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The Atlantic – How the Ballpoint Pen Killed Cursive – Thicker ink, fewer smudges, and more strained hands: an Object Lesson “…The ballpoint’s universal success has changed how most people experience ink. Its thicker ink was less likely to leak than that of its predecessors. For most purposes, this was a win—no more ink-stained shirts, …
The Washington Post – “Nothing on this page is real,” read one of the 14 disclaimers on Christopher Blair’s site, and yet in the America of 2018 his stories had become real, reinforcing people’s biases, spreading onto Macedonian and Russian fake news sites, amassing an audience of as many 6 million visitors each month who …
The New York Times: “…When Facebook users learned last spring that the company had compromised their privacy in its rush to expand, allowing access to the personal information of tens of millions of people to a political data firm linked to President Trump, Facebook sought to deflect blame and mask the extent of the problem.And …
Mozila: “Teddy bears that connect to the internet. Smart speakers that listen to commands. Great gifts—unless they spy on you. We created this guide to help you buy safe, secure products this holiday season.”
Joe Hodnick – “Holochain is a protocol for encrypted computer communications that is designed to run entirely on distributed networks of home computers and smartphones, on a peer-to-peer, give-and-take basis. Because apps built using the holochain protocol will live exclusively on distributed networks of consumer-owned computers, these apps won’t need to interact with corporate server …
Quartz: “…big tech companies have amassed so much power that even Apple CEO Tim Cook has called for stricter regulations to be placed on them. Google owns 92% market share of internet searches, Facebook an almost 70% share of social networks. Both have a duopoly in advertising with no credible competition or regulation. Amazon, meanwhile, …
“This portfolio is the first publication from Past Tense, an archival storytelling project of The New York Times. As we digitize some six million photo prints in our files, dating back more than 100 years, we are using those images to bring the events and characters of the past to life in the present. To …
CNet – Traffic got rerouted Monday through ISPs in countries known for internet surveillance. “Google suffered a brief outage and slowdown on Monday, with some of its traffic being rerouted through networks in Russia, China and Nigeria. Incorrect routing instructions sent some of the search giant’s traffic to Russian network operator TransTelekom, China Telecom and …
The Next Web: “The information age has delivered innumerable wonders to us and continues to churn out astonishing innovations on a daily basis. The only reason that contemporary society enjoys such awesome technology and progress these days is that we can gleam so much insight from our data, particularly when we combine disparate datasets together …
Hyperallergic – Thanks to the internet’s meticulous record-keeping, journalists are rethinking to ethics of publishing the identities of nonviolent criminals. “How long must someone pay for a mistake? The online publication of mugshots and police blotters takes an outsized toll on minority communities, which are already subjected to disproportionately aggressive police surveillance. According to the NAACP’s …
Slate – Facebook and others have gotten more serious about hoaxes, hate speech, propaganda, and foreign election interference. Here’s how it helped in the midterms—and why they aren’t going away. “At first grimace, the role of social media in the 2018 U.S. midterm elections looked a lot like the role it played in the 2016, …
Public-Interest Technology Resources Maintained by Bruce Schneier. “As technology—especially computer, information, and Internet technology—permeates all aspects of our society, people who understand that technology need to be part of public-policy discussions. We need technologists who work in the public interest. We need public-interest technologists. Public-interest technologists are a diverse and interdisciplinary group of people. Their …
