Thursday, January 2, 2014
Facebook scans messages for ad targetingI know this is an unpopular stance, but if you operate on any assumption other than that this happens all the time on myriad services you use, you’re a crazy unrealistic person lacking in the minimum amount of cynicism (read: realism) required to use the …Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Apple and “market realities”Apple, it turns out, is not happy about the legal consequences of its ebook price-fixing scheme. I would be unhappy as well if the attorney assigned by a federal judge to make sure I reformed my anti-competitive practices was sending me $1,100-per-hour bills. …Thursday, December 19, 2013
Teehan+Lax on redesigning PrismaticIt’s a great post by great designers about the work and value that goes into and comes out of great design. It also happens to explain very clearly the concept behind my own website here at Constant & Endless. Geoff Teehan of Teehan+Lax writes: In the end, a …Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Judges are, and aren’t, competent to rule on intelligence issuesLots to parse on this one, although it looks like a new chapter in the “Surveillance Wars” Edward Snowden started with his leaks. Two choice quotes really stood out to me in this article, though, especially because they are in …Friday, December 13, 2013
CrunchBase and People+ settleA TechCrunch reporter had this to say about his employer’s sister product: Put another way: The CrunchBase team ended up looking like it didn’t really understand how Creative Commons worked, or at least that’s what the vast majority of online commentary suggested. …Thursday, December 5, 2013
Personhood for chimps? Not any time soon.It’s a noble cause, but a flawed strategy. Victory is unlikely, but even if achieved it will be quickly squelched by legislation redefining personhood as belonging only to human beings. That’s one of the problems universal marriage proponents have had: some …Wednesday, December 4, 2013
NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwideBarton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani, reporting at The Washington Post: The NSA does not target Americans’ location data by design, but the agency acquires a substantial amount of information on the whereabouts of domestic cellphones “incidentally,” a legal …Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Jay Rosen on the “View from Somewhere”The quarter-billion-dollar news company Pierre Omidyar is founding will be fascinating: a digital-first journalism outfit with old media money behind it. It’s an odd flip of the Jeff Bezos/Washington Post play, which involved a digital-first …Monday, December 2, 2013
Stephen Wolfram is building a ghost for the machineStephen Wolfram, putting modesty aside as he often and justifiably does, to discuss his most ambitious project to date: The level of automation is incredibly higher than people could ever have before – it’s incredibly powerful. Anything that …Thursday, November 21, 2013
Is Google Play Newsstand a viable alternative to standalone Android apps?No.Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Winamp is deadVery sad news. I’ve used Winamp for its entire life, all 15 years.Saturday, November 16, 2013
10 misconceptions about copyright and fair useEveryone on the Internet should have to read these.Thursday, November 14, 2013
Judge calls Google book-scanning fair useGreat news for fair use doctrine, and a big win for word geeks. Judge Denny Chin said much in his ruling granting Google’s motion for summary judgment, but this part stuck out to me: Google Books permits humanities scholars to analyze massive amounts of data …Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Is the job worthy of you?The link is aimed at software developers but it’s applicable to anyone looking for a new job. I am at my current employer as much because it answered my questions satisfactorily as because I answered its questions satisfactorily.Wednesday, November 6, 2013
A new kind of freelance journalismThis is essentially journalism à la carte: Peter Jukes offered to continue live-tweeting the News of the World phone-hacking trial if the crowd would fund it. Interest was strong enough to do just that, and his Indiegogo funders ordered up some trial coverage, …Wednesday, November 6, 2013
AOL lawyers don’t understand Creative Commons. At all.David Kravets writes at Wired about AOL’s demand that an app called People+ stop using a complete replica of AOL’s tech company database. AOL’s CrunchBase is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution: We provide CrunchBase’s content …Sunday, November 3, 2013
Pivot while there’s still timeBobby Ghoshal, co-founder of the now-defunct social news app Flud: A year after pivoting to the enterprise we were out of business […] because we ran out of money and investors didn’t have enough data to make a decision to jump on board. I buy this reasoning. I …Sunday, November 3, 2013
Steam has more subscribers than Xbox LiveThe Steam gaming network is now the number 2 community for gamers in the world. Sony’s PlayStation Network is on top with 110 million users, followed by Steam with 65 million. Microsoft’s Xbox Live network takes the third spot with 48 million subscribers. The …Friday, November 1, 2013
Google’s party bargeMystery one day, party barge the next.Thursday, October 31, 2013
FBI asks DOJ to investigate source of Calderon leak to Al JazeeraIt could be that I’m new to the journalism industry and only recently interested in its developments. But it seems to me as if journalism and law are converging like never before, and on an international stage. While Al Jazeera America …Thursday, October 31, 2013
States cite lack of federal progress in pursuit of privacy reformSpecial interest groups oppose federal privacy reform to prevent onerous new regulations. But this effort must, at some point, become counterproductive. A multitude of state-specific privacy frameworks that, by (federal) law, can’t …Thursday, October 31, 2013
HTML5 includes two tags, details and summary, that can be used to generate expanding menus you once needed JavaScript or jQuery for. A code snippet opening and closing with the “details” tag can include a summary that, when clicked, expands to reveal additional HTML. As of this writing, I’ve …Thursday, October 31, 2013
Google “zealously” private about mystery bargeI thought this was interesting but not really worth mentioning here, until the Coast Guard visited, apparently, as USA Today reports, under a presumably Google-imposed gag order. I’m an avid Google user, incredibly open on the internet, and …Thursday, October 31, 2013
Jim Roberts joins Mashable as executive editor, chief content officerJim Roberts on his new role at Mashable: To some it might seem a bit of a departure. You might imagine a headline like: “Longtime New York Times and Reuters veteran forsakes legacy media for digital upstart.” Interesting. Roberts …Monday, October 28, 2013
On being a female lawyerWorth a read whether you’re a male or a female. Hat-tip to Sheryl Axelrod, immediate past president of the Temple Law Alumni Association and a preeminent Philadelphia-area lawyer, for sharing this on LinkedIn. (Yes, I visit LinkedIn, even when not looking for jobs.)Sunday, October 27, 2013
Whose Fault Is a Driverless-Car Crash?Some possibilities not contemplated in this brief Time piece: software developer for driving computer component designer/manufacturer of driving computer technician who performed final calibration of driving computer technician who installed driving computer …Sunday, October 27, 2013
Poetic copyright troll illustrates need for reformLinda Ellis, copyright troll: If protecting my rights in your eyes makes me a “troll,” then I’ll wear the badge proudly and keep fulfilling my role. Current law does allow hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages for sharing drivel like the …Saturday, October 26, 2013
Why You Need Several Versions of Your ResumeAbsolutely necessary. Just like cover letters, every resume you send should be tailored to the recipient, highlighting the experience you have that’s most relevant to that company and integrating some basic research on the employer. If you’re sending the …Saturday, October 26, 2013
Liberals, Tea Partiers unite to protest NSA in DC The march attracted protesters from both ends of the political spectrum as liberal privacy advocates walked alongside members of the conservative Tea Party movement in opposition to what they say is unlawful government spying on Americans. What a …Sunday, October 13, 2013
Corporations Have Personhood. Why Not Dogs?What a good survey of animal law, where it came from, where it is and where it’s going. A pleasant surprise, as I usually write off Huffington Post pretty fast. The only people that argue against the treatment of dogs, and other animals, as more than …