Notable Links
[Charles Duhigg at the New Yorker] "As the tech industry has become the planet’s dominant economic force, a coterie of specialists—led, in part, by the political operative who introduced the idea of “a vast right-wing conspiracy” decades ago—have taught Silicon Valley how to play the game
Media
[ John Naughton ] "If you log into Dave Winer’s blog, Scripting News, you’ll find a constantly updated note telling you how many years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds the blog has been running. Sometime tomorrow morning the year field will switch to 30." Running a blog
Technology
[Karl Bode at TechDirt] "The Harris campaign has remained largely silent on whether Khan will be allowed to stick around. And it remains entirely unclear whether Harris will continue Biden’s support of something that, for once, at least vaguely resembles antitrust reform and a crackdown of concentrated corporate
Business
[Ben Werdmuller on Medium] I find myself returning to this piece I wrote on Medium about building downtime into your work and lifestyle. It's important: Eight years into working in America, I’m still getting used to the macho culture around vacations. I had previously lived in a
Technology
[Bix Frankonis] Bix Frankonis does not agree with my analysis of the Fediverse and the Social Web Foundation. For him, much of the issue relates to appropriation of the "social web" name: "Like many trade groups, this one is named and self-described in a manner deliberately meant
I was tagged in a fairly critical SocialHub post about the Social Web Foundation launch announcement. I wasn’t in a position to add to the conversation then, but I’ve been thinking about it all week. Before I dive further, a reminder: I am not an employee or founder
Media
[Andrew Schmelyun] Following my piece about reading the news on paper, I came across this post from Anrew Schmelyun: "I recently purchased a dot matrix printer from eBay, and thought it would be a great excuse to have a custom "front page" printed out and ready for
I think there’s more work to be done to explore print as a modern product to support great writing and journalism. Lots has been said about its death — but comparatively little about its potential to live on in new forms. I think print has a lot of life left
Technology
[Dries Buytaert] "Addressing the Maker-Taker challenge is essential for the long-term sustainability of open source projects. Drupal's approach may provide a constructive solution not just for WordPress, but for other communities facing similar issues." Dries lays out a constructive approach to crediting open source contributors. There&
Technology
[Matt Haughey] "A couple months ago I was hanging out with my aunt, and she mentioned her cable+internet bill was around $250 per month. I thought that was insane and that I should do something about it. She's a 75 year old retiree that watches baseball
Culture
[Bop Spotter] "I installed a box high up on a pole somewhere in the Mission of San Francisco. Inside is a crappy Android phone, set to Shazam constantly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It's solar powered, and the mic is pointed down at the
Climate
[Molly Lempriere and Simon Evans in CarbonBrief] "Remarkably, the UK’s coal power phaseout – as well as the closure of some of the country’s few remaining blast furnaces at Port Talbot in Wales and Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire – will help push overall coal demand in 2024 to its lowest