Links

You know, it occurs to me that I’ve never really said what these “Links” are for, nor how I gather them. I’ll leave the “what they’re for” for a moment, and tell you the “how” of putting these lists together.

Basically, these links represent about a week of me reading an assortment of content from about 150 different RSS feeds to which I’ve subscribed using Google Reader (yes, I know, now Google knows what I read, but it’s the tool for which I’ve optimized this process). While in Reader (using FireFox, with GreaseMonkey installed, running Google Reader Absolutely Customizable), I can quickly navigate through posts, reading either a blurb or the full article, depending upon what the feed author has decided to publish. As I read, I can mark items as “starred,” to come back to later and examine more closely to determine whether they belong on the Links post.

Once I’m satisfied with the list of starred items, I have a .php script which consumes the RSS feed generated by my starred items, putting them into a standard format (basically, the HTML code for what’s below, yet without categories). I take that generated HTML, dump it into Excel where it falls into a series of columns with the title of the piece all by itself (thanks, .php script for making this part so much easier). I then sort by title & go through categorizing each link into what I think is its dominant category, sometimes pulling a link & copying it into two categories. I then sort by category and reverse date order, write a few Excel formulae to put on each section’s header, copy the code out into Notepad++ where I run a series of formatting replacements so that things lay out in a way which is easier to navigate than HTML all run together.

It’s at this point that I’m ready to add some commentary. All told, each Links post probably represents about 20 hours of reading and culling, probably about an hour of massaging content into their categories (which requires some re-reading to figure out why I thought the item was significant) and into an easily-editable format, and another hour or so adding commentary (if I’m not feeling lazy by this point).

Now, back to the “why” of doing this, as it’s certainly not something which is without effort, nor is it a trivial exercise. I do these posts because I believe the issues examined or linked to are significant to our lives, both digital and physical. I examine these issues because they are significant, and tend to be overlooked by most media, or are only touched upon lightly when they are examined at all.

As Bill pointed out to me last week, there is quite a lot of tension between some of these issues – for example, the tension between censorship on the one hand, and cyber-bullying on the other. There is tension between the right to privacy and the public’s right to know, or between freedom of expression and security. These tensions and how they are resolved are, to me, important issues, in particular because we interact so thoroughly through the medium of networked communications.

So, yet another batch of links for you all. Enjoy! And do feel free to check out the archives, particularly if you’re receiving these via email, as all of these are archived at http://hobbitsabroad.com/?cat=36

Censorship:

1. WARNING: Exposure to Video Game Labeling Laws May Be Hazardous to Freedom of Speech    22 March 2012, 7:20 pm
2. Microsoft Censors Pirate Bay Links in Windows Live Messenger    24 March 2012, 10:19 pm
3. From the archive: Last chance?    26 March 2012, 1:17 am
4. The practice of freedom    28 March 2012, 12:00 am
5. I am very real    30 March 2012, 6:34 am
6. United Arab Emirates – Authorities crack down on social networks and activist bloggers    30 March 2012, 8:37 am

Link 5 is a letter from Kurt Vonnegut, written to a school district which had burned his books. I believe that it expresses some of the issues of censorship quite well. Link 3 is Salman Rushdie writing about censorship in Pakistan and his early experiences of his being censored as a journalist just out of university.

Comics:

1. SMBC, March 24, 2012, When Scientists Discuss Papers / Grants    23 March 2012, 9:00 pm
2. Samuel Clemens Droppin’ Knowledge!

Quote from Mark Twain in Link 2: “Censorship is telling a man he can’t have steak just because a baby can’t chew it.”

Copyright / Patent:

1. Facebook Asserts Trademark on Word ‘Book’ in New User Agreement    23 March 2012, 1:09 pm
2. Lonely ISP Wants Other Providers To Disconnect Pirates    27 March 2012, 11:24 am
3. Megaupload Drops Mega Song Lawsuit to Focus on “Nonsense” US Charges    29 March 2012, 10:56 am
4. RapidShare Declared Legal In Court, With a Twist    29 March 2012, 2:05 pm
5. Patents Threaten To Silence A Little Girl, Literally    29 March 2012, 2:11 pm
6. SOPA is all fun and games until NBC rips off Apple’s artwork    30 March 2012, 5:03 am
7. Kim Dotcom: The US Government is Wrong, Here’s Why    30 March 2012, 2:46 pm
8. Megaupload User Asks Court to Return His Video Files    30 March 2012, 3:15 pm
9. ISPs Must Turn Over Customer Names in Porn File-Sharing Suit    31 March 2012, 3:37 am
10. Are College Professors and Librarians Digital Pirates?    31 March 2012, 3:37 am
11. French ‘Three Strikes’ Law Slashes Piracy, But Fails to Boost Sales    31 March 2012, 4:40 am

The MegaUpload case is once again playing a large part of these links – in particular, link 7 goes into some of the reasons why the defendant believes himself not to be guilty, and makes some pretty good points. If you get stopped by your browser (for some reason, TorrentFreak.com sometimes gets blacklisted – go figure), I suggest using a disposable browser (Firefox Portable) and just allowing the exception if you’re willing to trust yourself rather than some “security” system which is very dubious to begin with (I mean, it’s all about “people” “reporting” a site being “bad,” after all, and I can totally see that TorrentFreak isn’t a friend of the big copyright owners).

Education / Research:

1. Education Woes Linked to National Security    23 March 2012, 5:35 pm
2. The Stanford Education Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever    24 March 2012, 5:24 am
3. The higher education bubble    25 March 2012, 8:08 am
4. In cancer science, many studies don’t hold up    31 March 2012, 3:54 am

Link 4 is more about research, the rest are about the future of higher education. As to link 4, it’s well worth the read, in particular if you’re at all interested in how science is supposed to work as opposed to how it’s apparently conducted at the moment. I must say: I went out of my way, in my thesis, to provide the tools necessary for the experiment to be repeated – because I want someone to. Just saying – I don’t understand doing otherwise – so perhaps something larger is missing from education than just shoddy methods.

Gender:

1. Notes from UPenn’s Forum on Brogramming and Sexism in Computer Science    23 March 2012, 6:32 am
2. Gender Quota Debate: ‘We Have to Rethink Our Entire Social Model’    27 March 2012, 8:13 am
3. Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot    28 March 2012, 12:26 pm

1 and 3 are about women in technology, 2 is about Germany’s foot-dragging, resisting going the way of Norway and simply giving in to the idea that women in authority provide quite a bit of value and make not only for a better working environment and better politics but for better profits.

Law:

1. Idiotic Idea of the Day: Jailing Lurkers of Terror Websites    23 March 2012, 3:30 am
2. Guatemala proposes legalisation of drugs    24 March 2012, 10:39 pm
3. Four Unanswered Questions About the Cybersecurity Bills    27 March 2012, 10:57 am
4. FBI Taught Agents They Could ‘Bend or Suspend the Law’    28 March 2012, 3:30 am
5. Read the FBI Memo: Agents Can ‘Suspend the Law’    28 March 2012, 1:40 pm
6. Politically Motivated Border Searches Could Be Unconstitutional, Judge Rules    29 March 2012, 9:33 am
7. The NCTC Just Declared All of Us Domestic Terrorists    29 March 2012, 2:07 pm
8. House votes down stopping employers asking for Facebook passwords    30 March 2012, 1:59 pm
9. French Constitutional Court Bans Law Enforcement Use of National Biometric ID Database    30 March 2012, 11:59 pm
10. Boston Settles With Lawyer Arrested for Cell Phone Videotaping of Police    31 March 2012, 3:35 am
11. Computer Forensic Advances Raise Complex Issues    31 March 2012, 3:40 am

Link 6 makes me quite happy: the US has taken the stance that it may perform at the border what, under other circumstances, would be completely illegal searches. The problem is, though, that there are other rights guaranteed by the constitution, including the right to the freedom of speech. Finally, someone’s recognizing that the act of search may be an act to silence speech!

Medical Technology:

1. Computer Model of Spread of Dementia Can Predict Future Disease Patterns Years Before They Occur in a Patient    23 March 2012, 5:36 pm
2. The Xinjiang Procedure    25 March 2012, 12:52 pm
3. Rise in Allergies Linked to War on Bacteria    28 March 2012, 8:29 am
4. Controversial Pesticide Linked to Bee Collapse    29 March 2012, 12:33 pm
5. Vaccine to stop heart attacks could be here in 5 years    31 March 2012, 8:04 am

Link 2 could really have gone into politics, or … well, human rights, I guess, as it’s about the Chinese practice of forcing organ donation by “criminals.” Not a pleasant read, but … well, food for thought, I guess.

Miscellany:

1. The Catalan Tourist Board: Guerrilla division    22 March 2012, 6:36 pm
2. Tacocopter: The Coolest Airborne Taco Delivery System That’s Completely Fake    24 March 2012, 5:24 am
3. Google Advertising Based on Environmental Conditions Patent    24 March 2012, 10:28 pm
4. From cold fusion to human-powered flight: Great tech hoaxes throughout history    28 March 2012, 12:48 pm
5. ‘Pinkwashing’: How corporations jump on the breast-cancer bandwagon    30 March 2012, 8:51 am

I found link 1 particularly interesting, as I’ve both been mistaken as being Canadian and have been advised to say that I’m Canadian. Apparently, people don’t like Americans, and it’s just easier to be Canadian – “because Europeans can’t tell the difference anyway.” Link 5 is quite worth reading, not because it points out the corporations who are using breast cancer to forward their own corporate goals, but because it points out the effect this “pinkwashing” has had upon breast cancer research.

Museum / Library / Archive:

1. Keep Calm and Carry On: The Story of the Iconic World War II Poster    23 March 2012, 6:31 am
2. Momentum Builds in Campaign to Honor Alan Turing on 10-Pound Note    23 March 2012, 5:36 pm
3. Mash-Up Aids Translation of Obscure Languages    27 March 2012, 11:14 am
4. The Skills of Da Vinci    28 March 2012, 8:32 am

Link 4 is particularly entertaining, as it’s a side of Da Vinci of which I wasn’t particularly informed. I mean, yeah, I knew the guy built devices with military potential, but … wow, what a sales job of his abilities. True, the guy interested in paying Leonardo was not going to be interested in art, per se, but still: this doesn’t seem like the great artist, somehow.

Open Source / Open Access:

1. Skype55 deobfuscated version released    25 March 2012, 12:56 pm
2. Red Hat becomes the first open source company to amass a billion dollars    27 March 2012, 5:02 am
3. This Week in Transparency: Faulty FOIA    27 March 2012, 1:46 pm
4. Interview with Richard Stallman, Founder of Free Software Foundation    30 March 2012, 2:48 pm

Politics:

1. US to resume military aid to Egypt    22 March 2012, 9:10 pm
2. Israel court rejects plea on outpost removal    25 March 2012, 1:33 pm
3. Israel cuts ties with UN human rights body    26 March 2012, 9:33 am
4. The new hacking scandal: Pay TV    27 March 2012, 12:54 am
5. Satellite-TV Hacking Allegations Return for Murdoch    28 March 2012, 12:20 pm
6. News Corp “totally hacked” pay-TV rival, leaked company emails reveal    28 March 2012, 12:26 pm
7. US suspends food aid to North Korea    29 March 2012, 12:03 am
8. Darpa Backed Director’s Bomb Detector, Despite Failed Tests    29 March 2012, 1:00 am
9. News Corp denies smart card piracy claims    29 March 2012, 1:49 am
10. German Pirate Party Scores Second State Victory    30 March 2012, 2:47 pm

Links 4-6 are about Rupert Murdoch’s company’s apparently having hacked into rival companies to commit sabotage. This is a surprise? Link 8 is particularly ironic, as the DARPA director in question has just moved to Google. I wonder if they’re still investigating that she gave millions of dollars in contracts to a company run by her family and in which she had a financial interest, to build bomb-detectors that didn’t work and never had even during tests. Can we say, “corruption?” My bet? She’ll run for a political office – I mean, sounds like Halliburton & Cheney to me, really, all over again.

Privacy:

1. Brazilian city uses computer chips embedded in school uniforms    25 March 2012, 1:16 am
2. Removing support for mobile browsers that don’t support auth cookies    25 March 2012, 8:04 am
3. New Counterorrism Guidelines Gives Authorities Vast Access to Private Info of Innocent Americans    25 March 2012, 7:25 pm
4. Google told to halt auto-complete    26 March 2012, 4:07 am
5. FTC Tells Net: Agree to Stop Invading Privacy (Or We’ll Say ‘Stop’ Again)    26 March 2012, 3:13 pm
6. FTC Final Privacy Report Draws a Map to Meaningful Privacy Protection in the Online World    26 March 2012, 6:26 pm
7. Tighter privacy laws would only serve the rich and powerful    27 March 2012, 4:08 am
8. NSA Chief: Agency Wants to Provide Malware Signatures, Not Enter Private Networks    27 March 2012, 11:19 am
9. Garbage Collectors Around the U.S. Trained to Report Suspicious Activity    29 March 2012, 9:54 am
10. Lacking GPS Data, Prosecutors Turn to Cell Towers    31 March 2012, 3:35 am
11. Google Sued in Three States Over Customer Profiling    31 March 2012, 3:37 am
12. Federal Judges on Guard Against Jurors’ Social Media Activity    31 March 2012, 3:37 am
13. Facebooking Juror Sets Fair Trial Rights Against Privacy Concerns    31 March 2012, 3:41 am

Link 4 is quite interesting, as it really demonstrates the effect some technologies can have upon our lives. TLDR*: a guy in Japan shares a name with a criminal, which criminal’s name comes up in Google’s AutoComplete; this has caused harm to the innocent guy, who has sued, and won … except Google hasn’t even bothered to acknowledge the judgment against them by a court of law in Japan. Link 5 … is just creepy, and really makes me wonder about a society which has gone so far over into paranoia that it seems to be repeating some of the worst aspects of post-war communism in terms of privacy invasion. Link 7 explores a bit of how privacy law might be misused. Not sure what to make of it, really, although I can certainly see how libel and slander laws are being used that way.

TLDR = “too long, didn’t read” and is something quite fascinating. Rather than just saying, “abstract” or something like that, TLDR implies that the reader is too lazy to read the whole article. Not sure what to make of it, really. I must say, though, that I quite like the idea of having an abstract, so I’ll put up with the whole TLDR thing, and recognize it for snark from people who feel that the article is worth reading and fear that people won’t unless they know what it’s about. Apparently they don’t know the word “abstract?” Or maybe just don’t know how an essay is supposed to be structured?

Psychology:

1. List of cognitive biases    26 March 2012, 4:11 am
2. Curse of knowledge    30 March 2012, 2:52 pm
3. Physical attractiveness and careers    31 March 2012, 3:45 am

Link 3 is about a study wherein people put photos on their resumes (apparently it’s common in Europe) which had been ranked not by attractiveness but by how intelligent the person looked. The results are a bit … well, shallow, but could provide some interesting areas in which to conduct more research. I wish that they’d conducted the experiment under more controlled conditions, frankly, so that we could get at the root of what’s going on, rather than just being left wondering what’s going on with the “more intelligent looking” men being called in for interviews, but the “more intelligent looking” women being excluded from interviews. Strange.

Robotics:

1. Whether grasping Easter eggs or glass bottles, this robotic hand uses tact    30 March 2012, 8:05 am

Robotics – it continues to advance.

-D