Tab-clearing link fart

February 27, 2011 in Uncategorized

Mike Konczal and the snark: We are perpetually in a spiritual crisis that can only be fixed by a woman in the kitchen. It’s a huge win for the second half of the 20th century that this argument has been moved from leading political figures addressing graduating classes to the shadier alleyways of the Wall [...]

A case study

February 27, 2011 in energy, Wanktanks

This Realclimate thread provides some interesting insight into how Nigel Lawson and sports scientist Benny Peiser’s wanktank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the dodgy journal Energy & Environment, and the little gang of rightwing nutters at the University of Buckingham are being progressively integrated into a single meta-wanktank. They’re all sitting on each other’s boards [...]

Enduring stare: Donal Blaney edition

February 27, 2011 in Tories, Wanktanks

Here’s something interesting, from a post at Owen Jones‘s. Has Donal Blaney’s “Young Britons’ Foundation”, the Tory wanktank that was too wanky for the Tories, been reactivated? I will not distance myself from the right wing spin machine which attempts to bring down NUS’ credibility, but tackle it head on. Both of those occasions have [...]

a patron, Sir?

February 27, 2011 in GSM

Sensible piece about US State Department funding for mobile anonymity projects, and some interesting stuff. The crack about looking with disfavour on the drowning man and then encumbering him with help once he reaches ground is relevant. The real prize (as alluded to here) would be a mesh network application that works either instead of [...]

So what are the other side using?

February 27, 2011 in press

OK, so I’ve been getting referrals from The Social Media Library, which describes itself as follows: Social Media Library contains the first ever regionally-focused directory of influential blogs read in the UK. Social Media Library’s proprietary BlogScore™ ranks each blog in terms of its influence and its visibility in search engines – providing you with [...]

The Observer’s comment page has been overrun by zombies

February 27, 2011 in press, Uncategorized

…And I feel fine. These two columns appeared on the same page of today’s Obscurer. I believe this is probably the most incoherent single page to ever appear in a British national newspaper. For a start, there’s Nick Cohen with a piece that accuses essentially everybody of being obsessed with Israel, because of the Protocols [...]

Fun with nonsense and hash functions

February 27, 2011 in funny ha ha, hacker, memes, press

Churnalism is a brilliant idea – no surprise that it was originally one of Chris Lightfoot’s. Basically, it allows you to determine how much of a given newspaper article was copied from which press release. There’s a nice graphic visualisation, and a diff, so you can see precisely what was altered and what taken over [...]

the CIA decided they wanted Roland dead, so that son of a bitch Van Owen cut off Roland’s head

February 21, 2011 in 4GW, Egypt, electronics, mercenary

Sultan al-Qassemi kicks in a data point to the ArseDex. Apparently Libyan agents are distributing flyers in Guinea and Nigeria calling for mercenaries to fight for $2,000 a day. Yesterday, loyalist thugs cost $500 a day in Libya. Even with the huge supply of potential thugs in sub-Saharan Africa’s demobilised militias being available, the ArseDex [...]

from the MWC gossip column

February 20, 2011 in GSM

You can consider MWC as being a giant augmented-reality computer game. You run frantically in and out of different constructed environments, very varied but actually deeply conventionalised, trying to score points. You get points for collecting gossip, useful information, sales leads, and shiny gadgets; you lose them for queuing, being publicly humiliated, or getting stuck [...]

i haz bin in yr AR standardz, facilitatin yr interop. kthx!

February 20, 2011 in civil service, dayjob, engineering, GPS, GSM, hacker, Internet, open source, tags

So I had the opportunity to take part in an Augmented Reality standardisation meeting on the fringe of this year’s 3GSM Mobile World Congress. First of all, it was the year the heavens opened (someone on twitter said it was as if the show had turned into Glastonbury) and I got drenched and my shoes [...]