Four short links: 4 November 2019
Disinformation, Ticketing, Run a City Like a Company, and In-Browser Ultrasonic Data Transfer
- Beyond Bots and Trolls: Understanding Disinformation as Collaborative Work — we examine three case studies of online information operations using a sociotechnical lens that draws on CSCW theories and methods to account for the mutual shaping of technology, social structure, and human action. Through this lens, we contribute a more nuanced understanding of these operations (beyond “bots” and “trolls”) and highlight a persistent challenge for researchers, platform designers, and policy makers—distinguishing between orchestrated, explicitly coordinated, information operations and the emergent, organic behaviors of an online crowd.
- Alf.io — open source ticket reservation system. Their draft new web site does a better job explaining what they do and why they’re good. (via Hacker News)
- How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables — The idea behind the book is to ask what would it be like to live in a city administered using the business model of Amazon (or Apple, IKEA, Pornhub, Spotify, Tinder, Uber, and more), or a city where critical public services are delivered by these companies? (via Rob Kitchin)
- Quiet.js — a javascript binding for libquiet, a library for sending and receiving data via sound card. It can function either via speaker or cable (e.g., 3.5mm). Quiet comes included with a few transmissions profiles which can be selected for the intended use. For speaker transmission, there is a profile which transmits around the 19kHz range, which is essentially imperceptible to the human ear. Quiet uses the Web Audio functionality in order to send and receive sound. Sending data is supported by Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. Reception is supported by Chrome, Edge, and to some extent Firefox.
