Month: August 2014

Researching Link Rot ⇥ blog.pinboard.in

Maciej Cegłowski will be using a large pool of Pinboard’s bookmarks to gather data on link rot, and I’m pretty excited for the results. I know of things I’ve bookmarked from just a couple of months ago that have already been moved, and things that I’ve bookmarked from ten or more years ago that are still around at the same link. My own anecdotal evidence suggests that links from 2007-2011 or so are frequently rotted, probably due to rapid changes in site architecture best practices during that timeframe.

This post also illustrates how to research user data without being a dick about it. Cegłowski is upfront, is going to ensure that links are not associated with user names, and is offering a clear, simple way to opt out.

The Lie Behind 1.2 Billion Stolen Passwords ⇥ youarenotpayingattention.com

Pretty good counterpoint to both the New York Times’ story on this and Brian Krebs’ post. Krebs has more to lose here: the Times is a mainstream publication, but Krebs’ credibility in the computer security industry has been astonishing so far.

The other credible media-friendly security dude Bruce Schneier is also not convinced:

I don’t know how much of this story is true, but what I was saying to reporters over the past two days is that it’s evidence of how secure the Internet actually is. We’re not seeing massive fraud or theft. We’re not seeing massive account hijacking. A gang of Russian hackers has 1.2 billion passwords — they’ve probably had most of them for a year or more — and everything is still working normally. This sort of thing is pretty much universally true.

Unprepared ⇥ mattgemmell.com

About a week ago, I spent my first night in my first apartment. It was a big change — moving out of the house I grew up in, with the same view outside my room all my life. It was equal parts exciting and nerve-wracking.

I’ve had a pretty late bedtime for as long as I can remember. So, on my first night in my new place, I decided to head to bed at about 1:00 AM. I put some flannel pants on, washed my face, grabbed a glass of water, and then went to brush my teeth.

And I had no toothpaste.

Where does one find toothpaste at 1:00 on the Sunday of a long weekend in downtown Calgary? There’s a 24/7 convenience store chain here called Mac’s, and I’m pretty close to one of the more famous locations in Calgary: the lovingly-dubbed “Crack Mac’s”, for its rather specific clientele. It’s not dangerous, really, but you’ll often find people nodding off or completely fucked-up just outside its front door.

I changed into proper clothing, popped into Crack Mac’s, and looked around for toothpaste. Couldn’t find any. I asked the clerk who — and I shit you not — was fully Jamaican, “could you please show me where the toothpaste is?”

He takes me to the place I had already been looking. “Looks like we’re out, mon,” he said, “but there’s another location nearby. You know it, mon?”

So I began walking the eight-or-so blocks to the other Mac’s location downtown. About halfway there, a police car drove by, and I couldn’t help but think of how they would not believe a single word of this story so far, should they have stopped me to ask: I’m looking for toothpaste at 1:00 on a Sunday and a Jamaican guy just told me to head in this direction. What’s the matter, officer?

I got to the other store, found what I was looking for, put all $2.51 of it on my Visa — because cash is for chumps — and walked home, the new proud owner of a tube of toothpaste.

“Unprepared” is right.

Schiit Happened ⇥ head-fi.org

Really good post from Schiit Audio’s Jason Stoddard over on the Head-Fi forums (via Marco Arment). It’s ostensibly about the sales effect of a review in an “old media” publication, but this part struck me more:

Or, if someone says, “We can’t convert new audiophiles,” laugh louder. We absolutely can. We just need to get more attention in the mass media. And continue our inroads on sites where younger people discover stuff, like Reddit.

And that can be done.

But it won’t be done with $40,000 preamps, $3,000 USB cables, and $500 magic pucks. It won’t be done with aspie-level obsessive in-fighting about formats and provenance. It won’t be done with religious fervor to spread the word about the One True Sound or the One Perfect Measurement.

It’s too bad the term “audiophile” has been hijacked by technological homeopaths. It’s time to take it back.

Suitable Disruption ⇥ economist.com

“E.W.”, the Economist:

People who value disruption and unconventionality are more likely to interpret these signals positively. They work where deviations from the norm are lauded, and the interpretation says as much about the viewer as the wearer. But as waves of hoodie-wearing 20-somethings flood companies, sartorial deviation is poised to become the new norm. When everyone wears a T-shirt to lectures and board meetings, how do you tell who is truly innovative and who is just posing?

I’m not sure how many of you had a group of punk rock fans in your junior high school, but I did. They were my favourite group to hang out with because they listened to the best music, but you wouldn’t know it based on the way I dressed. Or, for that matter, the way I dress now. But there were also those in the school who did the opposite: they had a bunch of chains and patches, but they couldn’t tell the Dead Kennedys from Fear.

Does it really matter? Can someone dressed in a suit not pitch venture capitalists nearly as effectively as someone who looks like they rolled into the meeting directly from their futon? Does someone who’s wearing Chucks automatically get a 10% bonus because they’re “unconventional”? The big question: should anyone make their investment decisions based on the cut of the investee’s jeans?

Russian Gang Amasses Over a Billion Internet Passwords ⇥ nytimes.com

David Gelles and Nicole Perlroth, New York Times:

A Russian crime ring has amassed the largest known collection of stolen Internet credentials, including 1.2 billion username and password combinations and more than 500 million email addresses, security researchers say.

The records, discovered by Hold Security, a firm in Milwaukee, include confidential material gathered from 420,000 websites, ranging from household names to small Internet sites. Hold Security has a history of uncovering significant hacks, including the theft last year of tens of millions of records from Adobe Systems.

I’m hoping that this is just the setup to yet another Die Hard film.

“It’s Not A/B Testing. It’s Just Being an Asshole.” ⇥ kottke.org

Tim Carmody on Kottke.org:

We all buy in to Facebook (and Twitter, and OKCupid, and every other social media network), giving them a huge amount of personal data, free content, and discretion on how they show it to us, with the understanding that all of this will largely be driven by choices that we make. We build our own profiles, we select our favorite pictures, we make our own friends, we friend whatever brands we like, we pick the users we want to block or mute or select for special attention, and we write our own stories.

[…]

This is why it really stings whenever somebody turns around and says, “well actually, the terms you’ve signed give us permission to do whatever we want. Not just the thing you were afraid of, but a huge range of things you never thought of.”

It’s an inherent problem in the way that the social web works today. Experiments with exchanging less personal information and therefore being less susceptible to these kinds of activities, like App.net, have proved largely unsuccessful. So far, we have elected to sacrifice more of our control in exchange for no-monetary-cost services. What’s the point at which we — the user base — will collectively decide to back away?

I Want It, and I Want It Now ⇥ recode.net

Liz Gannes of Recode is writing a multipart series about instant gratification services for physical products and services. The first article, posted today, is full of examples of all kinds of services that will deliver goods to you on demand:

[J]ust last Monday, a mobile medical-marijuana delivery startup called Eaze launched in San Francisco. Not only was Eaze open for business, it was open for business 24 hours a day.

Bootstrapped by an early Yammer employee, Eaze’s site promises delivery to our office in seven minutes. I don’t have a medical marijuana card myself, but my friend Joey at our co-working space does, so I get permission from the bosses to subsidize a minimum order of “Berry White,” described as a “mix of legendary White Widow and Blueberry strains.”

We submit Joey’s doctor’s letter at noon, and are verified by 1:20 pm. We place our order via mobile Web on Joey’s iPhone.

A black Lexus pulls up outside the office 42 minutes later. We have been told to have cash on hand, because Eaze’s online payments system isn’t fully in order yet.

Our “caregiver” — a guy named Loreno who says he found the Eaze gig on Craigslist — opens the trunk and sorts through piles of Tupperware to find the baggie of Berry White. Joey gives him our $40, and instant gratification is delivered.

It’s both odd and perfect that this example of instant gratification — this particular version of which has been around pretty much since all kinds of instant communication methods were invented — is now legitimized.

4Chan Conceptual Artwork Reaches $90,000 on eBay ⇥ news.artnet.com

Sarah Cascone, Artnet:

Online message board 4chan, notorious for its irreverent sense of humor, has spawned what is either a bizarre art project or a massive flipping of the bird to the art world: a photo of a 4chan post, being auctioned as art on eBay. The auction item, Artwork by Anonymous, reads “Art used to be something to cherish. Now literally anything could be art. This post is art.” The existentialist musing could prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, with bidding rapidly approaching six figures and just under seven hours left to bid.

I’m not sure whether this piece deserves a proper critique, or even if it can be taken seriously enough to warrant one. As an artwork, it reads like a second-year student’s work, produced just after they learned about dadaism. As a statement, it’s played.

But its presentation — a photograph of an anonymous message board posting that automatically deletes itself after inactivity — speaks volumes: it’s a captured version of something designed to be temporary. It’s a moment captured in time that would otherwise likely be overlooked. It’s a bold statement that’s completely unoriginal, presented within a fairly original contextual framework.

It’s not a very strong piece on its own. But with a potential price tag of $90,000 attached, it becomes an extremely strong statement. It’s, at the very least, intriguing.

Macintel: The End Is Nigh ⇥ mondaynote.com

Interesting speculative “Monday note” from Jean-Louis Gassée:

Furthermore, it looks like I misspoke when I said an An chip couldn’t power a high-end Mac. True, the A7 is optimized for mobile devices: Battery-optimization, small memory footprint, smaller screen graphics than an iMac or a MacBook Pro with a Retina display. But having shown its muscle in designing a processor for the tight constraints of mobile devices, why would we think that the team that created the most advanced smartphone/tablet processor couldn’t now design a 3GHz A10 machine optimized for “desktop-class” (a term used by Apple’s Phil Schiller when introducing the A7) applications?

Today’s ARM chips are decidedly optimized for mobile usage because — spoiler alert — that’s where they’re used. But, while the architecture of the chip was decidedly built in favour of mobile and low-power usage in the beginning, today’s ARM chips are a completely different species. Imagine what kind of power an A-series chip could turn out if it were not encumbered by the power constraints of a smartphone (or a tablet, at the highest end of the available mobile power envelope).

No Permission Necessary ⇥ anxiousmachine.com

Robert McGinley Myers:

The remarkable thing about the internet is that you don’t have to wait, you don’t need anyone’s permission to put your creative work out in the world, you can just do it.

I’m just getting around to reading Clive Thompson’s “Smarter Than You Think” — I’m about halfway through — and Thompson has devoted a large chunk of the first half of the book to almost exactly this. Myers and Thompson are, of course, not the first to notice the magic of having a largely-democratic widely-accessible platform.¹ But it’s something that cannot be overstated: no matter how much crap gets produced and released as a byproduct of so many people having access to the tools, there’s so much more amazing stuff being written, filmed, photographed, recorded, and made every day.