Crowd sourced morality on automated cars handling collisions: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/542626/why-self-driving-cars-must-be-programmed-to-kill/ … 3 laws is thin API over Amzn Mechanical Turk service.
Time of year we're reminded that Intuit spends millions to ensure we have to do our
own taxes - for sake of freedom! http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/technology/personaltech/turbotax-or-irs-as-tax-preparer-intuit-has-a-favorite.html …
If you're a technology worker who has any access to sensitive keys or secrets, read all the way
through this piece. https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/19/great-sim-heist/ …
Level3 counters Verizon’s recent post about Netflix traffic.
"In fact, Level 3 has asked Verizon for a long time to add interconnection capacity and to deliver the traffic its customers are requesting from our customers, but Verizon refuses."
A high-profile fork: one year of Blink and Webkit
Some stats and analysis at a very high level of the Blink fork from Webkit.
Victorian Trolling: How Con Artists Spammed in a Time Before Email
The main difference between 21st-century scams and those of centuries past is one of delivery method.Read more. [Image: Wikimedia Commons/Benjamin Breen]
'Please Contact Us': It's Been a Tough Week for the Nobel Prize's Twitter Feed
Tales of temporary rejection from an organization not used to being ignored.
Moral: laws should cover behavior not specific technologies. The implementation can change, laws shouldn’t take such dependencies.
How the 8.5” x 11” Piece of Paper Got Its Size
Why do we use a paper size that is so unfriendly for the basic task of reading? According to a very interesting post by Paul Stanley, the rough dimensions of office paper evolved to accommodate handwriting and typewriters with monospaced fonts, both of which rendered many fewer characters per line. “Typewriters,” he explains, “produced 10 or 12 characters per inch: so on (say) 8.5 inch wide paper, with 1 inch margins, you had 6.5 inches of type, giving … around 65 to 78 characters.” This, he says, is “pretty close to ideal.”
Read more. [Image: Picsfive/Shutterstock]
When they went to the Moon, they received the same per diem compensation as they would have for being away from base in Bakersfield: eight dollars a day, before various deductions (like for accommodation, because the government was providing the bed in the spaceship).
Apollo 11’s Astronauts Received an $8 Per Diem for the Mission to the Moon
The astronauts of Apollo 11: Intrepid explorers. Inspirational heroes. Government employees.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]
A House subcommittee has passed the Global Online Freedom Act (GOFA), which would require disclosure from companies about their human rights practices and limit the export of technologies that “serve the primary purpose of” facilitating government surveillance or censorship to countries designated as “Internet-restricting.”
3/ This lets advertisers figure out that 'John owns this laptop AND this smartphone.'
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