Weekly Web Harvest for 2016-09-18

  • Welcome to the Dark Net, a Wilderness Where Invisible World Wars Are F | Vanity Fair

    , Look, we’re in the Internet business. We know we’re going to get hacked. We have to assume, always, that our network is already owned. It is important to go slowly and stay calm. We will soon know how and when to lock the door. We will have to decide later if we should do more.

    To me he said, “Also, relax. In the long run, the chance of survival always drops to zero anyway.” He did not say this to his client. It was not an insight the Company would have valued at the time. Even in the short run, as it turned out, the news would be alarming enough.

  • Anxiety Culture: 8000 years of anti-social behaviour

    I haven’t tracked down all the quotes but there’s some good looking stuff here.

  • This Is What’s Missing From Journalism Right Now | Mother Jones

    Conservatively, counting just the biggest chunks of staff time that went into it, the prison story cost roughly $350,000. The banner ads that appeared on the article brought in $5,000, give or take.

  • Nothing To Do With Arbroath: Man acquitted of remote-control arson from 250 miles away now faces deportation

    The investigator’s theory was that Mr Robinson, while in Hamilton, opened his Macbook Pro laptop, and used the internet to log-in remotely to an Acer-brand PC back at the Kerikeri home, which was connected, perhaps wirelessly, to a nearby Brother inkjet printer. Once logged in, Mr Robinson caused a print command to be sent to the printer. The investigator suggested that when the printer started pulling the sheet of paper in, it set off a Heath-Robinsonian chain of events: the paper was sellotaped to a piece of string, which was attached to a switch. When the string pulled the switch, it completed a circuit that included a 12-volt battery and a length of high-resistance wire like the ones that glow inside your toaster.

  • xkcd: Fashion Police and Grammar Police
  • The Zig Zag Process of Musical Creativity: The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” – The Creativity Guru

    At the age of 14, a dog barked at Brian Wilson’s mom. She said “Sometimes dogs pick up vibrations from people.”
    Nine years later, Wilson remembered this statement, and wrote a short chord progression for a song based on what his mom said. No lyrics were written yet.
    Combining cello and electro-theremin on the chorus was his brother Carl’s idea.
    They had the instrumentals recorded, and they liked what they heard on the tape, but there still weren’t lyrics for the song. At the time, Wilson was writing lyrics together with Tony Asher. When they first sat down, Wilson was calling the song “Good Vibes.” Asher thought “vibes” sounded cheap and trivial, and suggested “vibrations.”
    Asher wrote the first verse and chorus, including “good, good, good, good vibrations.”
    At the time, it didn’t really come together, and they put the song aside for a while.

  • Andrew Sullivan: My Distraction Sickness — and Yours

    “Distractions arrive in your brain connected to people you know…”

    good quote but most of this is hyperbolic yearning for a past that never was . .

  • Teen Sues Parents for Posting Childhood Photos on Facebook | Mental Floss

    But it led to legal trouble for one Austrian couple when their 18-year-old daughter slapped them with a lawsuit for refusing to remove hundreds of embarrassing baby photos, The Local reports.

    The teen, whose name has not been released to the public, claims the over 500 childhood pictures posted to the social networking site without her consent violate her privacy. “They knew no shame and no limit—and didn’t care whether it was a picture of me sitting on the toilet or lying naked in my cot—every stage was photographed and then made public” she told The Local. “I’m tired of not being taken seriously by my parents.”