McFilter

Interesting Things on the Internet: March 2nd 2015

• A different cluetrain. Charlie Stross on finance, politics and power.
• The Seven Reasons Why Super-Rich British Tax Dodgers Don't End Up in Jail. And following that, a more concrete and depressing example of how the establishment works. When is there going to be a political party that makes some inroads on that?
• Emma Thompson on tax-strike until HSBC tax evaders are jailed. Maybe this is a way forward for the rest of us?
• Bruce Sterling on why you shouldn't care how SIRI feels. Bruce Sterling doing an excellent job in reminding us that artificial intelligence is our era's horseless carriage. We should be having discussions about the ethics or dangers of the systems we're building, but we shouldn't only apply that approach to something we can identify as AI because then we'll miss the important developments.
• Hardware by the Numbers. Great read if you've anything to do with building hardware.
• Hacking for the planet. In Chicago, civic hackers are working to improve local life with data and technology.. "Getting the right people together is more important than patching the right code together. That’s one of the most important things to understand about this movement. This is not a bunch of coders coming in on white horses going ‘I can fix this with code!’, but rather people with technology skills partnering with non-profits, government agencies, community activists, to build something together that solves problems in our cities.". I wonder who wants to run something like this here in Liverpool.