Who Will Command The Robot Armies? Funny and worrying talk. Pinboard is always good for “Internet of shit” stories, but has a wider point here.
(tags: robots facebook twitter amazon work po politics surveillance technology automation iot) Ur-Fascism | by Umberto Eco | The New York Review of Books What are the common features of anything worth ( Read more... )

NSA files decoded: Edward Snowden’s surveillance revelations explained | World news | theguardian.com The Guardian’s summary of the story so far. Nicely presented.
(tags: politics snowden nsa surveillance encryption guardian privacy edward-snowden government gchq) Attenborrowed David Attenborough’s commentary on the mating habits of pop stars on ( Read more... )

The 29 Stages Of A Twitterstorm Tells it how it is.
(tags: twitter controversy funny storm satire) Age-ism, Transhumanism, and Silicon Valley’s Cognitive Dissonance - Better Humans - Medium “If you’re irrelevant at thirty, why live forever?”
(tags: silicon-valley ageism transhumanism aging) Ken Auletta: Can the Guardian Take Its Aggressive ( Read more... )

The Ecuadorian Library - Geek Empire - Medium SF author Bruce Sterling on Assange, Manning and Snowden, and the surveillance geeks at the NSA: "Citizens and rights have nothing to do with elite, covert technologies! The targets of surveillance are oblivious dorks, they’re not even newbies! Even US Senators are decorative objects for the NSA. An ( Read more... )

Using Metadata to find Paul Revere - Kieran Healy Great stuff.
(tags: paul-revere graph surveillance social-networks matrix maths mathematics metadata) Opt out of PRISM, the NSA’s global data surveillance program - PRISM BREAK Unlikely that the general public will adopt crypto tools but an interesting list of what’s out there, none the less.
(tags: ( Read more... )

THE EXPLODING TOILET and Other Memories "And in one of those dreaded realizations pilots are advised to avoid, that insulation between cockpit calm and atmospheric anarchy looks thin indeed. An extrapolated horror: the riveted aluminum planks bending apart, the wind rushing in, explosive depressurization, death, the first airliner - no, the first ( Read more... )