Looking forward to a quiet summer day in NYC.#

A reporter is trying to squeeze an oral history out of me re podcasting in 2003-04. I'm driving her crazy. Wish they had a reporter covering us 14 years ago while it was happening! #

I'm doing some work with forever, the utility that keeps a set of Node apps running. I want to be able to get a list of the running processes from within an app that builds on forever-monitor, which is forever's core functionality. Here's the question I asked. Any help much appreciated. ;-) #

I picked up a CitiBike this afternoon and it wasn't properly docked. I could have taken it home and no one would have known. I imagine the poor person who thought they docked it was wondering what would happen. Would they end up owning the bike? No worries, I docked the bike for them, after taking it to my destination. Everyone wins. I got a free ride. Well I would have gotten a free ride anyway, because I have an unlimited card. But I still feel like I won! 👮#

#rex tells me that CitiBike has GPS built-in. How does that work. Is it always broadcasting its position back to the home office? Also there's a new dockless bike sharing program coming to NYC, to compete with CitiBike. Competition is good! #

Trump will say he was just making a joke about transgender people serving in the military. #

An August 2003 post about how Chris Lydon covered a Howard Dean campaign event in Manchester, NH. A confluence of politics, journalism, podcasting and a technology that was nothing more than a vision, and all of it ended up mattering. It doesn't often work out that way. #

Betsy Devine blogged the event which happened on August 20.#

The BloggerCon blog at Harvard seems to be gone. Pictures from the NH field trips were there (pointed to from Betsy's blog). Archive.org has the page, but many of the pictures are missing. But the pictures themselves are preserved. The ones of the campaign events begin with DSC. However I thought all the original blogs at Harvard were preserved? This is not a good sign. There was a fair amount of history preserved there. It was an academic project, so it's not cool that our work is gone. #

BTW, if you were part of the Berkman Thursday group, what became of you? I created a page where you can check in. Don't be shy! (You can send me an email if you want to be private, address is on that page.)#

Billionaires bought the govt and their big idea was that they should get more money.#

Trump will have the Boy Scouts search for Hillary's 33,000 emails. #

If you read my blog in an RSS reader, you should visit the actual site today and yesterday to see how the new features work. They don't come through to your reader, though it's conceivable at some point they could. I have the ability to include images, tweets and xrefs (other posts) in posts. They expand in place instead of linking. A pretty nice upgrade to the web. Come see how it works. If you study the web, you'll get a new idea. #

Keith Olbermann says something interesting at the end of this video. If you're pardoned, you lose the ability to take the 5th at an impeachment. #

I use node-emoji to process the emoji short codes on my blog. I asked for a feature that allowed me to enclose emoji in a span so I could make them a bit larger using CSS. They added the feature. Thanks! 👍#

It would be dramatic if John McCain returned to vote against the Obamacare repeal, but I'm pretty sure that's not why he came back.#

Happy Sunday. Just had a remarkable programming session. At the beginning of the session I had a nice chokidar-based image uploader app in Node. I wanted to get started at putting it into an Electron shell. A couple of hours and it's done. There's an image that was uploaded with it in the right margin. The cool thing is that it hooks into the OS, no polling, so there's zero latency. Drop an image in the folder and it's up before you can bring the app to the front. Debugged a race condition, a file deleted before it was read, and then realized I had two copies of the app running. #

Here's a screen shot of the app of an image of of itself uploaded by itself. I could have kept going, but I decided not to. 💣#

It's 78F here in NYC, humid but it feels delightful compared to the heat we've been having. Feels like springtime! Might have to wear a sweater (just kidding).#

One more thing I like, the node-notifier package. Not a huge fan of desktop notification, but that's a separate issue. The team that did this package did it well, with good examples, and attention to detail. #

The new server locked up again. I rebooted it with the same apps running, but now I'm thinking I have to split it in two. I also have in mind some software that will make that easier. Always factoring. Also might give me a chance to try out the new cname trick we learned. ⏰ #

Pay attention to this. Something we might not want to let a president do.#

Josh Marshall: "President is accused of winning election by conspiring with a foreign power, now openly signaling no investigation will be allowed. A crisis." Also meets privately with the leader of the foreign power and makes unilateral concessions.#

Special story: Musical podcasts of 2005.#

A magazine is doing a profile of me re the beginnings of podcasting in 2003-2005. They asked for stories of goofs, or the first time something weird happened on a podcast. If you were listening back at the beginning, the podcasts from the DNC in 2003, or a BloggerCon, or one of the casts from my cross-country driving in 2004, please leave a note here with any stories you remember. #

Here's the original Morning Coffee Notes podcast page. #

I've skipped Rachel Maddow for the last three nights. It's no longer interesting to me. We're looping around and around. It's the same story. Trump was and is in the money laundering business. They operate in the open, just lie about it. No coincidence the same people in the June 2016 meeting are turning out to have relationships with Trump and his team as well as Putin and his. They're all part of the same effort. Trump is so happy to meet Putin and hang with him because he's the boss's boss's boss. We can all see Trump is both crazy and subordinate to Putin. The only story left to tell here is when are the Repubs going to do something about it. #

An interesting side-effect of all the Russian-Trump michegas is that the Russian actors in US politics are getting exhaustively examined by the US press. They probably don't like the exposure. Makes it harder for them to do what they do. #

Tweet: A few years ago in Berkeley I had a public argument with Lowell Bergman. I said judges would blog, an idea the famous journalist laughed at. The point being that people who have climbed to the top of a ladder, the people we respect the most, usually miss new ladders being erected.#

President Trump didn't get his way on health care, not that he had any idea what he wanted, so he threatened to "let ObamaCare die." Of course the Repubs can make it die, and there's a pretty good chance that's what they're doing. That's really fucked up. What's next. He wants something so he threatens to launch the nukes? A president who tries hostage-taking once will do it again. #

Good morning e-sports fans! 🚀#

OJ is paroled. Here comes the moral parade to end all moral parades. #

To me a blog is daily writing and a software project.#

I learned something new about DNS today, I think. You can use CNAMEs for top-level domain names? Who knew. I always thought they had to be IP addresses. I still do, actually, but this experiment seems to work. Puzzled. #

Just sayin the Repubs could have gone through the CBO exercises in private before rolling out their plan. Even a small software company would do a little testing before deploying, just in case, you know, the app deletes 23 million people's insurance. #

Podcast: It's not often you LOL at a Bloomberg headline.#

Occam's pundit: He's in the business of moving money out of Russia and into apartments and golf courses. #

I've been under a total eclipse. It gets dark. Then it gets light. My friend #rex will be under the best part of the August 21 eclipse in Nashville. #

instantdave.com is a domain I bought today. ✈️ #

I'm wearing a MLK button as my avatar on Twitter. By wearing this button on my virtual self, I'm hoping to reserve my place in the traditional, diverse and generous America.#

What will happen on health care now? I have a prediction. Repub senators are pissed off and split, they like the Senate, think McConnell is a heartless hack, and enough of them will work with Dems to form a majority on just this one issue. Then McDonald's Trump will declare victory. "I always said the Dems could work with us." Everyone's happy. DJ Don gets to drive a fire truck for Christmas. #

New version of the MacWrite demo app for nodeStorage. I factored the top level into a JavaScript object called nodeStorageApp. Makes it a little simpler to make a browser-based storage-capable app.#

Interesting Daily podcast yesterday. French president Macron has figured out how to be friends with our president. I think maybe some people in the US will figure that out too. What would happen if we gave the president what he wants. Parades, trucks and lots of money. Just give it to him. And then get on with it. He really seems easy to please. It would blow his mind. It's something the Mission Impossible people would do. Or the Blues Brothers. 💥#

Trump does deal-making like they do it on TV. He plays someone who makes deals.#

I wonder how much carbon is dumped into the atmosphere because we don't have basic train service between cities in the US. For example, I was looking at taking an Amtrak from NYC to Nashville, thought that would be an interesting trip, well there is no Amtrak service to Nashville. You can take a train to Chicago and get on a bus. #

I just had to switch servers, one that has a lot of parked domains. That meant going to three different registrars (I know I have to consolidate) and entering the new IP address in place of the old one. Why haven't we created another level to DNS that lets this just be a matter of changing a constant in one place. #

I'm interested in Hubble contact lenses, but I just need one lens, for the right eye, and their website doesn't seem to allow for this. #

Welcome to the camp, I guess you all know why we're here.#

Here's the official JSON source code for Scripting News. It's the output of my editor, in JSON form. It's totally analogous to programming in a high level language. I write in a form that makes sense for me as a writer. The software transforms that into something easy for people to read. Of course this file is maintained as I publish new stuff to the blog. Knock wood, praise Murphy, I am not a lawyer. 💥#

There's all this wisdom out there that isn't being heard. #

I'm starting a project with my friend Rex Hammock relating to this blog. When you see a #rex tag that means I wanted to call his attention to the item because it relates to something we're discussing. #

Good morning open tech fans! 💥#

To people in blogging-tools-land, I have a new proposal for interop this morning, already implemented on my blog.#

Jay Rosen pointed into a Twitter thread that said that news orgs, instead of sending NYC-based journalists to the middle of America, should give the money to local journalists and run what they write. Good idea. Perhaps go the next step, find thoughtful people everywhere to write about what's wrong with the world, and listen. A lot is lost when you have to explain things through reporters. We're limited by what they understand. As a result events fly by without much understanding. #

I just plain don't like it when big companies lecture their customers.#

I hear the Democrats need a core message, how about: "We love America and Americans and the Constitution and we're fighting for all of it." Or hot dogs, baseball and apple pie, or you could do that in the background with farm pictures, subways and highways full of cars. Mountains, the Grand Canyon and the Florida Keys too. #

Why don't the Democrats hold a contest among the people for the new message of the party. That itself might be the message, in a sense.#

I think you have to be over 55 to get the idea of a phone call that isn't scheduled two weeks in advance.#

Tweaked the fonts a little on the Scripting News home page. The titles should be tighter and more clear. #

This happened to me yesterday. I knew I had a contact lens floating around somewhere in my right eye, outside my vision. I couldn't feel where it was, and no amount of tweaking would get it to re-center. So finally I decided it must have fallen out, and put in a second lens. Then I could really feel something was wrong. So I took out the second lens and miraculously the one I thought had fallen out came back into view, and my vision was back to where it was supposed to be. But I wondered what I would do if I never found the first lens and had to live with the possibility that I had it floating around inside there, getting infected and fused and whatever contacts lost in your body do. #

Things are still settling in after the server switch over the weekend. I explained what happened in a comment in the Issues thread. I had a chance to learn once-again the old adage -- If it ain't broke don't fix it. 💥#

Links are spoilers. Think about where Tywin Lannister is at his moment of truth and the title of the show. It makes you wonder. Are they really clever or is it just an accident? (I bet they're clever.)#

BTW, Amazon has Game of Thrones action figures. For example here is Tryion Lannister. Only $10.95. They make perfect right margin images on Scripting News. Expect to see more of them. #

4PM Eastern: I moved the apps on an old server to a new server. If you notice something that stopped working around that time, post a note here. #

7PM Eastern: I had to switch to a larger instance size. Hopefully that'll make things run more smoothly. As before if there continue to be problems please post a note here. #

I like the phrase Nothing Burger. When I hear a Trumpster say it I think they're saying "Russian Burger."#

I have no idea what this means. Is there $232 million in a bank account somewhere that you can spend to hire people, pay rent, buy food?#

Just checking. Fargo still works. #

Someone should write a fictionalized soap-style novel about how the Trump campaign hooked up with Russia to take the White House. All the whacky even supernatural things that happen when a foreign country takes control of the United States. Fill in the blanks, all of them. When facts become known, and the narrative differs from reality, update it. Share the doc in GitHub repo so you can see the changes. It would be a fascinating new media way to cover this story, to make it understandable and interesting. The movie rights could be incredible.#

I don't think it matters what Repubs do, or if it's collusion or treason or leads to impeachment or is legally anything. What matters is what do you think about sleazebags selling us out to the Russian mob? #

Net neutrality is an issue for a set of big companies relative to another set. Users don't have a reason to support one over the other. Neither group has made a pitch to users that mean anything other than more control of the net by big companies. The tech industry has fooled you if you think they're your friends. #

The Bay Area has a new bikeshare program. Already operating in parts of San Francisco and the East Bay. San Jose coming. #

What are the chances that POTUS 46 is less compromised by the Russians than Trump? Pretty low imho. Once the mob is in they don't leave.#

People might not like a world dominated by China. For example, the Internet is heavily censored in China. They also have the death penalty. Trials are short, constitutional protections non-existent. The dominant country tends to spread its values to the countries it dominates. They are in a position to demand it. The United States has been in that position for all the lives of everyone alive today. We don't know any other way. We are spoiled and lazy and are trying desperately to pay the price for it. #

Surprisingly, China has been boosting unions and American companies have been fighting it. That's the opposite of what I thought was happening. Maybe Chinese domination would be better than I thought. (The American companies listed are Wal-Mart, Google, UPS, Microsoft, Nike, AT&T and Intel.)#

58% of Repubs think higher education has a negative effect on the country. So how are those high-paying jobs going to stay in America if our people aren't educated? America seems to have a willed itself to fail. I don't see this as the country I grew up in. Next-up: Repubs think health care has a negative effect on the country. #

Single-feed viewer feature released to River5 users.#

As noted in the announcement, some feeds work better than others in the single-feed viewer. If you don't like the way an item looks in the right panel, it's probably something you should report to the source of the feed, not me. We show you exactly what's in the feed. Unlike the main river display, we don't truncate or strip markup. You're getting what's in the feed, no more no less. #

An example of a feed that looks great is Political Wire. Good length stories, not too much markup, links are included. I've always liked Political Wire, they summarize important political stories, and save you from having to click through a paywall to use up one of your monthly reads. #

Epiphany: Twitter is a slice of the crazy life. #

Yes dear friends there is an Emoji Movie coming later this month; starring Patrick Stewart as Poop. God help us. 💩#

Remarkably Fargo is still working. WTF! 🐓 #

Good progress on the Feedviewer app. Here's the NYT > Politics feed. Note it is not a full-item feed. It would be interesting to curate a set of feeds that are designed for the feedviewer approach to reading. #

Frank Rich says the moment of truth will come for Trump as 2018 midterms approach as it did for Nixon in 1974.#

Kind of obvious Trump Jr and Kushner were briefed on the hacked DNC emails at the meeting.#

Seems like a day for looking back through tech history. Brendan Eich dug up a 1998 email exchange betw Bill Joy and myself re Java being a locked box. In 2017 people still program in Java, but it did not take over the world.#

In 2002, when I was working on RSS 2.0, I started keeping a blog-like diary of thoughts. I stumbled across this doc when I was looking for an explanation of guids for the piece about the blog bugfix. The first part was so good, I wondered why I had no memory of it. Then I got to the second part. The attacks were ugly, personal and awful and that's what I had put out of my mind, and I never wanted to point to this piece for fear of inviting more abuse. But the first and last parts were good, and RSS 2.0 went on to be a juggernaut. And that's most of what I wanted. #

I wonder if news orgs consider that Americans would stand up for them as the president and his family get more abusive (the same family that stands in for the president at international summit meetings). The assumption that all or most Americans are lazy and weak is itself weak. Flip it around, set the expectation for us all to be strong. #

Must-read: How Trump used Facebook to win. Take-away -- vote your interests, completely discount emotions. They are being programmed. #

To fully appreciate the norm-busting insanity of Ivanka repping the US at the G20, imagine another country doing it.#

Software preview. I don't usually show off software before it's done, but what the heck. I've been playing around with a single-feed view of news for River5. This is a demo, it's not hooked up to a server. Gives you an idea what it might look like. I used Brent Simmons' new Evergreen reader as a model. #

Someone has to speak for journalism, to respond to what the president says. The response is imho simple. Of course he doesn't like what we report about him. We're finding out who he is. What he has been hiding. Also what he is doing. This is what journalism does. An expanded answer here. Perhaps they need the opposite of a public editor. Someone who represents the ego that journalism isn't supposed to (according to some) have. #

There never was a real controversy over which form of RSS reader is better. There are two. Mailbox style and river. The correct answer as to which is better is both. You need both. People who thought they could live without rivers were presented with Twitter and Facebook whose timelines are rivers, although they muddy them up a bit with algorithms and ads. You need the mailbox approach when you want to see all that an individual has posted recently. Even Twitter has this ability. Even Radio UserLand, in 2002, had it. In 2017 the controversy, if there ever was one, is long-settled. #

Wyoming really has a fraction of the population of a NYC borough. Queens, the second most populous borough had 2.2 million people in the 2010 census. Wyoming at the same time had only 564K. Even more ridiculous, three neighborhoods in Queens combined have a greater population than Wyoming: Flushing, Jackson Heights and Jamaica. #

A memoir: Techno-utopianism in the 90s. No regrets. #

If you think the permanent division in our country's politics comes strictly from the right, here's pundit/lawyer Glenn Greenwald saying not to be generous with Republican pundit David Frum, because we aren't generous with Republicans, even if we agree on Trump. That's the politics of division. That's the problem right there. We need to start listening, to everyone. Because you never know who your newest ally will be. I don't like Greenwald, it's true, and it's because he is one of the worst listeners I've ever encountered. Totally self-contained. Greenwald knows the truth, and can't learn anything from anyone. (My politics and his are pretty well aligned btw, which I know from reading his columns.)#

I shipped a new product over the holiday weekend, pngWriter. ⛵️ #

Message to amateur pundits on Facebook: You're not on Hardball or Morning Joe. No one can hear you.#

La Repubblica, an Italian news org, wrote about techno-utopianism of the 90s. I wrote something for them, quoted in the piece. They wanted to know what went wrong. Here's the full text of what I wrote. #

It would be great if we could pool our money to buy political ads. That seems to be what Marc Pincus and Reid Hoffman are doing. If so, let's go! :-)#

It's July 5 and Fargo is still working. 🍀 #

Mike Arrington, in 2010, on what it means to be an entrepreneur.#

I like what Mike wrote. I'd add in 2017 it pisses me off that people will only accept the media that big companies give them, thus giving up all their power for a Like or an amen. Being lazy is what gets us in so much trouble. Here we are in nirvana of media creation. Anyone can create any media they want. Running servers is cheap and relatively easy, at least compared to how it used to be. I have to believe this bubble can't last much longer, because so much more is possible. But so few people have the energy or courage to try out a new idea, even if it might fail. #

Trump is a NBB. Seriously. He's got the knack. But where is the balancing act. Someone who tells it like it is, but uses agreed-upon facts as opposed to making shit up. I had the thought yesterday that Maxine Waters, if she had Twitter-fingers, could do the job. Here's what she said when asked if she'd go easy on Ben Carson (presumably because he's a black man): "I'm going to tear his ass apart." I like that. I think a lot of people would find that refreshing. (And no, she's not threatening violence. It's an idiomatic expression.)#

David Brooks asks why working class conservatives seem to vote against their economic interests. Where does Trump's 40 percent approval rating come from? He has a theory that they're expressing the self-reliance ethic of the wild frontier. That's some happy horseshit. I have a different theory. They approve of what Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity tell them is happening. In other words they don't know they support someone who is against their economic interests. #

BTW, Fargo is still working. 🎉 #

It's July 3 and Fargo is still working. Go figure. 🐜#

BTW, the fact that the president only promotes acts of violence by Muslims against whites tells you that the goal isn't to protect, it's to raise fear among Christian whites of people who are "different."#

Good morning sports fans! ⚾️#