31 Januar 2013

Love in the Age of Data: How One Woman Hacked Her Way to Happily Ever After

Love in the Age of Data: How One Woman Hacked Her Way to Happily Ever After

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Reverse-engineering the algorithms of romance, one picky data point at a time.


The question of how love works has bedeviled writers and scientists for centuries. But how do the dynamics of romance differ in the age of online dating? In Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match (public library ; UK ), digital strategist and journalist Amy Webb — one of the smartest people I know — takes us on her unexpected journey to true love, in which she sets out to “game the system, using math, data, and loopholes” to find the man of her dreams. If it sounds predictable and contrived, rest assured it’s anything but.


Amy writes in the introduction:



I realized that we’ve all been going about finding our matches the wrong way. Whether we’re dating in the real world or online, we’re relying too much now on hope and happenstance. And these days, algorithms, too. We don’t allow ourselves to think about what we really want in a partner, an then we don’t sell ourselves in order to get it.



After a series of bad dates following a major heartbreak, mathematically-driven Amy decided to take a quantitative approach to the playing field and started systematically recording various data points about her dates, revealing some important correlations. After one particularly bad date, she decided to formalize the exercise and wrote down everything that was important to her in a mate — from intellectual overlap to acceptable amount of body hair — eventually coming up with 72 attributes that she was going to demand in any future date. She then broke down these attributes into two tiers and developed a scoring system, assigning specific points to each. For 700 out of a maximum possible 1800, she’d agree to have an email exchange; for 900, she’d go on a date; for 1,500, she’d consider a long-term relationship.



But this, she soon realized, was only half the equation — it only illuminated what she was looking for in a mate. So Amy took the obvious data-driven next step: She set up 10 fake dating profiles, posing as 10 men with high scores on her rating system, and set about using the site as each of these different archetypes. She interacted with a total of 96 women, systematically noting their behaviors and responses, from the way they constructed their profiles to the language they used in interactions to how long they took in responding to messages, reverse-engineering what makes a successful, popular female profile that attracts the very kind of man Amy was looking for.


This allowed her to create a “super profile,” her very own custom “algorithm” of love. Once she looked at her data and set up a real profile for herself, it was a matter of time until she met Brian, fell in love, got married, and started a family — your ordinary happily-ever-after fairy tale ending, with an extraordinary side of quantitative and qualitative magic.


Amy writes:



Think about the way you’ve set up your Facebook profile. And i you don’t use Facebook, instead think about how you’ve described yourself to new people you’ve met recently. You list your favorite foods, bands, books. You talk about cities you want to visit. These aren’t meaningful data points; they’re stylized nuggets of information meant to personify ourselves in a formulaic way to others. A Facebook profile is in many ways an outfit we wear and the accessories and cologne we put with it: we’re hoping to project a particular image in order to socialize with (or avoid, in some cases) a particular group of people.


Dating sites and the algorithms they advertise purport to sort through our personalities, wants, and desires in order to connect us with our best possible matches. Which means that we’ve outsourced not just an introduction , but the consideration of whether or not that man or woman is really our ideal. We’re putting our blind trust in a system that’s meant to do the heavy lifting or figuring out what it is that we really want out of a mate, and what will truly make us happy. This job is being processed using information that we, ourselves, have entered into a computer system. Bad data in equals bad data out. Algorithms that dating sites have spent millions of dollars to refine aren’t necessarily bad. They’re just not as good as we want them to be, because they’re computing our half-truths and aspirational wishes.



One of the possible reasons for this imperfection, Amy points out, is a misalignment of motives. Dating sites make their money either through advertising or through subscriptions, and in either case they benefit from your coming back to the site again and again, spending as much time as possible looking for — but not finding — a mate. (If this sounds cynical, it isn’t any more so than the fundamental reality of the internet itself — it’s the same misalignment of publishers’ financial motives and the audience’s best interest that’s responsible for the web’s infestation of slideshows, pagination, and other vacant content aimed at maximizing pageviews while minimizing your reading experience and enjoyment of the content.)


Though some of the findings are dishearteningly prehistoric, reinforcing gender stereotypes and sexual archetypes — men prefer blondes and are turned off by powerful women, curly women are better off straightening their hair, and using light language bordering on the inane helps women attract more dates — the overall experiment offers some fascinating, and often counterintuitive, modern-day anthropological insights.


In the appendix, Amy shares some of the findings she arrived at in analyzing what makes a successful profile:



  • Use aspirational language; keep it positive and optimistic.

  • Sounding “writerly” doesn’t work in your favor.

  • Don’t recycle your resume on your dating profile.

  • Lead with your hobbies and activities.

  • Stay away from foreign words.

  • Keep your profile pithy, between 90 and 100 words — or about three sentences.

  • Use humor, but beware that sarcasm doesn’t translate well online and tends to come off as anger or aloofness.

  • Don’t talk about your job, especially if what you do is difficult to explain.


Sample Data, A Love Story with Amy’s entertaining, enlightening, infinitely heartening TEDx talk:



Ultimately, the point of Data, A Love Story isn’t to colonize romance by validating the rites of a Universal System where, in order to attain some regressive ideal of love, women dumb themselves down; rather, it is to demonstrate that it’s possible, with the right amount of intelligence, both technical, in reverse-engineering the system’s inner workings, and emotional, in being unafraid to want what one wants, to hack the system — any system — to serve one’s own ideal of love.



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30 Januar 2013

Astronaut Chris Hadfield's otherworldly Earth landscapes, from space

Astronaut Chris Hadfield's otherworldly Earth landscapes, from space

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"Venezuelan valley framed by misty clouds - mysterious, beautiful and surreal."—Chris Hadfield


As I've blogged before, Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield is currently living in space aboard the International Space Station (ISS) as Flight Engineer on Expedition 34 and he has been tweeting absolutely stunning photographs of Earth. Follow him on Twitter, for daily photo updates. Hadfield has captured some of the devastating floods hitting Australia this week, in images like the one below.



"Floodwaters pour into the Coral Sea near Rockhampton, Australia on Tuesday morning."—Chris Hadfield



"Cauliflower clouds over the Amazon rainforest. A river like lightning."—Chris Hadfield



"A blue river in Brazilian farmland provides a striking contrast of colour and landscape."—Chris Hadfield



"Is this African lake real, or a mirage? Either way, a sere and beautiful natural work of art."—Chris Hadfield











via Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2013/01/29/astronaut-chris-hadfields-ot.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29

28 Januar 2013

How To: Make a cloud chamber

How To: Make a cloud chamber

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David Ng has a great guide to building your very own sub-atomic-particle-spotting device.







via Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2013/01/28/how-to-make-a-cloud-chamber.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29

Argument

Argument

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/argument.png

The misguided search for a perpetual motion machine has run substantially longer than any attempted perpetual motion machine.



via xkcd.com http://xkcd.com/1166/

Op-Ed Columnist: Makers, Takers, Fakers

Op-Ed Columnist: Makers, Takers, Fakers

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Class warfare comes out into the open.







via NYT > Opinion http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/opinion/krugman-makers-takers-fakers-.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

27 Januar 2013

Comic for January 27, 2013

Comic for January 27, 2013

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via Dilbert Daily Strip http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2013-01-27/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dilbert%2Fdaily_strip+%28Dilbert+Daily+Strip+-+UU%29

25 Januar 2013

Türkisch lernen in Istanbul: Wo geht es hier zur Wurst-Brot-Party?

Türkisch lernen in Istanbul: Wo geht es hier zur Wurst-Brot-Party?

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Istanbul ist ein Sehnsuchtsort, ein Mix aus Orient und vertrautem Europa. Sarah Levy zog für einen Monat zum Türkischlernen in die Stadt - und um dem deutschen Winter zu entfliehen. Sie fand Schnee am Bosporus, einen überaus strengen Lehrer und eine Metropole, die einem den Kopf verdreht.



via SPIEGEL ONLINE - Schlagzeilen http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/studium/sprachkurs-in-istanbul-erfahrungsbericht-uebers-tuerkischlernen-a-879267.html

Legos and green army men show you how cold sores work

Legos and green army men show you how cold sores work

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Anne of Green Gables had herpes. And now, you can learn a little more about how herpes hides out in your body and how it causes cold sores with the help of University of Texas professor Chris Sullivan, a bunch of legos, and a platoon of green army men.


Many thanks to Joe Hanson!










via Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2013/01/24/legos-and-green-army-men-show.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29

24 Januar 2013

Sucht-Drama "Flight": Denzel, der Suff-Pilot

Sucht-Drama "Flight": Denzel, der Suff-Pilot

http://www.spiegel.de/images/image-449386-thumbsmall-orrn.jpg

Ein besoffener Pilot steuert das Flugzeug, in dem Sie sitzen. Gutes Gefühl? Das Oscar-nominierte Drama "Flight" spielt mit diesem Szenario. Regisseur Robert Zemeckis und Hauptdarsteller Denzel Washington sorgen dafür, dass wir nicht allzu verstört das Kino verlassen. Aber dieser krasse Absturz!



via SPIEGEL ONLINE - Schlagzeilen http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/kino/flight-denzel-washingto-spielt-alkoholkranken-piloten-a-878976.html

Globe and Mail runs loony screed against "hackers", Aaron Swartz, logic

Globe and Mail runs loony screed against "hackers", Aaron Swartz, logic

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Cory wrote on Monday about Ahmed Al-Kabaz, the Dawson College Comp Sci student who found a massive bug on his school's website that left total data on thousands of students vulnerable to an easy hack. Ahmed reported the bug to Dawson's administrators and later checked to see if it had been closed. He was then expelled. The story outraged Canadians, disgraced Dawson College and won Ahmed some job offers. Yesterday, the editorial board of The Globe and Mail, Canada's "newspaper of record", published this contrary view:


"When did it become wrong to punish hackers?"


The piece not only sides with Dawson College on Ahmed's expulsion, it also takes the opportunity to state the Globe's support for Carmen Ortiz's prosecution of Aaron Swartz. And it goes on. In five galling paragraphs, the Globe and Mail has declared its opposition to Internet freedom fighters, copyright reformists, privacy activists, transparency campaigners, and hackers of any stripe.


Read it and I think you'll agree that it's a stunningly ignorant piece of writing. A proud declaration of ignorance. An ignorance manifesto.


It's beneath contempt and consideration, save for the fact that it was published by the most influential newspaper in Canada. So it must be dealt with. Where to begin?


"The international hacking community is currently up in arms after the suicide of Aaron Swartz"

Sorry, "the international hacking community"?


Are the academics who donated thousands of research papers to the public domain in Aaron's memory members of this "international hacking community"? Is Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren in this shady cult too, and is her bill in Aaron's memory a weapon of her radical cause? What about the hundreds of thousands of people who mourn Aaron because his contributions are so wonderful and his resolve to do good so inspiring? Are we the "international community of hackers", or is that just a convenient way of ghettoizing, belittling and dismissing us?


"Stealing is stealing," "rules exist for a reason," copyright is a "foundation".

Jesus, really? You'd think they wouldn't go there, considering what just happened.


Last fall, senior Globe columnist Margaret Wente was exposed as a serial plagiarist and a fabulist. The Globe knew about her thievery for months but ignored it for as long as they could. Then they tried to sweep it under the rug. Finally, they apologized, badly and insincerely. So much for copyright, so much for "stealing is stealing". And as for "the rules," they didn't apply to Margaret Wente. Her job was protected.


"In the age of the Internet, the massive downloading for free of music and movies and other copyrighted material has muddied the waters for many people."

What on Earth does music downloading have to do with Ahmed Al-Kabaz and his discovery of sloppy code that put himself and thousands of his peers at risk? What exactly does movie piracy have to do with Aaron Swartz's belief that locking away thousands of scholarly works, paid for with public funds and created for the good of humanity, was a crime that couldn't be tolerated? Who exactly is guilty of muddying the waters by lumping these disparate things together?*


Can the Globe's editorial board really not fathom the difference between running a security diagnostic tool on a website and launching a "cyber attack"? Would they uncritically appropriate language from a corporate press release in any other instance? Is this truly an inability to discern distinctions between fraudsters and fixers, between thieves and humanitarians, or just an angry refusal to even try?


Either way, it's no longer okay to be this stupid. Stubborn, willful stupidity like this, in the hands of power, has consequences.




Jesse Brown blogs at Macleans.ca and is on Twitter @JesseBrown.




*Actually, there is a connection between Ahmed Al-Kabaz and Aaron Swartz. Ahmed investigated a powerful institution to see if it was competent and safe, and when he discovered that it wasn't, he exposed it. Aaron believed passionately in the public's right to information. Both were doing journalism. In decrying their actions, the Globe has in effect taken a position against the basic mission of journalism .








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Why I Hate Saturn (and other Kyle Baker classic comics) free online

Why I Hate Saturn (and other Kyle Baker classic comics) free online

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The astounding, amazing, brilliant comics creator Kyle Baker has thwacked a whack of his graphic novels onto the tubes, for free, including my all-time favorite Baker, "Why I Hate Saturn." Run, don't walk.


Why I Hate Saturn by Kyle Baker (via Making Light )








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22 Januar 2013

Kids should learn programming as well as reading and writing

Kids should learn programming as well as reading and writing

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Here's Mitch Resnick of the MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarten Group (whence the kids' programming language Scratch comes) doing a TedX talk about the role of programming in education, arguing that kids should learn to code so that they can use code to learn:



Most people view computer coding as a narrow technical skill. Not Mitch Resnick. He argues that the ability to code, like the ability to read and write, is becoming essential for full participation in today's society. And he demonstrates how Scratch programming software from the MIT Media Lab makes coding accessible and appealing to everyone -- from elementary-school children to his 83-year-old mom.


As director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, Mitch Resnick designs new technologies that, in the spirit of the blocks and finger paint of kindergarten, engage people of all ages in creative learning experiences.



Reading, Writing, and Programming: Mitch Resnick at TEDxBeaconStreet (Thanks, Mitch!)








via Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2013/01/21/206830.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29

Another new asteroid-mining firm: 'First commercial space fleet'

Another new asteroid-mining firm: 'First commercial space fleet'

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Plus 'breakthrough' in space manufacturing


A new space mining venture is all set to do battle with James Cameron’s asteroid mining outfit in an industry that isn’t even certain to be possible yet.…






via The Register http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/22/new_asteroid_mining_firm_deep_space_industries/

21 Januar 2013

Remembering Aaron Swartz: David Foster Wallace on the Meaning of Life

Remembering Aaron Swartz: David Foster Wallace on the Meaning of Life

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“Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.”


This past weekend, I attended the heartbreaking memorial for open-access activist Aaron Swartz, who for the past two years had been relentlessly and unscrupulously prosecuted for making academic journal articles freely available online and who had taken his own life a week prior. A speaker at the service read a piece by one of Aaron’s personal heroes, David Foster Wallace — an excerpt from Wallace’s famous Kenyon College commencement address, the only public talk he ever gave on his views of life, which was eventually adapted into a slim book titled This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life (public library ).



I’ve written about the speech perviously, but the particular excerpt read at Aaron’s memorial resonates with chilling clarity in light of recent meditations on the meaning of life, how to find one’s purpose, morality vs. intelligence, and whether money can really buy happiness. Wallace remarks:



If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.



Also speaking at the memorial, data visualization godfather Edward Tufte captured the essence of Aaron’s character:




Aaron’s unique quality was that he was marvelously and vigorously different. There’s a scarcity of that.



Hear This Is Water in its entirety, with notable excerpts, here. Help fight the broken system that mauled Aaron here.


Portrait: Aaron Swartz by Fred Benenson under Creative Commons



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