John Lanchester reviews 3 books on Facebook and Google, and comes to the conclusion that Facebook does things because it can, without considering whether it should. (tags: facebookadvertisingpsychologyInternetzuckerberggoogle)
“So I’ve been thinking for a while about the Discworld books, and how they can be divided up into three rough thematic phases; not based around the focal characters, but rather what the story is about.” (tags: discworldterry-pratchettbooksfantasy)
A critique of the problems with the world building in Rainbow. “Rod, Jane and Freddy seem to live everywhere and nowhere all at once, a bit like God or The Littlest Hobo.” (tags: funnyrainbowtelevision)
1997 presentation about the levels of flight deck automation and how to keep out of trouble. Interesting stuff about trusting the automation too far, and how trying to keep it updated when the situation changes is worse than going more manual. (tags: automationaircraftsafetyflying)
“1. Gender differences in math/science ability, achievement, and performance are small or nil…
2. Gender differences in interest and enjoyment of math, coding, and highly “systemizing” activities are large. …
3. Culture and context matter, in complicated ways. Some gender differences have decreased over time as women have achieved greater equality, showing that these differences are responsive to changes in culture and environment. But the cross-national findings sometimes show “paradoxical” effects: progress toward gender equality in rights and opportunities sometimes leads to larger gender differences in some traits and career choices. Nonetheless, it seems that actions taken today by parents, teachers, politicians, and designers of tech products may increase the likelihood that girls will grow up to pursue careers in tech, and this is true whether or not biology plays a role in producing any particular population difference.” (tags: feminismgooglediversitypsychologygenderpolitics)
Dr Sadedin’s is the best rebuttal to the Google memo that I’ve seen (as the rest just call it bad without rebutting it). (tags: sciencegooglegendersexismpsychology)
2FA without the SMS/phone number backup (which can be hacked by social engineering your mobile phone network provider). (tags: emailgoogle2faauthenticationsecurity)
Alleges that neoliberalism encourages employees to see themselves as the CEO of “Me, Inc”, always looking for tasks that’ll help them get their next job. Interesting final section about the modern obsession with “passion”. (tags: capitalismbusinessworkeconomicscareer)
A service where you can check the clear text (if you trust the site owner) or hash of passwords to see whether they’ve leaked in any of the site hacks over the years. (tags: securitypasswordsapi)
What are the differences between cranks on both sides? Conservative ones are generally stupid, liberal ones are clever rationalisers. (tags: politicscranksconservativeliberal)