Baton Rouge sheriff trying to enforce unconstitutional anti-sodomy laws
Baton Rouge sheriff trying to enforce unconstitutional anti-sodomy laws
It’s been ten years since Lawrence v Texas saw anti-sodomy laws declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but I suppose stupidity is eternal. At least the District Attorney is ending the absurdity by refraining from prosecution. There may yet be hope for Baton Rouge.
Christmas in jail
John Futty, reporting for The Columbus Dispatch in Ohio:
Judge Michael J. Holbrook placed Young on probation yesterday for five years and ordered that she spend a minimum of three days in jail each Christmas while on probation.
This made me smile. Now, crime is bad, and Christmas in jail is bad. But what a creative way to punish a fraudster without wasting taxpayer money on a non-violent offender.
Stop taking multivitamins. Seriously.
Stop taking multivitamins. Seriously.
I’ll be the first to admit I took multivitamins on and off for years, always assuming vitamins could only be good for you. But the overwhelming majority of scientific studies on the subject not only debunks the myth that they help, but strongly suggests that they may be harming us.
The article I link to above is longer than most I share here, but it’s also more important that you read the whole thing. It could (and, to be honest, should) change your mind on including multivitamins as a part of your daily diet, at least without your doctor’s advice.
Norwegian rape victim Marte Deborah Dalelv "pardoned" by UAE
Norwegian rape victim Marte Deborah Dalelv “pardoned” by UAE
I wrote yesterday about Ms. Dalelv’s 16-month sentence for sex outside marriage, among other absurd charges to levy against a victim of rape, in the city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. I’m happy to report that, according to Reuters, the 24-year-old has been “pardoned” and will be able to go back to Norway.
The fact that UAE called it a “pardon” is as unconscionable as the sentence itself, but freedom by any name is better than being jailed in the kind of nation that would punish a rape victim.
Dubai: Where rape is only a crime if you're the victim
Dubai: Where rape is only a crime if you’re the victim
Update: she has been “pardoned.”
A Norwegian woman was raped, reported it to police, and was charged and convicted of extramarital sex, drinking alcohol, and perjury. She was sentenced to 16 months in jail.
For being raped.
And that’s three months longer than her attacker.
This is a major problem of international law. What happens when the economic and business relationship between two states places citizens in the crosshairs of antiquated and ignorant laws? What is the remedy when the Western expectations of a visitor are shattered by foreign norms that, well, prompt Western folks to use words like “antiquated” and “ignorant.”
The Norwegian government has the woman safely housed in what sounds like a naval base, but there is a warrant out for her arrest.
We will find out. I’ll be keeping an eye on this story.
MIT wants pre-release review of Secret Service file on Aaron Swartz
MIT wants pre-release review of Secret Service file on Aaron Swartz
Kevin Poulsen, at Wired's Threat Level blog:
MIT argues that those people might face threats and harassment if their names become public. But it’s worth noting that names of third parties are already redacted from documents produced under FOIA.
MIT has screwed up repeatedly throughout this ordeal, and this is not a sign of improvement. If anything, their interference itself might prompt anonymous hackers to launch new salvos against their networks or dox their personnel.
Tim Stevens is no longer editor-in-chief at Engadget
Tim Stevens is no longer editor-in-chief at Engadget
Two years is a good run, and the site looks and reads far better than it did before his reign, but Tim Stevens’ exit from his role as editor-in-chief at Aol property Engadget is bad sign for the site and it’s owner.
It’s never a good sign, in business or blogging (and especially when your product is a hybrid), when a leadership role is vacated before a replacement is appointed.
Tumblr, Yahoo, and Ads That Don't Suck
Here’s a semi-article, in that it’s more like a rant, but certainly not a link post. If you’ve seen similar stuff in your dashboard, feel free to let me know.
Dear Marissa and David,
Joe here. I’ve used all of Tumblr’s competitors extensively and I settled on Tumblr because it’s mindfully-designed, community-focused, and dead simple. The lack of ads helped, but more important to me than services with no ads are services that do have ads at least respecting their users enough to have decent ads.
So.
Keep ads for The Bachelorette out of my dashboard feed. Please consider presenting users with relevant ads. Scan my blog, the tags i use, the words I like, the stuff I link to. After all, you own it. So look at it. Run it through an algorithm and spit out some sort of value which you can key to a set of sponsored posts that, based on their weighted relevance to my interests and the things I cover on my blog, may actually be interesting to me. This is more palatable to users and more valuable to advertisers than showing me some random woman running around on the beach.
Over and over again.
Despite my never clicking it or reblogging it or seeing it without making an angry face and swearing never to watch that goddamn show. This dashboard spam does not bode well for Tumblr’s future at Yahoo, and that makes me sad, because I like Tumblr, and I rather like both of your styles, to the extent I can know anything about them from reading things on the Internet or watching you do interviews.
You said you wouldn’t fuck this up, but the glut of sponsored posts in my feed tonight about something I’ve never given any corner of the web any reason to think I care about suggests otherwise. Turn it around while you still can.
Change Yahoo, change Tumblr a bit if you must, but why not change advertising and the typically adversarial relationship between advertisers and target audiences while you’re at it?
in other words, don’t shove bad ads in our faces. If we wanted that we would turn on the TV or some other medium that can only collect data in really clumsy inaccurate old ways.
You’ve disrupted plenty of things, why not this?
If you ever want more advice, get in touch. I’ve got lots of ideas.
Sincerely, Joe Ross
German railroad mulling anti-graffiti drones
German railroad mulling anti-graffiti drones
With US authorities pushing for easier backdoors into electronic communications systems, a network of anti-graffiti drones looks like a good front for general state-wide surveillance. The German privacy ethic runs deep, but it may provide an interesting model for US authorities to consider in the long-term.
10 great free monospaced fonts for programming
10 great free monospaced fonts for programming
I can understand why programmers may want to consider using a decent font, but it’s worth noting that writers, particularly those who prefer plain text, should also pay attention to the fonts they’re using.
I like to write with a monospace font for two reasons. First, there’s nostalgia in using a monospace font that connects me to the days I spent in college writing on a typewriter. Second, I find them easier to look at for long periods of time than standard serif or sans serif fonts.
If you write often on a computer, you owe it to yourself to be a little picky about the fonts you use.
Evernote's desktop apps get integrated reminders and a task list, no love for mobile yet
Evernote’s desktop apps get integrated reminders and a task list, no love for mobile yet
Evernote’s reminders are great news, and something I’ve been waiting for since at least February, but here’s all that matters to me:
We have big plans to expand the functionality, and to bring it to more platforms in the very (very) near future.
I can’t wait to get this on mobile. I’ve long hoped that some day Evernote would become the one-app-to-rule-them-all for me. I already use it as a data archive, storage for manuals, occasional journal, research tool, and songwriting management tool. True, cross-platform task management would supercharge the service for me, and may even end my Any.do versus Wunderlist problem.
In related news, Wunderlist has added hashtag support in its web incarnation, and so far I’m actually finding it’s very useful.
Strongbox and Aaron Swartz: Open source, anonymous tips
Strongbox and Aaron Swartz: Open source, anonymous tips
There is plenty of Google news today coming out of their annual I/O conference, but this looks far more important and big-picture, if it actually gets used.
Minnesota governor signs same-sex marriage bill into law
Minnesota governor signs same-sex marriage bill into law
Number twelve and counting; this looks to be a big year for marriage equality in the United States.
DARPA and deep learning
This article by Daniela Hernandez at Wired is well-done and fascinating. However, this bit most caught my eye:
Half of the $100 million in federal funding allotted to this program will come from Darpa — more than the amount coming from the National Institutes of Health — and the Defense Department’s research arm hopes the project will “inspire new information processing architectures or new computing approaches.”
Make no mistake: the US military wants intelligent killing machines.
Delaware becomes eleventh state to approve same-sex marriage
Delaware becomes eleventh state to approve same-sex marriage
And the steady march continues, as Delaware joins their ten predecessors in granting gay couples the basic American right to marry.