Tag Archives: internet

Goods and services

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Read this old, unsurprising report in New Scientist. From the article:

Automated trading ...has come to account for more than half of trades in many markets around the globe. ...Because of the finite speed of light, trading speed depends on where you are sitting. ..."The basic insight," says Wissner-Gross, "is that the optimal location lets the trader exploit fluctuations equally on both exchanges." ..."This shows that the technological arms race to extract every penny from high-frequency mechanical arbitrage will soon reach its ultimate limits," says physicist and hedge-fund manager Jean-Philippe Bouchaud

If this is how money and the free markets work now, I'm pretty sure we no longer know what words mean.

How to remove "+1" icons from Google search results

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Having apparently abandoned former principles of simplicity and unintrusiveness, Google now punishes account holders by sticking coloured icons next to every Google search result and, worse, animating them on a mouse-over of the result.  Obnoxious!  There currently seems to be no setting to remove these that I could find, but I figured a way to use AdBlock to hide them away.  If you have AdBlock installed on your browser, simply add:

www.google.com##[class="esw eswd esws"]
www.google.com##[class="esw eswd eswh"]
www.google.com##[class="esw eswd"]

to your custom filters.  There, somewhat cleaner search results!

Edit: Now you also need to add:

www.google.com##BUTTON[class="gbil esw eswd"]
www.google.com##BUTTON[class="gbil esw eswd esws"]
www.google.com##BUTTON[class="gbil esw eswd eswh"]

Edit: OK, I found another way to fix this.

Cultural Relativism and Technology

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I was talking to a couple of friends of mine about politics the other day. The conversation ended in a disagreement about whether or not one ought to adhere to principles of cultural relativism. That is, whether it is fair or legitimate to criticise the practices of members of another culture from the inescapable perspectives of ones own. I was arguing against cultural relativism but in the course of the discussion some arguments were raised which I hadn't considered before and which made me stop and reconsider my position.

My purpose in writing this is partially in order to get my thoughts in order and partly in the hope that the discussion can continue, 'cause it's one that interests me. I wish to wear my ignorance of many relevant topics on my sleeve and, as always, I'm completely open to the prospect of changing my mind.

My feelings were that open criticism of other cultures should be permissible. I felt that if we had carefully examined our own reasoning and motives, we ought to be allowed to criticise the practices of others, even if we understood that those practices may be the product of another culture and its historical context.
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Twitter account suspended

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Aw man.  I got hacked (or something) and an obviously spam message got posted in my twitter feed. Of course, I've had my account suspended, pending investigation. I should be back up within a month, according to twitter. I don't know whether the error is twitter's or mine, but needless to say every place where I used the same password as for twitter has been changed, just in case. All in all, not as painful as it might have been, I guess!