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Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
From kafkatrap to honeytrap
The short version is: if you are any kind of open-source leader or senior figure who is male, do not be alone with any female, ever, at a technical conference. Try to avoid even being alone , ever, because there is a chance that a “women in tech” advocacy group is going to try to collect your scalp.
Radicalizing the Romanceless
[PLEASE NOTE: This post is from 2014.] [Content note: Gender, relationships, feminism, manosphere. Quotes, without endorsing and with quite a bit of mocking, mean arguments by terrible people. Some…
Ten years ago Wikipedia was widely considered a doomed experiment
Today, Wikipedia is widely considered an invaluable resource. There are occasional errors and controversies, but for the most part it…
Physics in Metal Music
Metal bands aren't afraid to tackle serious topics in their lyrics. Here, we look at metal songs that deal with concepts in theoretical physics and cosmology.
My Livecoding.tv account deletion saga
Update 3, Nov 2 2015 (PM): Well, it’s been…strange. First, it seems my account was finally deleted by Livecoding.tv (thank you!) After being up all night with libel posted all over it, hours after Jamie Green (the other Livecoding co-founder) and Sam Altman (Y Combinator president) replied to the Hacker News thread…
Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of “Blind” Auditions on Female Musicians
The difficulties associated with proving and addressing gender discrimination in hiring processes have presented policymakers with a major challenge over the past few decades. In an attempt to overcome gender-biased hiring, a vast majority of symphony orchestras revised their hiring practices from the 1950s. Many…
Locked doors, headaches, and intellectual need
You know those things that, once you learn about them for the first time, you start seeing them absolutely everywhere? Recently, that’s been my experience with problem-solution ordering issues. They keep cropping up: not just in the context of gam...
Windows 10 to be a recommended update in early 2016
Windows 10 has been a great journey so far. Following the plan we originally outlined in June, more than 110M devices have upgraded. If you’re already running Windows 10 – thank you! Our aspiration is for customers to choose Windows, and to love Windows. Our early data shows customers from France to Brazil to China
You're Eight Times More Likely to Be Killed by a Police Officer Than a Terrorist
It got a lot of attention this morning when I tweeted , “You’re Eight Times More Likely to be Killed by a Police Officer than a Terrorist.” It’s been quickly retweeted dozens of times, indicating that the idea is interesting to many people. So let’s discuss it in more than 140 characters.
Screenshots from developers and Unix people taken in 2002
What did people's desktops look like?
What Happens When You Enter the Witness Protection Program?
The history of the Witness Protection Program is full of Hollywood-worthy intrigue. It also challenges our assumptions about crime and identity.
Inside The Fine Art Factories of China
When Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo toiled for four years on his master work. Renoir spent six months painting Luncheon of the Boating Party—the painting featured in the film Amélie. Even Guernica, which Pablo Picasso painted quickly to publicize the…
VMware GPL Enforcement Suit in Germany Continues
Software Freedom Conservancy is pleased to provide updated information regarding the ongoing GPL enforcement lawsuit for Linux, funded by Conservancy, that Christoph Hellwig has brought against VMware in Germany. Information about the suit is available on the FAQ page.The lawsuit continues to progress. VMware has…
CISA passes Senate
CISA passed the Senate today in a 74-21 vote. The bill is fundamentally flawed due to its broad immunity clauses, vague definitions, and aggressive spying authorities. The bill now moves to a conference committee despite its inability to address problems that caused recent highly publicized...
U of California policy extends free access to all articles by UC employees
Today the University of California expands the reach of its research publications by issuing a Presidential Open Access Policy, allowing future scholarly articles authored by all UC employees to be freely shared with readers worldwide. Building on UC’s previously-adopted Academic Senate open access (OA) policies, this…
Processed meats as bad as cigarettes: bad reporting on good science
Today, the WHO issued a report that says, in essence, processed meats and red meats are carcinogens. This has been reported in a variety of…
The Collapse of the US-EU Safe Harbor
When people who care about technology look back at the year 2015, they will remember October as the month when the EU-U.S. Safe Harbor collapsed. An international legal agreement that has been in place for 15 years was invalidated in a single day. On Oct. 6, the Court of Justice of the European Union struck...
Google’s growing problem: 50% of people do zero searches per day on mobile
Amit Singhal in 2011 showing a comparison of search volumes from mobile and “early desktop years”. Photo by Niall Kennedy on Flickr. Amit Singhal, Google’s head of search, let sli…
Wikipedia is significantly amplifying the impact of Open Access publications
When you edit Wikipedia to include a claim, you are required to substantiate that edit by referencing a reliable source. According to a recent study, the single biggest predictor of a journal’s appearance in Wikipedia is its impact factor. One of the exciting findings, writes Eamon Duede, is that it appears Wikipedia…
What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon
“Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.”