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via Jennifer Waters, Market Watch Tucked into the U.S. Supreme Court’s agenda this fall is a little-known case that could upend your ability to resell everything from your grandmother’s antique furniture to your iPhone 4. At issue in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons is the first-sale doctrine in copyright law, which allows you to … Continue reading
via Ryan Grenoble, The Huffington Post Most people view Facebook as an ideal time-waster, a way to step back from the hustle and bustle of daily life and click around idly. Need a mental breather at work? Scroll through the News Feed. Insufferable urge to gossip? There’s a relationship rumor out there, somewhere. In one … Continue reading
via Rob Waugh, Mail Online A Russian entrepreneur who heads a hi-tech research project called ‘Avatar’ has contacted billionaires to offer them immortality. Itskov claims he will personally oversee their immortality process, in exchange for an undisclosed fee. Itskov, a media entrepreneur, claims to have hired 30 scientists to reach this goal – and aims … Continue reading
via Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post In the ‘you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff’ category, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is spending about $1.1 million to develop a way to physiologically measure how engaged students are by their teachers’ lessons. This involves “galvanic skin response” bracelets that kids would wear so their engagement levels could be measured. If this … Continue reading
via David Brooks, The New York Times As a young man, Peter Thiel competed to get into Stanford. Then he competed to get into Stanford Law School. Then he competed to become a clerk for a federal judge. Thiel won all those competitions. But then he competed to get a Supreme Court clerkship. Thiel lost … Continue reading
via Marcus Wohlsen, The Huffington Post A watchful eye has arrived on San Francisco’s bar scene, but not to keep you in check. It just wants to check you out. A new app launched this weekend that will scan the faces of patrons in 25 bars across the city to determine their ages and genders. … Continue reading
via William Pesek, Bloomberg The iPhone has become a symbol of something Steve Jobs never envisioned: Chinese sweatshops. Were the late Apple Inc. co-founder still with us, he would surely dispute that. But facts are facts, and any of us (full disclosure: this includes me) who use one of Apple’s smartphones, iPads or iPods is, … Continue reading
via Will Doig, Salon Cities as technologically precise as a Formula One race car are being built now. Do we really want to live in them? Formula One car racing is the most viewed sport in the world. On any given race day, half a billion people — one-fourteenth of the globe — are watching … Continue reading
via John Naughton, The Guardian: The Observer Earlier this year, American legal scholar Tim Wu published a sobering book: The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. In it, he surveyed the history of the great communications technologies of the 20th century – the telephone, movies, broadcast radio and TV. And in the … Continue reading
[Editress’ Note: It’s important to be well-informed. Read the full CISPA bill here.] via Donna Cassata, AP, MSNBC The Obama administration on Wednesday threatened to veto a House bill designed to defend critical U.S. industries and corporate networks from electronic attacks by foreign governments, cybercriminals and terrorist groups, arguing the measure falls short in protecting … Continue reading
Social media—from Facebook to Twitter—have made us more densely networked than ever. Yet for all this connectivity, new research suggests that we have never been lonelier (or more narcissistic)—and that this loneliness is making us mentally and physically ill. A report on what the epidemic of loneliness is doing to our souls and our society. … Continue reading
via Ross Anderson, The Atlantic Our mourning rituals are being adapted to — and evolving because of — our strangely persistent online personas. In this interview, a philosopher tries to make sense of death on the Internet. Think of how rich and deeply personal your online persona has become. Now think of what will happen … Continue reading
via Pete Cashmore, CNN As we enter the final months of 2011, the thoughts of tech watchers like me are turning to what we can expect in 2012. Voice recognition in all our devices? Touch control replacing the mouse and keyboard? The death of the wallet as mobile payments become mainstream? Maybe. But what I’m most … Continue reading
via Chris Taylor, Mashable Television is broken. I know it. You know it. Steve Jobs knew it. I have a pretty state-of-the-art 2011 Sony LED TV, complete with Hulu Plus, Netflix and YouTube apps. Yet it still usually takes me about a dozen clicks on a button-rich remote to get to what I want … Continue reading
The U.S. Postal Service appears to be the latest casualty in digital technology’s slow but steady replacement of working humans. Unless an external source of funding comes in, the post office will have to scale back its operations drastically, or simply shut down altogether. That’s 600,000 people who would be out of work, and another … Continue reading
The Brandt Standard 