The Secret Life of Passwords - NYTimes.com
A fascinating look at how the humble password gets imbued with incredible levels of meaning.
It reminds me of something I heard Ze Frank say last year: “People fill up the cracks with intimacy.”
Link archive: December 3rd, 2014
The Spirit of Flickr and the Problem of Intent - mor10.com
This is a superbly-written, empathetic, nuanced look at the issues around Creative Commons licensing, particularly the danger of inferring a “spirit” in a legal agreement.
“Spirit” as it’s being used in this conversation is a relative term. You have the spirit of the user, the spirit of the license, the spirit of the community, the spirit of the service, and the spirit of the law. All these can align and all these can diverge and that’s OK. It is also the reason we have a legal system that sets clear parameters for how things can be interpreted: Spirit is relative, legal decisions and documents are not (at least in theory). The whole idea of a legal contract (under which we can find CC licenses) is that there is no room for interpretation. The meaning of the document is singular, unambiguous, and not up for debate. Of course this is purely theoretical, but that’s the idea anyway.
The problem arises when the spirit – or intent – of the user when applying a license differs from the actual legal interpretation of that same license.
Flickr Users Are Wrong by Tom Lee
The title is harsh, but this is a good summation of the issues involved in choosing a Creative Commons licence.
Open licensing is about giving up control so that other people can benefit. That’s all it will cost you: control. Having control feels nice. But you should ask yourself what it really gets you. And you should think about what others might gain if you were able to let go.
Think carefully and decide what you need. No one is going to make you tick that Creative Commons box. But when you do, it’s a promise.
The New Yandex.Browser. Alpha version
A concept browser from Yandex that takes an interesting approach to URLs: on the one hand, hiding them …but then putting them front and centre.
But the main focus of this concept browser is to blur the line between browser chrome and the website it’s displaying.