DBMS 2 : DataBase Management System Services

The technology industry has an increasingly complex relationship to government and politics, most importantly in three areas: Privacy and surveillance. Censorship. Antitrust, general economic reg...

http://www.dbms2.com/2019/06/27/political-issues-around-big-tech-companies/

Most observers hold several or all of the views: “Fake news” and the like are severe problems. Algorithmic solutions have not worked well to date. Neither have manual ones. Trusting governmen...

http://www.dbms2.com/2019/06/27/how-to-beat-fake-news/

The United States has new legal limits on electronic surveillance, both in one specific way and — more important — in prevailing judicial theory. This falls far short of the protections we ul...

http://www.dbms2.com/2018/06/25/new-legal-limits-on-surveillance-in-the-us/

In my initial post on brittleness I suggested that a typical process is: Build something brittle. Strengthen it over time. In many engineering scenarios, a fuller description could be: Design som...

http://www.dbms2.com/2018/06/20/brittleness-murphys-law-and-single-impetus-failures/

Every system — computer or otherwise — needs to deal with possibilities of damage or error. If it does this well, it may be regarded as “robust”, “mature(d), “strengthened”, or simp...

http://www.dbms2.com/2018/06/20/brittleness-and-incremental-improvement/

The tech industry has a broad range of political concerns. While I may complain that things have been a bit predictable in other respects, politics is having real and new(ish) technical consequen...

http://www.dbms2.com/2018/05/20/technology-implications-of-political-trends/

I have a LOT of partially-written blog posts, but am struggling to get any of them finished (obviously). Much of the problem is that they have so many dependencies on each other. Clearly, then, I...

http://www.dbms2.com/2018/05/20/some-stuff-thats-always-on-my-mind/

When one tries to think comprehensively about politics these days, it quickly gets overwhelming. But I think I’ve got some pieces of the puzzle figured out. Here they are in extremely summarize...

http://www.dbms2.com/2018/02/07/some-things-i-think-about-politics/

Like many people, I’ve been shocked and saddened by recent political developments. What I’ve done about it includes (but is not limited to): Vented, ranted and so on. That’s somewhat therap...

http://www.dbms2.com/2018/02/07/politics-can-be-overwhelming/

Almost nobody pays attention to the real issues in privacy and surveillance. That’s gotten only slightly better over the decade that I’ve written about the subject. But the problems with priv...

http://www.dbms2.com/2018/01/22/the-chaotic-politics-of-privacy/