Against surveillance-based advertising

19 Apr 2021 - permalink

We need legislation in this area, fast.

Every day, consumers are exposed to extensive commercial surveillance online. This leads to manipulation, fraud, discrimination and privacy violations. Information about what we like, our purchases, mental and physical health, sexual orientation, location and political views are collected, combined and used under the guise of targeting advertising. […]

Together with 55 organizations and more than 20 experts, NCC is asking authorities on both sides of the Atlantic to consider a ban.

Inferential Statistics is not Inferential

25 Mar 2019 - permalink

Valentin Amrhein:

A small p-value indicates that something is wrong with the model, but it does not indicate what is wrong.

Symbol of Life

7 Oct 2014 - permalink

Jamie Davies, professor of experimental anatomy at the University of Edinburgh in Aeon:

If we recognise that genes do not make body features, they make the machines that organise body features adaptively, that shift in perspective does much to lay to rest the long debates about nature versus nurture.

Very good.

Lost in translation, space edition

11 Feb 2014 - permalink

Emily Lakdawalla from Planetary Society:

A big question is whether we even still know how to communicate with the spacecraft. It was built in the 1970s, at the same time as the Voyagers. But we’ve been in continuous communication with the Voyagers since their launch; the same isn’t true of ICE.

[…] in the 30 years since it departed Earth we’ve lost the ability to speak its language.

The Patent Protection Racket

4 Apr 2013 - permalink

Joel Spolsky on software patent trolls:

It is organized crime, plain and simple. It is an abuse of the legal system, an abuse of the patent system, and a moral affront.

Indeed.

The Internet is a surveillance state

17 Mar 2013 - permalink

Bruce Schneier on surveillance online:

All of us being watched, all the time, and that data being stored forever. This is what a surveillance state looks like, and it’s efficient beyond the wildest dreams of George Orwell.

The Trouble with Social News

17 Mar 2013 - permalink

In social news, the front page is king. Most users never go beyond the first or second page of top stories. […]

The effect of this is that we’re looking at a fast-flowing river of information through a pinhole.

Leopardize your internet

21 Mar 2012 - permalink

Small Safari extension I wrote inspired by this XKCD that “improves” the internet by replacing all occurrences of keyboard with leopard.

You Are Not Ruthless Enough

25 Feb 2012 - permalink

In the next release a new feature will be impossible to implement because class A has intimate, incestuous, biblical knowledge about class B. It seemed to work but the child of this relationship is going to cause you problems for the rest of its life even if you manage to separate the star-crossed classes and send them back to their families.

Here’s the thing: you are not ruthless enough.

Do it right the first time or you’ll have a “Giger-esque state-driven nightmare”.

Facebook is gaslighting the web

21 Nov 2011 - permalink

Anil Dash:

Facebook has moved from merely being a walled garden into openly attacking its users’ ability and willingness to navigate the rest of the web. The evidence that this is true even for sites which embrace Facebook technologies is overwhelming, and the net result is that Facebook is gaslighting users into believing that visiting the web is dangerous or threatening.

In this post I intend to not only document the practices which enable this attack, but to also propose a remedy.