So just what are the Holy Algorithms? They are the automatic schemes of man, human plans to model human behavior and optimize for some potential profit, either monetary gain or behavioral control. Humans make the algorithms for use on humans. Never forget that. Computers are only the agents of mass scale. How to resist? Simply …
Category Archives: Technology
Clicktease
It’s apparent to me now: the modern web is designed to give us just enough of what we’re looking for to require us to make an action to find out more. We’re being teased into providing input into the system. Did someone post an image? Guess what: that image will be cropped with just enough …
In Praise of the Holy Algorithm
It seems that I am, that we are, irredeemably under the thumb of the Facebook algorithm as far as getting any messages out. A week ago, I was having a particularly bad night, emotionally, and I posted a short message that could have been construed as a cry for help. What I got was absolutely …
Golden Jerks
Travesty. I found the “video images” track from the Voyager Golden Disk on archive.org, officially from NASA. Was thinking about writing software to decode it to get the source images. Y’know, as an exercise. However, on closer inspection, it sounds like it has been intentionally denatured with a chorus and delay to keep it from …
Trend Resistor
I used to laugh at people who brought laptops to cafes, because cafes are where you go to read papers and socialize and play board games, right? And then I starting bringing a laptop to cafes. I used to laugh at people who carried a tablet computer with a detached keyboard to cafes, because if …