The debate around 5G is being framed as if picking Huawei instead of an European vendor would upset the control telecommunication providers have over their networks. The reality is more grim: we’ve long crossed that bridge, and most providers already do not have a full understanding of their own infrastructure: In a modern telecommunications service […]
A spreadsheet way of knowledge
Steven Levy, writing on Wired around 30 years ago on the rise of spreadsheets: Increasingly, however, businessmen are not telling but letting their spreadsheets do the talking. Because a spreadsheet looks so authoritative – and it was done by a computer, wasn’t it? – the hypothetical models get accepted as gospel. The spreadsheet presentation is […]
Spotify’s emotional surveillance
The Baffler: Spotify specifically wants to be seen as a mood-boosting platform. In Spotify for Brands blog posts, the company routinely emphasizes how its own platform distinguishes itself from other streams of digital content, particularly because it gives marketers a chance to reach users through a medium that is widely seen as a “positive enhancer”: […]
Kind of mind-blowing overview of the waste management of a specific item (Christmas tree lights), from Adam Minter.
I would also highly recommend to anyone who wants to understand recycling as a system (that exists outside of our daily reality) to follow Discard studies, which is how I stumbled upon the above:
Structures, not behaviours, uphold norms and practices of waste and wasting. In sociology and other fields, there is a constant tension between agency–what individuals and groups of people are able and want to do– and structure, the cultural norms and values, institutions, infrastructures, and power relations that constrain and even determine that agency. Because of this, we’ve argued against awareness as an ideal method for creating changes around waste and wasting, instead arguing for changes in infrastructure and other scaled up systems. To help understand this tension, we use concepts of scale and scalar mismatch to argue that waste occurs differently within different structures at different scales, and that action must match up with these scales. For example, if we want to address pollution and waste, then focusing 90% of our activist efforts on household waste that makes up less than 3% of a nation’s waste is not going to be effective. Consumer and citizen behaviour cannot impact 97% of the waste that’s out there.
Filippo is typing…
I kind of hate messaging these days. Over the years different software have imposed on their users FOMO inducing features that lead us to this ridiculous reality in which we all collectively agreed that a response to a text needs to be returned within minutes, no matter the content nor the urgency. I sometimes choose […]
Read Only Memory
Read-Only Memory publishes high-quality books that document videogame history.
The equilateral triangle of a perfect paragraph
A web typography learning game
Time, self and remembering online
L.M. Sacasas: “When I was a child,” the Apostle wrote, “I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.” And, we may add, I looked like a child. Thus the appropriateness of my childishness was evident in my appearance. Yes, that was me as I was, but that is […]
The values change every time the universe changes, and that’s every time we redefine a big enough bit of it. Which we do all the time through the process of discovery that isn’t discovery: just the invention of another version of how things are.
How to organize your life with spreadsheets
From the New York Times course to teach its reporters data skills.
Hello, is this a modem?
Oona Räisänen: If you ever connected to the Internet before the 2000s, you probably remember that it made a peculiar sound. But despite becoming so familiar, it remained a mystery for most of us. What do these sounds mean? […] The first thing we hear in this example is a dial tone, the same tone […]
How to recognise AI snake oil
Arvind Narayanan: I will focus the rest of my talk on this third category [predicting social outcomes], where there’s a lot of snake oil. I already showed you tools that claim to predict job suitability. Similarly, bail decisions are being made based on an algorithmic prediction of recidivism. People are being turned away at the […]
The most interesting Tunnel Boring Machines
Anton Dubrau does a fascinating overview of existing tunnel boring machine technology: People tend to think it’s the tunnels that are the most expensive part of underground systems like metros, but thanks to the already existing TBM technology, they often represent only a small portion of the overall cost. Sometimes as little as 10%. The […]
Security UI does not work
A keynote slide from 2013. In a nutshell, why cookie banners are pointless and the GDPR is a mess.
The institutionalization of the web
Ethan Marcotte: I want to suggest that web design has, as a practice, become industrialized, and I want to look at how that will change the nature of our work in the months and years to come. I want to talk about how the web has always excelled at creating new kinds of work, before […]