Freeform

In this essay framing the struggle for power over the Internet in feudalistic terms, Bruce Schneier calls for a new body of rules governing the behavior of the players in the conflict. He calls it “a new Magna Carta focused on the institutions that abuse power in the 21st century.” How about we call it … Read more

http://m.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-10-2013/131015-reinventing-the-web.html?source=nww_rss Just skip the browser’s renderer.

An excellent use of large font and CSPAN on a House rule-change that forced the request of any vote on a funding resolution to go through the Republican leader. USA today on the story. Here is the nitty-gritty of Resolution 368.

I made an app: Penny (https://hellotumo.com/penny). Penny takes the purchase price of tiny, daily treats, such as brownies, coffee and whatnot, and calculates the cost of them spread over a week, month and year. Then it tells you what else you could have done with that money. I made it because I often think this … Read more

I took TextTeaser, an “automatic summarization application and API,” for a spin. Short review: It pretty much works. Wow. Update: The TextTeaser site is spewing app errors. The Internet likes it! A happy problem to have. I guess being No. 12 on Hacker News will do that to a site. I also tweaked the bookmarklet … Read more

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/10/12/us/seeking-a-bridge-between-western-science-and-eastern-faith-with-the-Dalai-Lama.html All is here and gone and always is and never was. The monk wants to put a pipe around the spirit, a line to knowing that to clench is to suffer. But even ghosts must hang onto something. What about singing, Buddha? Nothing lasts but that is no reason to do nothing.

The bicyclist with the whistle could have gone around the car. There was plenty of room to the right. The car had broken the rules, left its designated area, but surely the man with the whistle knew: lines are imaginary things. He blew his whistle. Long, piercing tweets like a walrus-sized bird strangling on a … Read more

Medium.com wants to use what it knows about who I was yesterday to customize content for who I am today. No thanks. I use sites like it to find things I didn’t know I liked. Surprise me. Challenge me. Don’t feed me what I already know I like. I don’t like it.

The technology to make a real T-1000 continues to evolve. A bit of combining, a bit of refining, and soon we will have the pleasure of being chased by self-aware machines that don’t want to be friends with humans. Read these four articles and tell me you don’t see it coming, especially when DARPA (well, … Read more