This post turns out to be one of my longer ones. The tl;dr is that (1) a good policy is one that makes lives better, (2) the best policy is the one that makes lives better the most, (3) even the best policy can't give people everything they want, and (4) it's unrealistic to deny point 3.Greg Laden has a post criticizing Bjorn Lomborg's position on the effects of sea level … [Read more...] about Denying Scarcity Is Not an Option
HTTPS
Ever since Edward Snowden told us all about the NSA's rampant spying on Americans, I've been meaning to convert Windypundit to an encrypted site, and I think I finally did it. If all is working, you should be seeing "https:" in front of "windypundit.com" up there in the address bar.(You might not see the little lock symbol, however, depending on your browser. That's because … [Read more...] about HTTPS
Ten Years of Fuckery
Someone named Payson just left a comment on a very old blog post. It starts this way: Hello, happy 2015.I have never heard of this website but out of rage I googled “sprint is a fucking piece of shit” and this came up. I don’t blog and I rarely leave comments on anything. However, that being said, Sprint has managed to fuel a fire deep within me that has caused this … [Read more...] about Ten Years of Fuckery
Some Speculation About the Google Truth Machine
Google recently announced they are researching the use of estimations of trustworthiness of websites to help prioritize results returned from search requests. This excites people who hope that pseudoscience and crazy conspiracy theories will get less attention, but it upsets people who are worried that the results will be biased: “I worry about this issue greatly,” said … [Read more...] about Some Speculation About the Google Truth Machine
The Future of Net Neutrality?
So, I hear the FCC is going to give us net neutrality: For the stuff that matters to us most, as an online community: the order bans paid prioritization, throttling and blocking. That means that outright blocking of content, slowing of transmissions, and the creation of so-called "fast lanes" available on a pay-to-play basis are banned. Daily Kos will be delivered across the … [Read more...] about The Future of Net Neutrality?