Steve Waldman raises a point I’ve thought about in the context of peak oil.

Say you know only a few things:  Your king.  You have oil reserves.  The price of oil is rising fast due to peak oil, say 12% a year.    From a financial perspective you have a large asset that is returning 12% a year.  This asset is reasonably liquid, you could pump some and invest in other things.  But your only going to do this if you think you can find better assets to invest in.  These days that seems unlikely.  So you let it sit.

People like point out that as we transition across the top of the peak or peak oil the supply of oil doesn’t suddenly dry up.  It just stops increasing.  I think that misses the message in the above model.  Because what does change is the expected furture value of all oil reserves.  If the supply of oil is growing faster than the demand then prices fall, and the moment that reverse they can be confidently predicted to rise.  And the moment that happens anybody with oil in the ground is better off leaving it there.  That may not be a positive feedback loop, but it certainly a phase change.  To compound the effect; absent macro economic intervention, the phase change triggers a shape rise in prices which triggers a economic downturn which hollows out expected value of alternate investments so that hording is even more attractive.  That last sentence, of course, explains the psychology of recessions – or why all the money hides in a self destructive manner under the mattresses.

Steve at this points out that maybe you know another thing.  Maybe you, the king, know your countrymen hate you.  If you figure there is a 10% chance per year they will throw you out then your best course of action is to convert that oil into something even more liquid.  This is what happen in Russian after privatization, everybody who managed to get their hands of a high value asset thought: “Gosh this situation looks pretty volitile… i think i should try to convert this into something less risky.”  And they stripped the assets to the best of their ability and moved the money out of the country.

Generally political upheaval in oil producing regions drives up oil prices, but in Steve’s model a dose of political unrest creates an incentive for the king to increase supply.

Squirrel this away.  It’s a big time saver.  Next time your minions rise up you can rework this template:

“The younger Mr. Qaddafi … blamed … offered … potentially … a new flag, national anthem … threaten …” — nytimes

Your welcome.

Here’s the pull quote: “young teenagers ran about 40 percent more yellow lights and had 60 percent more crashes when they knew their friends were watching” from an amusing  article about an experiment into the effect of friends on behavior.  The experiment involved two groups – teens and adults – in two settings – alone and with friends watching.  Actually – in conformance with standard practice – experimenters lied; the friends weren’t actually watching.

This is a very nice result, but it seems to me that the article, and presumably the experimenters, didn’t spin up enough insta-theories for why there might be this difference.

The motivation for playing this game presumably falls into three buckets – playing by the rules to maximize your score and cash reward,  having fun, and finally using the game experience as an token in your social relationships.

The player is juggling these motivations as he tunes the style of his play.  I think that teens are more aware of these three sources of reward than adults are, having played more games, and more games in a social setting.  Further I think that teens have a more nuanced awareness that games are, well games; and are more likely to discount the point/cash reward aspect of the game.  They are more playful.

Of course the experimenters did this entire exercise inside a brain scanner.  The data shows the teens had more fun than the adults.

So, the articles conclusion, that this shows how peer pressure leads teens to take more risks, seems excessive to me.

Undo is, of course, the single most awesome advance in user interface ever.  What makes it awesome is that it lets the user poke around in the UI fearlessly.

Big useful software has lots of commands.  Even if you have made it safe to browse and play with the commands it can be hard to organize the commands so users can find them.    The Mac’s menubar was big help, but it only works up to a certain scale.  A monster program; like full featured word processor or spreadsheet just doesn’t fit.  One of the problems with multi-button mice is that few users manage to discover how to browse and try the commands are hidden under various mouse buttons.  Similarly one of the problems with floating toolbars is that few users manage to get around to finding, exposing, and then trying each of the tools.  And of course it all gets worse when the behavior of the tools varies slightly depending on selection state, what’s selected, and how many things are selected.

There is a long history of attempting to look over the user’s shoulder and guess what he’s trying to do.  The most infamous example is of course the Microsoft paperclip.  UI is a bit like a game, the hundreds of available commands provide possible next moves in the game.  Given the size of the space of possible moves it seems obvious that the software might be able to make helpful suggestions.  In a sense the way that menu items are enabled/disabled depending on what’ selected is just that; at least it avoids the foolishly suggesting commands that aren’t available.

This video shows an interesting extension to some of these ideas.  The UI this case does two things.  First off it suggests commands based on what the user has selected.  That’s not really different than enabling/disabling menus based on what’s selected.  The reason it feels different is that the the UI is also taking a guess what, of all the possible operations, it thinks the user is most likely to be doing.  It’s guesses aren’t particularly impressive, but it’s very suggestive.

There is a nice additional trick shown.  As the users is browsing to decide what command to invoke the UI shows him previews of what the command’s effect will be.  Preview like this is easy if you have a solid undo infrastructure, and enough computes.

Yahoo’s fate was pretty much sealed in the aftermath of Microsoft’s take over attempt.  Shortly there after control of the firm shifted to a handful of wealthy individuals who’s only aspiration was to maximize the short term return on their investment.  Yahoo will die or be torn asunder trying to met their demands.

So what about Flickr?  Which without exaggeration I think can be described as one of the few great cultural achievements of the last twenty years.  What can they do to it?  What will squeeze the maximum return on investment out of it?  Fast.

Here’s a possibility: Yahoo is sells the Flicker community to Getty Images.  Let me explain.

While opinions vary about copyright’s fate, everybody agrees that copyright is looking a bit sickly right now.  The internet upset the traditional distribution barriers, barriers that encouraged bottlenecks.  Bottlenecks where copyright fees could easily be collected.  The physical world analogy for this transformation is a toll bridge over a fast and dangerous river.  If the river dries up it’s going to be hard to get people to pass thru your toll booth.

One school of thought argues that technical and physical realities have changed; and that makes the copyright business models obsolete.    Moral or legal arguments are irrelevant if they are physically impossible to implement.  And much the same way that you can make compelling arguments against extreme disparities of wealth, you are severely limited in how much you can do about it.  You can temper it, but you can not eliminate it.  You can temper our inability to pay creators of information goods; but you can’t eliminate it.  It’s not like they aren’t going to do it anyway.

Another school of thought holds that shifting distribution channels are nothing new.  Each time one emerges there is a period of, to use the analogy, untaxed river crossing.  And each time bottlenecks emerge and it becomes possible to collect the tolls once again.  And there is a lot of history to suggest that’s the case.  Distribution networks, like all unregulated networks, tend to condense so their are hubs.  A boatload of efficiency emerges out of that condensation.  The standardization they enable goes hand and hand with the opportunity to collect a toll.

One of the pleasures I get from thinking about his stuff is the stories.  Here is an amazingly fun story about condensation in a distribution network involving dope smoking, junk food, and the cash flow of the a distributor.

A common 20th century pattern in shifting distribution channels was the roll-up.  Early in the century every city had it’s own department store, and by the end of the century these had all merged.  Early in the century every neighborhood had it’s own hardware store, privately owned by a single proprietor.  By the end of the century national chains had displaced or rolled up displaced the neighborhood business.  At this point there are very very few locally operated businesses.  The pattern that a new industry starts with a diversity of vendors and condenses into a few is surprisingly inevitable.

Which brings us to Flickr.

Flicker is a photo sharing community.  It is a direct competitor to the more traditional stock photography industry; companies like Corbus and GettyImages.  These businesses provide a place were a publisher can shop for an image, pay his toll, and get back to work.  They are classic two sided network buisnesses; bridge between the photographers and the publishers.  Keeping most of the revenue for themselves.  Their success depends entirely on the vitality of copyright.  No doubt all those images at Flicker under liberal creative commons licenses have undermined the value of those businesses.  Copyright is pretty sick these days.  Thus, years ago, when Bill Gates bought Corbus by reaction was a combination of “wait!, copyright’s on it’s deathbed” and “oh, he think’s it will recover.”  Markets climb a wall of worry, and all that.

In talking about Corbus the Wikipedia page states: “By buying out the many family-owned businesses that created the field, Getty and Corbis are in the process of “rolling-up” the stock photo business.”

So.  How would you go about rolling up Flicker into your stock photo business if you wanted to?

This morning a friend, who has a delightful popular presence on Flickr was invited by Flickr and GettyImages to sign an “Contributor Agreement for Photo Sharing Content.”  The incentive was that she might receive a 20-30% share of any royalties they collect.  It includes this clause:

“Exclusivity:  All Content accepted by Getty Images is on a Content exclusive basis. Such Content and any Similars may

not be submitted to any third party for license, sale or distribution. However, on a non-exclusive basis, You

may use Content and any Similars for Your personal or self promotional, non-commercial use, including

Photo Sharing, provided that You do not compete with or limit the rights granted to Getty Images under the

Agreement. On an exclusive basis you may use Content and any Similars for limited edition, signed and/or

numbered fine art prints (though Getty Images retains the exclusive right to sell and license prints not

signed or numbered).”

So let us imagine how this plays out.  Currently thousands of pages on thousands of sites around the Internet are decorated with images she created.  After she signs this agreement the bots working on behalf of GettyImages quickly discover them all.  Actually, I suspect thier bots already know this information and they invited her to sign up because they know her images are widely copied.  The also know she didn’t already relinquish her rights with a liberal creative commons license.

She currently manages the “enforcement of rights” problem her self.  Trading off the chance of some royalities against the cost of chasing after those royalities.  But since she makes her income from the work she photographs the wide distribution of the photos has many beneficial effects.  It builds her fan base, it’s advertising, it contributes into the community she her work is situated in.  So how to manage the enforcement problem is more subtle than it might appear at first glance.

Not so for GettyImages, their business decision on enforcement is simple.  For example if sending a note to every site with one of my friends images on it asking for a toll maximizes revenue, why not.

So, I think, Yahoo is selling the Flicker community to Getty Images.  I wonder if Google could do something analogous with their image search collection.

I bought a light bulb.  It goes in my kitchen ceiling, to replace a 65 watt down spot.  The box says it will last 35 thousand hours (which is about four years). They talk about 20 years.  Though it only has a 3 year limited warranty.  These things cost fifty bucks.  Usually, Though i got mine on sale.  Rumor is that involves a subsidy by the local utility.  At the sale price, my calculations indicate it’s payback is about three years.  Of course maybe I’ll just leave the lights on more.

I’m amused by the amount of packaging this bulb enjoyed.  I guess if you spend fifty bucks for this thing you’d expect precious packaging.  The circles on that carpet are about a foot across.

Kieren Healy draws our attention to a paper demonstrating that information presented to students in a hard to read typeface is retained better than than presented in an easy to read typeface.  I feel this has something to say about dyslexia but I’m too exhausted from reading to say exactly what.

I recognized a long while back that different people have different preferred communication medium.  If you want to committee with Alice – use the phone, with Bob – use IRC, with Carol – send a fax, David – call a meeting and be sure to provide an agenda, Ed – writes a blog, and Freda – reads books.  And of course there are variations of style; George prefers light and humorous, and Helen insists on serious (including bibliography).  Following thru on this insight is exhausting.  Of course this can be used for evil, as in the “to unsubscribe from our marketing email send a letter to the following address.”  Once you comprehend all this the likelihood of your sinning in this regard rises.

Further nobody cares about your preferred modality; well except those people who happen to prefer the same one.  They are perfectly happy to join in a round of “those people!”  For example, Bill Tozier twitters:

While I was asleep, Santa brought me a new understanding about situation awareness vs. the common prejudice that “only face to face is real.  Where does the common prejudice against multiple modes of communication come from? Twitter is “inauthentic”? Email is a “proxy”? Laziness?  Face to face communication is high bandwidth, but demands inordinate resources as well. Folks who demand conversation are resource-greedy.

Somebody drew my attention to NetFlix’s Chaos Monkey.  This is a most excellent design trick.  The monkey randomly kills parts of your system.  His presence helps to avoid developers from falling into the illusion that failures won’t happen.  I’ve used this technique, though not enough.  It’s great.  One nice feature is you can juice up the monkey during testing to assure more failures occur.

What I’ve not done, and I don’t think I’ve seen suggested, is that you should manage the distribution of failures so they match what happens in the real world.  I.e. things usually fail one here, one there; but then occationally they fail in bunches.  It occurs to me that you really ought to have a barrel of monkeys and they should exhibit a tendency to trigger cascades of failures.