Entries by Rayne

Seeing Through the Blizzard to Utah: How Much Space Does Metadata Need

In the blizzard of half-truths, dissembling, and prevarications about the nature of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, it’s easy to lose sight of the obvious. In this case, the obvious is about one million square feet in size. First, a few other large scale objects for comparison: Here’s Google’s data center in The Dalles, […]

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Side by Side: Timeline of NSA’s Communications Collection and Cyber Attacks

In all the reporting and subsequent hubbub about the National Security Administration’s ongoing collection of communications, two things stood out as worthy of additional attention: — Collection may have been focused on corporate metadata; — Timing of NSA’s access to communications/software/social media firms occurred alongside major cyber assault events, particularly the release of Stuxnet, Flame, […]

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The Internet Didn’t Kill the Middle Class; Laxity and Apathy Did

In tandem with the release of his book, Who Owns the Future?, Jaron Lanier’s interview with Salon generated a lot of hand-wringing across social media. It seems Lanier, one of our so-called intellectual visionaries, believes that the collapse of Kodak and its 140,000 jobs, and the rise of Instagram and its 13 jobs, exemplifies the […]

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North Korea and the Bush Administration’s Toxic Legacy

Over the last several weeks there has been considerable re-evaluation of the Iraq War, launched ten years ago by the Bush Administration. Eulogies and opinions from pundits of all types ranged from “I told you so,” to “It was a qualified success.” We all know what the truth is without punditry: the war was a […]

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Identity Problem: The Delamination of the American Left

This is an op-ed; opinion herein is mine. ~Rayne Once upon a time, before the rise of machines — um, before corporations took over and subsumed the Democratic Party, there were people who espoused an ideology of caring for their fellow man. Granted, some of the richest among them ended up elected to office, but […]

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An Angry Mother on Steubenville and Parenting

The Steubenville rape case is so offensive in so many ways I can’t even begin to tackle them all. •  CNN and a number of other news outlets cast the rapists as victims; •  Idiots who “don’t believe in rape” come out of the woodwork and spew their insanity; •  Society follows the spectacle of the case for […]

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