Author Archives: Timothy B Lee

Reader Rhayader asks a good question: I love free software, but as someone who’s a novice (at best) when it comes to programming, most of the direct benefits I see have to do with the “free as in beer” side … Continue reading →

In the early 1980s a dispute over Xerox printer source code transformed Richard Stallman from a shy hacker to into a quixotic activist. Stallman had cut his teeth in a 1970s programming culture in which it was conventional for programmers … Continue reading →

My friend Kerry Howley’s has a fantastic essay about the relationship between individualism and libertarianism: I call myself a classical liberal in part because I believe that negative liberties, such as Min’s freedom from government interference, are the best means … Continue reading →

Last year I did a three part feature on the future of driving, and how the emergence of autonomous navigation systems could change society. Computer science researchers have always demonstrated prototypes of cars that can drive without human intervention, including … Continue reading →

This interview with my friend Reihan Salam is worth a read. Reihan is generally regarded as a conservative, but he is one of those guys who seems to have read absolutely everything, and he seems to incorporate a little bit … Continue reading →

A friend was kind enough to send me this post about bottom-up thinking in development economics: What must we do to end world poverty? There has been a search for sixty years for the right answer. Now most economists confess … Continue reading →

I have mixed feelings about the news that my former colleague and co-blogger Adam Thierer is the new president of the Progress and Freedom Foundation. On the one hand, I know he’ll do a great job for PFF. He did … Continue reading →

A couple weeks ago, Mike Masnick pointed to an interesting post-mortem of the Rocky Mountain News by John Temple, a former RMN staffer: We knew the web was a place we needed to be, but we didn’t have a clear … Continue reading →

My friend Sarah makes a point I’m embarrassed I didn’t think of myself: Bad charters don’t stay open indefinitely because no one has to enroll. Not everyone will necessarily pull kids out of a bad charter, but new people will … Continue reading →

Some excellent bottom-up thinking on education policy from Matt Yglesias: There’s substantial variation in the performance of different charter [schools]. What you need to do is identify schools that consistently perform poorly and shut them down. Then you create space … Continue reading →