Home – Readmill I've just signed up for the beta of this service. Will dump books across to it in the next day or so, and give it a go. The app certainly looks nice, just as a shame apple don't expose an API to pull books out of the iBooks app, meaning I'm going to wind up with (quite a lot of) duplicate data on my iPad.
What Does Google Mean By “Evil?” (Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought) This has been on my mind lately, and it's an interesting perspective. Swartz is suggesting that Google's definition of "evil" is "not making things worse for users in order to make more money". It's not a bad suggestion, and if it's accurate, it's still more than many companies even attempt, but (as is probably obvious if you've listened to me bang on for a while) I think it's perfectly possible to be "evil" and still hew to that definition. (I also don't agree that the G+/real names nonsense passes that definition of "evil", but that's another thing.)
Scripting Languages: PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby – Hyperpolyglot Likely of no interest to non-webdev-nerds, but potentially of enormous value to me, in terms of learning new languages. I sort of vaguely know Ruby, but this direct translation from PHP to Ruby would speed what little ruby hacking I do.
It’s Sexy A-Levels! A blog exploring the hypothesis that UK newspapers believe that only attractive girls in low cut tops do A-Levels.
fleet street fox: More pictures like this, please. A counter-argument: it is excellent that at A-level results time, the papers fill up with photos of attractive young women. Less sexist that you think.
Special ed student raped by classmate, forced by school to apologize to him, then raped again, lawsuit claims (UPDATED) – Boing Boing I wanted to link to this not because it's directly relevant to me (other than, y'know, as a human being with an ounce of compassion somewhere under a rock in here), or even because it's an exceptionally horrible story (it is, but the plain truth is that worse things happen every day, and I don't link to news about them), but just because it strikes me as a very, very stark reminder of how, even in the "developed" world, we still have such a very very long way to go before we can call ourselves civilised.
Your awful dates, in 140 characters – storify.com Rhodri Marsden has been collecting people's dreadful 1st date stories. Read them if you want to feel better about your dating life (no matter how bad you think it's been, I promise you, it isn't as bad as these stories) or even if you just want a few cheap laughs.
The Magistrate’s Blog: Contempt This one is worth flagging up, for those of my friends who are shocked and appalled at the actions of Wandsworth (and other councils) in their attempts to evict the families of those who are convicted in connection with the riots. Broadly speaking the message is this: don't worry, it isn't going to happen. The courts quite literally cannot allow it to happen. So: spread the word about that, because the only think this tactic is for is bullying and scaremongeriing, and that's easy to stop with information. But other than that, expend your energy on other matters, because this one's sorted.
Ghostery An ad-network and spyware blocker for most of the major ad networks. May ad-blockers just stop the ads from displaying. This one can stop them from spying on you, too. Nice.
danah boyd | apophenia » “Real Names” Policies Are an Abuse of Power An excellent summary of the what the "real name" policy Google are attempting to enforce is, basically, Evil. Me, I'm absolutely in favour of real names being used on-line, and I certainly insist on it in forums I moderate. But those forums tend to be small, relatively closed membership things, formed with the intent of supporting offline in-the-flesh interaction. That's a very different use case to massive social networks, where the ability to feel comfortable using one's real name is a privilege that all sorts of people don't possess for all sorts of reasons.
One tweet takes a journalist on a voyage of discovery | Media | guardian.co.uk Here's a thrilling example of our lack of privacy in the 21st century. There really not a lot that's going to be done about it,I'm just linking because I think this is good illustration of how the world work now. It's probably not an earth-shattering revelation to most of you, but nonetheless, it's interesting background in these days of phone hacking…
Simon Spurrier: A Serpent Uncoiled: LAUNCH DAY I tweeted about this earlier, but tough. Simon Spurrier's "Contact" was one of the best novels I read last year. "A Serpent Uncoiled", his new weird crime novel shows signs of being the best novel I'm going to read this year – I haven't finished it yet, having only bought it this morning, and the year isn't done yet, but so far, I'm fucking riveted. It is out now and both dead-tree and electronic editions for Kindle, and on the iBooks store, so you really don't have an excuse for now buying it at once. Get to it. You won't regret it.
Open the Future: Sword of Taxation, +5 You may or may not have heard/give too hoots about Diablo 3, but if you have, you might also have heard about their plan for an in-game auction house, where players will be able so sell the in-game items they acquire for real world cash. Leaving aside the fact that is going to take gold-farming to a whole new level of third world sweatshop labour, Jamais Cascio makes an excellent point, here: because these items will have a directly-measurable real world value, they will be be taxable in the US, the UK, and other places. Not taxable-when-you-sell-them, you understand. Taxable when the game randomly gives them to you. This could get very interesting, and I'm certainly going to think twice about playing – I just don't need the paperwork.
The Robot-Readable World – Blog – BERG Absolutely 100|% mandatory reading for anyone interested in the future-present. If this doesn't spark at least six exciting ideas in you, then I fear you do not understand when you are living. Also of interest: the Louis Vutton QR code. Suddenly, there's space for design in a barcode.