Links
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Digging Hart Island, New York’s Million-Corpse Potter’s Field
A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization. — Samuel Johnson Visitors to New York’s Orchard Beach (at the top of the photo above) probably don’t know that the low wooded island offshore will, at the current rate, contain a million buried human bodies, if it doesn’t already. The site is Hart… Continue reading
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Daily Outline
History John Philip Sousa, “The Menace of Mechanical Music,” 1906, at ExplorePAhistory.com. Pull-quote: “The host of mechanical reproducing machines, in their mad desire to supply music for all occasions, are offering to supplant the illustrator in the class room, the dance orchestra, the home and public singers and players, and so on. Evidently they believe… Continue reading
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Daily Outline
The Net Verizon’s diabolical plan to turn the Web into pay-per-view. By Bill Snyder in Infoworld. What Happened At The Network Neutrality Oral Argument? Bigger, Snarkier and Uncut. By Harold Feld in Wetmachine. Also: The short version at Public Knowledge. Surveillance Matthew Green’s post, which stirred up news of its own. Very useful, among other… Continue reading
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Weekend Outline
Privacy Revealed: How US and UK spy agencies defeat internet privacy and security. By James Ball, Julian Borger and Glenn Greenwald in The Guardian. Subheads: • NSA and GCHQ unlock encryption used to protect emails, banking and medical records • $250m-a-year US program works covertly with tech companies to insert weaknesses into products • Security experts say programs ‘undermine the fabric… Continue reading
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Daily Outline
Surveillance Have we passed peak surveillance? By Brad Feld. Pivots off my Thoughts on Privacy. The Only Way to Restore Trust in the NSA. By Bruce Schneier in The Atlantic. “The public has no faith left in the intelligence community or what the president says about it. A strong, independent special prosecutor needs to clean… Continue reading
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Daily Outline
Life on Earth On the Safety of Firefighters: Real Time Danger During the Jesusita Blaze and Human Lives vs. Expensive Homes. By Ray Ford in The Independent. An excellent report by Ray on a wildfire that took more than 80 homes, burned across the face of the Santa Ynez mountains above Santa Barbara, and was the second… Continue reading
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Daily Outline
Unpleasantries Report to the President: MIT and the Prosecution of Aaron Swartz. Review Panel: Harold Abelson, Peter A Diamond, Andrew Grosso, Douglas W. Pfeiffer. Some learnings: “Before Aaron Swartz’s suicide, the MIT community paid scant attention to the matter, other than during the period immediately following his arrest. Few students, faculty, or alumni expressed concerns… Continue reading
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Thoughts on Privacy
In Here Is New York, E.B. White opens with this sentence: “On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy.” Sixty-four years have passed since White wrote that, and it still makes perfect sense to me, hunched behind a desk in the back room… Continue reading
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Daily Outline
Wars and Rumors of Wars The First Global Civil War – Lionel Dricot. By Jaap van Till n The Connectivist. Syrian NYT Hack Shows New Asymmetries of Modern War: While U.S. troops readied for a possible military assault Tuesday, pro-Syrian hackers brought down the NYT and crippled Twitter. By Tom Simonite in MIT Technology Review. Obama is… Continue reading
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Daily Outline
Media The Natives Are Feckless, Part 2. By Bob Garfield in MediaPost. Pull quote: “For the sake of their audiences and for the sake of their own reputations, publishers must not let the content in any way disguise itself as editorial matter. Period.” How YouTube changes everything. By Miguel Helft @FortuneMagazine Designs for a networked beat. By… Continue reading
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Daily Outline
Cool Britt Blaser’s flying stories. The dude is a terrific writer who has lived to tell, and tell well. He should do that more often. Speaking of which, I interviewed him for this podcast. How 24 Tiny Satellites Could Change Business Forever. By Nate Hindman and Joe Epstein. Subhead: “Skybox doesn’t want to see pictures of Earth from… Continue reading
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2013_08_01 Link Pile
Tech Targeted Advertising Considered Harmful. By Don Marti. THE INSIDE STORY OF THE MOTO X: THE PHONE THAT REVEALS WHY GOOGLE BOUGHT MOTOROLA. By Steven Levy in Wired. CW500: The rise of the machines — how devices are taking over the internet. By Bill Goodwin in ComputerWeekly. Measuring the full impact of digital capital: Although largely… Continue reading
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2013_07_29 Link Pile
Marketing (public notes toward a piece I’ll be putting up in Linux Journal… also a podcast) The agency holding company model is dead — welcome to the ‘marketing stack‘. By Jon Ebbert in Ad Exchanger. This INSANE Graphic Shows How Ludicrously Complicated Social Media Marketing Is Now. By Charlie Menato in Business Insider. Folks Halley’s… Continue reading
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The Gospel According to ZZ Top
In mass this morning only two words the priest said during the homily stuck in my mind: it’s alright. Because they called ZZ Top to mind. Specifically, the song Legs. It begins, She’s got legs. She knows how to use them. Then the boys sing a bunch of other stuff over this repetitive throbbing riff that sounds like it’s… Continue reading
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2013_07_28 Link Pile
World going to hell Edward Snowden’s not the story. The fate of the internet is. “The press has lost the plot over the Snowden revelations. The fact is that the net is finished as a global network and that US firms’ cloud services cannot be trusted.” By John Naughton in The Guardian. The NSA Is… Continue reading
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Markets Why shouting about discounts won’t satisfy your customers, by Natalie Brandweiner in MyCustomer From Disney to dishwashers: Digital CRM to change customer experience, by Ashley Smith in SearchCRM. Venture Capital Funding At Its Lowest Since 2010 — A By The Numbers Look. By Meghan Casserly in Forbes. ArkOS: Your data, your rules. It explains,… Continue reading
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2013_07_16 Link pile
Journalism Fleeing the War at Home. A worthy kickstarter by @BlakeHunsicker No Ifs, Ands or Bots. By Bob Garfield in MediaPost. Pull-quote: Relying on CRM to repair BofA is like treating melanoma with Clinique. The Strange Case of Barrett Brown: Amid the outrage over the NSA’s spying program, the jailing of journalist Barrett Brown points… Continue reading
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2013_07_13 Link Pile
Advertising and marketing An olive branch to advertising, at ProjectVRM, September 2012 Retailers, STOP dealing with data brokers, by datacoup The Web Cookie Is Dying. Here’s The Creepier Technology That Comes Next, by Adam Tanner in Forbes LumaScapes, by Luma Partners destructoid.com, a typical small publisher supported by advertising, including third party tracking Surveillance vs.… Continue reading
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2013_07_05 Link Pile
Mind-bendings How many slaves work for you? A brand new way to share everything. Why you can’t get tickets to the hottest concerts. World 15 Photos From the Tahrir Square Protests You’ll Never See In Legacy Media. #Egypt #Morsi #Obama. By Doug Ross @ Journal. Taksim Underpass: Ask Gertrude Stein, Dorothy Parker, Jane Jacobs, and… Continue reading