Is way too hard. But results in interesting t9 errors, like clogging instead of blogging.

I don’t really like Facebook, but I have to use it because that’s where my friends are. (Well, my fiancée is there, and she makes my friends for me. So I use it. Begrudgingly.) At first what I didn’t like about Facebook was that it is a thinly veilled CIA front, and even if that weren’t true, they are grossly negligent about privacy, meaning that the CIA could get all my data even if Facebook wasn’t using Langely for offsite backups. (And they are.) ...

This is insane. At the time the web came into being, AOL was already offering a content-driven text and graphics medium. And Microsoft was hard at work making “Blackbird”, which was a content authoring technology for MSN that never saw the light of day because of HTML. Microsoft ditched it and launched MSN over PPP and HTTP, and embarrassed AOL by showing them the future. Also, network administrators are not technophobic reactionaries. They are professionals with conflicting responsibilities. Like all professionals, they do what they have to do to get the job done. Sometimes it is appropriate to filter something in order to maintain the breathing room for the network to do the job. In the early 90’s, filtering technologies certainly existed that could have killed off the web, but there was a critical mass of academic networks, and under-critical-mass of commercial ISPs. The academics were interested in seeing what new things were coming. The commercial ISPs were split between common carriers like UUnet, and walled gardens. As I already mentioned, the walled gardens had their own content technologies and wanted to move past the limitations of Gopher. The common carriers didn’t care what went over the network, as long as it drove demand for the network itself. ...

NPR’s Planet Money (which I have been known to describe – without hyperbole – as “the best journalism on any topic in any media, in the entire existence of journalism”) published an interesting blog posting. A reporter goes to the Treasury Department to find out that the US government is going to lend billions of dollars to the IMF, but will do it in an off-books deal (you know, like Enron). The killer is the last two sentences: ...

I became aware of Iceland’s bankruptcy through a curious route. A local geek mailing list had a posting from a friend of one of the guys on the list. She was Icelandic, and she was really in distress – able to understand how serious the situation was, unable to understand it at the same time, scared for the future, and reaching out to a friend. It was really touching. I replied to the guy that it was a shame I couldn’t access any of the Icelandic news as an English speaker, and that perhaps his friend would like to start a blog translating it, so that I could understand her country’s situation better. I offered to donate some money for the service. ...

This is the scariest evidence yet that this recession is not a normal one: This was brought to my attention by an excellent This American Life episode. The conclusion of Alex and Adam’s story at the top of the program is chilling… there’s several ways to read the tea leaves, and none of them are very good.

I heard about these guys from Stack Overflow’s podcast. Really fun.

I saw this quote in an article on E-Ink: If you ever want to make a billion of anything cheaply, you print it. What an interesting observation! With such interesting far reaching consequences: Nano Solar is on the right track, crystaline solar is not. Diamond Age-style nano-assembly is not quite a sure bet, and mass-customization by table-top fabs will clearly never be able to compete on price with items that are printed. Though another way of looking at nano-assembly is to recognize that nature manufactures far more, far cheaper, than all the printing presses in the world… Things that are flat, flexible, and where the complexity is expressed in 2D will always be cheaper than their competitors which violate one of those constraints of printing presses. It also further informs my day dreaming about clay tablets: a system for preserving data needs to be flat, flexible, and 2D. My “dots on ceramic” design might still be able to fit the bill, but the kind of uber-cheap ceramic I was thinking of (i.e. the same stuff in the 20 cent porcelin plates at Ikea) won’t be the material, something else will be. But what? What can go roll-to-roll in a printing press environment, but has the chemical stability of ceramics? I’m feeling like I really wish there was a layman’s introduction to ceramics on my reading list right now. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? ...

I’ve been known to complain a bit, now and then, about my current hosts, the English. I reserve the right to continue complaining, to be sure, but I’d like to take a moment to point out two things I like about England: ICICI Bank UK: This is one of the largest banks in India. In England, they are a very little fish in a very big nasty pond. English banks are incredibly expensive, arrogant, rude, and customer unfriendly. But because ICICI is tiny, and because it is focused on a small niche (immigrants who are sending remittances home), it gives excellent service. Go ICICI! I love you! Muffins: The English make very nice muffins. The chocolate/chocolate-chip ones are totally decadent, so when you want to take it easy, go for the ones which merely have lemon curd inside and crystalized sugar on top. PS: The English also display enormous muffin tops, but they are not really something you want to have… ...

Carl Malamud + the Government Printing Office is a match made in heaven. Please, President Obama, make it happen. This guy is one of us, one of the good guys who cares about transparency, about good government, about the freedom to know, to learn, to discuss and to criticize. He’s a person who speaks not with words, but with actions. I’ve followed his career and his dreams for years, always being pleasantly surprised when something I wanted to know or find had become available to me because of his tireless work. ...