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The Real Surface

Two things about Microsoft's Surface Pro: It's surprisingly cheap, at $899 with a type cover. And after using Windows 8 daily on a desktop for a couple weeks, I do not know if having the real Windows 8 is in fact going to immediate solve Surface's software problem; the Windows Store is still something of a ghost town.

Matt Buchanan Matt Buchanan

A Short History Of iPhone Jailbreaking

Jailbreaking used to be a thing — the iPhone was capable of far more than Apple permitted it to do, and jailbreakers liberated it. But as the iPhone's official capabilities expanded in number and scope, the reasons to jailbreak for most people have diminished, even as Apple's efforts to stomp out have made it an increasingly difficult enterprise.

Matt Buchanan Matt Buchanan

The Problem With Indexing Every Tweet Ever

"Effectively searching this mass of unstructured data, this barnyard of straw, will be more difficult than people may think. Despite the metadata attached to each tweet, and despite trails of retweets and “favorite” tweets, the Twitter corpus lacks the latticework of hyperlinks that makes Google’s algorithms so potent"

Matt Buchanan Matt Buchanan

Prosecutorial Discretion In The Aaron Swartz Case

Of all the lines in Orin Kerr's followup legal analysis on prosecutorial discretion in the Aaron Swartz case, it's this one that stuck out the most to me: "What’s unusual about the Swartz case is that it involved a highly charismatic defendant with very powerful friends in a position to object to these common practices."

Matt Buchanan Matt Buchanan

The Age Of Big Crit

With the advent of Big Data, we enter a new era of criticism: Big Crit. "We can ask what the big picture actually means, and—no less important—we can criticize those who claim to know. We can, in other words, be 'Big Critics'; we can do 'Big Crit.'"

Matt Buchanan Matt Buchanan

Was Aaron Swartz Stealing?

About a year ago, FWD contributor Maria Bustillos considered the question of whether Aaron Swartz, the internet activist who committed suicide on Friday, had been stealing when he broke into JSTOR, which led to his intense prosecution by the Department of Justice.

Matt Buchanan Matt Buchanan

The Facebook "Phone" Cometh

There is a big Facebook event tomorrow. Huge, even, since it's holding a London event too. And there's a pretty good chance it's about mobile. Maybe not The Facebook Phone as a lock, stock and barrel device, but a Facebookier Phone, in some form.

Matt Buchanan Matt Buchanan

Your Terrible Netflix Video History Can Finally Be Published On Facebook

Your terrible taste in music in no longer the only cultural failing that'll be splattered all over Facebook — President Obama signed just signed into law the bill that'll let Netflix (or Hulu or whoever) blast the fact you binge-watched all of the new Arrested Development in less than 2 hours (I'm not sure how that'd be possible but whatever) all over social media. Shaaaaame.

Matt Buchanan Matt Buchanan

I Want Amazon's AutoRip Service For Books

If you buy certain CDs through Amazon — or have bought them going back to 1998 — Amazon is now supplying free MP3 versions of the CD. Which is most excellent. Even more excellent, like no joke the greatest thing ever, would be the same service for books — buy a paper book, get the Kindle version for free.

Matt Buchanan Matt Buchanan

Against Motion Controls

Gabe Newell, Valve's wizard in chief, talks about that amazing new gaming console that doesn't exist yet. And more critically, motion control and the future of gaming interfaces: "Maybe the motion stuff is just failure of imagination on our part, but we’re a lot more excited about biometrics as an input method." Whoa.

Matt Buchanan Matt Buchanan
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