MOVED!

Please update your links to Lagomorph Watson.

Python Coding for Kids (And Beginner Adults)

Invent Your Own Computer Games With Python is a Creative Commons-licensed free(!) book aimed at kids (and beginner adults) to help them learn the Python coding language. And make games, I suppose, but I think for me the games would be a means to the end of learning Python, not vice versa.

Technological Brain-Rot

Two articles: one on how some people think technology is making us less focused and a shorter one explaining why that's crap.

The problem lies with the person lacking focus, not in the technology itself. Are things like Twitter, Facebook, and email too distracting? Not really. They're all still there for after you, say, finish your current class. Time management is the issue.

(I can't mess with Facebook or anything when I'm in class. I know it's going to distract me if I try to read blogs and websites when I'm supposed to be listening. Or if I try to read a book, for that matter. Sometimes when I doodle, too.)

Google Wi-Fi Data

It's just been so long since I mentioned Google here. So here is a disturbing article about wi-fi data Google collected that lots of people would love to get their hands on. Privacy? What?

Google said it didn’t realize it was sniffing packets of data on unsecured Wi-Fi networks in dozens of countries for the last three years, until German privacy authorities questioned what data Google’s Street View cameras were collecting. Street View is part of Google Maps and Google Earth, and provides panoramic pictures of streets and their surroundings across the globe.

Jane Yolen's Foiled

WIRED ran a small review of Jane Yolen's Foiled. Where was all this good YA fiction when I was young? I keep seeing books I would've loved that I'm tempted to pick up even today.

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.org

Snaked from Wired, who in turn link to the New Yorker website - No Secrets: Julian Assange’s Mission for Total Transparency.

Assange is an international trafficker, of sorts. He and his colleagues collect documents and imagery that governments and other institutions regard as confidential and publish them on a Web site called WikiLeaks.org.

I don't know about you, but I kind of feel like a secret agent just reading about it.

TED Talk: 4Chan

The virtues (and downfalls) of anonymity on the internet. Mostly I like the Dusty story.

Digital Lock Legislation

What you should know about Canada's proposed new copryright legislation.

The foundational principle of the new bill remains that anytime a digital lock is used - whether on books, movies, music, or electronic devices - the lock trumps virtually all other rights. In other words, in the battle between two sets of property rights - those of the intellectual property rights holder and those of the consumer who has purchased the tangible or intangible property - the IP rights holder always wins. This represents market intervention for a particular business model by a government supposedly committed to the free market and it means that the existing fair dealing rights (including research, private study, news reporting, criticism, and review) and the proposed new rights (parody, satire, education, time shifting, format shifting, backup copies) all cease to function effectively so long as the rights holder places a digital lock on their content or device.

Spelling Bee Protests

Four people dressed in bee costumes protested the Scripps Spelling Bee in Washington, DC.

According to literature distributed by the group, it makes more sense for 'fruit' to be spelled as 'froot'...

While I agree literacy is important, I don't think dumbing language down will help anyone. In fact, I think it might be UNGOOD. Perhaps DOUBLEPLUSUNGOOD.