Four short links: 11 August 2016
Benefits of Driverless Cars, Editing a Genome, Lagging Porn, and Federal Source Code
- Self-Driving Cars Will Improve Our Cities If They Don’t Ruin Them — a reminder that the possible positives of self-driving cars (such as fewer cars) should be regulated for, not assumed as a logical consequence of the introduction of the technology. My 2004 Prius costs me about $1.50 for an hour of run time. It will be cheaper to have my car double-park or circle blocks rather than pay for a parking meter or, heaven forbid, pay for parking in a downtown garage.
- Beyond CRISPR: Other Ways To Edit a Genome (Nature) — NgAgo is just one of a growing library of gene-editing tools. Some are variations on the CRISPR theme; others offer new ways to edit genomes.
- Porn Does Not Lead Technology Any More (Wired) — Some of it may have been true in years past. But no longer. A colleague of mine calls this a meso-idea, an idea that has ceased to be true but that people continue to repeat, ad infinitum, as if it still was. Sex has been commodified, price racing to the bottom in an ocean of perfect competition as the tools of production are democratized and the Internet destroys the pornography industry the way it took hatchets to the newspaper industry.
- The People’s Code — We’re releasing the Federal Source Code policy to support improved access to custom-developed Federal source code. The policy, which incorporates feedback received during the public comment period, requires new custom-developed source code developed specifically by or for the Federal Government to be made available for sharing and re-use across all Federal agencies. It also includes a pilot program that will require Federal agencies to release at least a portion of new custom-developed Federal source code to the public and support agencies in going beyond that minimum requirement.
