Originally published in Open Media Boston. | It was right here on the steps of Cambridge City Hall, on May 17, 2004, where it all started. To the cheers of a crowd waiting eagerly outside, Cambridge opened its doors at the stroke of midnight on the day Massachusetts became the first state to cross the federal law of the land and allow same sex marriage.
So it was a fitting place for hundreds of supporters, many of whom were married here on that day nine years ago, to reconvene and celebrate the defeat of the Defense of Marriage Act, struck down by Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision.
Read MoreRhenium is the last stable element to be discovered, found in 1925, before all of the nuke-y ones. It’s extremely rare, and one of the densest of elements. It’s used in alloy form, primarily in high-tech purposes like combustion chambers, turbine blades, and exhaust nozzles of jet engines.
And darts.
Read MoreOriginally published in Open Media Boston by Tate Williams (Staff), Mar-26-13
Cambridge, Mass. - The free software movement—based on the idea that computer programs should be available for anyone to use or modify—is in some ways at the top of its game, and in others facing its most difficult challenges.
For example, free programs like Firefox and mostly free Android are highly popular. And collaborative software projects are tackling serious, global issues like improving health care in developing countries. But activists are still struggling to gain broad support, and to stay relevant in the face of increasingly proprietary devices.
Read MoreOriginally published in Open Media Boston
by Tate Williams (Staff), April 16, 2013
BOSTON/Dewey Square - The Boston rally to honor programmer and activist Aaron Swartz had tearful moments, but it went beyond remembrance. Supporters of Swartz’s work called for a move from sadness and outrage to sustained political action that will reform computer regulations and the criminal justice system.
More than 100 people—academics, parents, children and 20-somethings—gathered at Dewey Square Saturday to mark what would have been the end of Swartz’s trial for downloading millions of academic papers over an MIT network. Swartz never made it to trial; he took his own life in January at age 26.
Read MoreOriginally published in Open Media Boston by Tate Williams (Staff), Mar-15-13
BOSTON - When the Boston Phoenix announced it was shutting down Thursday afternoon—after nearly 50 years of often being at the cutting edge of alternative media—the response was a mix of utter shock and resigned acceptance.
After all, while it had been a staple publication for the city for decades, there was general awareness that it was struggling in a world where classified ads are all online, and “alternative media” has fractured and bled into every corner of the Internet.
Read MoreOriginally published in Open Media Boston by Tate Williams (Staff), Feb-26-13
BOSTON - Hidden within the endless bytes of government data is information on everything from how corporations are influencing the votes of politicians, down to when the next bus will arrive.
But even if governments make data available to the public in a clear and accessible way (which is often not the case), there is still a mountain of information to process that, for citizens and government staff alike, is often far too much to approach in a useful way.
That’s the problem that Open Data Day—an annual event of more than 100 affiliated hackathons around the world that took place over the weekend, including one in Boston—hopes to tackle.
Read MoreOriginally published in Open Media Boston by Tate Williams (Staff), Feb-05-13
BOSTON/Kenmore Square - The reactions to the death of prominent computer programmer and activist Aaron Swartz have ranged from sadness, to calls for investigation, to fiery demands for policy reform.
But for many of the people worldwide who were influenced by Swartz, one very important response has been to get back to work, that is, to start coding.
Read MoreOriginally published in Souciant Magazine on February 4, 2013. Warren Ellis’s latest novel Gun Machine is like a cop thriller set in a fever dream, twisted genre fiction that employs the conventions of a primetime police drama to investigate a series of brutal crimes, but also the bloody history of New York City itself.
The novel starts with a compelling premise — an empty apartment hiding 200 guns, each implicated in a separate unsolved murder — and then plays out the mystery with the familiar elements of a hardboiled detective story or an episode of CSI.
But while Ellis, who is best known as a renowned graphic novelist, toys with the genre’s well worn tropes with glee, the real joy in this book is not in police work itsef, but in the archaeology it makes possible.
Read MoreA HERF gun, or an otherwise-nicknamed personal electromagnetic device, is the fantasy weapon of anti-government drone-haters and corporate saboteurs. As in William Gibson’s Zero History:
Read MoreOriginally published on Open Media Boston by Tate Williams (Staff), Jan-26-13
BOSTON/South Boston - Members of the Internet collective known as Anonymous took to the streets of Boston yesterday in memory of fellow activist Aaron Swartz, who took his own life earlier this month, and to protest the criminal prosecution that they believe contributed to this death.
But despite the sinister grins of their characteristic Guy Fawkes masks, the protest had a much more somber tone than many of Anonymous’ previous public actions.
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