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Wikileaks pay to play? – Cryptome

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Wikileaks has always been a commercial enterprise hiding behind a narcissistic “public interest” PR, says Cryptome operator John Young in a scathing critique of the site.

Whistleblower site Cryptome began publishing documents in 1996, incurring the wrath of UK and US governments. The archive endures. Young was invited to be the “public face” of Wikileaks at the formation of the venture, but declined. Now Young believes Wikileaks is selling its secrets for commercial gain. Speaking to US talk radio, Young compared Julian Assange to Henry Kissinger, and other “spook insiders” who have turned their insider knowledge into a lucrative sideline.

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Times bullish: no longer throwing money down web toilet

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It’s too early to say whether the Times paywall is a success or not. But it’s done wonders for conferences about newspapers.

In place of the usual hand-wringing and Kumbaya pipedreams, we’re getting quite a bit of decent discussion. The Telegraph is next to ask for your dosh – probably with a “metered” model used by the FT, according to… the FT.

No one looked happier than Dominic Young, News International’s director of strategy and product development, after five months behind a paywall. Speaking at a Westminster Media Forum debate on Payment for Content, Young said none of the dire predictions by rivals had come true; and free of the tyranny of SEO, his journalists could write stories for humans again, rather than robots.

“Virtually none of the predictions about would happen have turned out to be correct,” said Young.

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Facebook: Privatising the internet, one Poke at a time

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The world has been pretty slow to wake up to the power of Facebook and Google, web services with the power to make internet standards disappear faster than a Poke. But maybe people will sit up now. Mark Zuckerberg’s embrace and extend attitude doesn’t just encompass your data – but email protocols too. And there’s very little you’re going to be able to do about it.

At a typically oversold launch event yesterday, Zuckerberg complained about the “friction” generated by having to compose a simple email. You had to type a subject line in, he said, incorrectly, making people wonder if he’d ever used email himself. It’s too formal, he concluded. The poor love – I’m surprised he hasn’t thought about suing the developers of POP3 for emotional distress, as well as repetitive strain injury.

The Facebook plan is to integrate email and SMS into Facebook, into one great big inbox, which will be stored forever. And which will naturally drown people who are not on Facebook under a tide of real-time chaff – Web2.0rhea, as we call it here.

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The Autistic Network

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Andrew’s Mailbag Isn’t it time for a War on Stupid Generalisations? These usually need a Czar, and I’d gladly volunteer.

Novelist Zadie Smith has written about the movie The Social Network and wonders if Mark Zuckerberg’s apparent extreme autism doesn’t manifest itself in both the reductive view of humanity that Facebook (and Web 2.0) software demands. That’s fine. It’s when she steers into observations about autism – largely borrowed, because she’s not an original thinker – from Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not A Gadget – that the trouble starts.

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Shhh… Opera holds the web’s most valuable secret

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Without anybody noticing, Opera has amassed one of the world’s most valuable commercial resources. And the funny thing is, it isn’t going to do anything evil with it. Marketing, new media and technology pundits may have to rethink a few things once they digest the size of Opera’s well-kept secret. It is possible the gurus may have spent years barking up the wrong tree.

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Nathan Barleys to fill Olympic chasm – PM

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Prime Minister David Cameron has cast his gaze east across to Essex – and dreams of a landscape filled with social media marketing consultants and SEO boutiques as far as the eye can see.

In the aftermath of the Olympics, Cameron wants to put the land and property on the Lea Valley to private sector use, and his Big Idea is to “nudge” the Shoreditch and Hoxton crowd eastward.

“Our ambition is to bring together the creativity and energy of Shoreditch and the incredible possibilities of the Olympic park to help make east London one of the world’s great technology centres,” said Cameron today.

That would be a sight: a mass migration of tiny designer tricycles as the Nathan Barleys pedal across the Hackney Marshes to Essex.

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The next mobile UI (why nobody has a clue)

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How things have changed. Fifteen years ago attendees at a select mobile conference might have been found sparring over spectrum allocation and control channels. Back then, 3G loomed large, and huge geo-political battles were being fought. Today the talk is – how do you make it all work nicely?

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What’s next for nuclear?

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This year, Imperial College graduated its first nuclear scientists for a very long time. After years in the doldrums, other universities are also increasing their activity. Is this a sign of a Nuclear Renaissance?

Perhaps it is. Even deep Greens are dropping long-standing objections [1] to nuclear power generation. I got in touch with Imperial’s Professor Robin Grimes, who recently co-authored a Science paper with William Nuttall indicating how the nuclear industry could re-emerge. Here’s an interview that encompasses the current state of play, and some ideas about how the next 40 years could take shape.

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