Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan’s theory of the paywall suggests a local paper of high caliber can survive erecting a paywall.

Maybe he is right, but can two local papers survive?

It will be good to see the Inquirer and the Daily News broken out into their own websites, if only for the fact that they have very different voices. But, as Philly.com is currently an amalgam of the two, with its own original content as well, I’m curious to see what it will look like after the websites split.

The Next Web's Emil Protalinski, quoting HP's head of enterprise services Mikle Nefkens:

“This means the attacks average out at about 1,833 per minute or 30 every second.” Those figures are simply astonishing. Extrapolating the other way, it means the US Navy is attacked some 96.36 billion times every year.

If you ever doubted the importance of cyber-preparedness, this should go a long way toward assuaging those doubts.

Oh. So. Meta.

It’s true, but not really because lots of people can follow Netflix CEO Reed Hastings on Facebook, but because many reporters actually do. This was not going to go unreported.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Jennifer Lynch explains how EFF got data on active drones over US soil. I’m not prone to slippery slope arguments, but with the volume of cyberattacks directed at the US each year, it’s not ridiculous to suggest that our drones may be vulnerable to hijacking.

Ronnie Polidoro, writing at NBC:

“When I go into my living room and turn on the TV, I feel like I have gone backwards in time by 20 to 30 years,” Cook told Williams. “It’s an area of intense interest. I can’t say more than that.”

This is the only interesting bit of the article. I’m not sure why he would tease it in an interview like this one, that will ostensibly reach a large viewership of non-geeks, unless they were close to their TV solution.

As an aside, “assembling” some iMacs in the US is not the same as “making” them here, and it’s a distinction I suspect will be lost on many.

This is wonderful stuff: with a shortage of STEM talent these days, it’s imperative to involve all those who are interested, and this project serves to reduce the barrier to entry for deaf students.

(Via Evening Edition)

This is important, and Richard Dunlop-Walters’s The Brief has a great, ongoing summary of the issue and the news coming out of the World Conference on International Communications. It may seem dry at first, but this stuff could have far-reaching effects on privacy and internet governance, so it’s worth at least a quick glance.

lilly:

What I meant to say about this article about online education: MOOCs are a breakthrough in distribution of educational content, but not really a breakthrough in the way that we learn. What this article points out is that there are more important developments in the way we teach and learn…

Mr. Lilly makes some great points. There is a great opportunity here for colleges to partner with coworking organizations to integrate local “MOOC clubs” into the surrounding community.

I know they’re not the same thing, but it’s interesting to watch News Corp. fail with The Daily while Marco Arment’s The Magazine is gaining altitude, despite production by a relative publishing newb and one other staffer.

One thing is clear: digital publishing does not belong exclusively (or even primarily) to the Old Publishing incumbents.

Josh Constine at TechCrunch:

There no big launch event yesterday because Facebook didn’t need one. In fact, it probably didn’t want one, considering it didn’t even notify bloggers like me as it usually does.

This isn’t going to end well. I predict that a backlash will build over the next couple of weeks, nothing dire, but familiar fare by now for Facebook. They should have come out with PR about the easy privacy controls they have implemented to allow seamless and secure photo uploading. Instead they tried to sneak it in on the weekend.

It’s one of my favorite services, and the first I decided to pay for on a monthly basis. I think Libin, despite his transparent business style and easy-going manner, is genius of the caliber of any CEO at a company ten times Evernote’s size. He built something awesome, gives most of it away, and amplifies the magic for a small monthly fee.

You don’t get to 45 million users without being awesome.

Joseph Goldstein, writing for the Times:

Mr. Sussmann suggested that the Police Department could limit its subpoenas to phone calls beginning on the hour, not the day, of the theft, and ending as soon as the victim has transferred the number to a new phone.

Mr. Sussman is exactly right. I suspect the intent here on the part of NYPD is an admirable one: we have data available that can help us track thieves, so let’s use it.

But it’s not hard to limit the information requested to only the information that could possibly be of use in finding the suspect.

Erik Eckholm, reporting for the New York Times:

Referred to Jonah by a rabbi when he was 18, Mr. Levin began attending weekend retreats at $650 each. For a year and a half, he had weekly private sessions with Mr. Downing as well as weekly group sessions. He quit, he said, after Mr. Downing had him remove his clothes and touch himself, saying it would help him reconnect with his masculinity. Mr. Goldberg has defended Mr. Downing’s methods as sometimes appropriate for men dealing with body image problems.

Golberg and Downing have no license to practice psychology or therapy. They took money from men in exchange for the promise of “curing” their homosexuality. And, as this passage demonstrates, Downing took advantage of at least one young man’s vulnerability.

Deplorable.

Conversion “therapy” is one of religion’s dark arts, with no basis in reality and the primary purpose of enriching cynical snake-oil salesmen by feeding off the self-hatred of confused individuals. No god wants you removing your clothes and touching yourself for a fake “therapist.”

Sadly, the California ban on this absurd abuse of religion only applies to licensed therapists. This would leave “religious counselors” like the scum described in this story able to continue to profit from the desperation of people who can’t live with the thought that their god will hate them if they’re true to who they are.

If you think gay people need to seek healing in the form of getting “un-gayed,” you’ll get no respect from me.

Richard Williamson is his name, and shipping a less-than-perfect mapping application on the iPhone 5 was his game, until, as Bloomberg's Adam Satariano reports, Senior Vice President Eddy Cue fired him.

As an aside, I really like that Bloomberg lists both the reporter’s and the editor’s name and email address at the bottom of stories. More publications should do that.

Someone’s gonna get fired…

This is an interesting move, basically setting up the lemonade stand while all you have is water: it’s on your parents to give you the rest of the ingredients if they want you to do the work.

Congress would do well to expedite the provision of sugar and lemons (read: broader authority, and some more money) to the new unit so they can start making lemonade before threats to the electrical grid start turning up the heat on the US.

Now I’m thirsty.

David Kappos thinks software patents are just fine, but I’m interested in what his as-yet unknown successor will have to say on the matter.

Twenty-plus years is a long time, and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act is overdue for an update. A summary of the state of things:

Unfortunately these digital documents lack long-held privacy safeguards. Email saved in web-based email systems like Yahoo for longer than six months can be accessed with an administrative subpoena, which provides less protection than a warrant. Similarly, no matter what privacy setting you use, sensitive and personal information — photos, private journals, Facebook pages, corporate data, draft reports — shared with third parties like Google and Facebook can be accessible by police without a judge’s approval. All the government has to do is swear it’s “relevant” to an investigation.

Here’s to ensuring that the Fourth Amendment isn’t rendered moot by technological advancements.

Updated: This is not true.

Angela Moscaritolo of PCMag.com reports:

In a statement, Google said it made the acquisition to “further diversify its already impressive portfolio of companies.” The Web giant did not elaborate about its motivation for the deal.

You don’t spent $400 million on something that isn’t strategically important to your business. I predict that Google WiFi will launch in 2013.

Frédéric Filloux at Monday Note:

As for the TV shows such as Homeland and others hits, there is not justification whatsoever to preserve this calendar archaism. They should be made universally available from the day when they are aired on TV, period. Or customers will vote with their mouse anyway and find the right file-sharing sites.

I’ve been preaching this line for a while, but Mr. Filloux articulates, by far, the best argument I’ve heard.

Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office David Kappos, quoted by Timothy B. Lee at Ars Technica:

In a system like ours in which innovation is happening faster than people can keep up, it cannot be said that the patent system is broken.

Of course, he’s wrong, but what else would he argue?

"The work my directorate does is under-funded and based upon a flawed patchwork of case and statutory law that frustrates our Constitutional mandate!"

Unlikely.

It’s worth considering if you’re a PayPal user.

HP’s got ninety-nine problems, but a recently-acquired pattern recognition company with possibly-dishonest accounting practices ain’t…

…oh, nevermind.

We categorically deny these allegations from unnamed sources, published in L’Express, that the United States government has participated in a cyberattack against France. France is one of our best allies. Our cooperation is remarkable in the areas of intelligence, law enforcement, and cyberdefense. It has never been as strong and essential to our common fight against the threat of extremism.

L’Express is the French publication that first ran the accusations of US involvement in a cyber-espionage attack on the offices of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy (while he was still in office). They asked the US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano why the US would do such a thing, and she reiterated her French visit’s mission to strengthen the long-standing alliance between the two nations.

I have no reason to doubt the Embassy’s (or Secretary Napolitano’s) sincerity, but it’s an interesting thought experiment to consider that the US Embassy in France, and even the Secretary of Homeland Security, may not be aware of any covert cyber espionage operations the US carries out in France.