... it sure does help to follow some actual hackers. I follow Anonymous @YourAnonNews — these folks suspected the hack of the AP twitter feed within seconds, before it was even confirmed as a hack by AP. So while the stock market was going into its temporary panic-collapse, I already knew the true story. How many brokers and hedgies do you imagine follow Anonymous?

There is, you see, no such thing as “computer knowledge” or “computer information” or “computer data.” Within a few years, everyone will understand that. The essential characteristics of information are that it is true or it is false, it is significant or it is trivial, it is relevant or it is irrelevant...Computers are going to have an impact on my life that is similar to the impact that the coming of the automobile age must have had on the professional traveler or adventurer. The car made it easier to get from place to place; the computer will make it easier to deal with information. But knowing how to drive an automobile does not make you an adventurer, and knowing how to run a computer does not make you an analytical student of the game.

DNA is one of those phenomena of Nature that can be experienced (and therefore conceived) both materially and ideationally. That is, we can see it as “stuff” — physical molecules composed of nucleotides — or as information, data, cosmic thought. In fact, it appears essential to equally maintain both perspectives on DNA; just as physicists need to work with the phenomenon of light as both photon particles and wave-forms. Even casual observers like myself are aware that the DNA of all life-forms that we know about is defined as much by its peculiar shape as by its chemical composition. That is, a relative abstraction such as shape (the famous double-helix) is as definitive to the DNA of an organism as a planet’s orbit — its relation to other spatial bodies in its movement through the space-time continuum — is to its existence within a galaxy. Nature abhors entropy.

My personal feeling is that people like the late Aaron Swartz are those who push civilization out of its potholes of stagnation and complacency and inner death. They press us forward, outward; they can usually see a horizon of change even amid a society’s deepest night. We who work or have worked in the fields of compassion and psychological support owe them our presence and our commitment. I am ready to sign up.

Believe it or not, a lot of the innovation in stuff like Flash video, javascript, moving GIF images, general image quality and multimedia page design has been driven by porn. The best porn sites — the ones that succeed with their audiences and with their, um, bottom lines — usually reside at the leading edges of online tech.

The longer a man's fourth or ring finger is compared to his index finger, the more likely he is to be judged attractive by women, according to a new study.

An Australian publisher has had to pulp and reprint a cook-book after one recipe listed "salt and freshly ground black people" instead of black pepper.