‘I wonder why they call it Miner when it tells jokes?’
We wrote an evil data mining application called Miner, which, if we wanted, could masquerade as a game, a test, or a joke of the day. It took us less than three hours.
But whatever it looks like, in the background, it is collecting personal details, [...]
PBS is running a documentary series this week called “Carrier.” It follows the life of crew members aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz on their sixth month deployment to the Persian Gulf.
It’s interesting because the focus isn’t so much on the operations, but on the operators. It’s narrated completely by crew members — from the [...]
Andrew Sullivan is one of the best and most accomplished bloggers. Yet lately he seems to be lost in the deep and unforgiving well that is Obama-mania. Now I am a proud supporter of Obama, but not narrowly so. I post on topics other than just the election and Obama. Reading Sullivan’s blog, on [...]
UK PM Gordon Brown now has a Twitter account.
If you don’t know what Twitter is, I’m sorry to be the one to inform you. It’s a micro-blogging service, essentially an aggregator of away messages and statuses, known as ‘tweets’ to users. For example, ‘at work.’ That’s it. There’s nothing else, just updates on what you’re [...]
Glenn Greenwald spent his weekend doing a little research on what the media covers:
Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in the media over the past thirty days:
“Yoo and torture” - 102
“Mukasey and 9/11″ — 73
“Yoo and Fourth Amendment” — 16
“Obama and bowling” — 1,043
“Obama and Wright” [...]
The House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet held a hearing Thursday on virtual worlds which was simulcast in Second Life. There were all sorts of ridiculous questions posed, particularly those that focused on how Second Life was policing its site from terrorists. Despite their apparent ignorance on the subject, several committee members took the [...]
Yahoo has set up a fund that will provide legal defense and family support to Chinese ‘cyber dissidents’ like the ones they threw under the bus in 2004:
Business journalist Shi and pro-democracy blogger Wang were given 10-year jail sentences as a direct result of information provided to Chinese authorities by Yahoo, their lawsuit alleged.
Shi has [...]
I’ve seen a lot of scientists complaining about how the media reports on science. For the most part, I’m pretty indifferent because I don’t read science stories and because I don’t know a lot about science. However, I do know a little something about space and common sense.
So today when I was reading an ABC [...]
In a moment of near-vanity, CNN’s Lou Dobbs begins to decry black leaders as “cotton,” but catches himself before blurting out the obvious “picking.” Classy, Lou. Roll the tape:
[H/T TPM]
A new Dutch film entitled “Fitna” brews Islam’s well known extremities into one steaming cauldron. Its release online yesterday has been met with death threats, DDoS attacks on hosts, and promises of terroristic reprisal in the Netherlands.
One of my favorite web sites, LiveLeak, was the first to host the film online. After hours of online [...]
Since the entertainment industry is masquerading as ‘journalists’ in America, it’s good to know that there are still unencumbered journalists in this world. For example, The Economist has wholly rejected the trend of sensationalist reporting and narrow-minded, simple analyses as found on cable news.
A new edition is out and it is best one I’ve ever [...]
Slate reviews the season premier of The Hills on MTV:
Lauren and Whitney jetted to Paris. Their internships at Teen Vogue required attendance at a debutante ball. Said Lauren of the City of Light, “It’s so pretty here,” which counts as an incisive comment, the dramatis personae of The Hills not really being verbal creatures. They [...]
For the second time in two weeks we’re learning about Chinese hackers doing its government’s dirty work:
The FBI has opened a preliminary investigation of a report that China-based hackers have penetrated the e-mail accounts of leaders and members of the Save Darfur Coalition, a national advocacy group pushing to end the six-year-old conflict in Sudan…The [...]
Here’s a compilation of post speech reactions from Fox News, BBC, Sky News, and Al Jazeera. Notice a difference?
The Pew Research Center released its annual “State of the Media” report yesterday. For a cable news hater such as myself it’s a treasure trove of ammunition. I’ve compiled the study’s core findings for cable news (CNN, MSNBC, and FOX) below.
Wedge Issues
When it came to specific stories, cable news showed a tendency to take the [...]
FP PASSPORT pointed me towards Kill the Cliché, a site that tracks clichés used daily in print MSM. Here are their all-time leaders:
[h/t FP PASSPORT]
Cable news once again proves itself as America’s all purpose shit-magnet. Seriously, where do they get these people?
NSA’s Domestic Spying Grows As Agency Sweeps Up Data
By SIOBHAN GORMAN
March 10, 2008; Page A1
According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called “transactional” data from [...]
Jon Friedman of MarketWatch compares “Curb Your Enthusiasm” to The Economist:
It shouldn’t surprise fans of the Economist that the magazine’s editor-in-chief, John Micklethwait, gets a kick out of HBO’s comedy series “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
“Anyone who likes ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ could read the Economist,” Micklethwait, 45, quipped, tacitly comparing an edgy, high-minded TV show [...]
About
Brian is a recent college graduate living in Washington, D.C.
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Quotes
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
– Plato
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