Data Anxiety

jacquelinevandusen:

My Manhattan map was featured in another project, “New York to Moscovites.”
nycasmoscow:

Группа «Наши в городе»:
Григорий Кегелес, Павел Пуш (innyc.ru)
Дизайн: Наташа Милешина (bubbo-tubbo.com)
Карта Манхэттена: Jackie VanDusen (jacquelinevandusen.tumblr.com)

If you wish to view in full sized glory, click, or visit the artist’s website, JacquelineVanDusen tumblr.
Cool map!
I liked the realistic feel of this. It uses different fonts to distinguish between languages. The thick cursive black marker (in Russian, presumably) is an agreeable contrast to the other sans-serif English language font, and to the precision of vector grey Manhattan streets. Splotches of color are nice too, reminding me of watercolor. Yet there is contrast, again, of a practical sort: The horizontal latitude-like lines keep it tidy, organized, and are functional.

My Manhattan map was featured in another project, “New York to Moscovites.”

nycasmoscow:

Группа «Наши в городе»:

Григорий Кегелес, Павел Пуш (innyc.ru)

Дизайн: Наташа Милешина (bubbo-tubbo.com)

Карта Манхэттена: Jackie VanDusen (jacquelinevandusen.tumblr.com)

If you wish to view in full sized glory, click, or visit the artist’s website, JacquelineVanDusen tumblr.

Cool map!

I liked the realistic feel of this. It uses different fonts to distinguish between languages. The thick cursive black marker (in Russian, presumably) is an agreeable contrast to the other sans-serif English language font, and to the precision of vector grey Manhattan streets. Splotches of color are nice too, reminding me of watercolor. Yet there is contrast, again, of a practical sort: The horizontal latitude-like lines keep it tidy, organized, and are functional.

Patent wars

I’ve been following the Apple v. Samsung patent case in The Wall Street Journal. This is another aspect of the story, which is possibly more interesting, as it directly involves the media.

Reuters Wants to Publish Un-redacted IBM-Samsung Patent License Agreement, Apple v. Samsung; IBM Moves to Block (GrokLaw)

GrokLaw is a great resource. It is very densely packed with content! I rarely need that level of detail, but when I do, GrokLaw is the place to check. They are not neutral, nor do they claim to be.

Note that Reuters has not yet published anything, although the judge ruled that Reuters is allowed to publish the document.

Soi-dissant tech journalists: Stop hyping unproven security tools

c1qfxugcgy0:

“Tech journalists: Stop hyping unproven security tools”

Journalists love human interest stories

Kobeissi presents the kind of human interest story that journalists dream about: A Lebanese hacker who has lived through 4 wars in his 21 years…

This is about Cryptocat.

Cryptocat was here on tumblr, might still be. They were friendly, enjoyed math, probability, random number generator humor. I followed young (and cute) Kobeissi on Twitter.

Cryptocat is a proto-type. Read Mr. Kobeissi’s biography. He is bright. He is getting a fine education. I think he just completed a bachelor’s degree program in computer science at a good school in Canada, and has received funding from someone to do further work on Cryptocat. No problem there.

However, Wired Magazine, AND The New York Times, are not behaving responsibly. In my sometimes-not-so-humble opinion.

The New York Times really, REALLY needs to hire (or have on retainer) someone with credible training, education and experience in information security if they intend to cover cryptography-related news.

As for Wired, well, I just don’t understand what they were thinking.

The Cryptocat media hyperbole reminds me of TechCrunch at its worst, e.g. when one of their staff attempted to do financial reporting or investigative journalism, but didn’t have the knowledge or time to do a good job. TechCrunch is a glorified blog though. They make mistakes, and that’s okay. They aren’t the Paper of Record. They aren’t Wired Magazine, which has been a decent specialty publication for over two decades.

What’s going on? A possibility: Business problems e.g. diminished advertising revenues and an increasingly desperate need for page views and circulation volume. I worry about that, for all mainstream news sources.

Exxon Now Offers World’s Largest Dividend

Sigh…

Not bad, compared to the 10-year’s 2% yield.

Yes, that IS bad!

Why would I want to buy Exxon (XOM) common with a 2.6% annual return (via dividend) when I could earn the same from risk-free U.S. T-notes?

There’s more

The article, well, Wall Street Journal ”MarketBeat” blog post (April 25, 2012) said that the S&P 500 “annual yield” was 2.21%, which is just as unappealing. And unlikely. I realize that there’s always growth, potentially, with equities, but I still don’t think these numbers make sense.

Just to be perfectly clear about this

This isn’t evidence of a wild market anomaly. It isn’t symptomatic of a shocking revelation that the financial markets “are broken”. Rather, I think this WSJ blogger didn’t check his facts closely enough. Check out the other comments.

gregmelander:

100

Istvan Szugyiczky is an amazing illustrator. A great one hundred for a Bloomberg Markets Magazine.

A

Human error?

Maybe the site was hacked? That is better than the other catastrophic, low probability scenarios that my long-tailed imagination conjures up.

(Source: m-x)

See above, for truth.

See below, for Fox.

The point is not whether the employment data is flawed. The official source is the U.S. Department of Labor, as represented above. That is primary data. Fox must either report it as released by the government of the country in which Fox operates and holds allegiance to, OR, present a credible investigative analysis as to why the data is incorrect.

Falsifying a chart and distorting the time series data is NOT journalism. And I don’t want to hear that “only idiots watch Fox” nor “no one takes Fox seriously”. It has news programs. It is not “The Satire and Parody Network”. Though it should be, with repeated incidents like this.

(via Today In Dishonest Fox News Charts)

via Fact: Constitution has no Article 28 nor Section 144 and does… on Twitpic

"
Are You Reading This? That Is So Cool.

WHAT’S up, Times readers?

Normally right now you’d be nodding off over a very thoughtful prescription for offering Qaddafi an honorable exile at a plastic surgery teaching hospital. But not today, people! Because I deleted that snoozer when I hacked my way in here.

That’s right. I hacked the Op-Ed page.
"

— Dude! I Hacked the Op-Ed Page! - NYTimes.com

Fecundity is a double edged sword

Actually, this might be due to the hyper-abundance of economic news and drama lately, and The Economist’s reaction, of staying on top of it, rater than getting behind as many of the rest of us have?

I like the Onion!

Via theeconomist:

“The Economist” To Halt Production For Month To Let Readers Catch Up

This post courtesy of our friends at The Onion.