onfocus

The web is becoming more and more ephemeral.

"Vanished are amazing pieces of writing on kuro5hin about tech culture, and a collection of mathematical puzzles and their associated discussion by academics that my father introduced me to; gone are Woodman's Reverse Engineering tutorials from my high school years, where I first tasted the feeling of dominance over software; even my most recent bookmark, a series of posts on Google+ exposing usb-c chargers' non-compliance with the specification, disappeared."

This article includes some steps you can take that could help preserve what you publish. Complex frameworks, walled-gardens, and serverless publishing trade away endurance for convenience.

Excellent description of how broken “both sides” journalism is right now.

"Chuck Todd has essentially said that on the right there is an incentive structure that compels Republican office holders to use their time on Meet the Press for the spread of disinformation. So do you keep inviting them on air to do just that?"

Paging Upton Sinclair.

My alternate headline for this: Twitter CEO makes the case that Mastodon has a superior architecture for social media; forms group to invent it. The Mastosphere has been chatting about this quite a bit with worries about embrace, extend, and extinguish. It wasn’t received well is what I’m trying to say. Mastodon BDFL Eugen was more diplomatic.

Anil on links and the web we’ve settled for:

"So let’s look at all the apps that live under our thumbs, and interrogate the choices they’re making, and then imagine what they would look like if we demanded that our tools don’t tie our hands."

"[$50 billion] sounds like a lot, but it could be a bargain compared to adding a lane to I-5, the current north-south corridor linking the megaregion."

Co-signed!

This is the scariest take I’ve read on impeachment. We have arrived at the future Neil Postman warned us about in the 80s: no debate is possible because there's no space for serious debate. In Amusing Ourselves to Death Postman asked, "Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture’s being drained by laughter?" Everything is entertainment.

This article is very motivating to me. I should set up a semi-private Mastodon instance for locals. We have some good tools available to make New Internet happen.

Get thee to this list. So many feels retracing these footprints. I wasn’t walking alone this whole decade—the weird web was carrying me.

"But everything that looks good doesn’t necessarily work well. In fact, those two traits are opposed more often than not: efficiency tends to look messy, and good looks tend to be inefficient."

I really enjoyed this essay about perceived efficiency and complexity. Especially with the Chesterton’s Fence kicker. Understanding an existing system before changing it is important.

This sure feels like an iconic photo that sums up the impeachment hearings in so many ways. Twitter people had fun with the Morrissey remix. And Alexandra Petri is a national treasure: Foolproof ways to be not guilty of crimes.

"Either we must submit to this pervasive surveillance machinery – where our data is easily weaponized to manipulate and influence us – or forego the benefits of the digital world. This can never be a legitimate choice."

Amnesty International the organization is wrestling with their use of Facebook in the wake of this report: We called out Facebook and Google but still need them. That's exactly the problem. They go on to say:

“We are trying to pull off the difficult balancing act of carrying out our duty to spread our human rights message while spending money with companies profiting from problematic surveillance. The reputational risk grows with every scandal. ”

I hope we see some progressive organizations start to distance themselves from Facebook. If they won’t, who will?

Take 25 minutes to watch this. He makes a fantastic, succinct argument for regulating social media to stop the reach of hate speech.