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JoeP

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   I'm an interaction designer and front-end developer based in London.
   I'm passionate about the open web and I'm involved with various 
   non-profit projects in the UK/EU to do with promoting the adoption of 
   open-source software, net neutrality and protecting our rights online.

   I also spend too much time playing Minecraft when I should be working.

   http://www.joepettersson.com
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TechCrunch As We Know It May Be Over 15 years ago

I suppose you could argue the benefit of keeping it private is that it doesn't let their readers see all the personal drama and histrionics that could impinge their editorial/journalistic credibility e.g. it's their job to report tech news, not to be a platform to communicate their personal feelings about internal office politics.

I get the feeling that this article is precisely as a result of the 'new media' model of content production at sites like TechCrunch. The author rightly lauds this models dynamism and agility in the article on his personal site (that was linked in the article) but do you think something like this, that's so close to verging on unprofessional, would happen at a more conventional publication? Because I certainly don't.

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TechCrunch As We Know It May Be Over 15 years ago

I'll be the first to admit that I know very little about the internal structure of TechCrunch in particular (and AOL's web properties more generally) but this article strikes me as being enormously counter-productive.

What benefit is there in airing all your dirty laundry like this? Publicly 'shaming' AOL into backing down?

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MI6 defaces Al Qaeda website with Cupcake-making recipes 15 years ago

The problem I suspect, with only slightly altered bomb recipes, is that you leave room for experimentation. A potential terrorist could try and work out how to correctly concoct a bomb after your supplied recipe has failed, he might even succeed.

Also, explosives by their very nature are unstable and providing a recipe slightly wrong could lead to premature explosion: 'Great!' you might think 'One less terrorist!' but terrorists don't often operate in seclusion, they operate in residential areas (look at the London 7/7 bombers, for instance). Meaning innocent people could be injured by their bomb making.

The deliberately bad computer security advice would seem a better idea, like 'Download the official Al Qaeda security suite! That only COINCIDENTALLY sends all your personal information and location to the security services!'.

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Netflix Now The Largest Single Source of Internet Traffic In North America 15 years ago

I know it sounds like a pain in the ass, but I've got a somewhat stable solution.

Invest in a good VPN with several US based end-points (I like StrongVPN myself) which by itself will allow you to watch normal Hulu. I personally then go a little further and use a US based mail forwarder (which I use for several other things, not just this) to sign up for Hulu+ and Netflix.

It costs me about $20 per month, plus the standard cost of Hulu+ and Netflix obviously.

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