Month: June 2016

When everything else fails, amateur radio will still be there—and thriving | Ars Technica

In the days of valve radios, it was a standard rite of passage for 10 year olds to take them apart and find out how they worked. The likes of Richard Feynman, Claude Shannon, and Robert Noyce all started that way. Good luck taking the back off an iPhone, kids—but the whole path from simple radio receivers to megabit interplanetary communication is still there. Amateur radio will take you every step, bypassing barriers and making connections. There’s a reason ham radio is aboard the International Space Station.

Source: When everything else fails, amateur radio will still be there—and thriving | Ars Technica

There Is No Such Thing As Private Data – The Atlantic

Source: There Is No Such Thing As Private Data – The Atlantic

If you need credit or a place to live, companies may try to persuade you to give up even the most intimate information in your social media accounts.

social-media users of all stripes would be wise to remember that a post that’s private today may one day become fodder for a computer algorithm that will decide whether or not you deserve a loan, a house, or a job.

The Data/Human Goal Gap | Ken Arneson

Source: The Data/Human Goal Gap | Ken Arneson

Let’s call the goal you’re trying to reach “Point G”.
And let’s call the best place the data can lead you to “Point D”.

Note that Point D is near Point G, but it’s not exactly the same point.
…
The problem is this: the thing your data is measuring is not *exactly* the thing you’re trying to accomplish.

The real world isn’t two-dimensional, and the data doesn’t lead you in a straight line. But the phenomenon does, I believe, exist in the wild. And it’s becoming more and more common as computers make data-driven processes easy for organizations and industries to implement and follow.