- Just how big are porn sites? | ExtremeTech
YouPorn apparently accounts for around 2% of the web's traffic (by volume) per day. Personally, I'm interested to see that they're using a lot of the obvious technologies, rather than anything really ultra-custom.
- Rogers’ “Cybersecurity” Bill Is Broad Enough to Use Against WikiLeaks and The Pirate Bay | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Americans! Are you aware of CISPA? Here are the facts: it is not a replacement for SOPA. It is however, badly drafted enough that it could very likely be similar in effect. Please write to your representatives, and make the point that while you don't necessarily oppose the aims of CISPA (many of them are actually quite sensible), the problem is that that bill as currently drafted is absolutely as bad as SOPA was. Seriously: if you got up in arms about SOPA, you need to write to them about the current draft of CISPA.
Tag: internet
Bookmarks for March 22, 2012
- Watercolour map of London
Stamen design have used OpenStreetMap data to produce full zoomable maps that look like they've been made with watercolours. Beautiful.
- The most highlighted passages of all time on Kindle
Just 4 books account for the top 10. And I promise you that unless you've already looked at this, you will not expect what 2 of them, that between account for fully 7 of the top 10, are. The first one that is something I might myself have quoted comes in at 14.
- Fairytales are all around us.
Del spots a fairytale happening on her commute. This morning, I watched 2 JCBs do a mating dance, then wind up hand in hand, the scoop of one left resting inside the scoop of the other. What do you see on yours?
- I can’t stop reading this analysis of Gawker’s editorial strategy » Nieman Journalism Lab
Here's an interesting insight into the view-economics of web-based journalism. Short version: linkbait trivia attracts more views than serious writing, but not remotely significantly more, and basically, without the more serious stuff, odds are most publications would lose even the linkbaited audience – people will read the daft stuff from a publication they view as at least slightly credible, but not from somewhere that's obviously *just* trolling for eyeballs. Unrelated: welcome to the 21st century, where the utterly absurd phrase "trolling for eyeballs" makes perfect sense. My grandmother would be so confused.
- 'Air Display' to Let You Use the New iPad as a HiDPI 'Retina' Display for Your Mac – Mac Rumors
I am spending less time with my dual-screen desktop, and more with iPad/laptop. Air Display may actually be a worthwhile purchase now, particularly once it's Retina-enabled.
Bookmarks for March 3, 2012
- Start Developing iOS Apps Today: Introduction
Any once again, I mutter "I'll get round to it one of these days" to myself… (In case you're wondering, I've been largely away from the t'internet for a week, being either parked in front of the Xbox or out doing museums and galleries, and I'm catching up on what I've missed.)
- In the Future Everything Will Be A Coffee Shop
I find the sort of future he's describing here quite pleasing, as he's essentially saying that the one aspect of modern life that cannot be reduced away is the idea of a social hub. The practical reality of the matter is that someone with an internet connect does not need to go to the shops, the office, or really anywhere, except places where they can be among other humans.
- CERN | booktwo.org
Here's a nice, easy to understand, and very readable bit of writing about CERN, what they do there, and why it's important.
- Olloclip vs iPro Lens review | The TechBlock
Been vaguely wondering about getting one of these. On the strength of this, it looks like the iPro is the one to get.
- Verisign seizes .com domain registered via foreign Registrar on behalf of US Authorities. » blog2.easydns.org – Happenings and observations
The US government have just demonstrated that they will sieze the internet based assets of foreign entities, even though no transaction related to those assets took place on US soil, and the crimes it thinks the company may have committed are not illegal in the places they may have committed them. This is (very) roughly like the US government marching into someone's home in London, and taking away their TV (that was purchased in London), on the grounds that it can be used to watch programs made in the US, because the owner, while living in London, drank alcohol at the age of 19. (I pick a trivial offence only because it's the first thing I can think of as an easy and everyday difference between US law and the law elsewhere.)
To quote the article: "This is no longer a doom-and-gloom theory by some guy in a tin foil hat. It just happened."
- 15+ Google Chrome extensions for better privacy control
Every time I need to set up a new install of Chrome, I have to hunt this page out. I'm bookmarking it so as to save myself a little time next time. Some of you may find a lot of it useful, too.
Bookmarks for January 18, 2012
- SOPA/PIPA blackout | MetaTalk
Another story about what it's like to get a bogus takedown letter. 2 weeks of work and stress, without getting compensation from the party that caused the work and stress.
- Takedown Hall of Shame | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Just in case you're thinking that this SOPA business is a fuss over nothing, than that it is what its supporters say it is – an act targeting pirates and criminals, and that it won't hurt the average innocent internet user – here is a link to a page collating the worst abuses of the existing law in this area, the DCMA, which is what companies currently use to require takedowns of infringing material. Take a look at the list of companies who have used the existing law in a way that was never intended.
Bookmarks for May 31, 2011
- UK Mobile Internet Usage Statistics February 2011 | Tecmark
Need these for work. They're not very interesting unless you're writing about mobile internet strategy, and if you are, you have my sympathies.
- Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide' – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education
Good article about well, what it says on the tin.
Bookmarks for March 10, 2011
- The Back Story | Thanks for Trumpet Winsock
The reason I am a web developer now is that in 1995, I was able to use Trumpet Winsock to connect to the internet, and then run Mosaic to browse the then-very-nascent web. I have therefore donated a couple of quid to this campaign. If you used it like I did, then I strongly suggest you kick in a couple of quid, too.
- BBC News – New net rules set to make cookies crumble
So there's going to be a new law about what websites need to do around setting cookies, and getting the user's permission to do so, that will probably change how a low of UK and European websites have to work. But at the time the law comes into force, the government will not have spelled out what websites need to do to comply with that law. Someone phone Terry Gilliam and tell him that he's won?
- HOWTO: Native iPhone/iPad apps in JavaScript
How to make an web app look and feel like an iphone native app. This could be very useful at work.
Bookmarks for November 13, 2010
- Alistair Bell's LU Record Attempt
Horrifyingly, I may have a use for this. I don't want to complete with the record, and I won't died of misery of if I fail to get the lot, but it, er, may come in handy as a chart of a way to get a job done a lot quicker than I might otherwise have thought.
- A renaissance rooted in technology: the literary magazine returns | Books | guardian.co.uk
Lots of things to think re: the future of literary publishing here.
Bookmarks for July 18, 2010
- New Statesman – We need a retroactive graduate tax
I am 100% in favour of this. And I fully support backdating it quite massively. But then, unlike most of my friends, I'm not a graduate. But I find it hard to argue against the point that if it is now reasonable for society to ask students to pay for their education, then it must surely also be reasonable for society to ask those who got their education for free to give the money back? (Mind you, I think her educationally-privileged background is showing a bit in the comments thread.)
- 10 Reasons to Stop Apologizing for Your Online Life – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review
If you still make a distinction between "in the real world" and "on the internet", then frankly, you're probably quite stupid. Some of this article is hippy claptrap, but it captures something I've been thinking about for a while now, when faced with friends who say that they "don't like doing X on the internet", when what they really mean is that they "can't be bothered to develop the skillset to do X on the internet". It's *not* a separate conversation to the one going on in the rest of your life. The issues are the same, the information the same, if not better, and if you can't engage with them on the internet, then you can't engage with them properly in other areas of your life.
Bookmarks for July 13, 2010
- Bankrupt Gay Teen Site May Be Forced to Hand Over Personal Information of Users
This is why you need to be careful with what data you hand to what websites, kids. You might well trust any given website website and the people running it today, but if something goes wrong, and the company goes bankrupt, your data is an asset that belongs to them. And as this article makes clear, the only thing that bankruptcy administrators are allowed to care about it getting the most money back for the creditors. Which means (at the moment, pending a change in the law to improve privacy in cases like this) they're ethically constrained from being picky about what happens to your data – if the highest bidder is a shit who is going to use the data to make everyone involved's life in some way worse, that's just tough for them, because they have to sell to the highest bidder in order to fairly represent the creditor's interests.
- The Technium: The Maes-Garreau Point
Interesting piece about predictions, singularities, and the tendency of utopians (and a lot of doomsayers) to predict paradigm shifting event to occur around the end of their own lifetime.
- HelvetiNote™
If they add some form of over-the-air syncing, then I'm sold.
Bookmarks for May 4, 2010
- Find is a beautiful tool – Eric Wendelin’s Blog
I invariably wind up doing something convoluted with needless scripts when I am trying to do some of the things find allows. I am bookmarking this to remind myself that find exists, and I should use it.
- Slyck News – The Effort to Save Duke University's Usenet Server
The original Usenet server is shutting down. I can't imagine anyone will notice – anyone still using Usenet probably has a very specific form of brain-damage, and in any case, this isn't killing Usenet, just a bit of it's history – but still, it's an event worth marking, in the same way that Tim Berners-Lee's first web server is now a museum piece.
- Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art – Stephen Walter's The Island
This is a brilliant map of London, that I would like on my wall. Failing that, I shall just content myself with spending hours zooming in on different bits of it…