I have said this before: Technology is about people. Why does this catch-phrase seem so important to me? Because, simply, it stabs so many holes in the fabric of that which we have come to accept as truth. The assumptions made constantly and persistently in our social, political, and economic environments have been left untouched [...]
Read more →Food is become increasingly scarce and expensive, and it is already unaffordable for many people. The world’s 200 wealthiest people have as much money as about 40 percent of the global population, and yet 850 million people have to go to bed hungry every night. This calamity is “one of the worst violations of human [...]
Read more →http://www.metafilter.com/70827/To-Nudge-or-Not-to-Nudge makes sense – set sensible defaults on things, but let people change them if they care. sounds like software.
Read more →Once a hash collision has been found and a demonstrably buggy test program created using the colliding inputs, how will you fix the bug? Usually, the response to a test program that demonstrates a bug in the system is to fix the bug. In this case, the underlying algorithm is the bug. What’s the error? [...]
Read more →Here is an interesting thought from the presentation by Adrian Bowyer of the RepRap project at the recent Go Open 2008 that I attended in Norway. “People can make patented things for themselves” Patentregulation prevents commercial agents without a license to sell people products covered by patents. In the future people will have in their [...]
Read more →Some of the mobile phone’s biggest boosters are those who believe that pumping international aid money into poor countries is less effective than encouraging economic growth through commerce, also called “inclusive capitalism.” A cellphone in the hands of an Indian fisherman who uses it to grow his business — which presumably gives him more resources [...]
Read more →So here’s the idea. Two wikipedias, sharing the same infrastructure and databases – in fact, the same site as now, with a special case. Wikipedia.org serves the content without ads Wikipedia.com serves it with ads You can use whichever site you prefer, but one of them raises money for Wikipedia. Thoughts?
Read more →So I think I’ve found a perfect game. I haven’t played it yet, and there are some details to be figured out, but I think it’s pretty clearly potentially a good abstraction for a certain class of mathematical and political issues, and also looks like it could be quite entertaining if you’ve got a taste [...]
Read more →It’s an injection that has a similar effect to a vasectomy, it lasts three months with limited study on 1756 men showing it can perform as an effective contraception in 95% of males. The ANZAC research institute may be on to something big here though it looks like it might not be going anywhere with [...]
Read more →“We were struck by how much food the organic farmers would produce,” Perfecto said. The researchers set about compiling data from published literature to investigate the two chief objections to organic farming: low yields and lack of organically acceptable nitrogen sources. Their findings refute those key arguments, Perfecto said, and confirm that organic farming is [...]
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