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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 695 posts.
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EFF Politely Asks PTO to Stop Issuing So Many Crappy Software Patents
Since the mid-1990s, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued countless bad software patents. These patents tend to be hopelessly vague and overbroad. Indeed, they are often so packed with indecipherable patent jargon that software engineers have trouble understanding them. As one programmer...
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Women, Tech Conferences and the Bullshit Surrounding It
Is the lack of women on tech conference panels a real problem? The media might think so, but we beg to differ. Read some alternative thoughts on the matter.
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This Page Is Why The Internet Sucks
James Bond was orginally called Barry Clams [Note: Typo in original headline at post time.] Go look at it. According to Letter Count, the entire item people are meant to read — including head…
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The Rent Seeking Economy
If you're the site owner, please check your site management tools to verify your domain settings.
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A plea for better open source etiquette
Update: this post kicked off a lively debate over at HackerNews. As a result of doing consulting, I’ve been hopping between a large number of OSS tools and libraries for the past few years. A…
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Is Social Media Worthless?
The Voice of the Customer (VoC) helps businesses understand who they are selling to and what they expect. Use the following tips and best practices to better understand what the Voice of the Customer is and how you can implement a successful VoC program.
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Language Log: Shakespeare used <B><I>they</I></B> with singular antecedents so there
Not happy that I cite Sean Lennon as a source of evidence concerning the way they can be used in modern English? Feeling that only something 400 years older would really convince you that it's OK. Has Coby Lubliner got news for you! Coby writes from Berkeley to point out the following lines from Shakespeare's A Comedy…
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Until Today, If You Were 17, It Could Have Been Illegal To Read Seventeen.com
If you are 17 or under, a federal prosecutor could have charged you with computer hacking just for reading Seventeen magazine online—until today. It’s not because the law got any better. Earlier today, we wrote about news sites that alarmingly prohibit their youth audiences from accessing the news...
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How the Internet Archive is having a great time with Bitcoin
The Internet Archive jumped into bitcoin in 2011 after many people asked to donate bitcoins-- a non-techy set up our wallet (good sign), and we got about $2,000 worth of donations that first year. In 2012 we got about $6,000 worth-- interesting. I think of it as the local currency of the Internet. I figured
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Teenager Who Reads News Online? According to the DoJ, You May Be a Criminal
During his first term, President Barack Obama declared October 2009 to be “National Information Literacy Awareness Month,” emphasizing that, for students, learning to navigate the online world is as important a skill as reading, writing and arithmetic. It was a move that echoed his predecessor's...
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The Patent Protection Racket
The fastest growing industry in the US right now, even during this time of slow economic growth, is probably the patent troll protection racket industry. Lawsuits surrounding software patents have …
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Quote Meritocracy Unquote
Meritocracy is a political philosophy that holds power should be vested in individuals according to merit. Advancement in such a system is based on perceived intellectual talent measured through examination and/or demonstrated achievement in the field where it is implemented.
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What I've Been Thinking About
I’m starting to think about my next book, which will be about power and the Internet—from the perspective of security. My objective will be to describe current trends, explain where those trends are leading us, and discuss alternatives for avoiding that outcome. Many of my recent essays have touched on various facets…
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Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention
I’m extremely excited about online education, but I’ve noticed that online education products have a really serious problem: low retention. I’ve used Coursera, EdX, Hack Design, Duolingo, Codecademy… and I’ve churned from all of them. I bet you did too!