- “For DecorMyEyes, Bad Publicity A Good Thing” (nytimes; h/t aldaily.com) – you may need to use bugmenot to access this. It’s well-worth it. The article is about a man who realized that by bullying and even threatening his customers, he could get negative online reviews written about his site. The trick: Google doesn’t properly discriminate why links are pointing to a site. The negative reviews caused his site to soar in the search engine rankings, bringing him a ton of business.
- Megan McArdle, “No More Secrets” – the excerpt she chooses from Assange’s writing shows pretty clearly what a lunatic he is. It’s all jargon he made up, in order to make a dubious point. Related: the Wikileaks fanboys, of course, include Ron Paul.
- “NASA Unveils Arsenic Life Form” (Wired) – this is cool.
- Julie Zhuo, “Online, Anonymity Breeds Contempt” – really, really excellent. One thing that’s pretty clear about trolls – they seem to hate the idea anyone else is getting any sort of attention.
Testing
Leaks don’t hurt secretive organizations? Try telling that to Scientology! (http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/3202?c=1)