My friend Blogdiva is back. She loves the new Congress. Me too. They're the Beatles, I say. Hard Day's Night she said. Yes! 💥#

The best line in a great movie: "Everyone wants that dear. It doesn't exist."#

The Tappan Zee Bridge was demolished today.#

A friend who's about 10 years younger than me wrote a blog post a while back saying that he was going to stop writing software in about 10 years because he'd be too old to do it at that time. I'm sure he didn't say it to offend me, but it did. He has no idea. And btw that was about five years ago, and he's still going strong. Heh. Also, the other day I wrote a tweet saying that I strive for simplicity in my programming work. I've been doing that ever since I read the source code to a famous OS and saw how clean and sparse it was. I wanted to do that too. That was 40-plus years ago. Today I write cleaner code than I could have at any other point in my career. The younger version of myself could imagine what I do today, but couldn't do it. So the myth that programming is something you forget how to do, or can't do, as you get older is a lie. It's not like basketball or skiing. It's a discipline. And as you get older, you get better. I'm not saying that because I want it to be true (as many people probably think) rather because it is true. #

I had a change in perspective on the shutdown. It isn't a sign of ineptness, it's an attack on the country. Connect the dots. Who's in the White House and where does he get his orders. Thought I would share that, of course no one listens. ;-)#

I watched a bit of MSNBC last night, and had another shift in perspective. There's nothing more for them to say. They're repeating things, aghast, that we knew two years ago, that they were aghast at then, when they were fresh. The shift was this. They feel as helpless as I do. Might as well enjoy ourselves. We're stuck. The only ones with any power are the useful idiot in the White House and AOC of course and Nancy Pelosi. #

I'm shopping for a car, and at this point if it doesn't have Apple CarPlay, that's a deal-stopper.#

Look at how AOC links reform in politics with reform in journalism. You don't see this kind of certainty coming out of Tow or Shorenstein. But she's right, and people are listening. Journalism must respond. I want to be part of that response. Think about how an Indivisible for journalism might work. We have the tools, we just need the will. #

I was at the Knicks game today. We lost but came close at the end. In NY we call this a moral victory. #

Journalism and politics must both be reformed around reality, you can't have one without the other. We need an Indivisible for journalism. We already have the tech, we just need the will.#

In the late 90s I got a call from Bill Gates's office saying they wanted to discuss Internet identity. Until then I hadn't thought about it much, because the web was barely used for commerce; there were no massive social networks. This was before all that. Now many years later, I understand the problem well, I've lived it, so far without much cost. There's a huge societal vulnerability because we don't have control of identity for many important things, like banking, loans, all kinds of property ownership, as well as the social risks. But because money is so central to identity, it's surprising that there isn't a Google or Amazon of identity. Seems there's money to be made here. An organization with physical branches everywhere, with people in them who can help with indentity problems. Starbucks would have a good start. Amazon, Google and Apple probably have plans for it.#

Starbucks also seems well-positioned to be a cannabis retailer. It's the perfect environment to buy and consume. #

Oy the horse race is so boring. Bernie or Biden or Warren or whatever. Whoever the Dems nominate we'd better all vote for them. That's why it's all such bullshit. It doesn't matter who gets nominated. Whoever it is, they will be infinitely more suited than the Repub.#

Trump is a Putin-loyal oligarch. Look at this picture to see where he fits in. He's comfortable with these guys. He's probably a bit more senior than they, but not much. And he's thought to be an idiot by them, but a powerful idiot. (Goes beyond the usual useful idiot.)#

Yesterday I reported on what you get when you download your archive from Flickr. Later I remembered I was archiving my Flickr site in an S3 bucket and this morning I figured out where it was. And now I'm looking through old pictures, that are already saved. For example, in January 2007 I went to CES and (apparently) was moving into my new house in Berkeley. In June I was in Rome, and also was waiting in line with the Scobles for the very first iPhone. A picture I took with my new iPhone at my favorite sushi takeout place in Berkeley. #

Photos from two previous living rooms, one in Woodside and one in Berkeley (both in California).#

Imagine that American politics since 2015 was a series like Game of Thrones or The Sopranos. The Helsinki Summit would have been the big reveal, in the second to last episode of the season, when we now know with certainty that Trump is a Russian mafia oligarch working for Putin. #

Listened to the Daily podcast interview a sheriff from an Arizona border county. The border wall story was used to stoke hatred of non-white, non-Christian Americans during the campaign. That's what it means. The "humanitarian crisis" the president calls for is a fig leaf for people like the sheriff. It's a loud obvious dog whistle. Can't budge an inch or we're supporting hate. #

Michael Cohen's open, under-oath testimony before Congress will be important because it's probably going to be the first truthful and somewhat complete testimony the public has seen. Impeachment is driven by public sentiment. It can't and shouldn't happen until a substantial majority of the people demand it, not just favor it. You don't casually impeach and remove a president, you can't do it only on principle. It has to be driven by the public determination. #

More on the dual-major journalism and computer science program. Yesterday I wrote how that could be great for journalism, now I want to talk about the flip side, how it's great for the software journalists use, i.e. publishing software. In my experience the best software is that which is designed by people who use the product. They bump against the limits as users do, think of shortcuts and simplifications (called factoring in software). If you don't use the software your ideas about how it should work are theoretical. The closer you are to the user experience, the better you understand the tradeoffs from the user's perspective. And that ultimately is the most important one. So applied to this dual-major concept when the students learn their comp sci, it can be in the context of how journalists use computer systems. And with better understanding of users on the part of the students, after all they are users, the better the publishing software can be. #

HBO has been playing all the Sopranos episodes back to back for a few days. Yesterday by luck I hit on the very last episode. Earlier in the day I read a debate on what happened at the end. I am of the school that yeah of course he died, but the person who took the opposite position was convincing. We don't know what happened at the end so leave it there. But I got to see all the scenes that were discussed, the same day. Intense, and fun. #

I just skimmed the Vice article about RSS. Up front they make it sound like something dramatic happened. That gravestone image was pretty bad. Someday it'll come back to them. ;-) Anyway there was, momentarily, some drama. The two groups wanted to do very different things. Netscape, as far as I'm concerned, wanted to bootstrap syndication of web content, and that was validated by the enormous popularity of RSS for that application. They had a vision that was right. And yes, they did one day just disappear. I wanted to preserve the progress we had made and build on it. I loved the idea since feeds provided exactly the level playing field I wanted for bloggers and pros. Look at all the good that came from that. Ask TechCrunch or Daring Fireball, Daily Kos or Talking Points Memo. And podcasting. These things all got their start because there was that level playing field. That vision was what was driving me. Ultimately the two forks went their separate ways, as they should have, because we were going different places. It's unfortunate both were called RSS, but if you study the history of tech standards these kinds of tales of woe are more the rule than the exception. It's a good story. I guess, for me it's the ancient past.#

Apparently several American universities are starting a new double-major, Journalism and Computer Science. I've been asked for input to one of the programs, and have started to think about it. One immediate idea is that the students will be able to write about technical topics without obfuscation. Examples: Hillary's emails. Facebook's API. They sound like scandals when the NYT writes about them, but what are the actual facts. Believe it or not, they don't say. The business and political press will do what they do, write shallow and inflammatory versions of the story that cast the Hillary and Zuck (and of course others) in the worst possible light. But some of us want facts. At the beginning, so we know if there's anything to the allegations or are they just smears. There are millions of people today who understand what a mail server is, to them it's not a mystery. There should be some news that's written for people with that basic knowledge. The students in this program will be learning how to communicate about technology with a sense that the answers are knowable, and not mysterious. So there should be an immediate benefit to all of us, not just the students, from these programs. #

Another benefit of the new double-major -- journalism will be able to closely examine the behavior of other tech giants, not just Facebook. For example, Google has been trying to take control of the networking standard of the web, HTTP. This is not in the public interest, yet there has been no discussion of it in the press. That's wrong. #

Here's a scriptingNews format feed example. They can be hard to find. Hopefully now at least this one will show up in searches.#

A podcast can be much more than a radio program. Since so many podcasters come from journalism, they miss this opportunity. They have no sense that there's value in the people who hear them.#

Because our POTUS is wildly insane, the United States itself is wildly insane. For example, the big controversy over $5 billion for an imaginary thing is overshadowing a real existential crisis, climate change. OK climate change is hard to grasp. What about all the Americans shooting other Americans. Most are American citizens born and bred in the USA. White Christians. As Trump would say, not our best people.#

I had a thought that Radio Open Source, probably the longest-running and super excellent podcast that was born out of the Berkman Thursday group and BloggerCon, could be the centerpiece of a blogging and podcasting network. The people who contribute to ROS, their rolodex of interviewees, are incredible people, but here's something that we haven't begun to tap into -- I bet the people who listen to it are equally incredible. Imagine tapping into their intellect, energy, expertise and vision. Could be very powerful.#

I just downloaded all my Flickr data. There's a lot of it. #

Do you like intelligent and irreverent political commentary? Then you must subscribe to the Radio Open Source podcast. #

Angus King on MSNBC said the thing I wished someone would say. 1. There already is a wall. 2. If you want to build something new, first tell us WTF it is because no one knows. I learned this from Leo McGarry on The West Wing. Don't accept the premise of the question. #

Anticipating Flickr's change in policy, I asked for a download of everything in my account. No response. I have received requests for me to subscribe. I might do it, but first I want copies of my stuff. #

Finished bingeing Get Shorty on Netflix. I liked it, but like a lot of series, it just trails off at the end. A comedy masquerading as a crime story. Don't expect too much and you won't be disappointed. 💥#

My friend Joe Moreno is looking for a 60-person venue in Silicon Valley to rent. "An ideal venue would be a college classroom with A/V." #

Concise explanation of the values of journalism. Must-read.#

Why people like AOC are so important -- she doesn't depend on the established news orgs to transmit what she says. She goes direct. This was the goal of blogging. And it's being achieved.#

Jay Rosen and I used to have a podcast entitled Rebooting the News. Since then it's gotten worse, as Jay explains in this Twitter thread. Today it needs more than a reboot. More like a tear-down and rebuild. Back in the podcast days I wasn't a believer in what they call "citizen journalism." Now I think it's the only thing that can save us. #

Just listened to the Brian Lehrer Show discussing The Wall. They talk about it as if it's something that exists or is possible. As I understand it, we already have walls where ever it is practical. It's not possible to put a wall on a river, and much of the border between the US and Mexico is the Rio Grande. You can't put a wall on the bank of a river. That's ridiculous. So I think before we have discussions about this thing that is supposedly possible, let's first address the question of whether it is. #

Every time I see AOC on TV I am so proud to be an American and a NYer. She is the future we deserve. Hopefully many young people will look to her as a role model, and will value intelligence, courage, education and their ability to make a difference. Now, we need journalism of that quality, because without it, politics can never really get out of the sewer. #

Good morning everybody! 🚀#

New header image, an almost frozen pond I came across in upstate NY. Previous image, suitable for the holiday season. #

I'm having an interesting discussion with longtime friend Jon Udell, but I think we're discussing different things. I'm trying to say we don't have a good way to explain features in languages and environments to people who aren't schooled in the environment. So if I say X has a feature no other environment has, people will always say it "sounds like" something they've seen in environment A, B and C. But "sounds like" is not good enough. If for example Billy Joel were to claim he had written a great new song, then played it on the piano and it was obviously Hey Jude, you could say Hey Billy that "sounds like" Hey Jude and you'd have a good idea that you are right. Because music has a universal instrument for sharing tunes, the piano. Software does not. I hoped JavaScript would be it. But maybe it is. I'll try demoing the feature I was talking about in the piece Jon was commenting on, using JavaScript.#

Escape at Dannemora was worth watching, but it was ungodly slow at times, which I guess is okay because that's how life is in prison, I guess. The Showtime series ended on Sunday. #

I really need to keep a diary of all the shows I've binge-watched. Until then I'm just going to write about them here on my blog. #

Another full year of Scripting News, in the archive. #

To ring in the New Year, I unsubscribed from all my Zillow emails. I had become addicted to house shopping that way. Learned a lot. Time to focus on other things now. #

Hello 2019!#

18-minute podcast about why the new comments are so good. Two main reasons. 1. It's inverted from a spam point of view. You comment in your Twitter flow. I get to read your comment because I follow the RSS feed and the #scriptingnews tag. If I think what you said is valuable I can like it, or RT it or follow you. So there's a way for me to amplify your flow, but it's my choice. 2. Twitter's new 280-char limit works really well, as noted earlier. It's enough to express an idea, but not enough to write a blog post. Perfect. #

iTunes has been acting like an asshole today, refusing to copy files onto my iPhone. Had an idea. Can Dropbox on my iPhone play MP3s? It can. It's a way to avoid using iTunes to put podcasts on my iPhone. And they end up on all my devices. #

Why is knowledge spelled with a D between the E and G, but privilege isn't?#

7-minute podcast story about two presidents, Bartlet and Gassée, and Guy Kawasaki, and how deveopers benefit from stories about how real people use their products. #

As I get deeper into SQL databases, I can explain the innovations of Frontier's object database in new ways. For example, with SQL, the way you access structures in memory is dramatically different from how you access structures in the database. In Frontier, there is no difference. You use the same operators no matter where the data resides. The system manages the caching of data transparently. As far as I know, no other enviroment does this.#

An interesting idea? A community project to build a social graph of people who knew/worked with each other in the early days of tech. It could be an interesting way to get the gangs back together "one more time." I wonder what the people who were at Personal Software would do with this idea. 1980s Apple people and developers. People who wrote for Wired in the early days. People who were at the first O'Reilly open source conference. The Silicon Valley Asshole Society. The first 100 bloggers, first 100 podcasters. People who worked at General Magic, Macromind and Marimba. People who went to Fred and Sylvia's cybersalons. Original subscribers of DaveNet. People who know NakedJen. People who were at the various BloggerCons. People who demo'd at the first Demo. Berkman Center alumni. Initial sponsors of the EFF. I would love to participate in this project. #

Developers who won't use Facebook are like the Dylan fans who stopped listening when he went electric. They eventually caved, of course, or they missed some great music.#

You may hate Facebook but at least they publish whatever I write. I've only once had an item banned from FB and it was comedic, not tragic. Contrast this to the NYT that offers very little opportunity for me to get an idea through to other users of the NYT. Yes I do think this is a valid comparison. #

We're all bonkers inside. The most bonkers thing is to pretend that you're not.#

Now that the hype about The Correspondent has died down, thankfully, re-focus on the problem that Medium presents for the news industry. This morning I almost pointed to two on-topic (for me) pieces on Medium. I didn't do it, because every time I do, it creates a burden for all of us to overcome down the road. Think about the irony that TheC, a publishing company, posted their corporate statements during the rollout on Medium. What happens when they open their service for real? Will they publish their stories there too? Medium has something other news orgs don't (and they are a news org, by any reasonable definition) -- deep pockets. Evan Williams has billions he can keep it floating with. He has a long time to figure out how to make it work economically. TheC has $2.5 million. Every news org and blogger has a problem with Medium, whether they realize it or not. The more it is assumed that significant writing appears there, the harder it will be to publish elsewhere. #

If you accept the premise that Medium is a news org, consider that they're the only one who creates a somewhat level playing field for paid and non-paid writers. In other words, imho, they're doing exactly what TheC (and many others) should be doing and aren't. They probably don't see Medium as competition. If so, that is wrong, they very much are. The economics of news doesn't follow the same rules it did in the print era. We need to lower the gates and let more people in. The challenge then becomes deciding who are following ethical guidelines required to be considered news, or the different rules that apply to op-ed writers. There's a lot of brainpower that's going to waste. Our problems are so big, and the capabilities of the professionals so limited, that it's suicide to not try to tap the big resource that's out there, ready to be used. Medium is the only one who's doing it.#

The danger of Medium is two-fold. Without competition, and right now they don't have any, we're right back where we were before the web, only it's worse. And they haven't made any comittment to keeping their archive accessible, nor do they give people the ability to move their content off Medium without breaking links. Even though they have deep pockets, they could fail to find a business model, and shut down, leaving a huge hole in the web, over many years. You could see we crossed a dangerous line when our political leaders, including the president, were putting things on the record on Medium. Centralization is not good, esp centralization without a long-term economic model. And the cost of hosting text documents is so low that it's ridiculous for the rest of us to cede so much power to one company, yet we're doing it. It's a case study in why it's wrong to blame Facebook for what's wrong with their system, we're doing it again with Medium. #

I saw a thing on the news that Saturn's rings might be gone soon and I automatically thought "climate change I don't know" and then..#

Today is my "little" brother Peter's 60th birthday. Here he is pictured shortly after birth on this day in 1958. I'm the little dude on his right who's freaking out. I've had that look on my face pretty much ever since. We're all that's left of the clan pictured here, taken in 1961 or 1962. Time is a funny thing. As they say it all seems like yesterday. It goes by in a flash.#

I realized a few days ago I have not been thinking about BOTY for 2018. This might be one of those years that I don't have one. Let's see what happens, go with the flow. #

Speaking of flow, I was up in the Catskills over the break, and took a movie of a creek I came across. The video demonstrates the Doppler Effect. #

Interesting post on journalism as a technology service. #

When everyone agrees on something, and users benefit from the agreement, then seriously consider maintaining the standard, even if your product would be, in some ways, nicer if you broke with the standard. Apple could have continued to have a headphone jack on their phones, and all the other phone makers would have kept theirs. I'd still use my Bluetooth headphones (I was a wireless fan long before the headphone jack disappeared). It's the same reason we should all support HTTP for as long as humanly possible (i.e. forever). This is a big philosophical question for all tech developers. I'm a continuity absolutist, to me the most awful word in tech is deprecate. #

I wish Netflix would link to Metacritic from each show. I wish they would all do this. And I wish HBO Go let you download shows. I'd watch more HBO if they did. Anyway, next up is Happy Valley.#

I had no way of knowing how well the two shows I've been bingeing fit together. They are River, which is the story of a crazy grieving brilliant cop who learns to accept his insanity, and Kidding, a crazy grieving Mr Rogers type TV actor. They're both struggling with pretty much the same issue. What were the chances. And both are quite good, if you're looking for a time-consuming holiday binge. #

Trump and his wall is beginning to sound like Captain Queeg and his strawberries, or Gollum and My Precious.#

War is over if you want it. #

I finished River, loved it. Almost finished Kidding, also good. #

If life's for living, what's living for?#

It’s disgusting how the big companies, not just Apple, have treated RSS. And for some reason journalism lets them do it.#

After four years of running Node apps on Linux servers, I have concluded that it could use an OS just for Node. A layer on top of Linux that watched the resources the apps were using and helped you better manage them. It's just a thought at this point.#

Now that I can monitor disk space usage in my ServerMonitor app, I'm getting a better idea of where the problems are. One of the big ones I just discovered is the Dropbox cache. On one of my servers 1/2 of the disk space was used by the cache! The docs say the cache is cleared every three days, but this clearly isn't working on at least one of my systems. According to the docs you can just remove the contents of the ~/Dropbox/.dropbox.cache/ folder. #

BTW the ncdu app is a life-saver. #