The Nexus of 2024

Category: Professional

Microsoft/Yahoo! roundup

Feb 27, 2008

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by

jon

in Professional, Uncategorized

Note: this thread summarizes what others are thinking, and my reactions. My opinion on the potential acquisition is here — and along with many others’, on MiniMSFT. Andy Borowitz has the biggest news: Obama to buy Yahoo! Other than that … Microsoft has been fined a record â‚¬899 million ($1.4 billion) for defying the EU’s…
Cult of the Dead Cow releases ‘Goolag’ beta

Feb 25, 2008

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by

jon

in Professional

Hactivists Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) have released a Windows-only beta of Goolag, a rich client for the Google Hacking techniques pioneered by hacker J0hnny I Hack Stuff. Basically, Goolag makes it easy to use Google to search out security vulnerabilities related to your web site — or, presumably, others.Â From cDc’s blog: SECURITY…
Yahoo!!!! (was Yahoo!?!?!): Why, after further reflection, I think Microsoft’s offer for Yahoo! is a brilliant strategic move

Feb 24, 2008

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by

jon

in Professional

Plunking down $44.6 billion, or whatever the number turns out to be, for “change” and “social software” sends a huge message — although bizarrely enough a lot of Microsoft employees, on MiniMSFT and internal email discussion lists like Litebulb, have managed not to hear it. It’s been several weeks since Microsoft’s unsolicited offer for Yahoo.…
Coverage for ‘How to respond when Facebook censors your political speech’

Feb 24, 2008

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by

jon

in political, Professional, social computing, social sciences, Tales from the Net

The two-part series I posted on Tales from the Net and Wired’s How-to Wiki is starting to get some coverage. Shai Sachs has an excellent piece on MyDD: There’s been a lot of buzz lately about Facebook “censorship” of free speech. The Blackadder One case I wrote about a couple weeks ago was just an…
Grr: “Our terms of service has changed”

Feb 22, 2008

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by

jon

in Professional, social computing, social sciences, Tales from the Net

This morning when I went to log in to a discussion forum on Yuku (“your interests, your communities” — the next-generation, friend-enabled version of ezboard), I was greeted with: Our terms of service has changed. Please read the new terms of service. By clicking “I agree,” you agree to Yuku’s Terms of Use. Oh, they…
Facebook: censoring political speech

Feb 19, 2008

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by

jon

in political, Professional, social computing, social sciences, Tales from the Net

Update on February 22: How to respond when Facebook censors your political speech is up on Tales from the Net and Wired’s How-to Wiki and links back to comments in this thread. Alas, the Facebook Barack Obama discussion board was deleted on February 20, so many of the links here go off to oblivion. If…
Mashups and teaching dinosaurs to dance

Feb 12, 2008

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by

jon

in Professional

The hot pink beanbag chairs are a dead giveaway: Ad Astra (Analysis and Development of Awesome STRAtegies) and Mashups are in the news! In the Yahoo!?!?! thread, Michael Foster posted about Jessica Mintz’ Microsoft-Yahoo could skip culture clash, relevant no matter how the potential acquisition came out: SEATTLE – Yahoo‘s walls are awash in bright…
Edmund Clarke wins Turing Award!

Feb 4, 2008

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by

jon

in Professional

Wow, the guy I took compilers from as an undergraduate has just won the Turing Award for his work in model checking. How cool is that?
Yahoo!?!?!

Feb 2, 2008

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by

jon

in entertainment, Professional, social computing

Todd Bishop’s Microsoft goes after biggest buy ever to catch up with Google in the Seattle PI has the most common framing: Could a PC software giant and an Internet icon join forces to take on the Web search king? That was the big question Friday as Microsoft Corp. stunned the online world with a…
How’d it get through QA — and why didn’t they fix it?

Jan 30, 2008

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by

jon

in Professional, social sciences

Over on Tales from the Net, I’ve been discussing Kevin Poulsen’s articles about a MySpace security bug that allowed access to photos in profiles that had been marked as “private”. It had been well known for months, but MySpace didn’t fix it until the day after Kevin’s first article. In the interim, somebody wrote an…
Privacy and civil liberties: showdown time on the “Protect” America Act

Jan 29, 2008

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by

jon

in political, Professional, social sciences

Update on February 12: Final votes were today. Barack Obama voted against telecom immunity — as did Harry Reid and 29 other Democrats. John McCain along with every single Republican Senator, Joe Lieberman, and 19 Democrats voted for. More here. Update on Super Tuesday: Ari Melber’s Nation article gives the current snapshot; read the thread…
“An experiment in community information gathering”

Jan 27, 2008

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by

jon

in political, Professional, social computing

I thought the Clinton Attacks Obama wiki was a great idea the first time I heard about it, and it’s steadily grown since then.Â Here’s the welcome message: This is an experiment in community information gathering. My name is BaratundeÂ Thurston. I’m a comedian, writer and social media junkie. As a contributor for JackÂ &Â JillÂ Politics, I’ve seen…
My “interventions” are admired!

Jan 24, 2008

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by

jon

in entertainment, Professional, social sciences, Tales from the Net

From Moderator’s closing statement in The Economist’s debate on social networking technologies in education: I also admired the interventions from JON PINCUS, who pointed out that supporters of the motion underestimated “the risks that the new technologies will in practice reinforce (rather than counter) existing negative biases and trends in the educational system”. He also…
What’s up with me, mid-January edition

Jan 21, 2008

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by

jon

in Personal, Professional, Tales from the Net

After taking a couple of months fairly completely off (sleeping, doing some writing, and plenty of hanging out with Deborah), as January gets going I’m starting to re-engage, so I figured it’s about time for another “what’s up” post…. The biggest news is that I’m going to be starting a consulting gig in early February.…
Is *that* why they make you wait till you’re at 10,000 feet to turn computers on?

Jan 16, 2008

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by

jon

in Professional

Boeing just announced another delay for the 787, its second or third so far depending on who you believe, so I wanted to go back to a story Kim Zetter reported a few weeks ago on the Wired Threat Level blog: Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner passenger jet may have a serious security vulnerability in its…
Happy birthday, EFF!

Jan 15, 2008

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by

jon

in political, Professional

EFF’s 17th birthday party is tonight at 111 Minna in San Francisco.Â Cleverly timed to coincide with Macworld, it features Adrian and the Mysterious D of Bootie fame, and is sponsored by Louis Rosetto’s (of Wired) new chocolate company TCHO.Â And they’ll be beta-testing TCHO’s new dark chocolates! [Hmm … DJs, mashups, chocolate.Â What does…
Wikia’s open-source “social search” alpha is up

Jan 7, 2008

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by

jon

in Professional, social computing

Wikia‘s an open-source search engine that uses community feedback to improve search results, an approach referred to as ‘social search’, and they released their alpha version today. I briefly discuss the social networking aspects of this and my initial experiences on the Tales from the Net blog and linked out to some initial reviews and…
“Unstuck”

Jan 5, 2008

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by

jon

in Professional, reviews

I picked up this short paperback (by Keith Yamahsita and Sandra Spataro) because I was intrigued with its design; it turned out to be very interesting in general. Unstuck is billed as “a tool for yourself, your team, and your world”, and while most of the examples come from the corporate space, it’s just as…
Announcing …

Jan 1, 2008

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by

jon

in political, Professional, social computing

Tales from the Net. Stay tuned!
THREAT LEVEL’s year in review

Dec 31, 2007

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by

jon

in political, Professional, social sciences

The group blog THREAT LEVEL is one of my favorite things about wired, and Kevin Poulsen’s year-end roundup is a great example of why: It was a year of soul searching at THREAT LEVEL, every day a fresh challenge to our fundamental beliefs and convictions: Alberto Gonzales made us pine for John Ashcroft; Google made…