Shirky: Ontology is Overrated -- Categories, Links, and Tags
Clay Shirky's writings about the Internet, including Economics and Culture, Media and Community, Open Source
Hasnain says:
Long, and worth reading for anyone who works or is interested in ontologies and classification.
"They missed the end of this progression, which is that, if you've got enough links, you don't need the hierarchy anymore. There is no shelf. There is no file system. The links alone are enough."
"One of the biggest problems with categorizing things in advance is that it forces the categorizers to take on two jobs that have historically been quite hard: mind reading, and fortune telling. It forces categorizers to guess what their users are thinking, and to make predictions about the future."
Posted on 2014-09-22T02:54:00+0000
I Had a Stroke at 33
On New Year's Eve 2007, a clot blocked one half of my brain from the other. My reality would never be the same again.
Hasnain says:
I didn't know buzzfeed actually had content worth reading. This is beautiful, moving, and scary.
"I wondered if I’d betrayed any secrets, but when I stopped to consider them, I couldn’t remember my secrets."
Posted on 2014-09-22T02:42:37+0000
The invasion of corporate news - FT.com
A population of 100,000 is no longer a guarantee that a city like Richmond, California can sustain a thriving daily paper. Readers have drifted from the tactile pleasures of print to the digital gratification of their smartphone screens, and
Hasnain says:
Native advertising and corporate-influenced media is kind of bad. The John Oliver video on this topic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_F5GxCwizc) is also great.
Posted on 2014-09-22T02:40:50+0000
David Berreby – The obesity era
As the American people got fatter, so did marmosets, vervet monkeys and mice. The problem may be bigger than any of us
Hasnain says:
"Today’s priests of obesity prevention proclaim with confidence and authority that they have the answer. So did Bruno Bettelheim in the 1950s, when he blamed autism on mothers with cold personalities. So, for that matter, did the clerics of 18th-century Lisbon, who blamed earthquakes on people’s sinful ways. History is not kind to authorities whose mistaken dogmas cause unnecessary suffering and pointless effort, while ignoring the real causes of trouble. And the history of the obesity era has yet to be written."
Posted on 2014-09-21T22:44:17+0000
Guido van Rossum on finding his way
The Python creator and Dropbox engineer reflects on his early days in programming
To Get More Out of Science, Show the Rejected Research
A proposal aims to address the problem of studies that go unpublished even though their findings can be important.
The C++14 Standard
New features you can use today.
Hasnain says:
C++11, and now C++14, have made developing in C++ a pretty pleasant experience.
Posted on 2014-09-17T16:48:43+0000
Weirdly, Tramadol Is Not a Natural Product After All. In the Pipeline:
Last year I mentioned a paper that described the well-known drug tramadol as a natural product, isolated from a species of tree in Cameroon. Rather high concentrations were found in the root bark, and the evidence looked solid that the compound was indeed being made biochemically.
Hasnain says:
"That's because, as it turns out, tramadol is given extensively to cattle (!) in the region, so much of it that the parent drug and its metabolites have soaked into the soil enough for the African peach/pincushion tree to have taken it up into its roots. I didn't see that one coming."
Posted on 2014-09-16T18:42:33+0000
Metasploit: Major Android Bug is a Privacy Disa... | SecurityStreet
On the night of September 7, 2014, Joe Vennix of Rapid7's Metasploit Products team wrote, "I did not believe this at first, but after some testing it seems true: in AOSP browser before Android 4.4, you can load javascript into any arbitrary frame or window [...]" and provided a Metasploit module to…
Tech’s Wakeup Call From Your Trans Coworker
Two things you probably need to know about me: I am a trans woman and I work at a tech startup as a QA engineer. This means having to deal with a lot of…
Hasnain says:
This is a great piece. I think all the [insert word here]s of the world, not just in tech, should read it. In fact, everyone should. And make the world a better place.
Posted on 2014-09-15T22:58:41+0000