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Society, Policy & Culture
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Here’s to the Misfits
The school I went to in England used to proudly display their famous alumni in black and white photos circling the theatre lobby. From John le Carré, to John Cleese, the list included notable actors, top politicians and accomplished actors. What the school didn't tell admiring visitors though, is
UK anti-encryption law
There was some surprise in the comments of yesterday's post over the fact that the United Kingdom has effectively outlawed encryption: the UK will...
Petition the U.S. Government to Force the TSA to Follow the Law
This is important: In July 2011, a federal appeals court ruled that the Transportation Security Administration had to conduct a notice-and-comment rulemaking on its policy of using “Advanced Imaging Technology” for primary screening at airports. TSA was supposed to publish the policy in the Federal Register, take…
Unicode is, in 2012, still “cutting edge.”
Note: These pages make extensive use of the latest XHTML and CSS Standards . They ought to look great in any standards-compliant modern browser. Unfortunately, they will probably look horrible in older browsers, like Netscape 4.x and IE 4.x. Moreover, many posts use MathML, which is, currently only supported in…
Three NSA Whistleblowers Back EFF's Lawsuit Over Government Spying Program
San Francisco - Three whistleblowers – all former employees of the National Security Agency (NSA) – have come forward to give evidence in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's) lawsuit against the government's illegal mass surveillance program, Jewel v. NSA. In a motion filed today, the three...
The Google Nexus Q Is Baffling
David Pogue tests the Google Nexus Q home entertainment device and finds himself bewildered.
ACTA killed in EU parliament: 478 votes to 39
Today at 12:56, the European Parliament decided whether ACTA would be ultimately rejected or whether it would drag on into uncertainty. In a crushing...
Charles Carreon Drops Bogus Lawsuit Against The Oatmeal Creator
San Francisco - Attorney Charles Carreon dropped his bizarre lawsuit against The Oatmeal creator Matthew Inman today, ending his strange legal campaign against Inman's humorous and creative public criticism of a frivolous cease and desist letter that Carreon wrote on behalf of his client Funny Junk...
Google Service Drops Support for Opera
Please read my original post below in conjunction with the Supported Browsers UPDATE from 11th July 2012. Just a brief notice for any use...
Apple ignores bug report
Almost two years ago I noticed a strange multitouch problem in Mobile Safari with one of my games. This problem was new; it was introduced with the iOS 4.2.1 update and wasn't present on older iOS versions.
Pump Up the Storage
If we adopt solar and wind as major components of our energy infrastructure as we are weaned from fossil fuels, we have to solve the energy storage problem in a big way. An earlier post demonstrated that we do not likely possess enough materials in the world to simply build giant lead-acid (or nickel-based or…
Goodbye Facebook.
Let’s get something straight: This is not a Facebook hate post. That being said, I’m running a little experiment of disabling my Facebook account. Why you ask? I first joined Facebook t…
There is no retirement
Paul Erdös used to say that mathematicians “die” when they retire or cease to do math; when they physically die they simply “leave.” Well, my father wasn’t a mathematician but he did leave last night.
OkCupid on Trial - 4 Month Experiment
10 fictional profiles were created on OKCupid with the same profiles but different photos to test how online dating is different for men than women.
Rent Control
New York State legislators defend the War Emergency Tenant Protection Act—also known as rent control—as a way of protecting tenants from war-related housing shortages. The war referred to in the law is not the 2003 war in Iraq, however, or the Vietnam War; it is World War II. That is when rent control started in […]
Malthusianisms
(See also: Umeshisms, Anthropicisms) Why, in real life, do we ever encounter hard instances of NP-complete problems? Because if it’s too easy to find a 10,000-mile TSP tour, we ask for a 9,0…