problems
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We’ve seen this movie before
When some big outfit with a vested interest in violating your privacy says they are only trying to save small business, grab your wallet. Because the game they’re playing is misdirection away from what they really want. The most recent case in point is Facebook, which ironically holds the world’s largest database on individual human… Continue reading
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Social shell games
If you listen to Episode 49: Parler, Ownership, and Open Source of the latest Reality 2.0 podcast, you’ll learn that I was blindsided at first by the topic of Parler, which has lately become a thing. But I caught up fast, even getting a Parler account not long after the show ended. Because I wanted to see what’s… Continue reading
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Is Flickr in trouble again?
December 10, 2020: This matter has been settled now, meaning Flickr appears not to be in trouble, and my account due for renewal will be automatically renewed. I’ve appended what settled the matter to the bottom of this post. Note that it also raises another question, about subscriptions. — Doc I have two Flickr accounts,… Continue reading
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One example of how subscriptions suck
My goal here is to make e this brilliant poster by Despair.com obsolete: Starting with just one magazine: The New Yorker. I’ve subscribed to The New Yorker for most of my life. As an adjective, loyal doesn’t cover what that magazine means to me. But wholly shit, they sure make subscribing a pain in the ass.… Continue reading
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Bet on obsolescence
In New Digital Realities; New Oversight Solutions, Tom Wheeler, Phil Verveer and Gene Kimmelman suggest that “the problems in dealing with digital platform companies” strip the gears of antitrust and other industrial era regulatory machines, and that what we need instead is “a new approach to regulation that replaces industrial era regulation with a new more agile regulatory model… Continue reading
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So far, privacy isn’t a debate
Remember the dot com boom? Doesn’t matter if you don’t. What does matter is that it ended. All business manias do. That’s why we can expect the “platform economy” and “surveillance capitalism” to end. Sure, it’s hard to imagine that when we’re in the midst of the mania, but the end will come. When it… Continue reading
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The GDPR’s biggest fail
If the GDPR did what it promised to do, we’d be celebrating Privmas today. Because, two years after the GDPR became enforceable, privacy would now be the norm rather than the exception in the online world. That hasn’t happened, but it’s not just because the GDPR is poorly enforced. It’s because it’s too easy for… Continue reading
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Will our digital lives leave a fossil record?
In the library of Earth’s history, there are missing books, and within books, there are missing chapters, written in rock that is now gone. John Wesley Powell recorded the greatest example of gone rock in 1869, on his expedition by boat through the Grand Canyon. Floating down the Colorado River, he saw the canyon’s mile-thick… Continue reading
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Zoom’s new privacy policy
Yesterday (March 29), Zoom updated its privacy policy with a major rewrite. The new language is far more clear than what it replaced, and which had caused the concerns I detailed in my previous three posts: Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act, More on Zoom and privacy, and Helping Zoom Those concerns were shared… Continue reading
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Helping Zoom
[This is the third of four posts. The last of those, Zoom’s new privacy policy, visits the company’s positive response to input such as mine here. So you might want to start with that post (because it’s the latest) and look at the other three, including this one, after that.] I really don’t want to… Continue reading
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Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act
[21 April 2020—Hundreds of people are arriving here from this tweet, which calls me a “Harvard researcher” and suggests that this post and the three that follow are about “the full list of the issues, exploits, oversights, and dubious choices Zoom has made.” So, two things. First, while I run a project at Harvard’s Berkman… Continue reading
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At Root an Evanescence
A Route of Evanescence, With a revolving Wheel – A Resonance of Emerald A Rush of Cochineal – And every Blossom on the Bush Adjusts it’s tumbled Head – The Mail from Tunis – probably, An easy Morning’s Ride – —Emily Dickinson (via The Poetry Foundation) While that poem is apparently about a hummingbird, it’s the… Continue reading
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About face
We know more than we can tell. That one-liner from Michael Polanyi has been waiting half a century for a proper controversy, which it now has with facial recognition. Here’s how he explains it in The Tacit Dimension: This fact seems obvious enough; but it is not easy to say exactly what it means. Take an example. We know… Continue reading
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On Linux Journal
[16 August 2019…] Had a reassuring call yesterday with Ted Kim, CEO of London Trust Media. He told me the company plans to keep the site up as an archive at the LinuxJournal.com domain, and that if any problems develop around that, he’ll let us know. I told him we appreciate it very much—and that’s… Continue reading
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Where Journalism Fails
“What’s the story?” No question is asked more often by editors in newsrooms than that one. And for good reason: that’s what news is about: The Story. Or, in the parlance of the moment, The Narrative. (Trend. More about that below.) I was just 22 when I wrote my first stories as a journalist, reporting… Continue reading
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On Amazon, New York, New Jersey and urban planning
In a press release, Amazon explained why it backed out of its plan to open a new headquarters in New York City: For Amazon, the commitment to build a new headquarters requires positive, collaborative relationships with state and local elected officials who will be supportive over the long-term. While polls show that 70% of New… Continue reading
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On comment spam
We had a temporary plague of comment spam here. My original post here remarked on that. But it’s gone now, so its safe to comment again. 🙂 Thanks for bearing with me in the meantime. Continue reading
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Journalism without Twitter
So I’m taking live notes at Blockchain in Journalism: Promise and Practice, happening at the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, in the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at the Columbia School of Journalism, to name the four Russian dolls whose innards I’m inhabiting here In advance of this gathering, Linux Journal, which I serve as editor-in-chief… Continue reading