China’s Mystery Patterns

This has absolutely nothing to do with what I should be working on but this piece in Gizmodo caught my eye: a number of weird lines and structures in the middle of the Gobi Desert in China’s western reaches. Like this one: They don’t seem to make much sense, despite some quite ingeniuous explanations by … Read more

Astroturfers Revisited

Good piece (video) by Jon Ronson about astroturfing: Esc and Ctrl: Jon Ronson investigates astroturfing – video In the second part of Jon Ronson’s series about the struggle for control of the internet, he looks at online astroturfing – when unpopular institutions post fake blogs to seem more favourable. He meets the former vice president … Read more

Korean Banks

The Washington Post report that it seems the attack on South Korea’s Nonghyup agricultural bank back in April was the work of North Korea. The evidence? South Korean investigators said they determined that 10 servers used in the bank incident were the same ones used in previous cyberattack operations against South Korea, including one in … Read more

The Big Boys’ Mea Culpas

I find it interesting that companies can get things so wrong. News Corp just sold off Myspace for a fraction of its original price today, effectively admitting it didn’t get social media. Microsoft famously came late to the table with the Internet, and then has been late to more or less every party since. It’s … Read more