An Ode to Lady Ada, Random Hacks of Kindness, and More

• Random hacks of kindness
  Yes! I was thrilled to see this O’Reilly Radar piece that exemplifies the very definition of the word “hacktivism”. According to the post by Brady Forrest, the idea was inspired by discussions at CrisisCamp here in DC and is being sponsored by some of the giants in IT.
• Sonar software to detect user presence
  This makes an astonishing amount of sense and I wonder if it would make the aggressive power savings settings I use on my laptop less annoying. So far the software which uses your laptop mic to sense whether you are present is only available for Windows and Linux.
• Pandora signed away its rights to protest webcasting royalty rates
  Mike Masnick at Techdirt explains the stipulation to which many web casters agreed to get the lower negotiated royalty rate. He ties in this waiving of the right to protest to Pandora’s maneuvering around the performance rights act, reasoning it may motivated terrestrial broadcasters to protest where the webcaster may no longer do so.
• Could better disclosure help broadband subscribers?
  At Ars, Matthew Lasar contemplates this question posed in the FCC debate around consumer choice. The question is whether a “Schumer box”, that is information formatted clearly and prominently on credit card bills, could help broadband consumers as well in understanding the consequences of their choice of plan and provider.
• An ode to Lady Ada
  Jaymee Goh at Tor focuses on Lady Ada as a continuation of that site’s discussion of the recent interest in Steampunk but she calls attention to Ada’s influence and place within the history of computing, the reasons I am fascinated in this historical figure. I love that Jaymee also linked to Sydney Padua’s 2D Googles web comic telling the well researched by alternate history of Ada and her contemporary, Charles Babbage.

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