Alexander Williams

"I'm just waiting for the next level of irony, where Google decides to publish – say monthly – a list of articles/sites which is been removed from specific search terms, what those specific search terms are, and the reason (not just the person, but the reason for their request). Which, of course, has to be searchable in order to be able to check and verify that they have been active in pursuing the dictate of the EU court. Soon we will have an answer to that age-old question: Does a book containing an index to all books which do not have an index contain an index to itself?" - Alexander Williams

"I have to believe that those courts had to see this coming as well, no matter their findings. Every time it's come up, anyone with a brain has said, "But what about using that ruling as a weapon, and to remove stories about public things, and what about legitimate news?" To which the response has been, every time, "oh, that'll never happen." I have some doubts about the EU judiciary, Adam. I just can't decide between malevolence or stupidity." - Alexander Williams

"Was there anyone that hasn't seen this coming? Like, from kilometres out and years away?" - Alexander Williams

"I'm curious how one would describe the "risks" involved in this particular study: "You may find yourself experiencing slight emotional shifts of some tiny percentage point either positively or negatively, with allowance made for the overall pathetic mess or general cheer of your self-selected friends group." I would also point out that Mary is simply wrong when it comes to quite a lot of sociological experimentation. When the observer effect not just possibly but definitely would swamp out any signal, quite a lot of manipulation to get around that fact is the order of the day. I think the overall complaint about the study misses something extremely important: all the participants, and in fact everyone on Facebook, has already consented to allow Facebook themselves to manipulate and manage their news feed in any way they see fit, by any metrics they enjoy, and all participants are free to leave the experiment at any time. FB has adjusted the "Top Stories" weighting mechanism dozens of..." - Alexander Williams

"I really wish that they would roll out the HD quality Hangouts to non-Enterprise users, because that would occasionally save me a lot of trouble, but in the meantime I've accepted that doing HD broadcast with Open Broadcast System streaming directly to YouTube gives me more control over what's going out, anyway. I would occasionally kill for fifteen people in a Hangout, however. It was funny, though, that for a week or two the only story anyone wrote about G+ was about how nobody used it and Google was winding it down. Literally no major tech journalism outlet wrote a story with a different narrative. Where did I hear about these stories? Google+. I think it might be unfair to use the phrase "beware online journalists who…" when we can find multiple examples a week of journalists in general, in every medium, doing very little but repeating rumor and speculation as if it were fact. Aside from the guys writing short articles in my hyper local Patch feed almost straight off the police..." - Alexander Williams

"The reason that there is an "archive" content interest is because people can actually find and access that content, and we can apply metrics to observe people acquiring and consuming that content. That desire isn't new – it's just possible. If, by some quirk of physics, going through old newspapers was less than a complete tedium and physical pain in the ass, many more people would of done it, and for exactly the same reasons as people go through archival content online today – because it has information on something that is not part of the current, momentary, news cycle.. But that's no real reason for "explainer" sites, and the main reason for that is no one goes to the archives to have things "explained" to them. They want to know something, they go read it or look at it. They want to know what the thoughts of the time, the moment, was when that piece was written. They are not looking to be taught, they're looking to teach themselves. That is the core disconnect between the whole..." - Alexander Williams

"Due diligence? The pursuit of truth? Feeling even the remotest pangs of conscience for pushing things which are simply not true? Even the pretense of journalistic integrity? You get more of that from reading my personal Facebook than you're going to find on a site like this, though I admit the rest of Facebook is more than a little questionable. Come to think of it, over the past decade or so, the personal blog has become far more readable as a source of verifiable fact than sites like – this. I blame a lack of personal accountability or the expectation of same." - Alexander Williams

"As long as "diversity" doesn't immediately map to "we just need more women," I'm better satisfied." - Alexander Williams

"Well, that objection's just silly. I remember the time one of the iconic images of the Internet was, "on the Internet, no one knows you're a dog." The implication that I took away was that on the Internet, all that matters is your qualifications and how ready you are to provide something somebody else wants. All that goes away when you start thinking of "diversity" as a desirable end goal, in and of itself. Every time I see an article like this, the writer's landing thing that some organization just hasn't hired enough women or "people of color," and because they haven't the opinions carried there by are somehow less – authentic? Meaningful? Useful? They are somehow lesser because of the color or gender of the writer. That's pretty much the definition of sexism and racism where I'm from. I'm increasingly beginning to think that I'm from another world. Maybe Nate Silver and Ezra Klein have assembled teams of people that work together well, that produce articles and other material that..." - Alexander Williams