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How the New York Times keeps tragedies ad-free
I was looking at the HTML source of a recent New York Times story about a tragic plane accident—150 people feared dead—and noticed this meta tag in its head:
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 580 posts.
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Memrefuting
(in which I bring this blog back to the “safe, uncontroversial” territory of arguing with people who think they can solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time) A few people have aske…
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The Linguistics of Writing an Email Like a Boss
Finally, statistical proof that bosses write the darndest emails.
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I Want Your AOL CDs
Yes, yes I do. As you might expect, someone who does a lot of something (collecting) like I do, in a pretty public fashion, tends to get some pretty shiny-polished chestnuts tossed over the fence. …
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The Backing Up of the Internet Archive Continues
A little over a month ago, I cooked up a grandiose plan with the Archive Team to back up the Internet Archive, and discussed what that might entail and how one might approach it. How’s that t…
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Difficult Times at Our Credit Union
Brewster Kahle, Chairman of the Internet Archive Federal Credit Union, November 2015 [NYtimes story, Motherboard, BoingBoing. Liquidation.] All deposits are safe, all loans performing, great and dedicated staff, wonderful members. So why difficult? Despite five years of effort, $1 million in donations spent (from the…
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Fair Use Is Not an Exception to Copyright, It’s Essential to Copyright
Over the past two years, as talk of copyright reform has escalated, we’ve also heard complaints about the supposed expansion of fair use, or "fair use creep.” That kind of talk woefully misunderstands how fair use works. Fair use provides breathing space in copyright law, making sure that control...
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Django Community Survey
Posted by Tim Graham on May 7, 2015
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“Nothing you can do impresses me”
Because of the urgent need for new blood / ideas in the tech world, our lack of ability to reward new developers is a particularly profound example of shooting oneself in the foot.
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Alleged $7.5B fraud in online advertising
Online advertising is often based around the idea of an "impression," but few of us actually know what that means. We assume it means some sort of interaction with a human being, but as it turns out, we're quite wrong. Today we dive into some staggering statistics with Samuel Scott.
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‘Pharmacy of the developing world’ under attack from the US, EU, Japan
What good is a breakthrough medicine, vaccine or test if the people who need it cannot afford it?
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Amtrak police use of passenger data
[Passenger Name Record (PNR) view from Amtrak “Police GUI”. Click image for larger version.]
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Secret TPP Talks Continue as the Deal Grows More Controversial
Trade ministers are meeting behind closed-doors at the Westin Resort and Spa in Maui this week to finalize the terms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This is the first formal round of talks since the U.S. passed the controversial Fast Track trade legislation in June, which has given U.S....
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Dear FCC: Thanks for Listening to Team Internet
Today the FCC voted three to two to reclassify broadband Internet access as a common carrier service under Title II of the Communications Act, and forbear from the parts of the Act that aren’t necessary for net neutrality rules. This reclassification gives the FCC the authority to enact (and...
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Why is finance so complex? (2011)
Lisa Pollack at FT Alphaville mulls a question : “Why are we so good at creating complexity in finance?” The answer she comes up with is the “ Flynn Effect “, basically the idea that there is an uptrend in human intelligence. Finance, in this view, gets more complex over time because financiers get smart enough to…
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France's Government Aims to Give Itself Carte Blanche to Spy on the World
The United States makes an improper division between surveillance conducted on residents of the United States and the surveillance that is conducted with almost no restraint upon the rest of the world. This double standard has proved poisonous to the rights of Americans and non-Americans alike. In...
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How to destroy special collections with social media
I just got back from a wonderful trip to Rare Book School to deliver a talk in their 2015 lecture series. It was the last week of their summer season in Charlottesville, the week when the Descriptive Bibliography course (aka “boot camp”) was in full swing, and the weather was in all its hot, glorious humidity. I…
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To defend the free web, save Mozilla
The latest version of this post, along with the blog, has moved. TL;DR: Mozilla is largely dependent on Yahoo! We must make sure it is funded by individuals’ donations and a diverse roster of…
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Comparing how security experts and non-experts stay safe online
Posted by Iulia Ion, Software Engineer - Rob Reeder, Research Scientist - Sunny Consolvo, User Experience Researcher Today, you can find...