Tim Pool:

I spoke with Geoff Shively, and he said, we have got plans for a hack that's going to make this essentially the most badass drone -- "The SkyWitness," is what he calls it.

Whit Diffie and Susan Landau:

The end of the rainbow would be the ability to store all traffic, then decide later which messages were worthy of further study.

Decius:

We are exactly what they accuse us of being, and the proof is the way that we've reacted to them.

It is our failure to avoid embracing fear and sensationalism that will be our undoing. We're still our own greatest threat.

Congressman Ted Poe, Republican from Texas, on the Send Equipment for National Defense (SEND) Act:

This legislation mandates that the Secretary of Defense transfer 10% of eligible returning equipment from Iraq to state and local law enforcement agencies for border security purposes. Eligible equipment would include: humvees, night vision equipment and surveillance unmanned aerial vehicles.

Philip Hensher:

I wish there was some less feeble response to this constant, exhausting, draining surveillance we live under.

Geoff Manaugh:

It seems only a matter of time before armed police drones are a reality in the United States.

We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that this very kind of spy equipment already exists and has already been deployed. That is, the unnerving implication that we are being watched from above by undetectable robots should not let us forget that being watched from above by human pilots is just as invasive.

Decius:

Man, what a great time to be alive!

Barry Schwartz:

Are people actually liberated by all this freedom?

Living a decent life just isn't good enough anymore. Why would you settle for decent when anything is possible?

It turns out that when you give people this kind of unconstrained opportunity to reinvent themselves, they don't know what to do.

In this land of milk and honey of unimagined freedom and affluence, everybody seems to be miserable.

Louis CK:

Everything is amazing right now, and nobody's happy ...

Brian Eno:

Use the dynamics of the system to take you in the direction you wanted to go.

Tyler Cowen:

The pro-wealth cultural vision may be overly optimistic about human willingness to embrace the idea of responsibility.

The relevant question, in my view, is not about how much you have earned but about how you have earned it.

Doris Lessing:

What government, anywhere in the world, will happily envisage its subjects learning to free themselves from governmental and state rhetoric and pressures? Passionate loyalty and subjection to group pressure is what every state relies on.

No, I cannot imagine any nation -- or not for long -- teaching its citizens to become individuals able to resist group pressures.

Tim Pool:

After a while I realized, maybe the best thing to do is document this as truthfully as possible so we could have just transparency.

I am an activist for transparency. I think information wants to be free, it deserves to be free, and the only way we are going to have a functioning government for the people is if people can see and understand why decisions are made. I hope I am contributing to that.

Jose Saramago:

You're right, our problem is that we're blind.

Tim Pool:

I turn my camera on and I just talk and everyone tells me it's an amazing narration, and I kind of don't think so. I am kind of just confused by it.

Lee Siegel:

1. Not everyone has something valuable to say.
2. Few people have anything original to say.

Jonathan Franzen:

The technological development that has done lasting harm of real social significance -- the development that, despite the continuing harm it does, you risk ridicule if you publicly complain about today -- is the cell phone.

Bruce Schneier:

Will not wearing a life recorder be used as evidence that someone is up to no good?

Philip Hensher:

I wish there was some less feeble response to this constant, exhausting, draining surveillance we live under.

Douglas Haddow:

We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us.

Interview with Tim Pool of 'The Other 99'

This is pretty amazing.

xkcd: Money

Paul Graham:

I'm not saying we should stop, but I think we should at least examine which lies we tell and why.

Bunk:

The bigger the lie, the more they believe.

From the Wikipedia summary:

Bunk makes this remark after perpetrating an elaborate hoax to trick a young suspect into confessing to a crime. Season 5 of the Wire will revolve around a series of lies, both public and private.

Paul Owen:

The big lie is a unifying theory ... We're led to a world in which a respected public servant has created an enormous lie, manufactured entirely bogus, disparate evidence, produced that evidence to an unquestioning media and prosecuted that lie at huge cost.

The big lie doesn't, of course, become a populist reality ... by repetition. To succeed it must be embraced and amplified by mainstream media.

Mark Bowden:

Journalism, done right, is enormously powerful precisely because it does not seek power. It seeks truth.

"Leonard Nimoy":

It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies. And in the end, isn't that the real truth?

The answer ... is No.

The Bigger The Lie, The More They Believe

A father-son exchange:

Where did it come from?
I don't know.
We're not going to kill it, are we Papa?
No. We're not going to kill it.

Mark Twain:

When an entirely new and untried political project is sprung upon the people, they are startled, anxious, timid, and for a time they are mute, reserved, noncommittal. The great majority of them are not studying the new doctrine and making up their minds about it, they are waiting to see which is going to be the popular side.

Noteworthy:

Like-minded people must form groups and work together to find the most effective way to express their sentiments.

Vint Cerf:

The Internet is for everyone -- but it won't be if Governments restrict access to it ...

EFF:

Any service that hosts user generated content is going to be under enormous pressure to actively monitor and filter that content. That's a huge burden, and worse for services that are just getting started -- the YouTubes of tomorrow that are generating jobs today. And no matter what they do, we're going to see a flurry of notices anyway -- as we've learned from the DMCA takedown process, content owners are more than happy to send bogus complaints. What happened to Wikileaks via voluntary censorship will now be systematized and streamlined -- as long as someone, somewhere, thinks they've got an IP right that's being harmed.

In essence, Hollywood is tired of those pesky laws that help protect innovation, economic growth, and creativity rather than outmoded business models. So they are trying to rewrite the rules, regulate the Internet, and damn the consequences for the rest of us.

This bill cannot be fixed; it must be killed. The bill's sponsors (and their corporate backers) want to push this thing through quickly, before ordinary citizens get wind of the harm it is going to cause. If you don't want to let big media control the future of innovation and online expression, act now, and urge everyone you know to do the same.

Mark Kingwell:

What is the only thing worse than un-civil discourse? No discourse at all.

Kill The Bill

Steve Jobs:

It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore.

John Siracusa will not be getting a Christmas card from Walter Isaacson.

John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Steve Jobs. Topics include Isaacson's failings as an author and biographer, the technical cluelessness on display in the book, and Steve Jobs, Enemy of Progress.

Steve Jobs:

To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it's all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don't take the time to do that.

Joe Queenan:

I have lately taken to hiding in subterranean caverns, wearing clever disguises while concealed in tenebrous alcoves and feigning rare tropical illnesses to avoid being saddled with any new reading material.

I do not avoid books ... merely because I believe that life is too short. Even if life were not too short, it would still be too short to read anything by Dan Aykroyd.

Lisa Moore:

There are only so many movies, so many trips, so many new friends, so many family barbecues with the sun going down over the long grass.

It has always been this way.

Finite.

But at forty-five you realize it.

Mason, Waters, Wright, and Gilmour:

And you run and run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or a half page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

5by5 | Hypercritical #42: The Wrong Guy

The latest from Alex Yde, with music by RJD2.

Paul Corkery, aka EZ:

You need an open mind, and away you go.

Wesley Morris:

When a body plummets down a stairwell or is hurled against a slot machine, it does so with conviction.

Have you seen Man on Wire?

The Firefly

Michael Koenig:

Time lapse sequences of photographs taken by Ron Garan and the crew of expedition 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station from August to October, 2011, who to my knowledge shot these pictures at an altitude of around 350 km with a high ISO HD Camera developed by NHK Japan, nicknamed the SS-HDTV camera. All credit goes to them.

Micah Zenko:

Is this the world we want to live in? Because we're creating it.

Michiru Hoshino:

Oh! I feel it. I feel the cosmos!

Brian Greene:

When it comes to the universe, what you see is not what you get.

Neal Stephenson:

In a world where decision-makers are so close to being omniscient, it's easy to see risk as a quaint artifact of a primitive and dangerous past. Today's belief in ineluctable certainty is the true innovation-killer of our age.

Freeman Dyson:

The truths of science are so profoundly concealed that the only thing we can really be sure of is that much of what we expect to happen won't come to pass.

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS

Chinese and Russian intelligence services and corporate hackers are using cyber attacks to steal hi-tech American research and development data, a US government report has said.

US officials have complained quietly for years about cyber attacks originating from China but this report offers the first such detailed public accusations from US officials.

The record came out to little to no fanfare earlier this summer on Drag City, and an awesome clip of "Fist Fight" can be heard on the label's site. The band also released an interview it supposedly did with Stabber fanzine back in 1984 that's well worth a read, especially for anyone with an interest in Black Flag, Minor Threat, or being 16 and mad.

In recent weeks, news stories quietly announced that major labels are making plans to discontinue the recording and sales of music CDs in late 2012. Yet, as MP3s have taken over the market as the prevailing way to record and purchase music, there are still many - millions even - who purchase and listen to CDs on a daily basis.

Vice president Dmitri Alperovitch, a highly regarded threat researcher whose work at the company helped give it a reputation for conducting cutting-edge research on hacking, quietly left last month, without the company issuing any announcement.

Alperovitch led a research team that produced several high-profile studies on suspected Chinese-government backed hackers during his tenure at McAfee.

Verizon quietly announced a change to its privacy policy last week that will allow the communications giant to collect information about its telephone customers' whereabouts and Internet surfing for use in business and marketing reports. It promises that this information will only be shared anonymously.

About a month ago, Microsoft quietly announced that it would stop making Zunes.

Late last week, as the world was getting ready for its Fall weekend, Google quietly announced it was shutting down Google Code Search, Jaiku, the University Research Program for Google Search, Google Labs, iGoogle's social features and, ... [ Read More (1.1k in body) ]