What happens when you let people pay to remove ads

Disclaimer: Obviously I worked at Google for 6.5 years so take this with the appropriate grain of salt.[0] "I wish Google wo…

Two white dresses

Striking juxtaposition (intentional?) on the CNN International home page just now: One woman is the subject of the photo, and you…

T. B. Lee on journalism and the Innovator's Dilemma

T. B. Lee ( not T. Berners-Lee ) has a newish blog and it has proved excellent enough* that it exceeded my expectations (which w…

A business model for reporting

I would pay $50 a year for Seymour Hersh's reporting alone.* So, suppose I did that. Then suppose that there are twenty tho…

Matt Taibbi on "everyone else was doing it"

Taibbi's article on Goldman Sachs has been getting a lot of attention. Today, he struck back at some of his critics in a mo…

Iranian elections (random thoughts prompted by)

I don't have much of value to add to what other, better-informed people are saying about the Iranian election, but I strongly…

C. Shirky on the end of newspapers (again)

You must Read The Whole Thing , but here is a taste: Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception. In ordinary times, peo…

Centrism begets extremism, in a precise game-theoretic sense

(Excavated from recent unpublished drafts.) This is not rocket science. Suppose a couple* is getting divorced and in joint posses…