Future Perfect » The Handbag Paradox "Bag mapping is a useful exercise to become acquainted with the norms of a society – what we do or don’t decide to carry being a reflection of our selves and the environment in which we live and work." I remain on the quest for the perfect bag, which is one exactly like the one I have now, but 3-4 inches longer and perhaps an inch wider and deeper.
Introducing Playfic – Waxy.org One for the "when I've got some spare time" file. If it really is as easy to generate interactive fiction as the example here makes it look, then I might take a serious stab at it one of these days.
Why Mass Effect is the Most Important Science Fiction Universe of Our Generation | Pop Bioethics So anyone that's spoken to me in the last couple of weeks knows I'm a bit obsessed with Mass Effect. This article does a really good job or articulating a lot of the reasons why. It does contain (generally broad picture) spoilers (with one or two specifics), so if you haven't played them, and think you might yet do so, you should avoid it until you have. But if you have played it, or aren't planning to, and are at all interested in SF, or in issues regarding representation of minorities in media, or in the potential of games as storytelling media, then I recommend reading this.
Ninja Blocks | Building blocks for the Internet of Things EEEEnteresting. I can see some flaws with it – ethernet? really? And where're the API docs? But this is all open source stuff, so an iteration or two from now, and something based on this could be a lot of fun, and very practically useful.
The Perpetual, Invisible Window Into Your Gmail Inbox – Waxy.org Andy Baio writing about the dangers of authorising apps to look in your Gmail. I am pretty careful about this stuff and I don't really *use* my gmail (it's a dump address that I've got more or less just so I can access Google's other services), and I *still* had a bunch of apps authorised to use it that I looked at and had only the haziest recollection of ever authorising, so I've cleared them out. The odds are that none of them are malicious, of course, but it's only going to take one service to get bought out by someone less ethical than it's founders for things to start going wrong. It's not just gmail, of course – we're all getting very used to authorising one website to see what we're doing on another one, and is should be part of anyone's personal security practice to review which websites can see what where on a semi-regular basis, just like you should all be changing your passwords regularly, and using a password manager. You are all doing that, aren't you?
Start 2012 By Taking 2 Minutes to Clean Your Apps Permissions I likned to this only a couple of weeks ago, but it’s very useful in light of the above, so I’m re-linking it. A list of popular web apps, with links that will let you manage what other web apps have permissions to use them, so that you can easily make sure that nothing has permissions it shouldn’t.
Learn HTML & CSS – a book that teaches you in a nicer way If anyone I know is looking to learn HTML and CSS, or even just improve a shaky grasp of it, then I really can't recommend this beautiful book enough. Too many build your own website books are both too technical, and too hideous. This book is starts from absolute first principles, and is a joy to look at. I don't need it, and I'm still thinking of buying it, that's how nice it is.
The ‘Eggs In One Basket’ Index – SplatF Dan Frommer take a look at major tech firms, and what percentage of their revenue is generated from for their largest revenue source. I was saying the other day that I would be happy to pay google a lot for their services, in exchange for an advertising-and-tracking free experience. I look at this chart, and I realise that it might even make (some) sense for Google to offer that option, just from a diversification-of-revenue point of view. I don't expect they will, and I'm sure there are big hurdles in their way that would stop it, but still, there's an awful lot of eggs in the advertising basket, there.
Britons give more to donkey sanctuary than abuse charities | Money | The Guardian This statistic is four years old, but I bet it's still true. People always look at me funny when I occasionally express my serious disgust with people who given to animal charities. I'm familiar with the walk-and-chew-gum theory, and indeed, use it myself when arguing for things like funding for the space programme, but that's an apples-and-oranges comparison – tech progress vs. abuse – while this is directly a "which abuse is worse" like-for-like comparison, at least to me. And many people appear to prefer to spend the money that they have available to spend on animals, instead of people. Because it really matter when someone shoves a cat in a bin, but much less when someone shoves their fist in someone else's face.
Who the hell do Camden Council think they are? Unfuckingreal. Local council decide that what residents really want, when hanging out in communal gardens of their flats, is a) to be on camera, and b) to have that camera tell them in the disembodied voice of authority to move on, or their photos will be "sent for processing". This photo of them, in their own garden.
What will happen with the NHS bill, in 5 tweets. By the time this posts, you'll probably already have seen this. If you live in the UK, and haven't see this already, go and look, because this is the future of your healthcare we're talking about.
Why Twitter’s new policy is helpful for free-speech advocates | technosociology Are you one of the people going on about how Twitter's new censorship policy is the beginning of the end, and a disaster, and how Twitter should be ashamed for caving like they have? No? Good. If you are, then read this, and shut up. There new policy was quite clearly a model for how to handle this sort of shit, and the on-line wailing completely bewildered me. I was going to write about it, but someone smarter than me has already done so.