Enjoyment of Life Increases by Deleting Facebook
It’s well known that Facebook is bad for your mental health, and let’s be honest it’s likely bad for humanity at large. The engineers at Facebook purposefully create algorithms to…
technology
A Website Powered by the Sun
The world wide web consumes a lot of energy to keep running as it is. The energy sources we use to power the net can make a big difference in…
On Being a “Boomer”
Generations When I was growing up in the 1950s and onward there was not all this talk about generations that seems to have become a fascination of the last twenty…
Dead Laptops are Fantastic Sources for new Projects
E-Waste continues to be a growing problem in our waste streams. This is unfortunate since it doesn’t need to be this way as people can use computers for longer, or,…
A Map to find Organizations Fighting Climate Change
Climatescape is a new web-based database to help you find organizations around that world that are trying to save the planet from environmental destruction. It can be hard to find…
Canada to Update Digital Privacy Laws, Hold Companies Accountable for Breaches
Last year Canadians witnessed too many data breaches of their data and the federal government is reacting. Large Canadian corporations didn’t do enough to protect their databases against attackers and…
The Greatest MIstake Humanity Ever Made
There are those who argue that the greatest mistake we humans ever made was agriculture. And they have a point. For 200,000 years we lived a hunter-gatherer way of life,…
Tips for Remaining Anonymous in the Surveillance Age
Surveillance capitalism benefits companies who have large datasets about what people do and where they are – without the consent of those being monitored. The pervasive modern surveillance which is…
Age of Oblivion: Another End of Decade Rant
Of course calendars are a construct and don’t mean anything, but the end of the year and, even more so, the end of the decade are useful times to take…
Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Bernie Sanders and Rashida Tlaib discuss Donald Trump’s holiday menu of serving the rich and feasting on the poor, while Paul Krugman…
The Greatest Propaganda Machine in History
Sacha Baron Cohen (aka Ali G. and Borat, among others) won an award from the Anti-Defamation League. Here’s his 25 minute acceptance speech. It’s in writing, abridged a bit, below…
Wikipedia Founder’s New Social Project Starts Strong
If you’re like everyone else then you still have a Facebook profile that you barely check, yet still need. Yes it’s handy to be in touch with people using one…
Hactivist Offers 100k to Hack Evil Corporations
The infamous (and very talented) hacker Phineas Fisher has offered $100,000 to people who hack into oil companies, banks, and other companies. There’s a catch: the hacks better be used…
Little Robot Friends: Kids Should have Fun with Code
Little Robot Friends is a Toronto-based startup that wants kids to not only be comfortable with code, they want kids to have fun playing with it too. The company runs…
Autonomous Objects
The sharing economy should be about sharing more than profits. At least that’s what the thinkers behind the sharing economy called for in the early days of the term; however…
The state, not the private sector, invented the modern economy
I read an article in The Economist a while ago that insisted the state should constrain itself to providing basic services and otherwise stay out of the economy. That is,…
Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Ernest Canning writes about the importance of treating corporatism as a specific and extreme position, rather than allowing it to define the political…
Try These Ethical Alternatives to Popular Apps
Large tech companies find ways to make money off of your data without you knowing about it, they might even be sharing personal information about you with governments or advertisers.…
Did the Chinese learn their trade antics from the U.S.?
The China/U.S. trade war heats up. The rest of us get dragged along willy-nilly. Nonetheless, there is a lot of sympathy for the American case. The Chinese have hardly walked…
Noteworthy Companies from Collision Conference
21 May 2019; Chelsea F. Briganti, left, CEO, LOLIWARE, Dianna Cohen, centre,rnCEO, Plastic Pollution Coalition, and Catherine Abreu, Executive Director, Climate Action Network Canada, on planet : tech Stage during…