by the operational commander. It was clear to everyone who watched the television coverage—never mind the police cameras—that the actions against property were isolated incidents and did not involve the vast majority of protesters and onlookers. So what was the reason for such a blanket attack on the freedom of assembly, one of the Charter's fundamental rights? Not only were there mass arrests, but the culture of brutality exhibited by the police was extraordinary, given they knew that every move was being watched and taped by their command. Who ran the training programs that led up to the weekend and created such a sense of impunity? Who decided that journalists were fair game? Journalists were punched, shoved, arrested, and told they would be arrested if they didn't clear the scene. Having G-20 press accreditation was no protection. What meaningful right to a free press will there be if journalists can't report on how the state exercises its authority? So we get back to the $1 billion security budget—okay, to be exact, according to the parliamentary budgeting officer, it was actually $929,986,110. If the Toronto police spent $122 million (and that's what they say, and they say it included their own men and all the city police who traveled from across Canada, and their airfare, hotels, and overtime) and the OPP bill for the G-8 in Huntsville was around $35 million, how much of the remaining $840 million or so was actually for the G-8/G-20 weekend? The Mounties received the lion's share, at least $500 million. Given how much more this is than the cost of the thousands of men paid out of Toronto's much smaller budget, it's hard to fathom that this was mostly manpower costs. Kevin Page, the parliamentary budget officer, in a report roughly breaking down the costs says this: "… it is still unclear how the RCMP will spend its sizable share of incremental costs". So where did the money go? One is forced to wonder if there's a hidden agenda of the G-20 weekend. Are they preparing for the kind of social unrest that might develop in the future if Canada's serious about meeting it's G-20 pledge of halving its deficit by 2013, at a time when the world seems heading back into recession? Do our security forces look at the rising tide of strikes and protests in Europe and decide they'd better get ready here? Okay, a lot of questions and some speculation, but easy to answer with a full and unrestricted report from the auditor general. But here's the big question, in terms of accountability, at least, and only a public inquiry with the powers of subpoena can get at this: who gave Superintendent Alfonse McNeil his marching orders? Who gave him the green light to violate the Canadian Charter of Rights? Who wanted the Public Works Protection Act imposed on the convention center and covertly served up by the Ontario government? It was a test of what civil rights lawyers are calling a form of martial law. It's not too many degrees of separation to get to the real man in charge, the prime minister. This was his show from the start. Should not Mr. Harper step forward and straightforwardly defend his decisions? If he thinks Canadians should be willing to support and pay for a massive investment in more policing aimed at domestic dissent and be willing to compromise basic Charter rights in the process, then let him say so. Let's have a proper public debate about it. And for that matter, shouldn't Ontario Premier McGuinty join him? He went along with the imposition of the archaic 1939 Public Works Protection Act, meant to stop German agents from attacking public buildings. Only a public inquiry with subpoena power, led by a person of courage, can really get to the bottom of this. But that's not likely to happen unless, dear readers, you raise your voices and demand it so.

Keynes, Crisis and Monopoly Capitalism

Robert Skidelsky and Paul Jay discuss Keynes, the IMF, concentration of ownership, political power and rebellion

skiing

Jade mountain tree-couple by Louis Chen

Ho huan mountain timelapse by Louis Chen

Cat Diaries: The First Ever Movie Filmed by Cats!

Watch "Cat Diaries: The First Ever Movie Filmed by Cats!" Inspired by our Repurrters, we created this amazing film to document the magical world of cats. Enjoy!

Arvind Gupta: Turning trash into toys for learning

About this talk

At the INK Conference, Arvind Gupta shares simple yet stunning plans for turning trash into seriously entertaining, well-designed toys that kids can build themselves -- while learning basic principles of science and design.

Gadget Lab Podcast: iPhone Tracking Controversy, Exercise Gear

Al Gore's Our Choice: Guided Tour from Push Pop Press on Vimeo.

Al Gore's Our Choice Guided Tour from Push Pop Press on Vimeo.

Onavo Is A Money-Saving, Must-Have App For EVERY iPhone Data User

I think it’s the very first app one should install.

IBM尼克杜諾菲歐：T型人才擁抱創新

在IBM成功轉型的過程中，扮演著重要角色的IBM資深副總裁─尼克．杜諾菲歐指出，企業要創新，就要重視「T型人才」─擁有多元又具專業深度的人才。同時，要勇於擁抱創新、迎接改變。

Microprocessor for cars

It’s Face Time: Google Talk For Android Phones Gets Video Chat Support

Fontana National Race Run - Captured on my GoPro HD HERO

Fontana National Race Run - Captured on my GoPro HD HERO from Houseman Family on Vimeo.

2011 Fontana Downhill Race Run

Story planning

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/english/writing/story_plan/play_popup.shtml

森山直太朗 花 Naotarou Moriyama

生きとし生ける物へ　森山直太朗
http://youtu.be/7-cV_FapS68

花(すべての人の心に花を)-夏川りみ

ShowYou users in the "age of Airplay" video to iPad

ShowYou is a new iPad app and I have an exclusive first look and interview with CEO Mark Hall.

Welcome to the Age of AirPlay (cool new feature of iPads/iPhones/Apple TV)

Look at all the cool new apps coming out that use the new Apple Protocol, AirPlay. What is that? It lets you push video wirelessly to your big screen if you have an Apple TV attached. The first apps have shipped in the past week that use it.

殘念人的思考法：你為什麼總離成功差一步？

我之所以想寫這本書，是因為發現有些人，有能力也有幹勁，但因為思考方式稍微出了問題，做事沒有辦法達到百分百效果。看到這樣的人、公司或是商店，我總是為他們覺得「很殘念」……
──山崎將志

Why you should jailbreak your iPhone

Way of the Warrior - Karate, Way of the Empty Hand

Part of a eight part series documentary on the Martial Arts of south and south east Asia, originally broadcast on the BBC in the early 1980s. This episode follows the master of a small karate dojo on the island Okinawa where the martial art of karate was first created. Part 4 of 4 parts.

BBC-Dangerous Knowledge

In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians - Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing - whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide.


The film begins with Georg Cantor, the great mathematician whose work proved to be the foundation for much of the 20th-century mathematics. He believed he was God's messenger and was eventually driven insane trying to prove his theories of infinity.

Talking iPad apps and accessories with Sam Levin

http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Sam Levin does the App Minute podcast which I love and here we talk about a variety of iPad apps and accessories. You can hear that at http://www.appminute.com/

Keepsy makes great photo albums from Instagram photos

Check out Keepsy and their new photo albums from Instagram. Really cool photo albums from Instagram (among other photo sharing services)

【他們在島嶼寫作】文學大師系列電影總預告

六位文學大師的創作靈魂，五位電影導演的生命追尋，21世紀台灣文壇最重量的文學紀錄，影壇最深刻的文學電影，2011年，耀炬登場。

Floyd the Skateboarding Bulldog - Cruisin' to the Beach

Buyosphere helps you find more of the things you like

Buyosphere is a new community that helps you find even more of the things you like. You import your Facebook likes, among other things, and it'll help you find other things you might like. Here CEO Tara Hunt shows us around.

Food Is The New Frontier In Green Tech

謝和弦 過來人

Travis - Chinese Blues & Eyes Wide Open (Live At Fuji Rock Festival 25.07.2008)

江惠 - 家后

Key: C

Intro: |C |C |Em |Am |
|Gm |Am |Dm7 |G |

C C C G
有一日咱若老 找無人甲咱友孝
Em Am Dm7 G
我會陪你 坐惦椅寮 聽你講少年的時陣 你有外摮
Em Am Dm7 G
吃好吃醜無計較 怨天怨地嘛袂曉
Am Em Dm7 G C C7
你的手 我會甲你牽條條 因為我是 你的家後

F Em
* 阮將青春嫁置恁兜 阮對少年跟你跟甲老
Dm7 Cmaj7 Csus4* C7
人情世事已經看透透 有啥人比你卡重要
F Em
阮的一生獻乎恁兜 才知幸福是吵吵鬧鬧
Dm7 C
等待返去的時陣若到 我會讓你先走
Dm7 G C
因為我會嘸甘 放你~ 為我目屎流

C C C G
有一日咱若老 有媳婦子兒友孝
Em Am Dm7 G
你若無聊 拿咱的相片 看卡早結婚的時陣 你外緣投
Em Am Dm7 G
穿好穿醜無計較 怪東怪西嘛袂曉
Am Em Dm7 G C C7
你的心 我會永遠記條條 因為我是 你的家後 *

Questions Over 'Three Cups of Tea' Author's Credibility, Charity

Porsche’s first hybrid

Ford Model T (A looking back)

Ford continued to make engines for the Model T after the car finished production in May 1927. Production averaged 100 per month in 1931, then dropped to 10 a month. The last engine, with serial number 15176888, was built on the 4th of August, 1941!

貨車煙火連環爆 估計上千公斤火藥

http://udn.com/NEWS/NATIONAL/NATS6/6292863.shtmlhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif


新北市新興堂香鋪爆炸慘劇，消防人員勘驗後，研判爆炸點在店門口前方的大貨車上，新興堂部分房間燃燒劇烈且有火藥殘跡，懷疑業者在屋內存放爆竹煙火。消防人員指出，在現場發現多個如椰子般大小的高空煙火和煙火發射器，這些高空煙火需發射器輔助發射，一般的廟會並不常見。

這些高空煙火都裝大量的黑色火藥，以爆炸現場的慘狀研判，現場至少有上千公斤的黑色火藥被引爆，才會造成如此恐怖驚人的爆炸力，估計比一百廿顆手榴彈的爆炸威力還大。

消防人員懷疑引爆火源，可能有人在卸貨過程抽菸；或是貨車在卸貨時未熄火，部分被卸下的爆竹煙火，碰觸到高溫的排氣管而引爆，正確原因還待深入調查。

新北市副市長侯友宜表示，根據現場鑑識及女子周劍琴當時目擊，爆炸是由香鋪外面十五噸大貨車上出現火種，進而引爆高空煙火彈、釀成大禍。

周劍琴向警方指出，案發時她在貨車後方，看見貨車上出現火種，竄出幾支像沖天炮的物品後，隨即發生大爆炸。

消防人員昨天勘驗，發現香紙鋪被炸開的磚塊是往店內四散，若店內存放大量爆竹而爆炸，磚塊應是往店外飛散，因此研判衝擊波來自店外；對照目擊者說法，研判爆炸點應在店外貨車上。

第一波趕往搶救的消防人員有看到新興堂二樓和三樓的房間出現劇烈燃燒、沖天炮不斷射出；勘驗後，也發現二樓和三樓房間燃燒劇烈且嚴重碳化，並有火藥殘跡，懷疑業者在此存放爆竹，已帶回現場碳化物比對。

消防人員指出，若這批爆竹煙火是在室內爆炸，磚塊外牆會先吸收爆炸力且阻隔衝擊波，爆炸威力不會如此巨大。

販賣爆竹煙火業者都擔心淋雨後爆竹煙火無法使用，且避免被查緝，常用有車廂的貨車或貨櫃車裝運爆竹煙火，在無磚牆阻隔下，一旦爆炸，威力相對強大。

【記者饒磐安／新北市報導】新北市五股區「新興堂」香鋪爆炸案四名死者，昨天上午初步確認；疑為開車路過無辜被波及的林文宏因遺體焦黑難辨，檢方為求慎重，將比對ＤＮＡ確認身分。

警方指出，林文宏遺體焦黑難辯，因陳屍在自己的轎車內，家屬據此指認死者是林文宏。

For the next 7 generations

SXSW Interview - Chris Farina

Sean interviews documentary filmmaker Chris Farina about his film World Peace and Other Fourth-Grade Achievements, which chronicles a teacher's mission to help 4th graders understand world diplomacy.

Ric Elias: 3 things I learned while my plane crashed

About this talk

Ric Elias had a front-row seat on Flight 1549, the plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River in New York in January 2009. What went through his mind as the doomed plane went down? At TED, he tells his story publicly for the first time.

Transcript:

Imagine a big explosion as you climb through 3,000 ft. Imagine a plane full of smoke. Imagine an engine going clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack. It sounds scary. Well I had a unique seat that day. I was sitting in 1D. I was the only one who could talk to the flight attendants. So I looked at them right away, and they said, "No problem. We probably hit some birds." The pilot had already turned the plane around, and we weren't that far. You could see Manhattan. Two minutes later, three things happened at the same time. The pilot lines up the plane with the Hudson River. That's usually not the route. (Laughter) He turns off the engines. Now imagine being in a plane with no sound. And then he says three words -- the most unemotional three words I've ever heard. He says, "Brace for impact." I didn't have to talk to the flight attendant anymore. (Laughter) I could see in her eyes, it was terror. Life was over.

Now I want to share with you three things I learned about myself that day. I learned that it all changes in an instant. We have this bucket list, we have these things we want to do in life, and I thought about all the people I wanted to reach out to that I didn't, all the fences I wanted to mend, all the experiences I wanted to have and I never did. As I thought about that later on, I came up with a saying, which is, "I collect bad wines." Because if the wine is ready and the person is there, I'm opening it. I no longer want to postpone anything in life. And that urgency, that purpose, has really changed my life.

The second thing I learned that day -- and this is as we clear the George Washington Bridge, which was by not a lot -- I thought about, wow, I really feel one real regret. I've lived a good life. In my own humanity and mistakes, I've tried to get better at everything I tried. But in my humanity, I also allow my ego to get in. And I regretted the time I wasted on things that did not matter with people that matter. And I thought about my relationship with my wife, with my friends, with people. And after, as I reflected on that, I decided to eliminate negative energy from my life. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better. I've not had a fight with my wife in two years. It feels great. I no longer try to be right; I choose to be happy.

The third thing I learned -- and this is as your mental clock starts going, "15, 14, 13." You can see the water coming. I'm saying, "Please blow up." I don't want this thing to break in 20 pieces like you've seen in those documentaries. And as we're coming down, I had a sense of, wow, dying is not scary. It's almost like we've been preparing for it our whole lives. But it was very sad. I didn't want to go; I love my life. And that sadness really framed in one thought, which is, I only wish for one thing. I only wish I could see my kids grow up. About a month later, I was at a performance by my daughter -- first-grader, not much artistic talent ... ... yet. (Laughter) And I'm balling, I'm crying, like a little kid. And it made all the sense in the world to me. I realized at that point, by connecting those two dots, that the only thing that matters in my life is being a great dad. Above all, above all, the only goal I have in life is to be a good dad.

I was given the gift of a miracle, of not dying that day. I was given another gift, which was to be able to see into the future and come back and live differently. I challenge you guys that are flying today, imagine the same thing happens on your plane -- and please don't -- but imagine, and how would you change? What would you get done that you're waiting to get done because you think you'll be here forever? How would you change your relationships and the negative energy in them? And more than anything, are you being the best parent you can?

Thank you.

(Applause)