September 2013
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Today’s raw bibliography
If I had world enough and time, the Fargo outline below would turn into one of my (less than) daily outlines. Instead I’m publishing it in raw form: links alone. Trust me: they’re all worthwhile. And I like them better this way than in as many open tabs spread across three browsers, all of which… Continue reading
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Digging Hart Island, New York’s Million-Corpse Potter’s Field
A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization. — Samuel Johnson Visitors to New York’s Orchard Beach (at the top of the photo above) probably don’t know that the low wooded island offshore will, at the current rate, contain a million buried human bodies, if it doesn’t already. The site is Hart… Continue reading
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Daily Outline
History John Philip Sousa, “The Menace of Mechanical Music,” 1906, at ExplorePAhistory.com. Pull-quote: “The host of mechanical reproducing machines, in their mad desire to supply music for all occasions, are offering to supplant the illustrator in the class room, the dance orchestra, the home and public singers and players, and so on. Evidently they believe… Continue reading
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Frontiers of Planned Obsolesence
Our iPad was new in the summer of 2010: first generation. It was top-of-the-line, with 64Gb of storage and 3G connectivity. And it still works well. But the number of apps it runs is going steadily down. Here’s the current list: All those apps ran in the past. But both Apple and the app developers decided… Continue reading
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The American Way of Privacy
My sister Jan — student of history, Navy vet and a Wise One — sent me an email a couple days ago that I thought would make a good guest post. She said yes to that suggestion and here it is… Is the new born-in-connectivity generation going to re-define privacy? They may try —… Continue reading
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We know we’ve traded away privacy. But for exactly what security?
In Freedom and the Social Contract, Vint Cerf writes, The tension we feel between preserving privacy and a desire to be protected from harm feeds the debate about the extent to which we are willing to trade one for the other. Not everyone, nor every culture, will find the same point of equilibrium. Moreover, as technology and society… Continue reading
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Pirate radio lives, big time, in New York
Last Saturday evening I was walking up Wadsworth Avenue in Manhattan, a few blocks north of 181st Street, when I passed a group of people sitting sitting on the steps of an apartment building. They were talking, drinking, eating snacks and listening to a boom box set to 94.9FM. A disc jockey chattered in Spanish,… Continue reading
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Daily Outline
The Net Verizon’s diabolical plan to turn the Web into pay-per-view. By Bill Snyder in Infoworld. What Happened At The Network Neutrality Oral Argument? Bigger, Snarkier and Uncut. By Harold Feld in Wetmachine. Also: The short version at Public Knowledge. Surveillance Matthew Green’s post, which stirred up news of its own. Very useful, among other… Continue reading
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Why we’ll win. All of us, that is.
JP Rangaswami, in On not collaborating: Ignore. Ridicule. Fight. Lose. That’s what happens to the institutions that seek to preserve the problems for which they were created. So it is with collaboration. We’ve heard the word many times. And we’ve seen it paid lip service many times. But so long as it was not centre-stage, the… Continue reading
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Now see these
40 Maps That Will Help You Make Sense of the World. In Twisted Sifter. My fave: That’s from Deadspin. Continue reading
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The postal model of privacy
On February 25, 2008, the FCC held a hearing on network management practices in the Ames Courtroom at Harvard Law School, hosted by the Berkman Center. In that hearing David P. Reed, one of the Internet’s founding scientists, used a plain envelope to explain how the Internet worked, and why it is wrong for anybody other than intended recipients to look inside… Continue reading
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Weekend Outline
Privacy Revealed: How US and UK spy agencies defeat internet privacy and security. By James Ball, Julian Borger and Glenn Greenwald in The Guardian. Subheads: • NSA and GCHQ unlock encryption used to protect emails, banking and medical records • $250m-a-year US program works covertly with tech companies to insert weaknesses into products • Security experts say programs ‘undermine the fabric… Continue reading
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Daily Outline
Surveillance Have we passed peak surveillance? By Brad Feld. Pivots off my Thoughts on Privacy. The Only Way to Restore Trust in the NSA. By Bruce Schneier in The Atlantic. “The public has no faith left in the intelligence community or what the president says about it. A strong, independent special prosecutor needs to clean… Continue reading
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Daily Outline
Life on Earth On the Safety of Firefighters: Real Time Danger During the Jesusita Blaze and Human Lives vs. Expensive Homes. By Ray Ford in The Independent. An excellent report by Ray on a wildfire that took more than 80 homes, burned across the face of the Santa Ynez mountains above Santa Barbara, and was the second… Continue reading
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Daily Outline
Unpleasantries Report to the President: MIT and the Prosecution of Aaron Swartz. Review Panel: Harold Abelson, Peter A Diamond, Andrew Grosso, Douglas W. Pfeiffer. Some learnings: “Before Aaron Swartz’s suicide, the MIT community paid scant attention to the matter, other than during the period immediately following his arrest. Few students, faculty, or alumni expressed concerns… Continue reading