The power of metadata

Laid out in a beautiful example -

Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere

What. A. Story.

Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations - Guardian.

I think he comes across as very sympathetic at the moment. Perhaps that's the advantage of outing yourself, you control the narrative, before people inevitably try to put the boot in.

Patronising response

Don't you just hate this kind of patronising response?  Just be good, and you won't get in trouble.  Because institutions like the police force and ministers are totally free from corruption, I don't think...

Hague: Law-abiding Britons have nothing to fear from GCHQ

Tim Yeo rejects committee coaching claim

Everything in terms of the Large Hadron Collider

Well done CERN scientists and engineers for finding evidence for a particle that is most likely the Higgs Boson.

The machine you used, the Large Hadron Collier (LHC), took a decade to build and cost around $10 billion. But it revealed a grain of undiminishable truth about the universe we all live in.

And what I love is the massive particle smasher was built for no other reason than to extend human knowledge. There were no guarantee of results, no sell on value, no returns above the bank's base interest rate, nothing but a billion dollar science experiment which let us peak into the heart of stars and see the smoke at the dawn of creation.

And now, everything should be seen through the prism of the LHC, how if we stopped avarice for avarice sake, then we could achieve so much more. The world needs more LHCs and less ECB, LTROs, and QEs.

What would you rather the money be spent on?

The UK government rescued the financial sector with a trillion pound bailout. That could have bough 100 LHC.

The man-made palm islands in the United Arab Emirates cost around $12 billion. That's another LHC. 

Goldman Sachs CUT staff bonuses in 2011 to $12.2 billion, again, another LHC.

We live in a world of such plenty. Just think what we could achieve.

Who am I to say

Maybe I've had it wrong the whole time. Maybe it's all about manufactured scarcity. Maybe I'm a huge doche bag.

Stand up

Watched my uncle do stand up comedy today. He didn't suck. Which is great. What more could a worried nephew ask for.

Recapturing the written word

Love this story on the BBC about how those online security tests are helping the world digitise old manuscripts.

Almost makes them less annoying to do now.

The internet has captured human-only skills on a grand scale.