Yahoo down 13%, “surprised investors, already hurt by a 26% stock slide this year”. Unless Google also loses at least 50% (indicating industry-wide problems), this is completely irrational. Yahoo is kicking Google’s butt in every single category except organic search. Their competence across the board is beyond question. Microsoft should buy them.
So, I recently finished Dunbar’s “Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language”. Although I am not convinced about Nostratic, Dunbar gave more than enough material to convince me I was right about past/future tenses in Chinese and English. I think it is pretty obvious, and was probably common sense to people with access to Alexandria library.
I [...]
Another nail in the coffin of Doctorow’s “metacrap” arguments. I never want to see anyone citing that inanity again. Doctorow said that metadata would fail because “people are lazy”, and “people lie”. The fact is, privacy is dead, because people are too lazy to STOP their metadata from leaking, and too lazy to lie/cover their tracks. And [...]
Tantek asks how we can kill bad ideas before we end up killing people.
While it’s useful to look at ideas through the lens of biology (”memes”), epidemiology, or systems theory; this is also the biggest error.
Human “ideas” are unique in all of nature. Humans (like apes or dogs) are capable of making a choice between [...]
Pete Wright says “Goodbye Microsoft!“ Several people assumed that he was quitting a job at Microsoft; or that he was quitting his job because of Microsoft products.
But that’s not true.
In fact, you can paraphrase his letter as “I can’t stand the companies, and particularly the people, who use Microsoft software; so I am going into a [...]