A Variegated Mind-Dump
by MDGreaney
The Flat Earth theory is having a renewed time in the Sun (which, of course, circles around it, and not vice versa).
There’s a rapper in a Twitter fight with a scientist, and if that isn’t a clue that things are getting Real then I don’t know what is any more.
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by MDGreaney
Apparently, they’ve done experiments that show that plants can ‘communicate’ with each other. They can pass on information about the environment, and they can pass on carbon via fungal pathways underground.
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by MDGreaney
by MDGreaney
Hi. My name’s Martin, and I procrastinate.
[Muted applause]
Look, I’m even doing it now, while trying to communicate with you about a technique I’ve employed to try to curb my procrastination!
by MDGreaney
Somewhere, a man in a room is carrying out a job of utmost importance.
The man in the room has seen the future, and understands how dangerous it could be. His job has no ending, just the infinite delay of that dangerous future.
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by MDGreaney
It’s time to ditch the idea that, when not paying for a service, we’re the product.
Tim Cook (billionaire chief of Apple) brought it up again in September, and recently Mark Zuckerberg (billionaire chief of Facebook) got a little angry with the accusation.
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by MDGreaney
Everyone loves a good apocalyptic prophecy. The latest is in regards to ‘Content’, that slippery concept allied to ‘Creatives’, trashing a couple of basic grammatical rules in its attempt to escape too-close a reading.
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by MDGreaney
Funnily enough, I finally get around to reading Gabriella Coleman’s Coding Freedom, and she pops up on the next episode of the Guardian Tech Weekly Podcast! I do love a good coincidence, especially when it tells me there’s a new book out: Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous.
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by MDGreaney
The temptation to name each New Year the ‘Year of the Linux Desktop’ became so regular in the mid 2000s that it evolved into a metajoke. If magazines and websites still do it, it’s with tongue firmly in cheek. Every now and again a Raspberry Pi comes along and a few eyebrows guiltily rise, questioning, hopeful.
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by MDGreaney
Is Wikipedia more useful than the Encyclopedia Britannica?
It’s a difficult question to answer, with many ‘depends’. But there are a couple of factors which say that it is: