Steven Levy, author of Hackers and one of the best tech writers in the field (previously), has profiled Carl Malamud (previously), the prolific, tireless freedom fighter who has risked everything to publish the world's laws on the internet, even those claimed to be owned by "nonprofit" standards organizations whose million-dollar execs say that you should have to pay to read the law.

Veteran tech journalist Steven Levy, author of the seminal books Hackers and Crypto, launched his new tech hub Backchannel over at Medium.

Steven Levy's Wired magazine feature on the cancerous multiplication of patents has all the hallmarks of Levy's work: excellent, eminently readable, human-scale tech reporting that makes important issues comprehensible.

The rise of trolls came as a result of a court system that seemed to favor them every step of the way.

Steven Levy tweets: "It will take people a while to absorb that a Facebook profile is now a timeline of your life, an autobiography rendered by data." Check out his long-read over at Wired today: "Facebook is Ready for Your New Closeup. — Read the rest

Steven Levy (whose new book, In the Plex, looks like a very good account of Google), has on the spot analysis for Wired about the revelation that Facebook had hired a PR firm to run a sleazy whisper campaign about Google and privacy, a pot/kettle/black moment if ever there was one:

Facebook was griping that Google is getting information about its users without permission.

At O'Reilly Media's FOO Camp this weekend, BB pal Dale Dougherty, founder of MAKE:, interviewed Steven Levy about his seminal 1984 book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. The book was just republished by O'Reilly in a 25th Anniversary Edition. — Read the rest

In episode 4 of Boing Boing's Get Illuminated podcast, I spoke with Steven Levy, author of the excellent book, The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness. Steven talks about Steve Jobs' role in the creation of the iPod, why the Zune is lousy, why Sony can't make a good MP3 player, and what the rumored iPhone is going to be like. — Read the rest

Steven Levy (author of such seminal tech books as Crypto, Hackers, and Insanely Great) has written a fantastic long piece for Newsweek about World of Warcraft. Prepatory to the piece, Levy spent time as an embedded reporter in the notorious We Know guild run by Joi Ito, and caught a side of the game we don't often see in reportage on the phenomenon:

Though WOW is a fantasy world, the interaction between guilds and individuals relies on human choices and morals.

In the new issue of Newsweek, veteran tech journalist Steven Levy profiles inventor Danny Hillis. From the article:

…Hillis has never had to put out an APB for his inner child.

This becomes clear as soon as one crosses the threshold of Applied Minds, which sprawls over five flat buildings in an industrial area of Glendale, Calif.

Wired Magazine has a fantastic, in-depth feature on Tim O'Reilly, the publisher of O'Reilly and Associates (world's greatest tech books, hands down). The feature is written by Steven Levy, he of Hackers, Insanely Great and Crypto fame (Hackers was a huge influence on me and a big part of how I ended up working in tech). — Read the rest

Steven Levy, author of Hackers and Crypto, has a fantastic piece on Newsweek's site about the potential dangers of Trusted Computing.

How could the freedom genie be shoved back into the bottle? Basically, it's part of a huge effort to transform the Net from an arena where anyone can anonymously participate to a sign-in affair where tamperproof "digital certificates" identify who you are.

Steven Levy tackles a much-blogged subject of late — blogs, war, and conventional media — with fresh insight in a Newsweek story today. He also coins a handy new term: embloggers. If you find this of interest, you may also want to check out this blog that Anil Dash recently built to document press coverage of the recently-suspended-by-CNN kevinsites.net — Read the rest

After discovering an open wireless net available from his sofa, Steven "Hackers" Levy interviewed lawmen, academics and WiFi activists about the legality and ethics of using open wireless access points.

I downloaded my mail and checked media news on the Web.

Steven Levy reports on Bill Gates's reaction to the new Apple iPod:

He spun the wheel, checked out the menus on the display screen and seemed to get it immediately. "It looks like a great product," he said. And then he added, incredulous, "It's only for Macintosh?"

Steven Levy explains how anthrax-tained postal matter may the be final shove that puts USPS out of business.

Let's try a thought experiment. What comes in the mail that you absolutely, positively can't get electronically? If you're connected to the Internet—and, duh, you wouldn't be reading this if you weren't—probably your e-mail-to-snail-mail ratio overwhelmingly favors the former.

Author Steven Levy discusses his new book, Crypto with Mike Godwin (late of the EFF) in a public ongoing discussion on the WELL. Link

Speaking on a panel about misinformation called Internet Lie Machine at Wired magazine's RE:WIRED conference yesterday, Prince Harry said he tried to warn Twitter's Jack Dorsey of the January 6th Capitol insurrection — and Twitter's part in it.

"Jack and I were emailing each other prior to January the 6th. — Read the rest

For years I used Soulver, a Mac-based calculator app that let you write out calculations and formula, and it would render the calculations on the fly. It was a superb way to think out loud with numbers. One of things I loved is that it showed you the record of eƒach calculation, so you could visually follow your chain of mathematical reasoning — kind of like in the old days, with calculators that typed out each line of figures on a spool of paper. — Read the rest

In 1995, Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly (also my friend and business partner for 30 years) made a $1,000 bet with neo-Luddite Kirkpatrick Sale. If civilization had collapsed by the end of 2020, Kirkpatrick would win the bet. If not Kelly, would win. — Read the rest

There are mythical rockstar coders, and then there are …. rock stars who actually write code.

I call your attention to Techcrunch, which has a piece interviewing Rivers Cuomo of Weezer about his side hustle as a programming student. Apparently he'd long been a spreadsheet-head, and it got him curious about programming — so he started taking Harvard's online computer-science classes, and began writing software to help manage various aspects of songwriting and running Weezer. — Read the rest