parker higgins

Malcom Gladwell’s New Yorker piece about his skepticism of social media’s role in social change has brought out the heavyweights, and in the past few days there’s been some really great writing about the idea. Anil Dash, in particular, raises the point that the actions of the Maker community are actually political, even though it usually just looks like they’re having fun.

Stories like the discovery of Bing Crosby’s copy of the previously lost Game 7 of the 1960 World Series are fun, and not totally uncommon. Earlier this year the National Jazz Museum acquired the Savory Collection of about 1,000 discs of radio broadcasts of jazz greats that had been recorded from radio broadcasts by an enthusiastic audio engineer, and a bootleg of a Woody Guthrie concert that surfaced a few years back is the only known recording of him playing live.

William Safire’s 1994 response to the Clipper chip works as a smart and poignant response to the Obama administration’s reported proposal to weaken encryption so “secure” communications can be wiretapped. The Safire piece is too good and too short to excerpt.

• Hey Twitter: Give us our Tweets A call for tweet data older than what is available on the site. It’s nice to make the call, and it’s great if Twitter listens, but unless you own your own data or have some control over the services you use, you’re beholden to a corporation to make decisions in your best interest and often against theirs. The Twitter history issue is a good reminder of why open APIs and the like are not sufficient for free network services.
• OUPblog » Blog Archive » The Sinister Influence of the Left Hand An interesting look at the etymology of “left” and “right” in a bunch of languages. One thing I’m left curious about, though: given the common relationship between “left” and “north,” where does English’s “southpaw” come from?
• U.S. Tries to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet – NYTimes.com Clipper 2.0: The US government is preparing to seek new regulation that will undermine encryption technology so that it can be wiretapped. I don’t love drug dealers or terrorists, but it’s hard to imagine clear-thinking people who see this as a good idea.

• [The Cost Of Free: How Freemium’s Cheerleaders Make A Pretty Penny

  paidContent](http://paidcontent.org/article/419-the-cost-of-free-how-freemiums-cheerleaders-make-a-pretty-penny/) WOW does this article ever miss the point. A criticism of the people who advocate giving non-rivalrous goods away in order to generate demand for rivalrous goods, calling them hypocritical for doing exactly what they suggest. (I think that makes them hypercrites!)

• The Most Powerful People in New York – How Diaspora Is a Very Different Kind of Social Network — New York Magazine Congratulations to the Diaspora guys on a great New York magazine profile. This piece seems to miss the point less, although it’s hard to find a source that isn’t posing D* as a Facebook killer.
• Twitter, Facebook, and social activism : The New Yorker Well, some of this skepticism of social networks is well-placed, and I do think social media fanboys get a little breathless when describing the power of Twitter et al. But of course, Gladwell gets a little muddy when talking about the strengths and weaknesses of these loose-tie networks, and this piece certainly doesn’t spell the downfall of the Twitterati, but it’s worthwhile reading.

• BBC News – Stuxnet worm ‘targeted high-value Iranian assets’ Stuxnet is the craziest malware since Conficker, and if you believe the hype, it’s way crazier. Four hitherto unseen Windows zero-days and it targets PLCs! Some researchers are suggesting it was built by a nation-state level entity to target Iran’s nuclear power plants, but Schneier in unconvinced.

• [Promoting statistical literacy: a modest proposal

  Technology

  guardian.co.uk](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/sep/21/password-security-cory-doctorow) A discussion from Cory Doctorow about how a lack of statistical literacy and password fundamentals leads to inconvenient and insecure practices. (Also: maybe I’m dense, but this didn’t seem like satire. Isn’t it weird to call your piece “A modest proposal” and then not be over-the-top satirical?)

• Looxcie Wearable Camcorder: Capture Unexpected Moments A somewhat conspicuous but still rather small wearable camcorder/bluetooth headset that can buffer up to five hours of running footage and store four. Next step towards Snowcrash “Gargoyles.”
• evercookie – virtually irrevocable persistent cookies This scary technology takes advantage of the eight or so different places cookies might be stored, and leaves a copy in each spot. If any, but not all, of the cookies get erased, the remaining ones will replace the deleted ones.
• Summer Guide 2010 – How Music Producer Dr. Luke Is Assembling No. 1 Hits — New York Magazine A profile of Dr. Luke, one of the masterminds behind a surprising number of smash hits in the past few years: “Tik Tok,” “California Gurls,” “I Kissed A Girl,” “Right Round,” etc etc. The description of his “curatorial” role is particularly interesting.

• Alex Payne — The Very Last Thing I’ll Write About Twitter Some very smart thoughts on #newtwitter and decentralization by Alex Payne, who should know. I think it’s a bit silly to refer to general micro-blogging as “lower case ‘t’ tweeting”, but I understand it and actually think it might be the most intuitive conceptualization for most people. That kind of thought is representative of Payne’s smart take on “Twitter as a medium.”
• The Quietest Place on Earth – Orfield Labs [audiojunkies] The anechoic chambers at Orfield Labs are the quietest place on Earth, at -9.4 dBs. (Yes, -dBs.) I highly recommend the experience of spending a few minutes in an anechoic chamber, if only for how bizarre it feels.

• KNIFE TRICKS: 10 Brief Responses To 700 Comments About Refusing To Answer Questions At Passport ControlThese are 10 really smart and well-reasoned responses to criticisms levied against this US citizen who refused to answer questions upon re-entering the country. Surprisingly effective in communicating what initially seems like an obnoxiously hard-line position.
• Example: Facebook “Like” buttonVery smart implementation of the Facebook “Like” button by social network site Chocobrain. “Click two times for better data privacy,” means Facebook can’t track you until you consent to it.
• HDCP ‘master key’ supposedly released, unlocks HDTV copy protection permanently — EngadgetIt looks like the “master key,” which is used to generate HDTV keys, has been leaked. If true, it means that the HDTV copy protection is broken, effectively creating a digital “analog hole.”

• Neo-Minimalism and the Rise of the Technomads – Boing Boing Good introduction to the concept of technomadism and the new minimalism. I’m not sure if these things merit -isms, but I do agree that I need to have less stuff.
• The Secret Lives of Big Pharma’s ‘Thought Leaders’ – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education A very interesting examination of the pharmaceutical industry’s practice of hiring Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) from the medical community to play up the benefit of new drugs.
• Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg opens up : The New Yorker A close-up profile of Mark Zuckerberg in advance of “The Social Network”. Some salient details that were new to me. My favorite was the conference rooms named after “bad ideas”: Knife at a Gunfight, Subprime Mortgage, Beacon…

Several months ago, I decided that the most responsible relationship to have with Facebook was none at all. I deactivated my account. After a rocky five years of ups and downs, I just couldn’t take their arcane and irresponsible positions on privacy.

• [I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat (but farm it right)

  George Monbiot

  Comment is free

  The Guardian](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/06/meat-production-veganism-deforestation) Thought-provoking review of a new book about the practicality of eating meat. The book’s author argues, and the pretty strongly vegan-leaning reviewer agrees, that meat can be farmed with a minimal or beneficial impact on the environment if the global agriculture system were to be heavily reformed.

• Forking is a Feature – Anil Dash Interesting collection of thoughts from Anil Dash on forking as a feature, and not the “nuclear option” of a f/oss community project.
• The Museum of Soviet Arcade Games Absolutely amazing walkthrough of a museum of Soviet Arcade Games outside of Moscow. This is too cool. Also cool is the Flickr set he links to at the bottom of the article.
• Walking in Midtown, without using avenues : The New Yorker Charming description of a trip through midtown without stepping foot on the avenues. (It’s an update on something John Updike once wrote about.) I think about this kind of thing all the time when walking in Manhattan.
• YouTube – Disney’s Blam – Up Spot-on parody of the really terrible “Blam!” thing Disney’s been doing, applying that treatment to the opening montage in “Up.” Watch for “INCONCEIVABLE!”