Top all-time · #6688
Seth Finkelstein
Personal blog · sethf.com/infothought/blogpoliticswebwriting
Seth Finkelstein's personal blog at sethf.com covers politics, web and writing. Since 2008, 12 different Hacker News readers have linked it 14 times, most often “ Aaron Swartz "JSTOR" case indictment revised/expanded”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Seth Finkelstein's essays and blog on censorship, Wikipedia, surveillance and tech policy, often as analysis or as a source for their own points. One commenter says he misses his writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
The home site of Seth Finkelstein
Most-linked posts?
- Aaron Swartz "JSTOR" case indictment revised/expanded2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-09-16
- Libertarianism Makes You Stupid2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-09-07
What Hacker News says?
Thanks for honestly emphasizing "initiation". http://sethf.com/essays/major/libstupid.php analyzes why that qualifier renders the statement almost meaningless. I, at least, found his points convincing.
Comment linking /essays/major/libstupid.php
on “The freedom to drink coffee”Submitted Aaron Swartz "JSTOR" case indictment revised/expanded as a story · 159 points
HN discussionThanks everybody for your advice. I've carefully read all of it. And since no less than three people have privately cautioned me about taking advice from HN, let me just say that one of the things I love/hate about HN is that we here are very good at poking holes in ideas. As somebody who has been a daily Twitter user for years, and as somebody who worked on anti-abuse stuff in the early days of web community sites,…
Comment linking /freespeech/memoirs/humor/guillotine.php
on “Twitter beats estimates, cuts jobs with eye on 2017 profitability”Submitted Why (individual) Blogging Is Dead - Objective Measurement as a story · 10 points
HN discussion> It also seems easy to post a notice saying: "Hey, searchers like you have found this query to contain many irrelevant or inappropriate results. Beware!" They did exactly this in 2004, when searches for "jew" brought up anti-Semitic website "Jew Watch" as the top result (because, as a linguistic quirk, "Jew" tends to be used in a slur-like way and Jewish organizations tend to use "Jewish," and the algorithm at the…
Comment linking /anticensorware/google/jew-watch/jew-watch-com-yes.gif
on “Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls”Submitted Libertarianism Makes You Stupid as a story · 6 points
HN discussionDoes anyone here remember Seth Finkelstein? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/jul/31/wikipedia I miss his writing! edit: His blog is still up: http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/cat_wikipedia.htm... but unfortunately, no new entries since 2013 :(
Comment linking /infothought/blog/archives/cat_wikipedia.html
on “In Defense of Inclusionism (2009-18)”Submitted Blog over. Infothought RIP 2002 - 2013 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAs Seth Finkelstein once said ( http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php ): Statistically, real threats are rare, but ambition and corruption are common. Overwhelmingly, the purpose of censorship is not the protection of national security, but the protection of individual careers. That's not ideology, but mathematics. Because there are very, very, few true national secrets, but a huge amounts of informati…
Comment linking /essays/major/greplaw-interview.php
on “Top NSA Surveillance Official Is a Multi-Millionaire”Submitted Google, Bing - Twitter as "a vehicle for directing ... to large audiences" as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAn interesting debunking: http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/001434.html http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/001435.html
Comment linking /infothought/blog/archives/001435.html
on “Worlds smallest microwave plugs into USB ”Submitted Inside Higher Ed - "Professors Should Embrace Wikipedia" - April Fool? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI'm the author of that. It's dated, though to my knowledge none of the issues there have yet been resolved, and the trial is scheduled for February 2013. Seth Finkelstein noted < http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/001476.html > that a new indictment has been filed, though it is not, at least in my brief skimming, substantially different, it just fills out the details. There is a much bigger issue in this cas…
Comment linking /infothought/blog/archives/001476.html
on “Examining The Outrageous Aaron Swartz Indictment For Computer Fraud”
