Why Louis CK Hates Cell Phones
Just trust me and watch it.
Read more...Category Archives: Technology and innovation
When Too Much Housing is Bad for Our Health
Yves here. It’s intriguing that “our economic model is based too much on the housing market” is becoming a meme a mere six years after housing bubbles in most advanced economics were a major driver of the global financial crisis.
Read more...Wolf Richter: Why IBM Throws Another Billion At Linux (With NSA-Designed Backdoor)
By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Cross posted from Testosterone Pit.
IBM announced today that it would throw another billion at Linux, the open-source operating system, to run its Power System servers. The big reason? To capitalize on customers’ mistaken perception that Linux is safe from NSA snooping.
Read more...Michael Klare: DoE Forecasts No Meaningful Change in Fossil Fuel Use by 2040
Yves here. While this post focuses on a newly-released Department of Energy forecast, and forecasting is always a fraught exercise, there’s good reason to see it as realistic. It reflects the power of inertia and entrenched interests. If anything, you’d expect the DoE to present a hopeful outlook on the growth of eco-friendly power sources, given how often Obama talks about “green energy” and “green jobs,” but the authors appear to have steered clear of undue optimism.
Read more...Patrick Durusau: Groklaw Goes Dark
By Patrick Durusau. Cross posted from Another Word for It
Just in case you missed it, Groklaw has gone dark.
In Forced Exposure, Pamela Jones outlines why Groklaw cannot continue when all email is subject to constant monitoring by the government.
Read more...Ilargi: London Is Fracking, And I Live By The River
By Raúl Ilargi Meijer, editor-in-chief of The Automatic Earth, Cross posted from Automatic Earth
It’s a state of mind, a way of thinking and a belief system bordering on outright religion all in one. If it would be recognized as a religion, it would be the world’s biggest. Its followers and proponents hold that growth is a necessary element of survival, that technology is capable of solving all problems (especially those caused by mankind), and that the earth, nature, the living environment, is there for mankind to be exploited at will to achieve that growth
Read more...Gaius Publius: IRS is Using NSA Data Too. Who in Town Isn’t?
Your Google-collected, Verizon-collected data seems to very broadly available. How broadly? Way more than you thought. Read on for the grizzly details.
Read more...Michael Klare: The Third Carbon Age – Drop the Fantasy of a Coming Era of Renewable Energy
Yves here. To put none too fine a point on it, the most important steps to reduce carbon emissions would be a Marshall plan level effort to reconfigure living and resourcing arrangements so as to reduce energy demands, and to go particularly aggressively after the worst polluters (for instance, the cars you see spewing fumes, are surprisingly large contributors to total emissions from automobiles). But it’s much easier to go the Easter Island route and keep carrying on more or less as before until you hit insurmountable constraints.
Read more...Questioning the Underlying Structures of Property and Power is “Off the Table”
Yves here. The Real News Network interview below with Vijay Prashad, a professor of international studies at Trinity College, is part of a series that examines the power dynamics that undergird our economic system. Unlike most interviews, this one is more ruminative. Rather than trying to deliver some key observations to viewers, this one is more intended to help people recognize that they have blinkered views on some issues.
Read more...A Killer App for Google Glass?
Before readers start throwing brickbats at me, understand that I am no fan of the Google Glass project. But the killer app for Google Glass could be protecting citizens from authoritarian policing.
Read more...Wolf Richter: NSA Pricked The “Cloud” Bubble For US Tech Companies
Yves here. It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bunch. As soon as Glenn Greenwald started to reveal the extent of NSA snooping, Ed Harrison remarked via e-mail that one of the casualties would be cloud-based computing models. Wolf Richter catalogues the damage so far. And who would trust any of the proprietors, given how obliging virtually all Silicon Valley players have been when it comes to indulging the pet needs of the surveillance state?
Read more...Lynn Parramore: The Depressing Tale of How Greedy Financial Titans Crushed Innovation and Destroyed Our Economy
Whatever happened to innovation in America?
Read more...The Global Race for Inventors
Yves here. I wonder if the pattern described in this article, which is basically a brain drain of inventors to the US, is playing a meaningful role in the degradation of public education in the US. Why do the elites need to care about home-grown “talent” if they exploit the investments in schooling made by other countries?
Read more...Econ4 on the New Economy
Econ4, a group of heterodox economists, has released a short video and a statement on the “new economy” which they define as more sustainable and equitable forms of organizing “productive” activity and the resources that support them.
Read more...ObamaCare Rollout: Punts on Income Verification and Employer Insurance Checks, Setting Stage for Insurers to Call Mistakes “Fraud” and Rescind Policies
By lambert strether of Corrente.
Obama’s career transition from selling hope and change to selling insurance seems to be, at least so far, a wee bit rocky. Kudos to WaPo’s Sarah Kliff and Sandhya Somashekhar for breaking the story of the newest #FAIL, which required them to process 600 pages of dense HHS prose on July 5; a classic Friday document dump, with bonus points for the holiday weekend, and super double bonus sparkle pony points for following hard on the heels of another huge #FAIL, Obama’s triage of the employer reporting mandate (chirped White House apparatchick Valerie Jarrett: “We are full steam ahead for the Marketplaces [exchanges] opening on October 1.” Right onto the rocks, Val!). Kliff and Somashekhar write:
Read more...