Printers have always been terrible. I got away without buying a new printer since 2008 or 2010… until today. I bought an HP printer, because I’ve used HP printers for a long time, and mainly because of the existence of hplip. My goal, after all, is to have no nonsense […]
Technology
216 posts
Understanding exponential growth is a prerequisite to understanding the pandemic. I’ve had many conversations about the public health response to COVID-19 over the past year. Setting aside more extreme conspiracy thinking, I’m increasingly convinced that most of the non-conspiracy skepticism of public health measures comes down to misunderstanding exponentials. People […]
In Part 1 in this series, I explained why there are no easy answers to social media censorship. The problem is not a “Big Tech” conspiracy to silence particular voices. The problem is that too much of our public discourse is mediated by private platforms — centralized, proprietary, walled gardens. […]
There are no easy answers to speech, censorship and internet freedoms given the current state of the internet. Some solutions are better than others, but there’s no perfect answer. If someone suggests there’s a simple answer, they’re probably wrong. As Harvard internet law professor Jonathan Zittrain explained in June: The […]
When I get frustrated about people’s response to public health measures, I rant on social media. When I rant on social media, some of the conversations are painful, but… others are just fantastic. Perhaps I thrive on genuine dialogue, which forces you to try to understand another person, and to […]
Since the start of the pandemic, many people have questioned the lockdowns, the emergency measures and overall government response. Especially after the curve was flattened in Canada, even more people question whether the measures are still necessary, or whether the goalposts are shifting. This defies common sense, the critique goes. […]
Donald Trump is attacking Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This is a really bad move. He doesn’t understand it at all, and unfortunately, neither do many Republicans who’ve become vocal about this lately. This will likely make things worse for conservatives (and everyone) on the internet, not better. […]
A prayer table in a classroom is like a Chief Digital Officer at a record label — a nice way to pretend that you care when you’re really just shoving something off into a corner. Legacy organizations sometimes hire someone who gets technology, and maybe even give them a fancy […]
I spent a few hours troubleshooting a problem with Thin when I upgraded from Redmine 2.5 to Redmine 3.0 on a Debian Wheezy server. I found a solution that’s worked for me. I’m not confident enough with Ruby and this setup to make a HowTo on the Redmine wiki, but […]