Hi, I’m Phil Nelson, a writer, developer, and audio-visual maker of stuff. I have been making stuff online for over 25 years. I run RetroStrange and Set Side B. Good to see you.
Blog Archives
The French offices of Elon Musk’s X have been raided by the Paris prosecutor’s cyber-crime unit, as part of an investigation into suspected offences including unlawful data extraction and complicity in the possession of child pornography.
No additional comment necessary, but… why is X still available on the App Store? Apple is deliberately allowing a CSAM app to be downloaded. Their credibility is shot.
[Cheeky as hell:][link]
>Twitter Sort is a sorting algorithm that takes advantage of the Twitter API. You pass the script the numbers you would like sorted and it will tweet a request asking for somebody to sort them. When someone replies with a sorted version of the numbers, it will print them to the console and return.
[link]: https://github.com/ExPHAT/twitter-sort “ExPHAT/twitter-sort”
[Peter Organisciak:][link]
>The medium of Twitter bot offers us the ability to shine a spotlight on the entries as individual entities; “hence, conspicuous public notice“. While it is certainly possible to look up all the words, perhaps dig through my Github account to find them, there is a different dynamic of attention with a tweet. Having @OldSlang drop another tweet in your timeline from time to time is not simply a slow-burn form of reading, but a different experience or appreciation.
I’m all over this.
[link]: http://www.porganized.com/blog/digital-humanities/old-slang-appreciating-websters-with-bots “peter organisciak » Blog Archive » Old Slang: Appreciating Webster’s with Bots”
[Twitov is a generative text bot that takes your Twitter history file and uses it to make new Tweets based on your own personality.][link] It’s free, all you need is your Twitter history file.
[link]: http://twitov.extrafuture.com/ “Twitov”
Twitov is an Extra Future 6-hour project that ballooned into a week-long one. Whoops. Previous ExFu 6-hour Projects include [Kove][kove] (a community-editable Choose Your Own Adventure Game), [Liblr][liblr] (Something like Mad Libs for Twitter), and [Kreskin][kreskin] (An app that generates album covers for fictional bands based on real Flickr images, Wikipedia, and famous quotes).
[kove]: http://kove.extrafuture.com “Kove”
[liblr]: http://liblr.com “Liblr”
[kreskin]: http://kreskin.extrafuture.com “Kreskin”
[Embedded rich content on the web and official Twitter apps.][link]
>You’ve probably expanded Tweets before to play videos from YouTube or see photos from Instagram. Now, a diverse and growing group of new partners like the The Wall Street Journal, Breaking News, and TIME also deliver rich content inside Tweets containing a link to those websites.
Twitter is fast becoming an exercise on how to make money without being scumbags. Take note, Facebook.
[link]: http://blog.twitter.com/2012/06/experience-more-with-expanded-tweets.html “Twitter Blog: Experience more with expanded Tweets”
[Another big privacy / security win for Twitter][link]. They’re using a new feature in Firefox called, appropriately, “[Do Not Track][dnt]”:
>Do Not Track is a step toward putting you in control of the way your information is collected and used online. Do Not Track is a feature in Firefox that allows you to let a website know you would like to opt-out of third-party tracking for purposes including behavioral advertising. It does this by transmitting a Do Not Track HTTP header every time your data is requested from the Web.
Can anyone even imagine Facebook doing this? I hope this finds its way into WebKit. [“Do Not Track” is also available as an option in Safari 5.2, which is available to developers right now.][safari] (thanks, [Jesper][jesp])
[link]: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/twitter-implements-do-not-track-privacy-option/ “Twitter Implements Do Not Track Privacy Option – NYTimes.com”
[dnt]: http://dnt.mozilla.org/ “Do Not Track”
[safari]: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/03/01/inside_os_x_108_mountain_lion_safari_52_adds_privacy_settings_website_alerts.html “Safari 5.2 adds privacy settings, website alerts”
[jesp]: http://stmts.net/ “STMNTS”
[Good news on this Tuesday morning:][link]
>The IPA is a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers. It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes. We will not use the patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What’s more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended.
[Software patents are a menace][marco], but it’s understandable for companies to hoard them when the cost for *not* doing so could take down their entire business. This sounds like a pretty reasonable solution. For now.
[link]: http://blog.twitter.com/2012/04/introducing-innovators-patent-agreement.html “Twitter Blog: Introducing the Innovator's Patent Agreement”
[marco]: http://www.marco.org/2011/08/11/patents-cant-be-fixed “Marco: Software Patents Can’t Be Fixed”
[Markov-generated random tweets from your own Twitter history][link]. Surprised/ashamed I didn’t build this.
[link]: http://yes.thatcan.be/my/next/tweet/ “That can be my next tweet”
