The Longest Now

El presidente siguiente (2013-2015)… será mi hermano.  Felicitaciones, Sebastian!

The coruscating James Grimmelmann recently published a crisp, clean exorcism of “future conduct” releases in class action suits, in the North Carolina Law Review.  Using a number of recent class actions as motivation, including the Google Books case, he patiently and eloquently dissects the ideas behind such carte blanche releases, and the rare cases in which they might be called for.

This is a gem of a monograph – worth reading even if you are not a copyright geek.

From the opening salvo (emphasis mine):

This Article identifies a new and previously unrecognized trend in class-action settlements: releases for the defendant’s future conduct. Such releases, which hold the defendant harmless for wrongs it will commit in the future, are unusually dangerous to class members and to the public… [F]uture-conduct releases pose severe informational problems for class members and for courts… create moral hazard for the defendant, give it concentrated power, and thrust courts into a prospective planning role they are ill-equipped to handle.

Courts should guard against the dangers of future-conduct releases with a standard and a rule. The standard is heightened scrutiny for all settlements containing such releases; the Article describes the warning signs courts must be alert to and the safeguards courts should insist on. The rule is parity of preclusion: a class-action settlement may release future-conduct claims if and only if they could have been lost in litigation. [...] The Article concludes by applying its recommendations to seven actual future-conduct settlements, in each case yielding a better result or clearer explanation than the court was able to provide.

If you’re in a hurry and don’t have time to savor all 90 pages of finely referenced background and analysis, a handy comparative timeline is on p.410, the standard and rule start on p.431, and the 7 brief case studies start on p.458.

via the Laboratorium.

Wikidata, the newest Wikimedia Project, is now in very active development, and being used on all of the Wikipedias. Here for instance is the item record for Pope Francis:

Paus Fransiskus, Францыск, Папа Рымскі, পোপ ফ্রান্সিস, Pave Frans, Pápa Proinsias, Ferenc pápa, Popiežius Pranciškus, Francés I (papa), Ransisku (Tayta Papa), I. Franciscus, 方濟各 (教宗), …

From the “too good to be true (but it is)” dept: OneWeirdKernelTrick.com

↬ YanZhu

Read the Big Data and the Topologist series, from the “low-dimensional topology” blog, written by 5+ budding topologicians.

They maintain a handy list of open problems they have discussed.
↬Michael Stone.

From a recent discussion about Web 3.0 and the far future, on the AIR-L list:

In fact, the Web is currently developing Web <30, to be rolled out
with Chrome 25, Firefox 20, Opera 15, and IE 10 later this winter.

If you are interested in cutting-edge research and convolving
observation with participation, you can take part in the design of Web
<30 yourself. It is being developed through a massively
multistakeholder open online crowd-refined platform generation
(MMOOCRPG) design.
Building on the exponential success of past
efforts, the development mailing list includes a periodic
distributed auto-immolating critique of its own work, where the future
web is continuously redefined as its own dual.

If you liked Google Reader, you’ll love TheOldReader.com – a site that perfectly replicates the funcionality of the original Google Reader, adding the joy of being part of a reclaimed tool.

Update: Mako points out that newsblur may be even better, and is free software. Huzzah!

Every day for the past two weeks someone different has mentioned in my presence how much they miss Google Reader, and I or someone else has pointed them to this site, to great joy. TOR supports importing of your old GR feed. Most of my G-R-maven friends have switched over by now, so there are at least a few amazing people to share with there.

This just went out by email, from MIT President Reif, who was inaugurated president in September:

To the members of the MIT community:

Yesterday we received the shocking and terrible news that on Friday in New York, Aaron Swartz, a gifted young man well known and admired by many in the MIT community, took his own life. With this tragedy, his family and his friends suffered an inexpressible loss, and we offer our most profound condolences. Even for those of us who did not know Aaron, the trail of his brief life shines with his brilliant creativity and idealism.

Although Aaron had no formal affiliation with MIT, I am writing to you now because he was beloved by many members of our community and because MIT played a role in the legal struggles that began for him in 2011.

I want to express very clearly that I and all of us at MIT are extremely saddened by the death of this promising young man who touched the lives of so many. It pains me to think that MIT played any role in a series of events that have ended in tragedy.

I will not attempt to summarize here the complex events of the past two years. Now is a time for everyone involved to reflect on their actions, and that includes all of us at MIT. I have asked Professor Hal Abelson to lead a thorough analysis of MIT’s involvement from the time that we first perceived unusual activity on our network in fall 2010 up to the present. I have asked that this analysis describe the options MIT had and the decisions MIT made, in order to understand and to learn from the actions MIT took. I will share the report with the MIT community when I receive it.

I hope we will all reach out to those members of our community we know who may have been affected by Aaron’s death. As always, MIT Medical is available to provide expert counseling, but there is no substitute for personal understanding and support.

With sorrow and deep sympathy,

L. Rafael Reif

Now I want to hear more… but I’m bullish on it.

Wikipedia reader are being asked to edit as part of a banner campaign — for the first time since perhaps 2003.
This is being done as part of the Thank You message we send out at the end of a campaign – something we can do quite early this year thanks to a successful fundraiser.

I’ve been pushing for something like this for a couple of years – I think it’s the most important thing we can do to refresh our communities of editors and change the sense readers have of what is and isn’t welcome. I want to see us do this on every project, all throughout the year (eventually combined with the new visual editor, of course; which is truly beautiful).

What do you think?

Here’s what the draft message looks like; suggestions for better wording or other variations are welcome.

Dear Wikipedia Readers: Thank You! Overwhelming support from Wikipedia users let us end our annual fund drive early. Your donations pay for the tools, infrastructure and programs that empower thousands of editors. We would like to introduce you to some of the dedicated volunteers who you empower when you donate. It is our hope that after you read or hear a few of their stories, you’ll want to join them in sharing your knowledge with the world by editing Wikipedia.

You can edit Wikipedia!

• Create articles. After signing up, you’ll be able to help Wikipedia grow by starting new encyclopedia articles.
• Add photos and video. Register an account and you can upload your freely licensed images
• and other media.
• Become a part of the Wikipedia community. Logging in means all your contributions are attributed to your username, helping you connect with other Wikipedia contributors.

Get started

The Chilean national architectural exhibit, showcasing the country’s work at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Designed by my brother:

One small step for an editor…

Huge props to the team working on this and the underlying parsoid. It’s still in Alpha, so it’s only on the English Wikipedia this week. And you have to turn it on via user prefs; and it wants good feedback, but it makes the old heart-cockles sing.

I’ve been talking to my dear friend Elan recently, who has been accumulating research insights — often brief incisive hacks bridging a gap or circumventing a self-imposed obstacle to some cutting-edge technique — related to renewable energy, computation, and human biology.

This is the sort of cross-disciplinary thought we should all spend more time pursuing; and that more polymaths should be encouraged to explore. “curiositate research” seems like a suitably tongue-in-cheek name for their team; I hope to see great things from them soon.

via Global Voices, the Top 10 Chinese Internet Memes of 2012.

Spaaaaaaa-aaaaace…