My experiment about user privacy  Tags: privacy, websites, security.
This first part is mostly about the experiment mentioned in the title, further on there is a part more about passwords (thought I'd mention it as it's tagged with 'passwords' as well).
As announced in a previous blogpost, here it is: The experiment I conducted on a forum to see how users respond when their privacy is brutally void by a third party. To give you an idea what the scope of this was: on the forum there are about about 164 messages posted every day, from which I do on average 2.9 every day for the past 3.5 years.

Mind what you post  Tags: social networks, privacy, websites.
I knew companies like Facebook store a lot, but seeing everything makes it look plainly ridiculous.
This article is about someone who used the European right to retrieve all data a company (which has to be operative in Europe though) stores about you. He was sent a CD with the data, and posted the contents on the web - with the really personal stuff blacked out of course. Note that he deleted all contents of his account first, before getting the CD.

I've skimmed through it, and it's just insane.

AIBox Experiment, another thought  Tags: AI.
There are two more very interresting things I read about AI lately. One of them is the Paperclip maximizer. On the Wiki page of LessWrong, it quotes Eliezer Yudkowsky, who brilliantly summarized it:

The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else.
- Eliezer Yudkowsky, 'Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk'

Just this quote alone had me thinking for quite a while.

XML  Tags: websites, webdevelopment.
For those who haven't seen XML before, this is what it looks like:

<?xml version and crap>

<users>

    <user>

        <name>lucb1e</name>

        <age>18</age>

        <computer>

            <gpu>nVidia GeForce 9800 GT</gpu>

            <cpu>Intel Core2Quad Q9400</cpu>

        </computer>

    </user>

    <user>

        <name>

et cetera

The first time you see this, it probably looks pretty neat. It is a very clear and usable format. You can easily store users and properties and everything!

Well, appearances are deceptive.

www.  Tags: websites.
I hate website requiring you to type www. Not having an domain.tld.-A record in your DNS is only a minor problem, but those websites returning an empty page or placeholder when you don't type www. are just bad.

Example, try typing in your addressbar:
google.com
It will work fine. It redirects you to www.google.com, which is inefficient and unnecesary, but it works.

Another example. Try, in Firefox at least, typing in your addressbar:
ajsfd.a4i
Firefox will first try a lookup for 'ajsfd.a4i', then 'www.ajsfd.a4i'.