Busy week. I’ve only had time to read one article, and I read it on the wrong week. But it’s an interesting article. The notion of automating humans as cheap labour is proven to be quite a successful endeavor.
Breaking CAPTCHA with automated humans
Troy Hunter
So CAPTCHA prevents all this, right? Only humans can break the code and complete these signup processes, right? But what if we could automate the humans; I mean what if we could take CAPTCHAs and solve them at such a rate that these registration processes could be easily automated? Well it turns out you can and it will only cost you a couple of bucks.
This week has been hectic, and truthfully I only finished this three articles this week, the last one a couple of minutes ago. Although it would be super nice to always have this list posted on Fridays, I feel that as long as I have it up within the correct week I’m on top of things.
I hope you enjoy this week’s articles, as I have.
Lockdown
Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
And, if you think of protocols and websites as features of the network, then saying “fix the Internet so that it doesn’t run BitTorrent”, or “fix the Internet so that thepiratebay.org no longer resolves,” sounds a lot like “change the sound of busy signals,” […]
How did molecular machines evolve?
John Timmer, Ars Technica
If a molecular machine requires so many precisely positioned parts to function, how could it possibly evolve? That question has been part of a populist attack on evolution but, contrary to its proponents, scientists have a number of ideas about the evolution of this machinery.
A Spellchecker Used to Be a Major Feat of Software Engineering
James Hague
Here’s the situation: it’s 1984, and you’re assigned to write the spellchecker for a new MS-DOS word processor. Some users, but not many, will have 640K of memory in their PCs. You need to support systems with as little as 256K. That a quarter megabyte to contain the word processor, the document being edited, and the memory needed by the operating system. Oh, and the spellchecker.
If there ever was a time to build a Twitter bot with Node.js, this might be it!
Marco Arment writes:
I’d guess that Instagram could have charged a few bucks for their app from the start, made us their customers, budgeted carefully, and avoided VC funding and advertising. But they chose the free-now-ads-later model, and it appears to be working very well.
Ah, the free-now-ads-later model. Also usually known as the starting signal for users finding the next thing that’s “free now”. It will be quite interesting to see if that happens to Instagram, as it has to many others.
And parents today are worried about harmful chemicals in plastic toys…
Due to the Christian, and national, holiday the Epiphany (Theophany, or Twelfthday), which is called the Thirteenthday here in Sweden, I am somewhat late with last week’s list. I have however backdated it for posterity and in order to not confuse it with week 2 of 2012.
Internet Access Is Not a Human Right
Vinton G. Cerf, NY Times, Op-Ed
[T]echnology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself. There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right. Loosely put, it must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience.
CV Dazzle
Adam Harvey
CV Dazzle™ is camouflage from computer vision (CV). It is a form of expressive interference that combines makeup and hair styling (or other modifications) with face-detection thwarting designs.
Google+ Is Going To Mess Up The Internet
Jon Mitchell, ReadWriteWeb
But never forget that you’re Google’s product, not its customer. Why does Google want to facilitate long, riveting conversations on Google+ (with only one permalink, so the search results don’t get confusing)? Exactly. For the same reason blogs allow comments, despite the outrageous overhead of fighting spam. Traffic and search engine optimization.
The last linked list for this year! I have some exciting things coming up next year, but all in due time. It might or it might not have something to do with “Gamification”.
Gamification sucks
Brent Simmons
“Gamification” is a word and concept invented by idiocrats who confuse humane with manipulative.
Gamification is bullshit
Ian Bogost
This rhetorical power derives from the “-ification” rather than from the “game”. -ification involves simple, repeatable, proven techniques or devices: you can purify, beautify, falsify, terrify, and so forth. -ification is always easy and repeatable, and it’s usually bullshit. Just add points.
Pirate, colonist, slave
N/A, The Economist
ONE cold morning in 1591 an English sailor found himself shivering on Ilhabella, now an island of yacht clubs and well-appointed weekend houses that is to Brazil what Martha’s Vineyard is to America. He had been left for dead—again—the fourth or fifth time Fate had deserted him in his short career as a pirate.
The Dangerous Effects of Reading
David Tate
In our personal lives we tend to optimize for one of two things: input or output. Reading or writing. Consuming or creating. The environment we live in – the prevailing culture – by default is optimized for consumption.
This week’s list is brought to you by Influenza. I’ve been in bed most of the time since last Friday, watching reruns, too tired to read. But I have gathered some articles and links during that time. Here we go.
First, a couple of awesome web sites curated by my coworker Lucas:
Now, links curated by me:
What SOPA Means for a Non-US Citizen
Drew Wilson, ZeroPaid
Once the entertainment lobby, several over corporate entities and who knows what else starts ordering the takedown of numerous websites, the threat will become real for many non-US citizens. Non-US citizens will be able to fully appreciate the type of threat the legislation has whether they want to believe it or not.
What Google believes your interests are
Below you can review the interests and inferred demographics that Google has associated with your cookie. You can remove or edit these at any time.
Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’
Daniel J. Solove, The Chronicle
One can usually think of something that even the most open person would want to hide. As a commenter to my blog post noted, “If you have nothing to hide, then that quite literally means you are willing to let me photograph you naked? And I get full rights to that photograph—so I can show it to your neighbors?”
Smoke Screening
Charles C. Mann, Vanity Fair
What the government should be doing is focusing on the terrorists when they are planning their plots. “That’s how the British caught the liquid bombers,” Schneier says. “They never got anywhere near the plane. That’s what you want—not catching them at the last minute as they try to board the flight.”
Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens
Geoffrey Miller, Seed Magazine
Basically, I think the aliens don’t blow themselves up; they just get addicted to computer games. They forget to send radio signals or colonize space because they’re too busy with runaway consumerism and virtual-reality narcissism.
This week’s list is going to be a short one. It’s been a hectic week, and haven’t had time to indulge in too many articles, or links. To compensate, I present you with this fantastic story about the Unabomber from 2000, and Give Me Something To Read’s 2011 Highlights.
Harvard and the making of the Unabomber, part one
Alston Chase, The Atlantic (2000)
Part two, part three, and part four.
In the fall of 1958 Theodore Kaczynski, a brilliant but vulnerable boy of sixteen, entered Harvard College. There he encountered a prevailing intellectual atmosphere of anti-technological despair. There, also, he was deceived into subjecting himself to a series of purposely brutalizing psychological experiments — experiments that may have confirmed his still-forming belief in the evil of science. Was the Unabomber born at Harvard? A look inside the files
Give Me Something To Read’s 2011 Highlights
Richard Dunlop-Walters, Give Me Something To Read.
This is an extra list, in addition to yesterday’s list, regarding the recent changes to Twitter. For the most part, they touch not only the visual changes but also the philosophical shift of Twitter from a service to an environment. I was going to write my own impressions, but this list covers most of my thoughts on the subject.
Also, I’d like to point out that very little has been written about Tweetdeck. Along with the updates, they’ve also changed Tweetdeck into a “native” app (HTML5 in a native shell), ridding themselves of the Adobe Air platform.
Personally, I’ve not used either of the versions a lot, so my opinions shouldn’t matter too much. The desktop version does look a whole lot better than the old version, yet I cannot rid the feeling that it has also been simplified, although I’m not sure where and how much. I’m not seeing the “Twitter Pro” Dan Frommer is talking about right now, and which Twitter mentioned in May that it would be.