Bad news: there's no solution to false information online
Ben Werdmuller, 2018/08/09
"It's clearly impossible for the web as a platform to objectively report that a stated fact is true or false," writes Ben Werdmuller. "This would require a central authority of truth - let's call it MiniTrue for short." And there's no easy way to do this in a distributed fashion. More...

How Does Mastodon Work?
Kev Quirk, 2018/08/06
I've been spending a lot more time on Mastodon recently than I have on Twitter (still not a lot, but it's really nice to have a community of nice people I can talk to, especially on a lazy Sunday afternoon). Anyhow, Mastodon is just different enough from Twitter that it needs a bit of explaining. More...

Patenting Air or Protecting Property?
While some people cling to the idea that progress and innovation can be measured in erms of the numbers of patents granted, it is becoming clear that the rapid proliferation of the technology monopolies are having the opposite result. More...

Peer2Peer Networking in Higher Education: New Challenges in a VI
I don't know what 'VI' stands for - 'virtual infosystem'? - and the author never bothers to define it. A sloppy beginning for an article that, though it predicts the inevitable onslaught of Peer2Peer networking throughout academic, is not overly enthusiastic about the prospect. More...

Revealed: How Drug Firms 'Hoodwink' Medical Journals
We hear a lot about how the (expensive) system of peer review and professional editing promotes high quality and impartial academic writing. This claim has always been dubious, and today it appears even more so as this story reports on the use of ghost writers in the pay of drug companies. More...

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow...
Saturday night it was chilly with a brisk wind. As midnight passed, we lashed a tarp over the top of the flat roof in the back, the roof that had been leaking all summer. By three in the morning the first flakes were beginning to fall on my snowless front lawn. More...