Digital Rights Management is a type of digital lock that companies put on the things they sell you. They’re terrible in many ways. They discourage innovation, they increase insecurity and they infringe on a person’s right of ownership. They’re also illegal to break, which is a huge injustice in our legal system. We really need laws to make digital locks illegal.
Tag: Waterloo
The Clusterfuck of Education
According to Kieran Egan, education is founded on three conflicting principles:
- Societisation: Being educated on the values of your society and being given a ranking.
- Acquisition of Platonic Knowledge: Ironic understanding of the ways the world works, via mathematics, physics and psychology etc…
- Self-Actualisation and Personal Development: The growth of the student as a person and the progress towards their interests.
Any attempt to try and combine any of these principles ends up with them undermining each other.
A potential solution is to try and keep these ideas in seperate institutions. Societisation can be kept in traditional schools. Self-actualisation can be encouraged in hack-centre like groups. However, the platonic acquisition of knowledge is still a difficult problem to solve. Hopefully explorable explanations, as described in Seymourt Papert’s “Mindstorms: Children, Computer’s and Powerful Ideas” would be up to the task.
How Airplanes Work
The physics and mechanics of airplanes with tons of animations and a delightful cardboard model.
Design without the mumbo-jumbo
What is design for a practical perspective and how do you know if you’ve made a good design? It all boils down to Value, Ease of Use and Craft.
Prioritisation and Growth in Startups
How to set priorities in your startup to maximize growth.
Coffee from Bush to Cup
How coffee beans are harvested and the different ways of preparing coffee.
How to Survive Existential Crises: Logotherapy in a Nutshell
An explanation of the concept of logotherapy from Viktor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning“. In particular, how there are three ways to find meaning in life:
- Working towards (not completing) a great work.
- Loving someone else.
- Finding meaning in unavoidable suffering
Notice how there’s no mention of explicitly pursuing happiness or peace. To Viktor, those things were side effects.
The first two are pretty basic, but the last one requires some explanation.
Life is filled with (often cruel) randomness. Consequently, it’s not uncommon to find yourself in an unpleasant and inescapable state. Maybe you have cancer, maybe you just got kicked out of school or maybe you’re jewish and you just got put in a concentration camp. Viktor maintained that even in these states, with hard work, you could still find meaning and a reason to continue on.
In the book, Viktor explains that as long as action or meaning can be found in this suffering, it becomes manageable and instead of being omnipresent and all-consuming, it becomes an understandable burden to learn and grow from.
He has applied this concept to victims of rape, sufferers of grief and those with suicidal tendencies.
The Pixar Pipeline
Explaining the first steps in animation – story & art, modelling, rigging, simulation, sets & cameras, lighting.
Meditation
Meditation can be a group or solo activity. Mason explains why both are valid, as well as where to find group meditation retreats and what to expect from them.
Hacking Friendship
Building meaningful and lasting friendships isn’t easy, but as long as you remember a few key things (with food metaphors), than you’ll be fine!
