therandomtexan
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The Abolition of Cash, Frisco Edition
Do people not understand the words “Legal Tender?” If you want a hot coffee at Blue Bottle, cold hard cash may not work anymore. The high-end coffee company will ban cash at 12 locations across the country starting on March 11 as part of a month-long experiment that aims to speed up purchases. (photo from Read more
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Big Brother Invades the Ice House
The Surveillance Market is set to invade your local quick-stop, grocer, or ice house. A new digital door technology from a company called Cooler Screens is now being tested in Walgreens, and it sounds absolutely awful. Rather than a basic, transparent glass door, coolers and freezers will be sealed by screens that show a sanitized Read more
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You’re not just web surfing, you’re participating in an A/B test
Pretty much every time you log on to Facebook or use Google, you’re participating, as a subject, in an A/B test. Unknowingly. Without informed consent. This is how privacy and human rights are eroded, one click at a time. Worse yet, the folks who do this brag about it! Don’t believe me? Type “A/B testing Read more
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Even your doorbell is spying on you
In it’s unbridled quest for behavioral data, Google put microphones in its subsidiary Nest’s home security systems. Ostensibly for future upgrades. Without telling their customers. Who does PR for these guys? Jussie Smollett? Bonus: apparently Google was pushing privacy limits with Street View as well, sucking up local WiFi addresses. Tip from Stephen Green at Read more
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Amazon gets pushed back
Writing in The New Geography, Joel Kotkin gets close to one of the threats of commercial cyberfascism: Amazon’s grab at oligarchic power by siting a new headquarters. New York’s brush-off to Amazon was the right move, even if for a variety of wrong reasons. Like constructing sports stadiums with taxpayer money, the exploitation of the Read more
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The War Against Big Brother
Today I begin a series of posts of observations and comments about what I call cyber fascism, the harnessing of ubiquitous information technology to impose political, commercial, and social control over much of the developed and developing world. My first real inkling of the enormity of our situation came as I prepared material for a Read more
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Hot Girl Privilege
Thales at The Declination tells it like it is: When a hot girl says something stupid, people pay attention to her anyway. This has the effect of separating the hot chick from reality even more. She might think her stupid poems are beautiful art, because thirsty men will say anything to an attractive woman. Hot Girl Read more
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A new, and wonderful, Christmas story
From my old childhood favorite Every Who down in Who-ville likes Christmas a lot, but the Grinch who lived just north of Whoville did NOT! — Dr Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas A Chistmas present from Faisal is not be missed. Read more
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You can teach yourself
Tara Westover gives the Big Reveal about education My parents would say to me all the time: you can teach yourself anything better than someone else can teach it to you. Which I really think is true. I hate the the word “disempower,” because it seems kind of cliché, but I do think that we Read more
The Random Texan 