Richard

Till it becomes illegal, I suppose. I'm sure the Chinese are not going to put up with it, and eventually, others could follow suit in the name of national security. But it might not even matter if the claims that are being made for gait recognition …

> Just what would that look like? Maybe like New Zealand's response to the terrorist shooting. In less than a week, assault weapons were banned. Compare that to thoughts and prayers.

I love these, especially the first. Thanks for sharing, @Denise

I don't know that we need to be worried, but we sure are going to feel stupid if there's a catastrophic event which might have been avoided had we only devoted more attention to contingency planning. It's probably safe to assume that our ability to …

I've been sleeping rather badly lately, so I decided to take a break from my recent diet of disturbing political and economic non-fiction. Just started My Brilliant Friend, the first of Elena Ferrante's series of four Neapolitan Novels. So far, so …

> How we evolved in such a short span of time to so freely giveaway our data is mind boggling to me. She describes it as a four stage process. It starts with incursion, in which a company simply seizes something (our data) and claims ownership of …

More quantum weirdness in the news today: https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-successfully-put-time-into-reverse-on-the-smallest-scale

Try telling your bank that your mortgage payment isn't objectively due. Or rather, don't. 😉 Seriously, quantum weirdness is fascinating, but we only understand reality at a much higher level of abstraction.

Cheers, @jpop, good write up. Seems to me that using traditional antitrust thinking largely overlooks the dangers that Amazon, FB and Google pose to personal autonomy and privacy, which concern me more than their impact on, say, Internet startup …

Here's a long but excellent talk/discussion with Shoshana Zuboff and Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, This Changes Everything, and other works about capitalism, globalization and the …

Interesting. I never joined FB because I didn't think its communication model made any sense for me--it seemed more geared to press releases, while I was more of a one-on-one type. Of course, later it became very clear what its business was all …

> Microsoft used to rule the desktop and browser markets. Got disrupted organically. IBM before them. Both Microsoft and IBM were subject to major antitrust actions in the US and EU and were forced to change their business practices as a result. …

He's impressive in many ways but he is competing with people with far more name recognition and national organization. Of course, that's what was said about Obama in 2007. Even if he doesn't make the ticket this time, I expect we'll be hearing more …

> but her stance here feels naïve, I agree--it feels like she's fighting the last war, not the one we need to be fighting. Still, I think it's a good thing that she has raised the issue and hope that something constructive comes of it.

Nobody is going to bother, other than an occasional investigative reporter. Who reads terms and conditions online? They are written to discourage reading. The only way to get this under control is to require anyone selling your data to get specific …

The problem I have with Warren's proposal is that I don't believe existing antitrust law addresses the current problems comprehensively. Distortion of markets is only one part, albeit an important one. But privacy is another. The Sherman and …

Elizabeth Warren is proposing new regulations that would significantly impact the tech giants. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-amazon.html Or read it in her own words …

This is scary stuff, but doesn't really come as a surprise. People got used to credit bureau reporting decades ago and so they may not get too worked up over the latest generation of internet enabled spying. In part, I think it's because they do …

I don't believe anything Z says. Or rather, I don't believe that any meaningful change is possible, as Facebook is one of the poster children of surveillance capital corporations. It may do more to protect its members from third party spying, but …

Thanks, Chris, that makes sense. I'm sure it's going to be a blessing for many people who lack adequate access today, though I hope that at some point they manage to shrink the uplink hardware so that it is portable and works in the wild.

As Descartes never said, j'ai mal donc je suis. (If you don't understand that, you will when you get older).

There's certainly a need for world-wide satellite coverage--or at least, it sure would be nice. One thing I've never understood is the interface requirement on the ground. My laptop's WiFi transmitter can barely make it to my entire apartment, so …

I just finished reading Zuboff's book. It's not an easy read--the writing is good but I found it conceptually difficult at times, as it draws on ideas from history, political economy, philosophy and social psychology to analyze a phenomenon that it …

> I don’t know if it’s a blessing or curse to be so into photography, like we both are, when it comes to watching movies. On the one hand, it’s fascinating and inspiring, but it distracts me and I miss some of the story. Getting into photography …

Good grief--one would think it really mattered or something.