Internet

"Kiwi Farms bills itself as a "community dedicated to discussing eccentric people," though researchers who study extremist communities say it's notorious for degrading and harassing its targets – often those they perceive as deviant and many of whom struggle with existing mental health issues."

"Named for their ability to be milked for laughs, lolcows are Kiwi Farms’ raison d’etre and site owner Joshua Moon has devoted the majority of the last 10 years to cataloging the names, faces, and online activity of the people he deems worthy of public ridicule."

"To the people of Kiwi Farms, this is a videogame. That the people on the other side of the screen are real makes no difference. They delight in the kill counter going up just like an FPS [first person shooter video game] player would. Lacking in any empathy, they have no regard for the damage they inflict on others."

"The brief history of the internet is dominated by wishful thinking about turning internet traffic into revenue; companies that have managed to do it are vastly outnumbered by those who have learned the cruel new information era twist on ‘if you build it, they will come.’ The modern form of that now runs: ‘if you build it, they may well come, but only as long as it’s free.’"

"Professionals need direct access to industry knowledge, data and insights from expert sources, and Reuters is pleased to offer our trusted, impartial and accurate news coverage through a premium offering"

"On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other."

"The internet is the most effective means of giving stuff away for free that humanity has ever devised. Actually making money from it is not just hard, it may be fundamentally opposed to the character and momentum of the net. And yet this is where the newspaper business now is."

"Wikipedia will be small, disreputable, and unimportant compared to [Citizendium] in a few more years. Uh, ;-)"

"Citizendium is devoted to keeping its content "family-friendly." In addition to policies on article inclusion, neutrality, and others, Citizendium has a policy concerning obscenity and violence. Citizendium is meant for readers of all ages, and so should have as little sexually objectionable or gratuitously violent material as possible."

"Probably, we will not have graphic depictions of the sex act or photographs of human sex organs; we will have few articles about pornography; we will not catalog every sex position and every fetish; we will not have gratuitous, and shocking pictures of gore (e.g., crime scene photos); and so forth. That said, we will have articles about sex, sex organs, sadomasochism, famous murders, war atrocities, etc., and some other topics that you probably would not want to explain to your five-year-old in detail."

"New participants to Wikipedia know that their contributions will have a significant audience; becoming a Wikipedia editor is trivial and instantaneous; since it lacks this immediate quality, Citizendium failed to attract the crowd."

"As you know, Citizendium stopped being "my" project a long time ago. But until this morning, I still owned the domain name."

"The world needs a more credible free encyclopedia."

"The Citizendium is a small, supportive community of collaborators who work on articles which could not be developed in Wikipedia, that are different from what Wikipedia now offers, though not necessarily either better or worse. Please understand that we love Wikipedia; most of us consult it several times per day. But we also understand its limitations, and that's why we support The Citizendium also, not as a competitor but as supplement. We acknowledge and honor Wikipedia's successes in seeking to be a complete compendium of everything; it would be futile to duplicate that effort. We also believe that the philosophy of "less is more" sometimes applies, where an important aspect of a topic can be emphasized without trying to include everything known about a given topic in a single article."

"The citizens' compendium of everything"

"Citizendium is a wiki project aiming to creating objective encyclopedic articles about virtually any subject, of a type which could not be written in Wikipedia. Our contributors use their verified real names, in a congenial and supportive online community. We welcome experts as well as the general public who would like to share their knowledge. Topics range from the universal to the highly local, including parks and school sports teams."

"Citizendium is based on the failings and unreliability of Wikipedia."

"The importance of a Web page is an inherently subjective matter, which depends on the readers interests, knowledge and attitudes. But there is still much that can be said objectively about the relative importance of Web pages. This paper describes PageRank, a method for objectively and mechanically rating, effectively measuring the human interest and attention devoted to them. We compare PageRank to an idealized random Web surfer. We show how to efficiently compute PageRank for large numbers of pages. And we show how to apply PageRank to search and to user navigation."

"A major reason Google’s search engine is so successful is its PageRank algorithm, which assigns a pecking order to Web pages based on the pages that point to them. A page is important, according to Google, if other important pages link to it. But the Internet is not the only web around. In ecology, for instance, there are food webs — the often complex networks of who eats whom. Inspired by PageRank, Stefano Allesina of the University of Chicago and Mercedes Pascual of the University of Michigan have devised an algorithm of their own for the relationships in a food web. As described in the online open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology, the algorithm uses the links between species in a food web to determine the relative importance of species in a food web, which will have the most impact if they become extinct. ... One key to PageRank’s success is that its developers introduced a small probability that a Web user would jump from one page to any other. This in effect makes the Web circular, and makes the algorithm solvable. But in food webs, Dr. Allesina said, “you can’t go from the grass to the lion — the grass has to go through the gazelle first.""

"PageRank (the name is a trademark of Google) is a method of measuring the popularity or importance of web pages. PageRank is a mathematical algorithm, or systematic procedure, at the heart of Google's search software."

"One of the major breakthroughs with Google’s search engine was a formula called PageRank, named after Larry Page, one of Google’s founders and now the chief executive of its parent company, Alphabet. PageRank works on the basic premise that a page’s value can be determined by how many sites link to it. In the early days of web search, this was a novel concept, and it helped to propel Google past competitors like Yahoo and AltaVista. The search engine has gotten more sophisticated over the years. (It was founded 20 years ago on Tuesday.) In addition to PageRank, the company has also said that the software looks at how often and where the keywords being searched for show up on a specific page, how recently the page was created (a sign of the freshness of the information) and the location of the person making the search."

"PageRank is a well-known algorithm for measuring centrality in networks. It was originally proposed by Google for ranking pages in the World Wide Web. One of the intriguing empirical properties of PageRank is the so-called ‘power-law hypothesis’: in a scale-free network, the PageRank scores follow a power law with the same exponent as the (in-)degrees. To date, this hypothesis has been confirmed empirically and in several specific random graphs models."

"Recently we have seen a spate of provocative and troll mods being uploaded based around current issues in the United States. As we get closer to the US election in November we expect this trend to increase as it did this time 4 years ago. Considering the low quality of the mods being uploaded, the polarising views they express and the fact that a small but vocal contingent of our users are seemingly not intelligent or grown up enough to be able to debate the issues without resorting to name calling and baseless accusations without proof (indicative of the wider issues plaguing our world at this time) we've decided to wipe our hands clean of this mess and invoke an outright ban on mods relating to sociopolitical issues in the United States. We have neither the time, the care or the wish to moderate such things."

"Most of these mods are being uploaded by cowards with deliberately to try and cause a stir. [...] Your engagement will only fuel the idiots further."

"To be blunt, we do not care how this looks nor do we care if you think the mods we do or don't moderate reflect on us, our political beliefs or what we do and don't want on our site. Say and do what you want on other sites or services, we care nothing for it here. Have a great day."

"Sixteen alleged members of Anonymous were arrested for their role in the PayPal DDoS, and could face more than 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. They were charged with conspiracy and “intentional damage to a protected computer” under the CFAA. The charge of intentional damage to a protected computer carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. These cases are being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys in the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices for the Northern District of California, Middle District of Florida, and the District of New Jersey. The Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section also has provided assistance. . The FBI thanks the multiple international, federal, and domestic law enforcement agencies who continue to support these operations."

"Whoever...5.(A)knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer; (B)intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, recklessly causes damage; or(C)intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage and loss."

"The internet is not divorced from other areas of life. It’s a place where every one of us spends a lot of work and leisure time. It is a public space for everyone."

"What happens on social media doesn’t stay on social media. Online violence is real world violence."

"Cybercrime affects each and every one of us. Every aspect of our lives is vulnerable to the criminal abuse of our networked world - not just by hackers and criminals, but by governments and foreign enemies."

"Social media amplifies the volume and intensity of attacks on journalists, not least when platforms become vehicles for state-sponsored attacks. Large platforms have a responsibility to help curb harassment globally, but companies and governments who aim to get to grips with online hate speech can also overreach and undermine free speech."

"But when the world’s ‘safest’ internet is currently found in China, where access is heavily restricted and censored by the state, it becomes clear how terrifying the government’s safety agenda really could be."

"Online dating and dating apps are powerful connectors in the American dating landscape. In 2023, 30% of Americans used online dating services or apps according to Pew Research Center. As is the case when meeting someone new, whether online or offline, it’s wise to keep a few precautions in mind for safer interactions. Very few dating apps conduct criminal background checks on users, so it’s up to each user to determine if they are comfortable meeting up with someone. And remember that if you do experience sexual violence while dating online or using an app, it is not your fault. Below are some steps you can take to for safer interaction with others through online dating apps and services—whether you are interacting virtually or in person. We say “safer” because no sexual violence “safety” tip is ever a promise of safety, and the only one responsible for sexual assault is a perpetrator. Full stop."

"It would be to Project Gutenberg what Wikipedia is to Nupedia."

"[W]e don't want to try to duplicate Project Gutenberg's efforts; rather, we want to complement them. Perhaps Project Sourceberg can mainly work as an interface for easily linking from Wikipedia to a Project Gutenberg file, and as an interface for people to easily submit new work to PG."

"A few times a week, Alastair Haines, a grad student at the Presbyterian Theological Centre in Sydney, sits down with a Greek version of the New Testament and translates a bit of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. Haines doesn't speak Greek, but he can read it. When he's done, he loads his work onto a Wikipedia page as part of the Wiki Bible Project, a take-all-comers effort launched in January to create "an original, open content translation of the Bible's source texts," which by most counts includes about 30,000 manuscripts. Along with Haines, who admits to signing up for duty as a way to put off finishing his dissertation, 21 others have answered Wikipedia's call to "claim a chapter!" The eclectic group includes a liberal Christian living in the United Arab Emirates and a Methodist financial counselor in Texas. Some claim to be formally trained in Biblical Hebrew and classical Greek; others, such as user John Kloosterman, admit to being "without qualifications of any kind." The project will take a few years to complete and require constant refinement, says John Vandenberg, one of project's main administrators. But "that is part of the beauty," he writes. "It's a laissez-faire translation." But Biblical scholars see the potential for an inaccurate, bias-filled mess. "Democratization isn't necessarily good for scholarship," says Bart Ehrman, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who worked on the most recent translation of the New Revised Standard Version in 1988. "Those were the best Greek and Hebrew scholars in the country, and it took them 20 years.""

"The hard question, I guess, is why we are reinventing the wheel, when Project Gutenberg already exists? We'd want to complement Project Gutenberg--how, exactly?"

"[L]ike Larry, I'm interested that we think it over to see what we can add to Project Gutenberg. It seems unlikely that primary sources should in general be editable by anyone -- I mean, Shakespeare is Shakespeare, unlike our commentary on his work, which is whatever we want it to be."

"Wikidata is one of the best options for an open, common knowledge graph of background information for use in an application or AI system. SPARQL is the most common way to access the data and here's one resource to get help in learning how to use it effectively."

"[It’s] a backbone of the web of data,If you are interested in data, it is better than search. It would be oversimplifying Wikidata to call it search. [There] you are matching the string, Wikidata’s web of knowledge is far more powerful than string matching"

"Until Wikidata can give me a list of all movies shot in the 60s in Spain, in which a black female horse is stolen by a left-handed actor playing a Portuguese orphan, directed by a colorblind German who liked sailing, and written by a dog-owning women from Helsinki, we have more work to do."

"State of Wikidata - giving more people more access to more knowledge one edit at a time"

"To explain and motivate [Wikidata], we have often asked the simple question: "What are the world's largest cities with a female mayor?" … [A]n answer can now, finally, be given."

"If you want to know what people are worried about look at what they spend their money on. If you’re afraid of burglars you buy a burglar alarm. What are the Chinese spending their money on? We’re told from Chinese figures they’re spending on the People's Armed Police, the internal security force is about as big as they’re spending on the regular military. This whole great firewall of Chinese, this whole massive effort to control the internet, this effort to use modern information technology not to disseminate information, empowering individuals, but to make people think what you want them to think and to monitor their behavior so that you can isolate and suppress them. That’s because this is a regime which is fundamentally afraid of its own people. And it’s fundamentally hostile to them."

"Frankly, during my years behind the Great Firewall, my understanding of church persecution and pastors imprisoned was extremely limited—not because I didn’t care, but because I simply couldn’t see. The information curtain made choices for many: you thought you “knew nothing,” but in reality, you were deliberately kept “uninformed.”"

"You are going to be doing a lot of writing. Do it well. Phone calls and Hangouts don’t scale. Face-to-face is expensive for distributed groups and therefore rare. Real-time tools like IRC and Slack disadvantage people in minority timezones. And so, in an online community, your main way to communicate is likely going to be email. Which means you need to be good at it. Take the time to write carefully, fully and precisely. And since text is going to do so much of your communicative heavy lifting, consider being a little more explicit about emotional signal-sending than you might be otherwise. (“I am happy…”, “it is sad…”, “I am grateful.”)"

"If you wanted to pick a single date to mark the beginning of the modern era of the web, you could do a lot worse than choosing Thursday, April 1, 2004, the day Gmail launched."

"It’s like if, like there was a big germ going around, and it was creating every one to be mad and angry and making them to do bad stuff."

"We decided to do the small things that we could, to the make the world a better place, so we created the Joygerm club, and the kindness campaigns."

"Somebody brought teeth to the relationship. … Forty years ago, my life started again."