Please read and rerecommend. I want this to get as much coverage on the site as possible, and I want feedback.

Currently the privacy policy says that your reputation tables are private. This reflects the fact that I think what you read ought to be your own business.

However, what you recommend is not exactly the same as what you read, and this is reflected in the reputation data. When you recommend something you are telling the site that you like it. Telling the site implies that you don't mind the site knowing. In fact, you want the site to know. If I do a little digging I can see who you got an article from, directly. This is a bit of an oversite. Something that can be "matured" out of the code. Thats one direction to go in from here. Keep the reputation data as private as possible.

However, if I monitor the site, and I see a certain person recommend an article, and then you rerecommend it, I'll know where you got it from. I do this often enough, in an automated fashion, for long enough, and I'll get a pretty good understanding of who you are reading. The site can't protect you from this. By recommending articles you are making them public. By making them public, you are giving up some of your privacy.

The only way to truely protect the fact that you are reading someone's recommendations is to never recommend their recommendations. They will still show up in the agent, but this information, I think, is private and ought to stay that way.

However, and as I've hopefully illustrated, the recommendations are public in a very real way. What I want to ask the site is if the recommendation DATA ought to be public too.

The reason I want to ask you this is because Rattle has assembled another visualization. This visualization is interactive. You can see a graph of the people who are highly connected to you, click on their names, and see a graph of the people who are highly connected to them, and so on.

Right now this data is amusing but not all that rich. There are about 15 people who regularily post to the site, and they hold all the reputation capital. Everyone's graphs look pretty similar, because we are all really recommending content from the same 15 people, even those of us who don't often recommend content and who aren't often read.

This is going to change.

As this site scales, clusters are going to form. I think the one that currently exists will always exist, but there will be others. People will begin to have different perspectives on the data, based on their interests. Thats what this site is designed to do.

And as those different communities of interest begin to form, the maps of the reputation data rattle is developing will become richer, and you will be able to surf through MemeStreams via the reputation system, hopping from person to person in search of interesting ideas.

I think this is a very compelling feature set, and I want to enable it. But, I've promised to keep your reputation data private. All of it. This promise may not have been very well thought out, but I did make it. So I can only break it with your permission, and that is what I am asking for.

I want to publish your recommendation related reputation data. Your clickthrough related reputation data will stay private. What is published is the number of times you have rerecommended articles from another person on the site, in the form of a graph.

Its similar to the graph on the "Visualizing Memestreams" page, but it is labelled, and interactive.

An important privacy question

Another short story by Cory Doctorow. Enjoy.

Liberation spectrum

] Brilliantly, seditiously remixed State of the Union
] address video.

This is really well done...

Deconstructing Bush...

Just when you thought that you might be safe from stalkers and identity thieves, here comes a service with a free 3 day trial where someone can plug in your address and learn what you paid for it, how much your mortgage is, etc. Yes, this info has been around for ages, so it's not really anything new, but the fact that it doesn't even cost money to do is a little more upsetting.

Every Public Record on your Home

"Mitchell strives for two goals in her writing: accurate science and worthy female role models. "I came from a science background, and I felt compelled to get the physics right, damn it," she said. Scientists deplore the inaccuracies that turn up in many sci-fi novels.
"I wanted to see more intelligent female role models," Mitchell added. Better portrayals will please men, too, she said, since "guys like strong female protagonists."
The panelists expressed strong views about the relations between the sexes within the field of science.
Mitchell, 32, found that her path as a scientist did not make her unattractive to men. In fact, she said, being the only woman in a physics class gave her favorable dating odds.
But Dazzo, who went to school in an earlier era, was tougher on her male classmates: "It was them and their slide rule, and I didn't want to know what they were doing with their slide rule," she said.
But when Dazzo fell in with other science-fiction fans, she found intelligent men she could talk to who were not put off by her science background. "Being one of the guys wasn't bad, when the guys weren't stupid. They weren't the best-looking guys, but brains count." "

Sci-Fi Women Want Brains, Brawn

This page is a pretty cool display of the current time (according to your browser) with every digit drawn by hand. Then erased by hand. Then the next digit is drawn by hand. Oh, just look at it.

The World's Most Labor Intensive Clock

Programmers who hack their own bodies don't need exercise and never get sick: A new short story from one of science fiction's bright young stars.

0wnz0red