It's even worse than it appears.
Monday, July 23, 2018
By now it should be obvious if the news industry had built its own distribution system, they'd be raking in cash like FB and Google, and instead of laying off reporters, they'd be looking for new places to invest the proceeds.#
Apparently tomorrow is the day Google will start flagging sites that use HTTP, the standard web protocol, as "not secure." Curious to see how people react. BTW, this link has auto-playing video. It may be "secure" but it's also obnoxious. This blog and all my other sites use HTTP. I don't see that changing. I expect this will make writing for the web more of a chore. That's life I guess. I don't want Google to be able to mold the web to its needs. I never signed on to being a Google developer, and never would. Basic rule: Google is a guest on the web, as we all are, and guests don't make the rules. #
One thing you can be sure of, when a lot of reporters get laid off, you'll hear about it. It's not true of a lot of other things. Big news happens, no coverage. It's not just because we're losing reporters, the ones that we have don't integrate well with the rest of the world.#
Yesterday I wrote that Frontier does not have hoisting. This is incorrect. It does. I found it in the docs written in 1996 and 2008, and tested it with the two built-in verbs, op.hoist () and op.dehoist (). My memory is imperfect. What I should have said is that I didn't use the feature, even though it was there. #
For my friends in journalism -- eventually Facebook, Google and Twitter will have to push the far right off their services, per your wishes. But that won't be the end of the tectonic plate shifts in news. The right will form their own services, where your product will be excluded, and will still apply pressure on the public companies to treat your work as suspect, and they will have to give them what they want. At that point you must have control of your own distribution. #
Trump's latest tweet is no joke. It's a huge escalation. He blew through all the defcons. The issue isn't whether or not to ban him from Twitter rather, where does he go for a rush after this? I wrote this about Trump as a troll in 2016: "Immunity to outrage builds up over time. What pissed people off six months ago will barely show up as a blip today." You can already see that this tweet isn't getting people riled up as it might have a few months ago. They understand how his trolling works. This is a serious problem for him. Without the ability to escalate through tweeting, he might have to resort to flyovers and actual attacks.#
So it's almost official, Melo is going to the Rockets for the veteran's minimum. I predict they won't like it any more than OKC did, unless Melo is willing to lead the second unit. That might work. Otherwise there's one too many on the starting unit that needs the ball. It's great that Harden and Paul have worked it out. Melo is still going to be a catch-and-shoot three point shooting guy. Not many moves to the rim for him.#
Libraries have a purpose I’ve never seen written up — as sanctuaries for children of troubled households. As a child, there was a safe place I could go at night, when things were crazy at home. A place they cared about kids, as people.#
When Repubs say they want to vote Democratic, the correct response is to say hey great to have you on the team! Let's really make America great again. I was dismayed when people pissed all over James Comey when he said (basically) he want Democrats to win in November. That's good news. He found the right answer. The lights are coming on. People have so much trouble taking yes for an answer.#
I have a philosophy. I don’t care how you got to the party. Whether you took the subway, walked, came by spaceship or were driven by your chauffeur. What’s important is you’re here. Now let’s party! 🎉#

© 1994-2018 Dave Winer.

Last update: Monday July 30, 2018; 10:14 PM EDT.