On the podcast this week I talk to danah boyd, Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, and Assistant Professor in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, discusses her recent article in First Monday with Ester Hargitai, Jason Schultz, and John Palfrey. It’s entitled, “Why parents help their children lie to Facebook about age: Unintended consequences of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.” boyd discusses COPPA as it applies to Facebook, namely that children under 13 are not allowed to use the site. She then talks about her research, which looks at whether this restriction is helping parents protect their children’s privacy, and whether it is meeting COPPA’s ultimate goals. boyd discusses her findings, which indicate parents are allowing their children to lie about their age to obtain a Facebook account. According to boyd, parents want guidelines when it comes to data protection, but they do not necessarily want strict requirements. boyd feels that COPPA is not achieving its goal of privacy protection and should be evaluated with more transparency so parents and the public in general know how to protect their privacy.
The whole idea of using the physical store to drive online traffic is pretty interesting,” said Keith Anderson, senior analyst at RetailNet Group, which first reported on the stores.Walmart begins ‘pop-up’ store experiment - FT.com (via rafer)
(via rafer)
I predict that health monitoring will be the next substantial phase of cyborg evolution.
Scott Adams Blog: Our Cyborg Evolution 11/08/2011
I agree. Sounds creepy taken out of context, but not in the context of the entire post. Also, the blog of Scott Adams should not be missed.
(via davidhoffman)
(via davidhoffman)
The New Luddites are back, and they’re packing heat. The mighty Economist writes of “the disturbing thought” that “America’s current employment woes stem from a precipitous and permanent change caused by not too little technological progress, but too much … A tipping point seems to have been reached, at which AI-based automation threatens to supplant the brain-power of large swathes of middle-income employees.” The New York Times chimes in: “technology is quickly taking over service jobs, following the waves of automation of farm and factory work.” At which those of us lucky enough to be software engineers burst into derisive laughter, of course. We’ve heard all this before, more than a decade ago, when ‘outsourcing to India’ rather than ‘automation’ was the threat that would destroy our jobs. Obviously this is more of the same kind of nonsense. Right?What If This Is No Accident? What If This Is The Future? | TechCrunch (via new-aesthetic)
(via new-aesthetic)
Squared Away
While I was still at TechCrunch, I would often get asked what startup excited me the most. That’s a massive question. There are a ton. But for the past year and a half, one was always at the forefront of my mind: Square.
Now that I’m a VC, the question is flipped: terms aside, what company would I love to invest in? The answer is the same. Square.
Of course, they don’t exactly need my money — they’re now at the stage where behemoths like Visa are doing strategic investments. And they’re closing $100 million rounds at billion-plus valuations. But I think back to May 2009, when Mike and I were working together to break the news about Jack Dorsey’s new project, then codenamed Squirrel. If only we had the CrunchFund back then…
Of course, at that point, the idea was still more of an intriguing, but somewhat crazy-sounding dream. It wasn’t until Square launched seven months later that it became apparent that this could really be a massive disruptor. And they haven’t disappointed.
cwnl:
“When my husband died, because he was so famous & known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me — it still sometimes happens — & ask me if Carl changed at the end & converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage & never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don’t ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief & precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting.
Every single moment that we were alive & we were together was miraculous — not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance… That pure chance could be so generous & so kind… That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space & the immensity of time… That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me & it’s much more meaningful…
The way he treated me & the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other & our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.“
- Ann Druyan, talking about her husband, Carl Sagan
Engagement x Value
Do you have a formula for figuring out how interested you are in a project?
Perhaps you do but haven’t thought about what exactly it is.
Of course, it’s never quite as simple as an exact formula, but I think this gets about as close as possible for me:
Engagement x Value
I like working on things that engage lots of people. The more the better. And judging from the recruiting notes I get from big companies these days that put the most emphasis on the number of people you’ll reach, I’m not the only developer or designer that cares about the ability to work on things that affect many people more than salary or perks.
But there’s also value in this formula. Except for the odd fun weekend project, I don’t see myself ever again working on social apps that are meant purely to spread and gain users, because there’s no value.
Without engagement or value, the result is zero. They’re both necessary. And as the amount of engagement and value increases for a project, the level of interest from the top developers and designers quickly multiplies. Literally, in this case.
