The best answer to the question “who will blame?” What I can think of is: the complexity of the web. The web has been around for a while, many stakeholders got involved, the web is open and forgiving, and some parts of it just… happened. Wanting to punish the site for its complexity is like … Read more
In most companies when something goes wrong, they call their IT department. But perhaps companies would instead need computer security directors, specifically tasked with protecting their goods. “If your company is based on digital intellectual property, then you’d better have someone in charge of protecting that,” said Echemendia, because your company might disappear the next … Read more
Hello, Backchannel-ismos. Good Of the season! It’s hard to believe that our tech hub on Medium is completing its first calendar year. I’m really proud of what our team has created. Special thanks to the editors Sandra Upson and Evan Hansen. When I took this job, everyone I knew in California thought it was a … Read more
Drivers from opposite sides of the track compete to see who is less evil: a taxi or a ride-hailing company? The seething anger that a taxi has at Uber and its cousin Lyft has been felt around the world. In Paris, taxi drivers burned cars they saw as Uber during protests. Taxi drivers blocked Uber’s … Read more
WIRED is where tomorrow comes to fruition. It is the essential source of information and ideas for an ever-changing world. The WIRED conversation sheds light on how technology is changing every aspect of our lives – from culture to business, to science to design. The breakthroughs and innovations we discover lead to new ways of … Read more
Chat in the car Hello, Backchannelers. And happy new year! You’ll notice, I hope we’ve kept our promise by stepping away from CES to start the new year. And guess? Nothing happened! Other tech publications sent squadrons of fools to Las Vegas and delivered… little tidbits. We wrote about What is life as if you … Read more
Moskowitz considers the system more or less fair, especially considering Disney’s cold capitalist nature. For Moskowitz, the Disney system that rewards the money first. (The company has been quite tight-lipped about its secret sauce; my pleas to Disney to tell me about the science that regulates the chain has come down.) After interrupting my call … Read more
Last summer, Saadeh and Rapp face the moment of truth. Six months after the procedure, the patient cautiously leaned on his leg after surgery, placing all his weight on it for the first time. The limbs are strongly organized. That is an encouraging sign. Over the next few months, she had to be on crutches, … Read more
It appears to be in contrast to this scene I observed at Legoland in Carlsbad, California, last month. When I go for a walk, and shoot photo parents take picturesI couldn’t help but think that Susan Sontag would love this. In her 1977 collection of essays, About photography, Sontag writes, cameras are “weapons of prey”, … Read more
What about Ramanujan’s weird 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +… = –1/12? That is also related to the Riemann zeta function. For positive integers, ζ (s) is defined as the sum And with those values, there is a nice function – called Zeta[s] inside Wolfram language – can be achieved by continuing to … Read more
