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Verizon and the N.S.A.: The Problem with Metadata : The New Yorker

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Verizon and the N.S.A.: The Problem with Metadata : The New Yorker:

But with each technological breakthrough comes a break-in to realms previously thought private. “It’s really valuable for law enforcement, but we have to update the wiretap laws,” Landau said.

It was exactly these concerns that motivated the mathematician William Binney, a former N.S.A. official who spoke to me for the Drake story, to retire rather than keep working for an agency he suspected had begun to violate Americans’ fundamental privacy rights. After 9/11, Binney told me, as I reported in the piece, General Michael Hayden, who was then director of the N.S.A., “reassured everyone that the N.S.A. didn’t put out dragnets, and that was true. It had no need—it was getting every fish in the sea.”

Binney, who considered himself a conservative, feared that the N.S.A.’s data-mining program was so extensive that it could help “create an Orwellian state.”

As he told me at the time, wiretap surveillance requires trained human operators, but data mining is an automated process, which means that the entire country can be watched. Conceivably, the government could “monitor the Tea Party, or reporters, whatever group or organization you want to target,” he said. “It’s exactly what the Founding Fathers never wanted.”

[And hasn't the attitude in Washington about this been entirely clear? I always worry when someone tells me something is "for my own good."]

Written by Daniel

June 9, 2013 at 6:51 pm

Lance 3.0: Lay down your cudgels, please | Cycling in the South Bay

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Lance 3.0: Lay down your cudgels, please | Cycling in the South Bay:

If you hate Lance because he “ruined the sport,” maybe it’s time YOU moved on. The pro sport is rotten. If you follow it and still bury your head in the jocks of its stars, there’s a problem all right, and the problem is with you. If you can watch Nibali repeatedly hit the gas in the snow at the end of the most grueling stage of the most grueling stage race while his competition is rolling over and dying on the slopes, you’re the one who needs to analyze my modification of this old saw: “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me over and over and over, and I’m a f***ing moron who enjoys being fooled.”

[Well said.]

Written by Daniel

May 30, 2013 at 1:53 pm

Michael, Steve, & Lance

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OTL: Michael Jordan Has Not Left The Building – ESPN:

THE OPPOSITE OF this creeping nostalgia is the way Jordan has always collected slights, inventing them — nurturing them. He can be a breathtaking asshole: self-centered, bullying and cruel. That’s the ugly side of greatness. He’s a killer, in the Darwinian sense of the word, immediately sensing and attacking someone’s weakest spot.

[Same thing about Jobs. Same things about Lance. There are certain types of greatness that make it easy to, maybe nearly demand this behavior. I don't think it's required. I think it's a flaw. But possibly one that keeps them human in the face of the searing burn they demanded of themselves.]

Written by Daniel

March 3, 2013 at 3:38 pm

Posted in advocacy, commentary, craft

The Improbable is the New Normal

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The Improbable is the New Normal:

Every minute a new impossible thing is uploaded to the internet and that improbable event becomes just one of hundreds of extraordinary events that we’ll see or hear about today. The internet is like a lens which focuses the extraordinary into a beam, and that beam has become our illumination. It compresses the unlikely into a small viewable band of everyday-ness. As long as we are online – which is almost all day many days — we are illuminated by this compressed extraordinariness. It is the new normal.

That light of super-ness changes us. We no longer want mere presentations, we want the best, greatest, the most extraordinary presenters alive, as in TED. We don’t want to watch people playing games, we want to watch the highlights of the highlights, the most amazing moves, catches, runs, shots, and kicks, each one more remarkable and improbable than the other.

[Worrisome on some level. But maybe it's the start of a new growth spurt?]

Source: The Technium

Written by Daniel

January 8, 2013 at 8:39 am

Posted in commentary

Why We’ll Never Stop Talking About Steve Jobs

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Why We’ll Never Stop Talking About Steve Jobs:

Jobs, like the titans of industry before him, realized that when we think about how the world works, we are actually thinking about the way people have made it to work. And that means that if you don’t like the way the world works, you are free to change it. Which is exactly what he did.

[Forgetting that in combination with Alice Walker's "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." explains why so little is done about so much.]

Written by Daniel

October 7, 2012 at 12:03 pm

Posted in advocacy, commentary, news

The Heinlein Maneuver

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Stranger_in_a_Strange_Land cover

The Heinlein Maneuver:

What are the minimum, indispensable functions of government? What functions are present in all human societies? Is it possible to name anything which obtains in one society which is not differently just the reverse in another? Or not done at all? Has there ever been a truly anarchistic society? The Eskimos, perhaps? We have an anarchist running a newspaper in this town, who is opposed to public roads, public schools, public anything—he maintains that it is not ethical for a majority to do anything collectively which each individual did not already have the right to do as an individual. This is an explosive notion; a corollary is that all taxation is wrong, all zoning laws are wrong, all compulsory education is wrong, all punishment by courts is wrong. In the mean time he lives in a well-policed society, his own considerable wealth protected by all these things he deplores. But one thing is sure: many of the things we take for granted are not necessary to a stable society, but we take them for granted. You could get a Campbell-style story out of doubting the most sacred of sacred cows—except big business, of course; John does not tolerate outright heresy.

[Genius. I was 13 when I read my first Heinlein book. And I read all I could get my hands on since. First? Obvious. Stranger in a Strange Land. Hardcover. Looked like the above. Introduced me to Rodin as well. ]

Source: Letters of Note

Rodin Gates of Hell

Written by Daniel

October 5, 2012 at 11:02 am

Posted in commentary, personal

My wick hath a thief in it

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My wick hath a thief in it:

Do you know what it is to succumb under an insurmountable day-mare,—”a whoreson lethargy,” Falstaff calls it,—an indisposition to do anything, or to be anything,—a total deadness and distaste,—a suspension of vitality,—an indifference to locality,—a numb, soporifical, good-for-nothingness,—an ossification all over,—an oyster-like insensibility to the passing events,—a mind-stupor,—a brawny defiance to the needles of a thrusting-in conscience. Did you ever have a very bad cold, with a total irresolution to submit to water-gruel processes?

[To good to ignore.]

Source: Letters of Note

Written by Daniel

October 5, 2012 at 10:48 am

Posted in commentary

Stuff

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Stuff:

I have too much stuff. Most people in America do. In fact, the poorer people are, the more stuff they seem to have. Hardly anyone is so poor that they can’t afford a front yard full of old cars.

[Brilliant opening, and sadly too true for most of us. I may work on this forever unless some calamity helps me.]

Written by Daniel

August 28, 2012 at 4:08 pm

Posted in commentary

What Eduardo Saverin Owes America (Hint: Nearly Everything)

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What Eduardo Saverin Owes America (Hint: Nearly Everything) | PandoDaily:

As an immigrant myself, I’ve got no patience for the argument that he should keep all of it. Pretty much everything in my life that I enjoy wouldn’t have happened without my being in the United States. My education, my job, my wife and family, the fact that I’m not persecuted for my race or religion (I was born in South Africa), the fact that I can sometimes forget to lock my doors at night and not end up killed by marauding bands—I hate paying taxes as much as the next guy, but when I think about all the ways that the United States has been integral to everything in my life, taxes seem like a tiny price.

Now, remember that the tax rate on long-term capital gains is only 15 percent. In other words, Saverin gets to keep 85 percent of everything he’s making from Facebook’s IPO. Given how much of his wealth depends on the government, that’s more than fair.

[Right on. The low level cheesiness surrounding Facebook and its founders is remarkably high. It may be time to toss my account.]

Written by Daniel

May 18, 2012 at 10:53 am

Posted in commentary, news, personal

The Loop on Blogging

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The Loop on Blogging:

Blogging is not a thing, it’s an attitude:

Blogging is not about being stiff and rigid in your writing, but being flexible and flowing with ideas. It doesn’t matter if everyone agrees with your thoughts. In fact, that would be really boring — but you write it anyway.

If large media companies want their writers to be bloggers, they need to let them go. Bloggers need to feel free to express themselves and their opinions. There are plenty of great bloggers on the Internet — many of them came from these large organizations, but weren’t allowed to post their thoughts.

Blogging is also about trust. If you’re readers know that you are writing from your heart, they will listen. They will engage you, and in the process you will learn something new. That, in turn, will help shape your opinions.

Blogging doesn’t have an agenda, other than expressing your true thoughts on a subject.

[The last point is, at the very least, poorly written. Of course blogging is about an agenda. It's just a personal one, not a corporate one.]

Source: inessential.com

Written by Daniel

May 17, 2012 at 1:56 pm

Posted in advocacy, commentary, news

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