June 2013
8 posts
“I don’t see myself as a hero because what I’m doing is self-interested: I don’t want to live in a world where there’s no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.”
—Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower. You’re going to want to read the whole article.
“The danger of ad companies like Google and Facebook isn’t that they are selling aggregated personal data. The danger is that they are aggregating unprecedented amounts of information…. These stashes are natural bait to those that would do evil, including government organizations. It’s not the collection of data that is a problem. It is the aggregation and correlation that concerns me.”
—Gabe Weatherhead
“It’s obvious that [the patent] system has gone off the rails and become a legal extortion racket for the ultra wealthy. Really, if you have any interest in the future of things and ideas, listen to [This American Life #496: When Patents Attack… Part Two!]. If you are one of these douchebags, shame on you. You are bad for the human race.”
—Gabe Weatherhead
The Cronut Business Has a Scaling Problem →
nymag.com
If we can’t scale New York-style pizza how are we ever going to scale cronuts?
Political Vs Racial Profiling →
youtube.com
I missed this Daily Show segment from Jason Jones when it aired. But the balance of political hilarity has been restored thanks to a link from Nish.
Marissa, Fix This
These The Bachelorette bullshit GIFs are going to chase me off of tumblr.
Ill-targeted ads in a feed make everyone involved look stupid.
May 2013
17 posts
“It is only because Silicon Valley has done such an extraordinary job branding itself that articles about their social conscience, or lack thereof, seem completely reasonable. But the tech sector is, on the whole, much more like other sectors of the economy than it likes to believe, or than it likes anyone else to believe.”
—Ezra Klein
“Economists are sometimes chided for disagreeing about the importance of such basic questions as the relative role of aggregate demand and aggregate supply but physicists can’t even find most of the universe and microbiologists don’t agree on whether the human genome is 80% functional or 80% junk. Is disagreement a result of knaves and fools? Sometimes, but more often disagreement is just the way the invisible hand of science works.”
—Alex Tabarrok
New Hidden Feature in Tumblr for iOS →
bryan.io
If you’re into bookmarklets, you can save yourself the trouble of typing tm and bookmark the following JavaScript instead:
javascript:window.location='tm'+(window.location.href);
When There Is No There There →
m.tofias.net
I wrote a post on the implications of “missing” scandal coverage based on Roy Unz’s “Our American Pravda” essay. I wanted to name the post “Trouble Will Find Me” but Colbert beat me to the joke.
Unz conflates attention paid by investigative reporters with coverage. Unz blames the lack of coverage in these cases of government “disasters” on “bipartisan” concerns over blame. Neither of these claims hold-up under scrutiny…. Lack of headlines shouldn’t be used as a measure for investigative attention because media outlets face a file drawer problem similar to the one that affects scientific researchers.
Cloud Competition →
m.tofias.net
Read about the moment when I realized competition over operating systems had moved into the cloud →
“I only know the two-spaces-are-bad rule because [John Gruber] taught me. But now I can’t even look at a double-space without literally puking every one of my guts out.”
—Adam Lisagor
The One-Person Product →
marco.org
Marco Arment on Tumblr, David Karp, and the Yahoo acquisition. Great post.
“If they treat Tumblr the way Facebook has (so far) treated Instagram, I think this will work out well.”
—John Gruber
“P.S. When I went to your office I saw all the band stickers and noticed you were into Pavement and some cool bands. My band plays our first show on [REDACTED] at [REDACTED] and we’re better than Pavement. You should come.”
—student email
