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Hacker News as a case study to test the wisdom of the crowd theory
Marketing Plan: What It Is & How to Create One (With Examples)
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 13,066 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
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How to know if where you live is “up and coming”: fried chicken vs. coffee shops
Whilst searching for a flat in London, I lamented to hear my estate agent described the area we were in as “up and coming”.
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Internet Companies: Confusing Consumers for Profit
A shorter version of this post ran as an op-ed in the San Jose Mercury News on October 6, 2015. The ubiquitous blue “Like” or “Share” buttons that you see all over the Internet are hiding an ugly secret. Starting this month, Facebook will use them to track your visit to every Web page that displays...
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Judge to DOJ: Not All Writs
A federal magistrate judge in Brooklyn took an admirable stand last week when he questioned the government’s authority to compel Apple to unlock a seized mobile device using the All Writs Act. That’s a general-purpose law passed in 1789 that allows a court to require third parties’ assistance to...
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There's No DRM in JPEG – Let's Keep It That Way
If you have ever tried scanning or photocopying a banknote, you may have found that your software—such as Adobe Photoshop, or the embedded software in the photocopier—refused to let you do so. That's because your software is secretly looking for security features such as EURion dots in the...
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Out of the Darkness: How two psychologists and CIA devised torture program
How two psychologists teamed up with the CIA to devise a torture program and experiment on human beings.
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IA or AI?
I’ve been reading a paper [1] written two decades ago, which itself is an account of events two decades before that. It is Alan Kay nominally writing about the history of a programming langua…
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Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department
Personal website of Dr. Alexander Coward — mathematician, educator, and entrepreneur. Formerly at UC Berkeley, Oxford, UC Davis, and The University of Sydney.
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The pace of major breakthroughs has declined
One of the prevailing narratives of our time is that we are innovating our way into the future at break-neck speed. It’s just dizzying how quickly the world around us is changing. Technology is this juggernaut that gets ever bigger, ever faster, and all we need to do is hold on for the wild ride into the infinitely…
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The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared
Today's release by Wikileaks of what is believed to be the current and essentially final version of the intellectual property (IP) chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) confirms our worst fears about the agreement, and dashes the few hopes that we held out that its most onerous provisions...
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Obama Encryption Policy Rejects Laws Mandating Backdoors
Obama’s position on encryption is now public, as reported by the Washington Post. According to Ellen Nakashima and Andrea Peterson of the Post, Obama “will not —for now—call for legislation requiring companies to decode messages for law enforcement.” Instead, the Post reports, the “administration...
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Gov. Brown Signs CalECPA, Requiring Police to Get a Warrant for Your Data
Californians can rest assured that law enforcement can’t poke around in their digital records without first obtaining a warrant. Today, Gov. Jerry Brown has signed S.B. 178, the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (CalECPA). After months of pressure from public interest groups, media...
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Ph.D. recipients in computing fields are primarily non-US residents in the US
Overall, non-US residents received 1,210 (54%) of the 2,244 computing related Ph.D. degrees awarded in the U.S. in 2013. This map illustrates that while non-U.S. residents received more than 50% of the Ph.D.s awarded in the majority of states, there was considerable variation across the states. Interestingly, a…
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No Safe Harbor: How NSA Spying Undermined U.S. Tech and Europeans' Privacy
The spread of knowledge about the NSA's surveillance programs has shaken the trust of customers in U.S. Internet companies like Facebook, Google, and Apple: especially non-U.S. customers who have discovered how weak the legal protections over their data is under U.S. law. It should come as no...
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The End of Safe Harbor and a Scary Path Forward
Some in detail analysis about what the end of safe harbor means for small companies, especially in Europe.
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Global coalition to Facebook: “Authentic names” are dangerous for your users
Facebook claims its practice of forcing users to go by their "real names" (or "authentic identities" as Facebook spins it) makes the social network a safer place. In fact, the company has often claimed that the policy protects women who use the social media platform, even when faced with community...
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Users Have Been Betrayed in the Final TPP Deal
Trade negotiators from the U.S. and its 11 Pacific Rim partners announced their agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) today, concluding the final round of closed negotiations in Atlanta and marking the culmination of seven years of secrecy. Throughout all that time, the U.S....
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Terrorism is not about terror
Terrorists act irrationally from a rational activism perspective, and groups act in ways most consistent with terrorism being about social status and belonging
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In China, Your Credit Score Is Affected by Your Political Opinions
China's social score system is full of rumor and speculation. We clear up the misconceptions and explain how the credit system really works.
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Losing Sight
Léonie Watson's personal website. Writing about the web, accessibility, and other things.
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DARE: The Anti-Drug Program That Never Actually Worked
Studies showed early on that kids who went through DARE weren't any less likely to do drugs. Why did schools keep using it?
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Haunted by Data
This is the text version of a talk I gave on October 1, 2015, at the Strata+Hadoop World conference in New York City. The video version is here (20 mins).