It’s been a busy week — 13 hours of EWW (Extended Work Week) combined with a dearth of interesting news articles led to the very rare situation of no posts during the week. There were a number of subjects I wanted to write about, but I could never find that elusive third article (and I like to have three for a themed post). So here are a bunch of “groupa twos”, as Ken Kay would say…
Privacy and Technology
Here are two articles I wanted to theme together in a post relating to privacy, technology, and the whole kerfluffle about the NSA and surveillance…
- Snowden and His Disclosures. A very interesting piece in US News and World Reports opined that Snowden was the wrong person to make his disclosures. He is doing them in a way that is bringing him harm, and his clumsy handling of things is creating problems for international relations. Who should have made the disclosure? A US Senator. They have the ability to leak information without threat of prosecution, and they are obstensibly working in the interest of the people. Any member of Congress can release any information that they think the public should see — so why aren’t they? Perhaps this is a question you should ask your senator?
- Cell Phone Privacy. I’ve been repeatedly noting how laws haven’t caught up with technology. Here’s a good example: the Supreme Court is exploring whether the contents of a cell phone can be examined when someone is arrested. In general, we’re trying to apply laws and concepts (personal domain, national borders) in an era where things have drastically changed. Further, we have people who are not familiar with the technology trying to decide these issues.
Facebook and Social Networking
I’ve been noticing lately that the Internets aren’t as interesting as they used to be. The Internet is going downhill. I was going to tie this observation to some articles I’ve seen about Facebook:
- Your Father’s Facebook. Perhaps one of the reasons Facebook is dull is that it has been taken over by old folks as they warm to social networking. Of course, as our parents warm to Facebook (and remember, I’m probably old enough to be your parent), the “kids” are going somewhere else. Pinterest. Tumblr. I remember when this happened to Livejournal, and it’s dead over there now.
- Don’t Be Boring. Facebook is updating its algorithms, and it’s new ranking algorithm for your newsfeed will punish you if you are boring. If people don’t like your posts and share them, you’ll be hidden from feeds. This will result in the viral stupidity and cat pictures being ranked high, and long form writing and blogging (such as I do) disappearing from your feeds. Fight the battle! Like this post!
Knitting
Two fascinating articles about knitting, but alas I couldn’t find a third…
- Knitting as Computation. Boing Boing had a link to a really neat article that explored knitting as computation, including concepts such as a stitch processing unit, the knitting needle as stack, archival memory, and the 4-step knitting clock cycle.
- Yarn Bombing. Normally, I don’t get excited about yarn bombing. But when it covers a four-car full-size train, I take notice.
Office Stupidity
The last groupa-two concerns office stupidity. Never could find the third article to make the theme be stable. Perhaps themes are like stools (heh, heh, he said “stool”) — they need three legs to be stable.
- War Against Stupid Office Signs. The CEO of Evernote is at war against office stupidity. This can be seen at his new headquarters, where he is waging war against dumb office signs. People love to be passive-agressive on their warning signs, and it affects office culture.
- Charging for Standards. Here’s another office war — this time against public standards issued by standards bodies that are not free. This often happens when private bodies (such as trade associations) issue standards that government adopts. When you need to get the standard, however, it isn’t free on the nets — you have to pay an ungodly amount for it. I see this often with ISO standards — trying to get a copy of ISO/IEC 27001/27002 is quite pricy. Luckily, I have great google-fu.
