It's even worse than it appears.
Note to self: A freshly set up Mac has weird mouse behavior. It scrolls when you move the mouse pointer, sometimes. This is how you disable it. In the Accessibility prefs panel, click on Mouse & Trackpad, then Mouse Options, then uncheck the Scrolling popup. #
Today's Daily podcast was about the terrorist attack in New Zealand. First they had interviews with victims, then quoted the prime minister about gun control and they ended with a broad trashing of the net, specifically YouTube and Facebook. But they omit a very salient fact about the economics of running an open content publishing platform. You can't review each video in advance, there are too many videos and employees are too expensive. There are shades of gray, but for the NYT it's black and white. Further the reporters have a huge undisclosed conflict of interest, because the net is used for more than terrorism, it's sources going direct to interested readers. There's a new news system trying to boot up. The same features of the net that make it possible to bootstrap a terrorism network, also enable new channels of news. But of course this is never part of their discussion. They make it sound easy. Tech is bad. Tech is responsible. Implied but not said: shut it down. They are as scary as the terrorists. Think about it. #
It's way too early for a 2020 presidential horse race. I'd like to uncheck that box. Oh that's right, there are no topic checkboxes on Twitter. Somehow my car can steer itself, but Twitter can't tell a post is about horserace politics.#
Journalism used to vilify Craig Newmark, then he started giving millions to news think tanks, journalism schools, and startup news orgs. The new demon is Facebook. A few hundred million should make the troubles go away.#
We need to talk about how we're going to reboot local news. The journalism industry isn't doing the job. #
This is our next big wakeup call. If a couple of hundred people die in an American plane crash due to the incompetence of the FAA we can't say we weren't warned.#
I decided to try Amazon Pantry, since I'm now living in a place where FreshDirect doesn't deliver. I just got a notice that "Progresso Soup" has shipped. I ordered five different kinds of Progresso soup, wanting to try them all. I prayed that the title of the order was just one of the items they were shipping. Nope. One can of Progresso soup will arrive in its own Amazon box on Wednesday. I can see this will be a short-lived experiment. #
  • I've had this problem for a few days in Signal and finally have a workaround. Warning you'll lose local copies of all the messages on your desktop only. They'll still be present on your phone.#
    • In the Finder choose Go to Folder from the Go menu.#
    • Enter ~/Library/Application Support/ #
    • Click the Go button.#
    • Delete the Signal folder.#
    • Re-launch the Signal app.#
    • It'll ask you to pair it with your phone.#
    • Do what they say to do.#
    • It'll redownload all the stuff it needs.#
    • Off you go!#

© 1994-2019 Dave Winer.

Last update: Monday March 18, 2019; 10:21 PM EDT.