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Smartphones Are Toys First, Tools Second
If you time-traveled to the 1960s, or even the 1980s, and tried to describe smartphones to the people you met, they wouldn’t believe you.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,148 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
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The APA Meeting: A Photo-Essay
The first thing you notice at the American Psychiatric Association meeting is its size. By conservative estimates, a quarter of the psychiatrists in the United States are packed into a single giant…
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China, Leverage, and Values
If there is a new tech cold war, it is one with shots fired over a decade ago, largely by China. The questions going forward are about both leverage and values.
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Mimetic Traps
I’ve been a graduate student in physics for almost three years, but I only recently figured out why. I had to tackle a simple question do so:
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The Trouble with “Finding Your People” Online
Create beautiful emails, automate campaigns, and track performance. Try it now and see how our tools can drive your business.
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Fukushima 8 years on – photo essay
Fukushima 8 years on
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Sexy weasels in Renaissance art
Exploring the sexual symbolism hidden in paintings of weasels in Renaissance art
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Free Solo and Economic Growth
The references to Gutenberg reminds me of a discussion in Simon Winchester's fascinating book "The Man Who Loved China". There the author points out that the first printed book occurred in China about 500 years before Gutenberg. The question posed by Winchester's "Man" (Joseph Needham) was why, with such a lead…
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Rückzugsorte – Map of areas in Berlin which are the furthest away from a street
Finde Rückzugsorte abseits von Berliner Straßen
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How to Join a Social Network in 1998
I'm David Friedman , a professional photographer who sometimes gets ideas for photos, designs, gadgets, and other projects. I write about it all on this blog. You can find the meaning behind the name “Ironic Sans” back in the very first post .
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Senate Testimony on Privacy Rights and Data Collection in a Digital Economy
Idle Words > Talks > Privacy Rights and Data Collection in a Digital Economy (Senate hearing)
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Cybersecurity Checklist for Political Campaigns
Short-lived political campaigns rarely build formal security programs and often assume they're too small to attract serious attackers, but campaigns across the United States have been targeted by document theft and credential phishing. Six observed attacker tactics map to a short list of defensive priorities, starting…
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The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)
(Note: although I originally wrote this as a stand-alone post, it may make sense to think of it as Part Two of a series, beginning with The Rise of the Access Economy.) There’s a classic exercise…
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I'm not collaborating with Kenneth Reitz
[Content Warning: parts of this post could be triggering for those who have experienced gaslighting or other forms of abuse]
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A World Run with Code
What the world will be like when computational intelligence and computational contracts are ubiquitous. Transcript of a talk by Stephen Wolfram from a 2019 blockchain conference.
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True Surprise
How many true surprises are there in life? This was the question I asked Mrs. Bastard when she was pregnant with our first child and wanted ...
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Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
Let’s lead with the punchline: the question of what comes after IRC, for Mozilla, is now on my desk.
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Meditations on Moloch (2014)
I. Allen Ginsberg’s famous poem on Moloch:What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and u…
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Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea
Patients having some sort of “control” over their own medical data is a perennial favourite blockchain pitch. We may have found the source.
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Notes on AI Bias
Machine learning is the new centre of tech, and like all big new things there are issues. ‘AI bias’ is much-discussed right now: machine learning finds patterns but sometimes it finds the wrong one, and it can be hard to tell.
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Is everything an MLM
Last week, I linked to a NYT article about the spread of CorePower Yoga: how its business model is contingent upon enrolling thousands in expensive “teacher training” courses, even though there’s already a surfeit of teachers out there.