Feb 2017

The Guardian view on big data: the danger is less democracy

theguardian.com

A Guardian’s op-ed on big data highlights the threat corporate surveillance poses not only on an individual level, but to democratic culture as a whole.

There are two kinds of privacy under threat in the emerging economy, where everyone is […]

2017

Reposting a Tweet by Matthias Ott

twitter.com

This is great news: a web standard for annotations - in true #hypertext spirit

“All pages could support rich layers of conversation” – #Annotation is now a web standard https://hypothes.is/blog/annotation-is-now-a-web-standard/ […]

2017

Why Nothing Works Anymore

theatlantic.com

Ian Bogost, in this piece on The Atlantic, expands the notion of “precarity” from the economic into the technological sphere - the instability and unpredictability of (technological) objects:

The frequency with which technology works […]

2017

The Internet's Original Sin

theatlantic.com

Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT and describing himself as part of the actors who established the ad-based web, investigates how and why advertising became the backbone of the fast-spreading web and the negative consequences it […]

2017

PRISM Break

prism-break.org

The PRISM Break project curates a comprehensive list of privacy-minded free and open source software projects that

Help make mass surveillance of entire populations uneconomical! We all have a right to privacy, which you can exercise today by […]

2017

Reposting a Tweet by Mallory Knodel

twitter.com

“Rule by Nobody” on Reallifemag:

So even when algorithms are working well, they are not working at all for us.

Great read!

2017

Reposting a Tweet by Florian Weil

twitter.com

Second Homebrew Website Club in Berlin tomorrow! Come over and let’s talk about #indieweb

2017

Want To Fight Inequality? Forget Design Thinking

fastcodesign.com

The Creative Reaction Lab questions the fashionable “design thinking” mindset and instead focuses on truly inclusive participation in design processes. This FastCoDesign article describes how

the Creative Reaction Lab starts from the […]

2017

Homebrew Website Club Berlin #2 on 22 Feb 2017

Last week’s inaugural Homebrew Website Club Berlin saw five independent web enthusiasts gather for an inspiring evening of conceptual and technical talk, and we all agreed to try and establish this as a regular bi-weekly event. Welcome to the second […]

2017

Working around the Twitter Cards "SSL Handshake Error" on Uberspace

NB. This is a two-years old post, only kept for archive purposes. The technology stack at either Twitter or Uberspace has since changed, and the described issue should no longer prevail - making this workaround obsolete. Ever since I migrated my website to […]

2017

Data Selfie

dataselfie.it

I don’t use Facebook nor Chrome for the very reasons this project advocates, so cannot put it to the test myself, but Data Selfie by Hang Do Thi Duc and Regina Flores Mir looks like a great tool to bring closer to the user just how much social network […]

2017

tosdr.org

“I have read and agree to the Terms” is the biggest lie on the web. We aim to fix that.

Terms of Service; Didn’t Read (ToS;DR) is a site that dissects the terms and privacy policies nobody ever reads and evaluates […]

2017

"Facebook tracks me - so what?

The blog post “What should you think about when using Facebook?” by Data Scientist Vicky Boykis is a thorough - yet likely not even close to exhaustive - summary of various ways how Facebook tracks, monetises and manipulates its users. It has […]

2017

Note, published 8 Feb 2017

Reminder: Homebrew Website Club Berlin inaugural meeting tonight 7pm Betahaus cafe. Table marked w/ #indieweb sign!

2017

What It Takes To Truly Delete Data

fivethirtyeight.com

We are living in the age of data. “What It Takes To Truly Delete Data” by Mimi Onuoha tells the story of hard drive disposal to illustrate three key facts about data: “All data […] is stored on a physical device somewhere.” As […]

2017

Is Private Browsing Really Private?

spreadprivacy.com

DuckDuckGo, the provider of a search engine that doesn’t track its users (see my earlier blog post), did a study about how users believe the “Private browsing” feature of their browser works:

Despite Private Browsing being one […]

2017

Reposting a post by Tantek Çelik

tantek.com

Tantek Çelik comments on the successful crowdfunding of micro.blog:

This is a huge step forward for the creation of an alternative to Twitter, in numerous ways, some obvious, many more subtle.

Reading through the […]

2017

After the Big Now

medium.com

This article by Fabien Girardin is an invitation to “imagine another version of the Internet respectful of people’s attention and time”:

In the current version of the Internet, digital artifacts connect individuals into feedback […]

2017

Homebrew Website Club Berlin: First meeting on 8 Feb 2017

It’s more important than ever to have your own place to publish on the web. Have a blog? Want a blog? Are you building your own personal bot? Come on by and join a gathering of people with likeminded interests. Bring your friends that want […]

2017

Browsing Histories

labs.rs

“Browsing Histories” is a journalistic illustration of how even the most barebone meta data trail created while using the internet gives away identity, interests, and more:

[…] the electronic communication transactional records […]

2017