It's even worse than it appears.
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.#
Just listened to the Slate podcast and they put it together better than I've heard before. Here's the deal. Russia is run for the benefit of 44 people. They are the ones targeted by the Magnitsky Act. They hate it because what they're about first and foremost is making money for themselves. They don't care about Russia. So the deal they were proposing to DJT Jr was this. We win you the election and you kill the Magnitsky Act. We all plunder together. "Love it!" says Junior. And the US govt is now run for the benefit of the Trump Family. This is the Occam's Razor explanation. #
Scoble wrote something about my blog on Facebook, but sorry I can't point to it. It's against the rules of this blog. But I will send Scoble a pointer to this post on Facebook. #- He said he likes the way Scripting News works now (I'd say again) and it's given him pause to think if maybe he should blog outside of Facebook too.#
- So here's what I want to say to Scoble. Why can't we have both? Why can't Facebook support the basic features of the web so we can post the same content to Facebook as we do on our blog. Make Facebook an excellent blogging surface. Really, a minor upgrade. That's the win-win. #
- For a couple of years that's what I thought Facebook was doing and why I was excited about the future that would unlock for the web. But either they punted or misled. Either way Facebook is a bad web citizen. Sucking energy from the web and not feeding it back. It's as if you had a one-way peering arrangement. You have to take our packets but we won't carry yours. That's not net-neutral (and why I don't support them in their fight against Verizon and Comcast).#
- It's the analog of constructing private apartment buildings in Central Park. Not only isn't it fair or moral, it's also stupid. When you're done, no one will want to live there. To this day Facebook feeds off the web. When the web is exhausted, maybe then Facebook will support linking in their discussion posts. #
- I've tried over and over to get people inside and outside of Facebook to understand why we need Facebook to relent, but I don't think they get it. This is one of those things you won't know you'll miss until it's too late. #
- PS: Just four features: 1. Links. 2. Simple styling. 3. Enclosures for podcasting. 4. Titles. They already have the code written, they just have to deploy it for regular users like you, Scoble and me.#
One of the reasons I prefer to blog here rather than on Facebook is that if I get an Aha! idea about a feature, over here I can implement it. On Facebook I'm just a user. That was/is one of the great things about the web. Anyone can develop features for it. On Facebook, just their employees can. No wonder it never moves.#- When a company dominates an activity, they tend to invest elsewhere. Seems kind of perverse, but that's why markets don't always evolve to fill every niche. Open platforms are more favorable. If you want to perform a new style of music in Central Park, you can. If you want to do it in Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center, you need to get the approval of a lot of rich people.#
- See yesterday's post about Chinese dominance and how Americans might not like it.#
- Here's something truly bizarre and totally on-topic. #
- While Xi and Putin were at the G20 conference over the weekend, bloggers on Sina Weibo with more than 1,000 followers discovered that they were no longer able to mention Putin in their posts.#
- One can imagine a modern-day president ordering Twitter to block criticism of Trump, or even Putin. Technically if the Chinese Twitter can do it, why not the American Twitter.#
China doesn't have a very high regard for free speech. And it's a good bet the Chinese don't have a very high regard for the 2nd Amendment either. #- If China is going to be the new world-dominant country, we should familiarize ourselves with how things might change for us personally. There probably is some good to it. For example, we'd be likely to get back on track re climate change. But we might not adapt so well to the Chinese citizen's lifestyle. #
- BTW, this is another reason why it would be good to have a technically literate lawyer blogging regularly. Tech permeates everything. #