Werd I/O

I really like Lou Plummer’s list of 15 books which made the most impact on him, which I discovered via Tracy Durnell’s own list:

I think you can figure out a lot about a person if you know what books have had the most impact on them. At one point or another, each of these books was my current favorite. They all had a lasting impact on me. I'd love to see your list.

Tracy has smartly split hers up into categories. I’ll do the same here. And just as Lou said, I’d love to see your list!

Formative Books

These books disproportionately influenced me when I was a much younger adult, and helped contribute to the way I saw the world in a hundred ways, from my sense of what was possible to my sense of humor.

1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams — I don’t quote it, but the clever irreverence still sweeps me off my feet. A large part of me wishes I was Douglas Adams and always will.
2. Constellations: Stories of the Future — a mind-blowing collection of science fiction short stories, some of which became episodes of The Twilight Zone and so on. Jerome Bixby’s It’s a Good Lifeand Fritz Leiber’s A Pail of Air are standouts for me.
3. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury — There’s a warm, beating heart at the center of this story, and that’s what draws me in every time (and I’ve reread it countless times). There are better Bradbury books which have probably aged better — you’re probably thinking of them right now — but at the time, it resonated.
4. Maus, by Art Spiegelman — It was much later until I really understood how my own family was affected by WWII, but I connected to this hard. It was also the first graphic novel that made me really think about the possibilities of the form: something that was clearly far beyond superheroes and fantasy.
5. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood — Practically a documentary at this point, but it’s always been a riveting work of speculative fiction that does what that genre does best: help us grasp with elements of our present. To most of us, it’s a warning. To the Heritage Foundation, I guess it’s a manual.
6. 1984, by George Orwell — It’s hard to imagine a more culturally influential science fiction novel. I love it: although it has a lot to say, I find it to be a page-turner. If you haven’t read Sandra Newman’s follow-up, Julia, run to get it: it’s an impressive work of fiction in its own right that reframes the story in brilliant ways.
7. Microserfs, by Douglas Coupland — Coupland sometimes reads like a funnier Bret Easton Ellis (which is to say zeitgeisty but hollow — Shampoo Planet and The Rules of Attraction are cousins), but at his best he captures something real. Microserfs gave me that first taste of the community and camaraderie around building software together: it’s set in an earlier version of the industry than I got to be a part of, but its depiction of those early years is recognizable. Even the outlandish characters don’t feel out of place. I don’t think it’s probably aged at all well, but it resonated with me hard in my early twenties.

Motivating External Change

These books helped me think about how we need to change, and what we might do.

1. The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World, by Vincent Bevins — I’m convinced that every American citizen should read this, in order to better understand how we show up in the world. (Spoiler alert: we don’t show up well.)
2. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond — Visceral, accessible, memorable reporting on poverty and housing. Again, it should probably be required reading for American citizens.
3. The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson — There’s a very silly passage in this book about the role of blockchain in solving climate change (come on), as well as quite a bit in favor of climate engineering, which I think is highly dubious bordering on terrifying. But at the same time, the novel succeeds at painting a visceral picture of what the effects of the climate crisis could be.
4. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson — A key to understanding America. There’s a lot spelled out here that I simply didn’t know, running the gamut from the details of peoples’ everyday lived experiences to the chilling fact that Hitler based his Nazi caste system on Jim Crow.

Books That Changed Me

These books either left me a different person somehow or touched something in me I didn’t know existed.

1. Kindred, by Octavia Butler — I wish I’d discovered Butler earlier. Her work is immediate and deeply human, and while it shouldn’t have had to change a whole genre, it absolutely did. Parable of the Sower is seismic, of course, and rightly famous. (It’s also getting to be a harder and harder read in the current climate.) But it was Kindred that opened the doors to a different kind of science fiction to me, and through it, all kinds of possibilities.
2. How High We Go in the Dark, by Sequoia Nagamatsu — I have never read a more effective metaphor for grief and change. I read it when I was in the depths of grief myself, and the way this book captures the nuance, the brutality, and the beauty is poetry. I still think about one chapter almost daily. (It’s the rollercoaster. If you know, you know.)
3. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker — A breathtaking example of a modern novel: a masterclass in form as well as content. Not a word is wasted in bringing the lived experiences of her characters to life (and through them, so many more). I’ve read this many times, and I’ve never made it through without absolutely weeping.
4. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott — So often recommended to writers for really good reasons, Bird by Bird is not just the best book I’ve ever read about writing but also about embarking upon any large project. It’s hopeful, nourishing, actionable, and lovely. Its lessons still motivate me.

Do you have a list of your own that you would like to share? Let me know!

Tantek Çelik has posted a lovely encapsulation of the indieweb:

The #IndieWeb is for everyone, everyone who wants to be part of the world-wide-web of interconnected people. The social internet of people, a network of networks of people, connected peer-to-peer in human-scale groups, communities of locality and affinity.

This complements the more technical description on the indieweb homepage:

The IndieWeb is a community of independent and personal websites connected by open standards, based on the principles of: owning your domain and using it as your primary online identity, publishing on your own site first (optionally elsewhere), and owning your content.

I first came across the indieweb movement when I’d just moved to California. Tantek, Kevin Marks, Aaron Parecki, Amber Case, and a band of independent developers and designers were actively working to helping people own their own websites again, at a time when a lot of people were questioning why you wouldn’t just post on Twitter and Facebook. They gathered at IndieWebCamps in Portland, and at Homebrew Website Camp in San Francisco.

One could look at the movement as kind of a throwback to the very early web, which was a tapestry of wildly different sites and ideas, at a time when everybody’s online communications were templated through web services owned by a handful of billion dollar corporations. I’d prefer to think of it as a manifesto for diversity of communications, the freedom to share your knowledge and lived experiences on your own terms, and maintaining the independence of freedom of expression from business interests.

A decade and change later and the web landscape looks very different. It’s now clear to just about everyone that it’s harmful for all of our information to be filtered through a handful of services. From the Cambridge Analytica scandal through Facebook’s culpability in the genocide against the Rohingya people in Myanmar, it’s clear that allowing private businesses to own and control most of the ways we learn about the world around us is dangerous. And the examples keep piling up, story after story after story.

While these events have highlighted the dangers, the indieweb community has been highlighting the possibilities. The movement itself has grown from strength to strength: IndieWebCamps and Homebrew Website Clubs are now held all over the world. I’ve never made it to one of the European events – to my shame, it’s been years since I’ve even been able to make it to a US event – but the community is thriving and the outcomes have been productive.

Even before the advent of the fediverse, the indieweb community had built tools to allow websites to connect to each other as a kind of independent, decentralized social web. Webmention, in conjunction with lightweight microformats that extended HTML to provide semantic hints about the purpose of content on a website, allowed anyone to reply to any website article using a post on their own site – not just that, but they could RSVP to events, send a “like”, reshare it, or use verbs that don’t have analogies in the traditional social networks. The community also created micropub, a simple API that makes it easy to build tools to help people publish to their websites, and a handful of other technologies that are becoming more and more commonplace.

In the wake of the decline of Twitter, Google’s turn towards an AI-driven erosion of the web, and a splintering of social media, many publishers have realized that they need to build stronger, more direct relationships with their communities, and that they can’t trust social media companies to be the center of gravity of their brands and networks. For them, owning their own website has regained its importance, together with building unique experiences that help differentiate them, and allow them to publish stories on their own terms. These are truly indieweb principles, and serve as validation (if validation were needed) of the indieweb movement’s foundational assumptions.

But ultimately it’s not about business, or technology, or any one technique or facet of website-building. As Tantek says, it’s about building a social internet of people: a human network of gloriously diverse lived experiences, creative modes of expression, community affinities, and personalities. The internet has always been made of people, but it has not always been people-first. The indieweb reminds us that humanity is the most important thing, and that nobody should own our ability to connect, form relationships, express ourselves, be creative, learn from each other, and embrace our differences and similarities.

I’m deeply glad it exists.

Also posted on IndieNews

I’d like to informally join the list of technologists who support the American Innovation and Choice Online Act. Here’s the full text of the bill.

Specifically, the bill would prevent “covered platforms” from prioritizing their products and services over those provided by other vendors in a way that would harm competition on that platform.

That could be interpreted to mean app stores and search engines: a “covered platform” is one that has at least 50M US-based monthly active users, at least 100K monthly active “business users”, and has either a market cap or revenues of at least $550B. It also needs to have the potential to “materially impede” access from a business to its users / customers, or to tools a business needs to service its users or customers.

It’s a good law. Neither search engine or marketplace vendors should have the ability to preference services made by that vendor over equivalent services made by others. Apple shouldn’t be able to promote Apple’s services over a startup’s on the App Store; Google shouldn’t be able to promote Google’s services on its store or in its search engine results. The result will be a better ecosystem for startups, independent projects, and software produced by co-operatives and collectives.

Similarly, the Open App Markets Act would prevent App Store providers from forcing app vendors to use the provider’s payments technology. Apple wouldn’t be able to require that subscriptions go through iTunes, for example. That’s a big change that, again, creates better terms for startups and helps to establish a more competitive ecosystem.

This is the kind of thing legislation should be doing: helping to enforce fairer markets that allow newcomers to compete with incumbents on a level playing field. I’m hopeful that these bills pass, and that they’re a precursor to real antitrust reform. In the light of today’s announcement around an overhauled merger approval process, we may be in luck.

A more competitive landscape is one where consumers have more choices and protections, and ecosystems are more open and innovative. These active steps to get there represent a change that’s been a long time coming.

When IndieVC arrived six years ago, it represented an exciting alternative to traditional venture investments. While revenue-based investing wasn't new, Indie made it mainstream, and started an important conversation: VC isn't appropriate for every business, so what's available for revenue-first, independent businesses that want to shoot for profitability instead of unicorn growth?

I was gutted today to read about its demise:

We’ve not been shy in sharing the challenges of departing from the well-known narratives of startups and VCs. 4 years ago, it cost us 80% of our LP base. Unfortunately, as we’ve sought to lean more aggressively into scaling our investments and ideas behind an “Indie Economy” we’ve not found that same level of enthusiasm from the institutional LP market.

Fundamentally, this shines an important light on a discrepancy in venture capital. Every VC fund depends on Limited Partners: typically institutional funds and the family offices of high net worth individuals that dedicate a portion of their investments to riskier, potentially high-yield businesses. While VC funds themselves claim to want to invest in the future, the investment managers in charge of LP money tend as a rule to be more risk averse. At the very least, in the same way that money from wealthy philanthropists is more opinionated than public funds, it is deployed according to the values of fund owners. Alternative models are met with reticence.

Radical changes in venture capital depend on radical changes in limited partner attitudes. So what does funding these kinds of sustainability-oriented businesses look like in light of this?

I suspect it looks like this: no funding. Instead, I wonder if we need to be building ecosystems like IndieHackers, which operates as a community of solo entrepreneurs focused on making their side projects profitable. Instead of funding, members promote each other and offer skill shares and examples from their own experiences. Product Hunt has evolved into a similar kind of space: one where individuals and funded companies alike share new things they've released, get feedback, and build community.

The idea of no funding is problematic, because only a certain kind of person can get something off the ground with only their own resources. Those people are usually wealthier, and wealthier people tend to come from a very narrow demographic. On the other hand, venture capital disproportionately (and problematically) already goes to people from that narrow demographic. So, screw it. Maybe the counterculture has better answers.

I link a lot to the Zebra movement; its upcoming co-op and crowdfunding partnerships make a lot of sense to me. I'm warming up more and more to the idea of exit to community as an exit strategy, which allows companies to shift ownership to their ecosystems and maximize their distribution of equity. But these approaches are most effective when a business has been established (although co-operatives and community collaboration can certainly help). I think there needs to be more support for the first step: getting a business zygote off the ground.

VC funding has the effect of allowing founders to focus on product for an artificially long time. In contrast, aiming from profitability from the get-go forces you to build a business from day one. (A third option, building a product and running it for the love of it outside of a business context, is a radically different thing, and not really interchangeable with the first two.) The result is two radically different kinds of ventures with different roadmaps, mindsets, and approaches. One is shorter on profitability; the second is shorter on product innovation.

Venture investors, at their best, are like co-founders; being a part of a portfolio creates a kind of network effect that maximizes value. You get introductions and advice you might not receive otherwise. This could potentially be substituted with small communities of practice. But another way VC founders win is by sharing equity: it's common for early-stage founders to swap a little ownership with each other to spread the risk. If one startup succeeds, all the founders in the network see some upside. I can imagine a world where indie founders do something similar, in a revenue-bound way: an equity spread that is paid down as a percentage of profits. If one company becomes wildly popular, every founder who's struggling to do the same gets a boost.

The bottom line is this: we need an established, alternative route for starting businesses on the internet. For some companies, VC is the right thing - but it's not the right thing for every company. For the others, rather than hoping for positive iterations of VC, the best bet may simply be to create community with each other, co-operate where possible, and make money on their own terms. To aim to be the million they never made. It's not about riches; it's about sustainability.

I'm sad to see Indie VC go. But I do have hope for the future.

#startups #indievc #funding

This is my monthly roundup of the tech and media I consumed and found interesting. Here's my list for November.

Books

Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson. A sobering, intelligent take on America's unspoken caste system, comparing it to similar systems around the world. For me, the history of how the Nazis looked to America's treatment of its Black population was particularly shocking.

Streaming

The Undoing. You know, I was skeptical, but it worked out well. It's somewhere between absolutely trash TV and a gripping thriller. And I like creepy Hugh Grant way more than I like apparently-charming Hugh Grant.

The Flight Attendant. Fresh off The Big Bang Theory, which I consider to be easily the worst television show ever made, Kaley Cuoco redeems herself in this pulpy, funny, unsettling thriller. It reminded me a bit of Run. Definitely a guilty pleasure watch - but that's kind of what I needed.

Save Yourselves! I felt personally attacked. But this hipsters-are-oblivious-of-an-alien-invasion movie is more of a roast than a takedown, and is absolutely hilarious. Recommended.

Notable Articles

Business

Justice Department Files Antitrust Lawsuit Challenging Visa’s Planned Acquisition of Plaid. “Visa’s con­cerns about Plaid un­der­pinned its de­ci­sion to buy the com­pany and pay a large rev­enue mul­ti­ple for it, the law­suit al­leges. The gov­ern­ment said Visa’s CEO de­scribed the deal as an “in­sur­ance pol­icy” to neu­tral­ize a threat to the com­pa­ny’s debit busi­ness. The law­suit quoted an­other ex­ec­u­tive who in 2019 com­pared Plaid to an is­land “vol­cano” whose cur­rent ca­pa­bil­i­ties are just “the tip show­ing above the wa­ter” and warned that “[w]hat lies be­neath, though, is a mas­sive op­por­tu­nity—one that threat­ens Visa.””

Unexpected & Inevitable. “The investor hears it and at first they don’t believe you. “Nah,” they say, as they start to argue with you whether that’s the way the world really works. Then, after a beat or two, they go, “wait, you’re right.” And after another moment, they think “fuck, that’s the only way it can be.”” I agree with Eric: this is what investors are looking for. You have an insight about the world that most people don’t, and you’re uniquely equipped to capitalize on it.

Spotify to acquire Megaphone. Megaphone is the network formerly known as Panoply. Spotify seems to be single-handedly creating value in the podcast market right now, but Apple has been quietly making acquisitions - like to keep its own ecosystem competitive.

Apple’s Shifting Differentiation. I found this exploration of Apple’s chip strategy to be really interesting. “Instead the future is web apps, with all of the performance hurdles they entail, which is why, from Apple’s perspective, the A-series is arriving just in time. Figma in Electron may destroy your battery, but that destruction will take twice as long, if not more, with an A-series chip inside!”

Women-owned businesses are struggling. Stimulus could help.. "Women and people of color were shut out of much of the initial rounds of stimulus because the program was set up to work through commercial banks. Those who didn’t have an existing relationship with a commercial bank found it harder to access the funds. And because the money ran out quickly, it left many without a lifeline."

The Double Standard of Female CEOs Moving Fast and Breaking Things. “We hold our female CEOs to impossible standards while not holding their male counterparts to high enough ones.”

The privacy fight is heading to the office. “I don't think Americans believe in privacy universally. And it's not a constitutional right. It's like, we have a right to free speech, we have a right to bear arms, we don't have a right to privacy in our federal constitution.”

Google Pay relaunch transforms it into a full-fledged financial service. Of note: “Google has co-branded banking accounts coming up in 2021. The new service, called Plex, essentially allows banks to partner with Google and use Google Pay as their own direct banking app.”

How Venture Capitalists Are Deforming Capitalism. "Even the worst-run startup can beat competitors if investors prop it up. The V.C. firm Benchmark helped enable WeWork to make one wild mistake after another—hoping that its gamble would pay off before disaster struck." VCs are upset about this article, but honestly, to me, it rings true.

Secret Amazon Reports Expose Company Spying on Labor, Environmental Groups. "Dozens of leaked documents from Amazon’s Global Security Operations Center reveal the company’s reliance on Pinkerton operatives to spy on warehouse workers and the extensive monitoring of labor unions, environmental activists, and other social movements." Gross.

Hulu raises Live TV price to $65, matching YouTube TV’s latest price hike. Here’s what I can’t fathom: why people tolerate cable TV at all. Every time I dive into it, I regret it. It’s a morass of shitty ads and low-quality programs that shout at you.

Unilever NZ’s 1-year trial of a 4-day week. I'm very into this.

Culture

The Shape of a Story. A beautiful exploration of narrative plot, Moomins, allegory, and the purpose of story in navigating real-world challenges.

Zillow Surfing Is the Escape We All Need Right Now. Is it? Or is it another form of doomscrolling, searching for places we could never afford in aspiration of an unreachable life we were told we could have? Hey, I'm just asking questions here.

As ‘Doonesbury’ turns 50, Garry Trudeau picks his 10 defining strips. Doonesbury is by far the best syndicated cartoon strip. I'm a lifetime fan. I met Trudeau once, at the Edinburgh Book Festival; we talked about Asterix. Lovely man.

Who’s in the Crossword? I loved this: a data-driven exploration of representation in crossword clues, with insight into how they’re produced.

Media

Confusion at BBC as boss says staff can attend Pride marches after all. “He told staff on Friday morning they would still be allowed to attend LGBT Pride marches, providing they remained celebratory and individuals were not seen to be taking a stand on any “politicised or contested issues”.” This is a ridiculous stance.

Google funds mouthpiece of Rwandan regime. “The worst case scenario for the NGO representative, however, is that „Google is signalling that it is funding repression and supports the muzzling of free speech, the closing of political space in Rwanda and attacks on political opponents and human rights defenders.“”

Travel influencers are being paid to whitewash authoritarian regimes. “Uncritically spreading political propaganda is unethical under all circumstances and especially in the form of branded content, where the lines are very blurry, and the audience might therefore not recognize it as such.”

How a crop of startups are trying to make for-profit local news work. "Evan Smith, the CEO of the Texas Tribune, said that when launching the local politics driven news site more than a decade ago, “We decided that for-profit was a non starter and that the market had failed.”"

News publishers dial up the marketing heat on their subscription products. Subscriptions are far better than advertising as a support mechanism. And news sustainability is deeply important.

Yes, Product Thinking Can Save Journalism. Six Reasons Why News Media Need Product Thinkers. "Knight Lab’s series on product thinking in media started with a question: “Journalism Has Been Disrupted. Can Product Thinking Save It?” After more than 25 years in digital publishing -- and as the editor for the series -- I think the answer is “Yes.”"

Politics

How a C.I.A. Coverup Targeted a Whistle-blower. “The C.I.A. has corrupted F.B.I. agents to violate basic rules as to how the Department of Justice does criminal prosecutions.”

Uber and Lyft had an edge in the Prop 22 fight: their apps. “In the weeks leading up to Election Day, the companies used their respective apps to bombard riders and drivers with messages urging them to vote for Prop 22, the ballot measure.” Let’s please make this illegal.

Evidence suggests several state Senate candidates were plants funded by dark money. Just one of a litany of dirty tricks used in this election.

I Lived Through A Stupid Coup. America Is Having One Now. “Ha ha ha, they lede, who’s going to tell him? Bitch, who’s going to tell you? An illegitimate leader has got all the guns and 40% of your population is down to use them. And y’all got jokes.”

We Need Election Results Everyone Can Believe In. Here’s How.. Smart suggestions for improving trust in our elections (undercutting the kind of FUD we’ve seen this month).

Trump races to weaken environmental and worker protections before January 20. Actively ghoulish.

Society

Why is Covid-19 is killing more men than women in middle age? Scientists are looking for answers not only in underlying health risks but also in biological and external factors. “Over­all, how­ever, men make up about 54% of U.S. deaths, and a sig­nif­i­cantly higher por­tion in mid­dle age. The death-cer­tifi­cate data through late Oc­to­ber show men make up nearly 66% of more than 42,000 Covid-19 deaths oc­cur­ring among peo­ple be­tween their mid-30s and mid-60s.”

Americans, Stop Being Ashamed of Weakness. "Too often in America, we are ashamed of being weak, vulnerable, dependent. We tend to hide our shame. We stay away. We isolate ourselves, rather than show our weakness."

Kamala Harris will be the first HBCU grad in the White House. “It’s not just about her being a Black woman. It’s about her being more than that, the intersectionality of who she is.”

Living With a QAnon Family as the Prophecy Crashes Down. “They’re treating it like there’s going to be an apocalypse — no matter who wins.”

Florida passes $15 minimum wage, a hike that could narrow the gender pay gap. Two important facts here: if a higher minimum wage can be passed in Florida, it can be passed just about anywhere. And it will disproportionately help women and people of color.

The new normal: Women and LGBTQ+ people are buying guns in 2020. “Although there is no official demographic breakdown of gun sales by race or gender, interviews with the gun community — new owners, sales people, analysts and activists — reveal a mounting anxiety among women and LGBTQ+ people, particularly those of color. And some are choosing to arm themselves for the first time.”

Why is life expectancy in the US lower than in other rich countries?. “The short summary of what I will discuss below is that Americans suffer higher death rates from smoking, obesity, homicides, opioid overdoses, suicides, road accidents, and infant deaths. In addition to this, deeper poverty and less access to healthcare mean Americans at lower incomes die at a younger age than poor people in other rich countries.”

Performative philanthropy and the cost of silence. "Days after joining the Criminal Justice Reform department, I was warned by a senior member of the team that I should avoid pushing for grantmaking strategies that centered racial equity, as Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan did not believe race was relevant to the issue of mass incarceration. I was told that previous attempts to educate the couple on this matter had contributed to a former employee being terminated."

Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression. "A cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of data from the UK Biobank, involving almost 85,000 people, has found that lifestyle factors such as less screen time, adequate sleep, a better-quality diet, and physical activity strongly impact depression." Also, water is wet.

Federal government to execute first woman since 1953. It was a heinous crime, but the death penalty is a disgusting, brutal practice that is not befitting of a supposed democracy.

A dinner party killed my Dad. Please stay safe this Thanksgiving.

AMA: Racism is a threat to public health. “The AMA recognizes that racism negatively impacts and exacerbates health inequities among historically marginalized communities. Without systemic and structural-level change, health inequities will continue to exist, and the overall health of the nation will suffer.”

Period poverty: Scotland first in world to make period products free. I miss living in a progressive nation.

Technology

I became an unwanted woman in tech.“There is something innately different now about my words. They’ve not changed, but their context has entirely shifted. It’s as though I walk around now with a badge that invites dismissal and disrespect. That badge is called womanhood.”

Roam: My New Favorite Software Product. I have a Roam account but I haven’t made it work for me yet. Articles like this make me want to try harder to get on the bandwagon.

A new way to plug a human brain into a computer: Via veins. Do not want. (But future iterations might be more interesting / palatable.)

DHS Buying Cellphone Geolocation Data To Track People. "The Department of Homeland Security is purchasing consumer cellphone data that allows authorities to track immigrants trying to cross the southern border, which privacy advocates say could lead to a vast “surveillance partnership” between the government and private corporations." Hands up if you're surprised.

User Stories Not Wireframes. "User stories provide the context of what a wireframe is for. When you give user stories to a developer, you greatly increase the chances they will be thoughtful about the product and features they are implementing. When they understand the bigger picture — who is this for, what are they trying to accomplish and why are they trying to accomplish it — they can take ownership over the project."

Product Hunt requirements document. A wonderfully concise example of what a good requirements document can look like.

HP ends its customers' lives. There's a reason why the free software movement started with printer drivers. It's mind-boggling to me how HP can continue to be so antagonistic to their customers. (Inkjet printers are the worst deal in technology.)

What using AT&T’s 768kbps DSL is like in 2020—yes, it’s awful. A reminder that if you’re serving all of America, you can’t assume a high-quality broadband connection.

Apple Silicon M1 Chip in MacBook Air Outperforms High-End 16-Inch MacBook Pro. I’m waiting for version 2, but this is super cool.

Your Computer Isn't Yours. "This means that Apple knows when you’re at home. When you’re at work. What apps you open there, and how often. They know when you open Premiere over at a friend’s house on their Wi-Fi, and they know when you open Tor Browser in a hotel on a trip to another city."

Parler, Backed by Mercer Family, Makes Play for Conservatives Mad at Facebook, Twitter. Bleuch.

How Discord (somewhat accidentally) invented the future of the internet. I’m not a gamer, so I was late to Discord. But it does feel like part of the future of online communities.

The iOS COVID-19 app ecosystem has become a privacy minefield. “It's hard to justify why a lot of these apps would need your constant location, your microphone, your photo library.” Relatively few of these apps use the comparatively privacy-protecting APIs developed by Apple and Google.

How the U.S. Military Buys Location Data from Ordinary Apps. “A Muslim prayer app with over 98 million downloads is one of the apps connected to a wide-ranging supply chain that sends ordinary people's personal data to brokers, contractors, and the military.” This is spectacularly not okay.

We Need Mandatory Enduser APIs for Social and Search Systems. This is an older piece (from 2018) but it still holds up, and I agree with it completely.

As internet forums die off, finding community can be harder than ever. It feels like this problem has been solved lots of times over on the internet - but it's both a huge problem and a real opportunity for the right startup.

How a young, queer Asian-American businesswoman is rethinking user safety at Twitter. “Su's goals sit at the heart of what could become a very different Twitter one day, if — and it remains a very big conditional — the company is serious about the changes it's been signaling over the last year.” Fingers crossed.

Rock-star programmer: Rivers Cuomo finds meaning in coding. The only time "rock star programmer" is an acceptable phrase.

The Secrets of Monkey Island's Source Code. A deep look into assets and code behind my favorite game of all time.

‘Tokenized’: Inside Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase. “One Black employee said her manager suggested in front of colleagues that she was dealing drugs and carrying a gun, trading on racist stereotypes. Another said a co-worker at a recruiting meeting broadly described Black employees as less capable. Still another said managers spoke down to her and her Black colleagues, adding that they were passed over for promotions in favor of less experienced white employees.”

Building your own website is cool again, and it's changing the whole internet. All hail the indieweb. I’m here for it.