Google's began by indexing massive portions of the internet, and rating sites according to which sites had the most links going towards them. You might state the general goal like this:

We will write a program to rank the quality of writing on websites.

This worked well for a while, but people with businesses saw how …

Read More

I regularly see indie artists posting some great images, and encouraging open-source-adjacent use, but messing up the latter completely.

Just to clarify:

• Professional artists probably understand art licences well enough, and likely don't care about 'open source'. This isn't a post for them.
• Other artists don't care …

Read More

I've seen this question come up a few times, so here's my collection of reasons which makes sense to me:

It's new

Film has been around for a century, so those people have had plenty of time to unionise. Linux has only existed for 20 years, so 'Linux sysadmins' have only had 20 years of experience, and that's an example …

Read More

Once in a while I hear of someone who's decided to not have children because of bad ideas. I don't want to argue that anyone should or should not have children, but I do want to remove those bad ideas. The bad ideas usually go something like this:

"I have this condition, and I don't think I should inflict that on …

Read More

People have parroted that old cyber-security phrase - 'depends on the threat model' - so often, so quickly, and so vacuously, that I find my toes curling at the sound of it. But after a run-in with the mods on Reddit's /r/privacy, some noteworthy gaffs came up which made the old phrase feel new.

It started with …

Read More

"News sources are biased", and "everyone lives in a bubble", we all hear constantly (or perhaps that's just my bubble). But what would a non-biased news source look like?

Taking a strict middle-ground gives immediately ridiculous conclusions. Perhaps the UK's food banks suggest some problem, but not …

Read More

The Fediverse has just suffered from an all-out spam attack from some script kiddies, and the moralizing tones I've heard from some people tell me that some people have the wrong attitude about cybersecurity, and the internet.

The only right attitude is that of a chess player.

Chess Strategies

Every few decades, …

Read More

The Guardian informs me that Suella Braverman has resigned, stating:

Earlier today, I sent an official document from my personal email to a trusted parliamentary colleague as part of policy engagement, and with the aim of garnering support for government policy on migration. This constitutes a technical infringement …

Read More

Any time I hear a patronizing sneer towards hopeful political thinking, I imagine just how insane representative democracy must have sounded when it first reached circulation.

---

Oh young one! So you think you have a fun idea to bring down the king. God himself has ordained that he rule, but you disagree.

And instead of …

Read More

I found out about the Russian invasion of Ukraine from a meme-site, where someone had cobbled together all the public footage available from the ground. The sirens, the little lights in the sky, the military aeroplanes, and the sound of bombs.

Jumping to Youtube (where I watch news channels), I found they have less …

Read More