Adam Curtis has a new series coming out soon

Its about computers and their affects on our everyday lives. Watch a trailer here.

Looks good, but its an Adam Curtis documentary, of course it looks good.

Lobbying in action.

The EU is trying to promote free, open source software and big software companies like Microsoft are using their lobbying firms to quash it as much as possible. A Spanish blogger (excuse the slightly odd way its written) has highlighted their efforts via a policy document the lobbyists had modified so as to better meet their views.

Wikileaks is a good thing.

thanks jonny

Facebook in not protecting people's privacy shocker.

For all the positive benefits users of facebook speak of, arranging overconsumption of alcohol, recording and sharing pictures of your overconsumption and helping employers decide if your alcohol consumption matches up with their corporate ethos, we all know that really all it exists to do is to get as much of your personal information as possible so as to sell it off. Kind of like how people often don't like to say they're going to the toilet but instead use a euphemism (which can be more vulgar than the truth but w/e) the general populace likes to pretend Facebook actually cares about you and your views instead of just a fungible data node. Ya know, like with shop loyalty cards.

A couple interesting privacy issues that have come up of late: The new Groups "security" feature is easily exploitable and far from under the control of the group creators. Oh and thanks to an indifference to personal privacy on the part of both Apple and Google your phone number is probably easily available on facebook even if you didn't put it there.

why yes it is ironic I am posting about this stuff on a google owned blog

German group points out website blocking is wholly ineffective.

When dealing with child porn at least which is the wedge strategy being used across the western world to make such censorship seem acceptable. The key point they make is so obvious as to be a "why didn't I think of that" moment. Simply put by blocking child porn sites the authorities are not dealing with them and shutting them down. In contrast simply contacting webhosts caused all the child porn sites they found to be shut down within hours.

The summary and report can be found here and is worth looking at. They destroy pretty much every excuse for site blocking that exists with short to the point arguments.


thanks jonny

Yet more Tech-Cartel news.

Angel investors are super rich people who invest their own money in tech startups at a very early stage. This is opposed to venture capitalists who generally invest other people's money at all stages of a firm's growth. Angelgate is the allegation that these angels regularly meet to fix prices and ensure they all make as much profit as possible, that is to say they are the very definition of a trust.

This accusation has brought us the non-news that Nerds are terrible, covertly racist and greedy selfish assholes in the form of an incoherent incensed word vomit of denial from David McClure, one of those who profited from Paypal. His APS (ad hominems per second) and anger level suggest there is some truth to Michael Arrington's claims. Even if there aren't by God McClure is just awful. I thought YOSPOS was the exception, alas it seems to be the rule.

More proof of an IT Cartel

Its not just in the area of IP law that high tech companies are acting as a cartel. It turns out that the US Justice Department has uncovered what it believes to be a deliberate suppression of IT worker's wages via agreements not to poach other company's employees. Of course these agreements wont be applied to small tech startups whose employees will be ripe for poaching (which again echoes how things are with software copyrights). I hope the Justice department ends it one way or another but it is kinda funny how this has happened to an industry in which the majority of its' workers are libertarian scum.

thanks jonny

(I'll try not to link the WSJ again for a long time).

Google Engineer had access to pretty much any personal info he wanted...

...used it to taunt children. He doesn't seem to be a paedo or anthing he just liked showing off how much data he could access by bullying young teenagers. Probably the more worrying aspect about this given how apparently IT people in any company have access to huge amounts of data wherever they work, Google just has more than most (posted on a google owned blog - Tony), is that Google took 4 months to realise this was going on and then made their investigations increasingly opaque to the families of the children involved and the wider world.

Random tangent; for some reason this lead to discussion of Roz Ho who is pretty bad at her job in that she has lost Microsoft literally billions of dollars. So here is a fun compare and contrast activity, search both Google and bing for just her name:
Google
bing

Oddly it seems Bing can't find any articles critical of Ms Ho.

thanks tony

Software patenting has lead to the creation of a defacto IT cartel.

I know little about tech so I can't really speak to this but it seems due to control of patents big companies hold control over all future innovation and can quash any start-up competitors. Read about it here.

thanks jonny

Computer nerds privileged white manbabies???

Idly going around the bbc news website I happened upon a link to something interesting, a blog post detailing something really obvious that had never occured to me. Basically starting using computers at a young age is less a sign of deep interest in the field and more a sign your parents were rich enough to buy you a computer. Its quite short and very interesting do have a look

Of course just with anything else that suggest maybe affluent white males didn't succeed solely because of their amazing abilities but, ya know, benefited from entrenched privilege within society those white guys feel the need to point out that possibly poors, women and minorities have a little bit of a disadvantage they got to where they are based solely on merit so the crazy bitch who wrote this article should shut up. Theres few groups more right wing and self important than computer nerds so if you do so choose to read the comments you get to some truly hilarious levels of denial.

super secret note for tony: more proof YOSPOS is a terrible place populated by terrible people