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Berkman Buzz: August 5, 2011

A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations

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What's being discussed...take your pick or browse below.

* The OpenNet Initiative investigates new DDoS attacks against LiveJournal
* David Weinberger liveblogs the Harvard Library Lab forum
* Dan Gillmor reviews the New York Times paywall
* The Berkman Center posts a new wave of videos from Hyper-Public
* danah boyd explains how to avoid creating angry mobs
* Weekly Global Voices: "Chile: Starbucks Baristas Hunger Strike for Higher Wages"

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The full buzz.

"Last week, the Russian language segment of the popular blogging platform LiveJournal experienced a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that brought down service for much of the week. This was the third such attack on the site this year, prompting vigorous discussion concerning the origins and goals of the attacks and their consequences for the Russian blogosphere."
From Jackie Kerr's blog post for the OpenNet Initiative, "Yet Another LiveJournal Outage Causes Concern for Russian Blogging Community"

"The Harvard Library Lab, which issues grants for library innovation at the University, is holding a forum in which all the projects get 5 mins to introduce themselves."
From David Weinberger's blog post, "LibraryLab funded project librapalooza"

"There are few news organisations whose survival I consider essential; the Times is one. Which is why I take modest pleasure in the news that its new online subscription service isn't failing."
From Dan Gillmor's article for the Guardian, "The New York Times paywall: the faint scent of success"

"In our (almost!) final post of the series of follow up materials for the Hyper-Public symposium, below you'll find seven more videos featuring key talks from the event."
From the Berkman Center's blog post, "Hyper Linking Hyper-Public #4"

"People don’t like to be configured. They don’t like to be forcibly told how they should use a service. They don’t want to be told to behave like the designers intended them to be. Heavy-handed policies don’t make for good behavior; they make for pissed off users."
From danah boyd's blog post, "Designing for Social Norms (or How Not to Create Angry Mobs)"

"Coffee is a high consumption export product in many Latin American countries. Consumers may be aware of the disparity between how much they pay for a cup of coffee and how much the coffee farmers in far away countries may make, but perhaps they don't realise that what they pay may be more even than their barista's hourly wage, as the Chilean Starbucks workers currently on hunger strike state."
From Juliana Rincón Parra's post for Global Voices, "Chile: Starbucks Baristas Hunger Strike for Higher Wages"

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Compiled by Rebekah Heacock.

The Berkman Buzz is selected weekly from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects and sometimes from the Center's wider network.

Suggestions and feedback about the Buzz are always welcome and can be emailed to buzz@cyber.harvard.edu.