1. In Defense of Deficits

    An interesting read on why Governments running Deficits isn’t a bad thing. I’m no expert but it’s nice to hear the other side of the story for once. 

  2. Moving to Tumblr

    I’m in the process of moving everything from www.invignation.com over to tumblr. You might see some random things going on with historical content and crazy stuff happening while I build a new theme but bigger, better and easier things to come. 

  3. New Navitas.com Site Launch

    Link: http://www.navitas.com

    If you spot any errors let me know!

  4. The Mariana Trench

    Link: The Mariana Trench

    Speaking of scale and exploration, check this out.

  5. No Internet Police - iiNet wins court case.

    Good news for the Internet in Australia, iiNet was found to be innocent of promoting copyright infringement by not taking action against users suspected of breaking copyright law.

    Recently the big movie studios teamed up to take on iiNet, one of Australia’s largest Internet Service Providers for not policing copyright infringement on their network. Currently the movie studios attempt to track peer to peer file sharing and record the IP Addresses of users transferring data related to copyrighted materials. They then track these IP Addresses back to the ISP’s and ask them to forward letters advising users of their breach of copyright law. Some ISP’s pass these letters on while others refuse. Unfortunately the movie studios don’t see this as going far enough and seeing as taking individual users to court is time consuming, expensive, and potentially damaging to the movie studios plans for policing the internet, they’ve decided that their best course of action is to force the burden of monitoring and enforcing copyright law onto the ISP’s.

    The major problem with this methodology for cutting down on piracy is that it cuts out the judicial system and gives private companies the responsibility of being both accuser and judge. It’s fundamentally flawed.

    In the current case Justice Cowdroy ruled in favour of iiNet - “The evidence establishes that copyright infringement of the applicant’s films is occurring on a large scale … however, such a fact does not necessitate or compel … a finding of authorisation, merely because it is felt that ‘something must be done’ to stop the infringements” (SBS news

  6. Invignation - Update

    Action! I’m going to be trying to add more frequent and in depth posts here continuing on. It’s going to be a building up process as I get back into the swing of things and keep allocating more time to writing and researching. Quick first post to follow.

  7. Facebook Privacy

    Link: The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now

    There’s been a lot of back and forward on how horrible Facebook has handled there updates to default user privacy settings most of which is pretty ridiculous.

    Facebook recently presented every user with a popup that asked them to review their privacy settings. It introduced simpler privacy options and forced every single user to look at them for the first time. If the user had never previously configured a privacy setting and clicked accept on the popup without making any changes then a new more public default settings group was applied.

    Most of the uproar centered around this “taking advantage of users habits of not reading popups and just hitting ok”. Yes they should be aware of this precedent. Yes they are taking advantage of it. Are they causing harm by doing so? Openness is going to be absolutely essential in the future internet and openness will create a better Facebook for Facebook users. The goal of Facebook should be to provide the best Facebook they can provide and if that means being more open they’ve had to find a way to try and do that. That Facebook made a decision that would impact every single one of there users with an intrusive alert box that explains the changes and provides the privacy options available right there should be applauded not slammed.

  8. Plannet Spotter

    Link: Super-Earth shortens odds on finding life

    Exciting that we found another earth like planet. Disappointing because the -200C to 2000C daily temperature range would make landing there difficult. When you think about it, life on earth is horribly fragile. Keep looking fellas!

  9. Apple delists sexy apps

    Link: Tits and Apps John Gruber reflects on Apples recent decision to boot a ton of “sexy” apps from the App Store. Personally I think they should have been dumped into their own category, but there isn’t one at the moment so I think Apple probably has a case against most of them for being incorrectly listed.

  10. We’re aliens, kind of.

    Link: We’re all aliens, says scientist

    Scientists believe life on earth travelled here on comets millions of years ago.

    There are so many puzzling things about life and the universe and we don’t devote nearly enough resources to figuring them out. The sheer scale of the universe should be a much bigger deal to everyone.