Moments, memory, story, beauty. Basically in that order.
— Craig Mod, Photography, hello
Craig digs deep into the purpose of photography and the impact software has had on destroying the camera but freeing the photograph in our networked world.
The response of those who are worried about surveillance has so far been too much couched, it seems to me, in terms of the violation of the right to privacy. Of course it's true that my privacy has been violated if someone is reading my emails without my knowledge. But my point is that my liberty is also being violated, and not merely by the fact that someone is reading my emails but also by the fact that someone has the power to do so should they choose. We have to insist that this in itself takes away liberty because it leaves us at the mercy of arbitrary power. It's no use those who have possession of this power promising that they won't necessarily use it, or will use it only for the common good. What is offensive to liberty is the very existence of such arbitrary power.
— Quentin Skinner, Liberty, Liberalism and Surveillance: A Historic Overview (via Three Things I Learned From the Snowden Files)
I've heard of the NSA's TAO unit before, but some of the stuff described in this article sounds fantastical - using Windows Error Reporting to identify programs and vulnerabilities in conjunction with XKeyscore and physically intercepting online electronics purchases. I'm impressed and terrified at the same time.
Newly published research suggests [the presence of security cameras] also has another, distinctly positive effect. They apparently prompt people who are part of a crowd to engage in helpful behavior, thus weakening the famous bystander effect.
Interesting psychology result.
Amazing that of all places, Hacker News brought me to a moderate view on anything, much less one on hard work, education, debt, vocational training, and politics. I'm really impressed by Mike's responses as well as the S.W.E.A.T. pledge he links to at the end.
Adam Kramer, a data scientist at Facebook, and Sauvik Das, a summer Facebook intern, tracked two things for the study: the HTML form element where users enter original status updates or upload content and the comment box that allows them to add to the discussion of things other people have posted. A “self-censored” update counted as an entry into either of those boxes of more than five characters that was typed out but not submitted for at least the next 10 minutes.
Interesting and clever approach, and completely understandable from Facebook's perspective. When and why people aren't posting is an important point for them to understand, just as a business might want to understand their conversion rate through various marketing efforts or their funnel abandonment.
Was waiting for this "revelation" for quite a while longer than I expected to be. Now we know for sure the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and NSA chief Keith Alexander repeatedly lied about the answer to this question on multiple occasions.
In my experience, almost nobody actually understands how payment systems work. That is: if you "wire" funds to a supplier or "make a payment" to a friend, how does the money get from your account to theirs?
"You are wonderful and what else can my soul sing? All Your hands have made, everything You've done, oh my God, You're wonderful." - Wonderful, Phil Wickham
Thankful for all of my community and above all for a wonderful God that has made it all.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Data is the pollution problem of the information age. All computer processes produce it. It stays around. How we deal with it — how we reuse and recycle it, who has access to it, how we dispose of it, and what laws regulate it — is central to how the information age functions. And I believe that just as we look back at the early decades of the industrial age and wonder how society could ignore pollution in their rush to build an industrial world, our grandchildren will look back at us during these early decades of the information age and judge us on how we dealt with the rebalancing of power resulting from all this new data.
— Bruce Schneier, The Battle for Power on the Internet