Worth living today:

“I know you get dozens of these requests every week (5 pr day, you said? damn), and it’s hard to top whatever weird and convoluted way people are finding to grab your attention. I was hoping to make you a deal: I promise that me and my brother are great people to host, and if I’m wrong I will change my profile picture to whatever you ask it to be for 6 months! :D
i have to admit, I’m kinda pleased with myself for coming up with this brilliant plan.”

Sorry guys, I won’t be able to host you since I won’t be in Berlin for a major part of your stay.

“I’d like to pay, please.”
- “Ok. What did you have?”
“One pizza Quatro Staggioni, and one pizza Quatro Formaggi. And a small bottle of coke.”
- “That’s 5.40, please.”

<3 Berlin

Link of the day: Pirate Coelho

A) In the case that you download a book and like it, please buy the book, so we can tell to the industry that sharing contents is not life threatening to the book business.
B) You can do a relevant service to your community. Print and handle FOR FREE to a local library in a small town, to a hospital, to a prison. The intention of Pirate Coelho (as well as my free web books) is first and foremost share thoughts with people who cannot afford buying books.

Wonderful.

“The argument that the wikileaks info can get people killed fails miserably when you realize that the absence of this info is killing people everyday.”

I just found this by accident on the internet looking for a bookshelf …

I bought Frank Warren’s book last year and found this video today.

The idea is amazing, the content both devastating and worth living for: Warren collects the secrets people have never told anyone.

I can’t say I agree with the video completely – it is to some degree xenophobic, intolerant and conservative. But that’s not the point. The point is that it inspires a sense of travelling, and sense of looking at places with different eyes, a sense of forgetting who you are and seeing a place for what it is, leaving yourself behind.

And that is something I want to keep in mind, and I don’t mind to be reminded of.

“I would like to have a Latte Machiatto.”
- “I’m sorry, we don’t have Latte.”
“Why not?”

Look around and live to see what the place is offering to you! And stop to live a standard life in a standardized world. Please stop to face your neighbourhood that thoughtless.

It matters whether you try to live in Neukölln or whether you just live your imported party here.

(thanks, Sophie)

Ross Anderson, Cambridge University
vs.
Melanie Johnson, UK Cards Association

Background, as described on Ross Anderson’s blog, in the entry “merry Christmas to all bankers“:

“The bankers’ trade association has written to Cambridge University asking for the MPhil thesis of one of our research students, Omar Choudary, to be taken offline. They complain it contains too much detail of our No-PIN attack on Chip-and-PIN and thus ‘breaches the boundary of responsible disclosure’; they also complain about Omar’s post on the subject to this blog.
Needless to say, we’re not very impressed by this.”

And here are parts of the reply of Ross:

“You seem to think that we might censor a student’s thesis, which is lawful and already in the public domain, simply because a powerful interest finds it inconvenient. This shows a deep misconception of what universities are and how we work. Cambridge is the University of Erasmus, of Newton, and of Darwin; censoring writings that offend the powerful is offensive to our deepest values. Thus even though the decision to put the thesis online was Omar’s, we have no choice but to back him. That would hold even if we did not agree with the material! Accordingly I have authorised the thesis to be issued as a Computer Laboratory Technical Report. This will make it easier for people to find and to cite, and will ensure that its presence on our web site is permanent.”
[...]
“You complain that our work may undermine public confidence in the payments system. What will support public confidence in the payments system is evidence that the banks are frank and honest in
admitting its weaknesses when they are exposed, and diligent in effecting the necessary remedies. Your letter shows that, instead, your member banks do their lamentable best to deprecate the work of those outside their cosy club, and indeed to censor it.”

The entire letter can be found here.

Hilarious.