heart of cyber darkness

The Washington Post calls it the "dark heart" of the internet. It's called 4chan.org and it could very well be the birthplace of some of the web's darkest dandelions.

Talk about walking on the wild side. Started in 2003 by a then 15 year-old who goes by "moot," 4chan is a hub for 5 million "hackers, slackers and potty-mouthed geek" visitors who create 400,000 daily posts on just about anything from "images of... their favorite actors to their favorite bowel movements." Apparently the group Anonymous, (in)famous for staging protests against the Church of Scientology, sprung from 4chan. The kid that hacked into Gov. Sarah Palin's Yahoo account? He's on 4chan. So are the ones that hijacked Google's Hot Trends list, first with a swastika and then this "?l?oo? no? ??n?". Remember the post - "Steve Jobs just died" - that leaked into the blog macrumors.com in January? You guessed it. That's 4chan too.

It's like stepping into the heart of cyber darkness. I imagine that countless other dastardly dandelions plant their roots in 4chan. Proceed with caution if you dare. Word of warning: it is highly NSFW.

all the world's a sage

Wikipedia is part of the reason why the web is so wonderful. Because anyone can contribute to the encyclopedia, everyone consumes each other's knowledge. Wikipedia has empowered us more than ever before. In the words of Marshall McLuhan, "all the world's a sage."

But, are all the articles accurate? I'm sure some high school kids would love if they were. Certainly many articles are well sourced, but you can't say all the facts are straight. According to wikipedia, there are a total of 9,725 good and featured articles and lists out of a total 2,734,727 articles. Good articles are "good quality but which are not yet, or are unlikely to reach, featured article quality." (Case in point: the good articles page cites 2,734,727 articles in wikipedia while the featured articles page cites 2,733,942.) That means the chances of running into a dandelion are- well, you're probably better at math than I.

However, this is about to change. Technology Review writes that some super smart scientists over at Palo Alto Research Center have created the WikiDashboard that will apparently give more transparency to each article page. The dashboard shows all edits on an article, who's edited, when it was last edited, and even the cat fights between editors. Basically, it means that it should be easier for us readers to catch the suspect dandelions and tell which ones are daisies. I don't know if the dashboard is live yet, but it's about time. After all, it won't just be high school kids breathing a sigh of relief.

what do you mean it's not wheel?

This is a bit of old news, but it's perfect.

My 13 year old nephew loves anything mac (who doesn't). But bliss was when he heard about the new "macbook wheel." Apparently it debuted at the mac world conference (?) and he even had the video to prove it.





Ok, that was pretty funny. My nephew is young and innocent and has no idea what the onion is about (it's a parody, i.e. not real). But, I wondered who else might know about this fake mac wheel and be excited. Surely the 19 minute battery and 45 minute email would be dead giveaways, so I probably wouldn't have much luck. But, news flies at super speed on the internet - especially when it comes to a new mac. And I wondered how many people had already called mac to reserve the mac wheel.

I called my brother today to find out. Did you hear about the new mac with the big wheel? He read about it, he said. Couldn't wait until it came out and was already saving his money. "Wheely?" I hate to be the spoiler, but better save your money for something else.

He was kind of disappointed. Not one to back down, he did make a good point - even if it's not out now it could actually happen - and he's right. But it's not wheel, at least not yet. Right now, it's just a little dandelion...