Victor Loux — bookmarks

On Tuesday, 153 of the most prominent journalists, authors, and writers, including J. K. Rowling, Malcolm Gladwell, and David Brooks, published an open call for civility in Harper’s Magazine. They write, in the pages of a prominent magazine that’s infamous for being

The Trump Administration Is Attacking Critical Internet Privacy Tools

vice.com/en_us/article/v7gz4d/the-trump-administration-is-attacking-critical-internet-privacy-tools

The Frink is Good, the Unit is Evil • Hillel Wayne

hillelwayne.com/post/frink/

One day Alan Eliasen read a fart joke and got so mad he invented a programming language. 20 years later Frink is one of the best special purpose languages for dealing with units. “But why do we need a language just for dealing with units?” Glad you asked! Intro to Units A unit is the physical property a number represents, like distance or time. We almost always are talking about SI units, or Système international.

Why intellectuals are scared of ‘cancel culture’ - The Verge

theverge.com/21320338/letter-harpers-writers-free-speech-canceled-social-media-illiberalism

Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media | The New Yorker

newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/slate-star-codex-and-silicon-valleys-war-against-the-media

So you want to reform democracy. Hello. You probably just wrote me an… | by Joshua Tauberer | Civic Tech Thoughts from JoshData | Medium

medium.com/civic-tech-thoughts-from-joshdata/so-you-want-to-reform-democracy-7f3b1ef10597

Opinion | I’ve Seen a Future Without Cars, and It’s Amazing - The New York Times

nytimes.com/2020/07/09/opinion/ban-cars-manhattan-cities.html

Against Testing | Hacker News

news.ycombinator.com/item

Writing tests (or deleting them, refactoring them, etc.) should always involve a cost/benefit calculation, even if it's a rough mental estimate that's not written down. In particular, that requires answering "How much effort will this test take me to write/debug?", "How much extra confidence will having this test give me?", "What level of confidence do I feel comfortable with?" and "Could I achieve higher confidence spending this effort on something else?".

The PlayStation's inner sanctum：Nikkei

vdata.nikkei.com/en/newsgraphics/sony-playstation/

Sony's top earner, the PS4. How are these popular game consoles made? We were given a tour of the production site that most Sony employees are not even allowed to enter.