Here's rogue archivist Carl Malamud's five-minute Ignite Sebastapol talk on "Code City": the democratic necessity of making all of the nation's laws and codes free to read, download and analyze: "The laws that most directly touch our daily lives are not supreme court opinions or bills of landmark legislation, they are the public safety codes: building, electrical, plumbing, and other technical standards. Yet, these laws are the most inaccessible.
Open standards make better infrastructure, and if we open sourced our public safety codes, our laws would be not only more relevant, but the law would be better."
Google and Mozilla are making changes to their respective web browsers to try and thwart the notoriously corrupt government of Kazakhstan’s efforts to launch a surveillance operation against its own citizens.
In 1994, Jeff Schwartz and Dan Wong fired up the San Francisco FogCam. For 25 years, it kept a constant vigil on the San Francisco State University campus, making the FogCam the longest operating webcam in history. (The first webcam, the Trojan Room coffee pot cam, went online in 1991 and shut down in 2001.) […]
Illegitimate, popular vote losing, and manifestly unfit United States President Donald Trump said on Monday that at a recent dinner with Tim Cook — what, you didn’t think they hung out and shared meals? — the Apple CEO made a “very compelling argument” that Apple may lose its competitive edge to Samsung because of Trump’s […]
The field of data analytics is growing as fast as the internet itself. Self-driving cars, airline pricing, and huge marketing campaigns are all driven by the insights that data scientists can distill out of vast sums of information. Even with the help of powerful software like Python, it’s a highly skilled position. But those skills […]
If you’re marketing on the web, your Google-fu needs to be strong – and up to date. Without a firm grasp on what drives traffic, you’ll never be able to take the wheel. That’s why even if you know where to put your keywords, a little extra effort goes a long way on any marketer’s […]
Want to keep the dentist away? A little tooth care at morning and night isn’t bad, but it won’t keep the stains from smoking or fried foods at bay for long. If you enjoy your food and want to avoid the consequences, an upgrade from that old analog toothbrush can make a huge difference. Among […]
