I just did some factoring on feed reading in Node. It was too hard to add rssCloud support to a simple utility. Too many moving parts. Every time I do it, there are lots of errors and it takes too much time. So I updated the davefeedread package to make adding realtime notification one call. Now I get to find out if it worked (if it does this post will appear in the chat tab). Then it's time to do some more testing and doc writing. Doing this very slowly. Country living has made me a slower developer. Weird. ;-)#
Just re-watched last night's Game of Thrones. It's even better when you know what's coming. #
If I were the CEO of a news org I would change priority from collecting members to collecting sources. Develop relations with sources the same way PR firms develop relations with reporters. You want lots of direct connects. And want the sources to value a relationship with you. That means providing lots of benefits for sources. Think creatively about that. What do sources want most. Not talking about money. #
Watched a bit of Reliable Sources — Trump has to escalate the outrageousness of his trolling or it doesn’t penetrate. That’s why there was so little coverage of his abortion story. He’s become boring, predictable. There's a math to trolling. #
Every time I see a for-the-record post on Medium, I think about how we've failed to solve the easiest most basic problem in 25-plus years of blogging on the web. How to put something on the record with at least an attempt at longevity.#
Here's a test post. Now that my chatbot has a ping handler it should show up in the Chat panel immediately. Yeah I'm sure. ;-) #
Overcast has a clip-sharing feature for podcasts. The clips are videos and can be sent via Twitter (and many other places). There's a little (optional) ad for Overcast on the shared clips. Here's an example. #
Good morning sports fans!#
Someone said this: "If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by." #
I've been steadily building out my home theater. Got a nice subwoofer last week, and a center channel speaker came today. One thing I've realized is that Netflix has the best sound and picture of any of the other streamers, some of which are really shitty. So I always turn to Netflix to test a new setup. Also HBO has very high quality. Game of Thrones is great for testing, even though the first two episodes of the season have been very disney or hallmark. #Nieman Lab exposes the snake oil at TheC. Journalists and academics need to be dispassionate when evaluating new ventures. This one was easy to debunk.#
If you look in the Chat tab on the home page, you'll see the recent blog posts are present in the chat stream. From now on (knock wood) my posts should appear in the stream. That way it might be easier to tell at what point in the flow a comment appeared. At this time it does not update posts as they change. One step at a time. #
Trump lies. Everyone knows it, even his “base.”#
A while back I said Biden should not run. But he's running. It is what it is and it's even worse than it appears. I look at Joe's eyes and I see they are the eyes of a very old man. Black dots. This happened to the eyes of my grandparents as they got close to the end. Joe seems to be in good health, but the eyes. #- There are tradeoffs with Joe. He's old. That means there's a lot to criticize, but it also means he has a time-tested idea of what America is. I know young people think they have experienced things we will never understand, and that's true, but it's also true a person of Biden's age has experienced things they will never know, except in history books, and they always tell the story of the winner, not the struggle and the choices that led to the outcome. #
- It seems you'd want someone like Biden around during the campaign with a voice people listen to. I think every one of the Democrats who will not be the nominee must view it that way. A billion dollars will be raised during the primary. Think about the good you can do with that, in communicating important ideas, and achieving positive results for the Americans you hope to represent. All my life I've been waiting for a candidate to realize that although they're probably not going to win, there are things they can do to make things better right now, as a person with a powerful microphone, as a potential president. Maybe Biden is the one who gets that.#
- He's already said something that needs to be said and has put Trump on the defensive, re-stating his Nazi-friendly ideas. I think that's a good way to start. Call the Nazi a Nazi. And Trump certainly is that. But we got tired of HRC advertising only how awful Trump was -- we got it. How about some uplifty poetry to go with the negative bits. We want to feel we're part of a cause when we go into the voting booth.#
- I hope Biden remembers how he launched his campaign, and others follow suit. We're all trying to reboot America. Let's keep focused on that. #
Every time you criticize a Democratic candidate, please add "Whatever happens I'm voting for whoever isn't Trump. I hope you are too." This ought to be our mantra. Disagreement is great. Suicide is not permitted.#Another problem in letting the silos usurp the name "podcast" is they will take it places that suit them, and when it's done, the term will mean "failed get-rich-quick scheme."#
Once podcasting becomes a tech battleground, it will get to be like Disneyland or HBO. I like silos as much as anyone, I prefer Fresca to some unknown local brand of soda (are there any?) but what I love about podcasting is the mix of styles and ideas. #
I just gave $100 to Joe Biden. I have already given $100 to Amy Klobuchar. I am really starting to like Elizabeth Warren. I like the confidence. But whatever happens I'm voting for whoever isn't Trump. I hope you are too.#
You might try listening to someone who is sure they're right, no matter what their age. Sometimes they're right, I've found.#
BTW, if you've ever watched Jeopardy, you should watch at least one of the current shows with James Holzhauer. He's basically found a new level in the game. He is very knowledgable of trivia, but also risks a lot. And that's why he wins.#
17-minute podcast. Impeachment is a TV show. Anyone who says they know what US politics will be like after the hearings is an idiot. They will transform the US. That's what happened with Nixon, but this is a better story with better characters. #Sam Ervin was probably the best character in Watergate. An avuncular country lawyer type, on the verge of senility, but incredibly eloquent all the same. He was one of the last Democrats from the Deep South to serve in the Senate. Barbara Jordan, also on the Select committee was from Texas, and incredibly eloquent and held the attention of the camera.#
We need a new name for podcast-like things that have no feeds, are locked behind a paywall, can't be archived, cited or shared, and don't create any kind of record. #
Why don’t Democrats do anything to divide the Republicans and their base, to shatter it into warring factions the way the Repubs and their Russian helpers do so effectively to the Dems?#
There's a new Chat tab on Scripting News. I've been planning to do this for some time, moving my basic json.chat shell into a tab on Scripting News in place of Disqus, which has become an embarrassment. I still haven't figured out a bunch of stuff, like when rollover happens, causing the chat stream to reset. For now if you have a comment on something on Scripting News, post it there. But it must still follow the Comment Guidelines. Keep it short, only add information to an existing post if it's asked for or you're pretty sure it would be welcome. No spam, and nothing that looks like spam, and of course nothing personal. I delete comments without explanation. I can block people here as with Disqus, so please respect the guidelines. ;-) #
BTW failing to comply with a congressional subpoena is certainly an impeachable offense. #
New feature on every page. A button in the upper left corner that signs you off Twitter or signs you on. Also made the version number in the upper right corner a bit less intrusive. #
People who think podcasts are not a product of the open web, ask yourself a simple question. Whose approval do you need to create a podcast? Today, no one. In the future, as silos take over, it’ll only be for sanitized product. Void of inspiration. Safe.#
The next thing are the hearings to determine if the House impeaches. No one knows where we will be after the hearings and the people who say they know are wrong. Far from hurting the Dems chances in the 2020 election, the stuff coming out of the hearings will electrify the campaign. There will be all kinds of Republican unsavoryness on parade. A circular firing squad for the ages. #
12-minute podcast about where we're at with impeachment. Key point is that we can't just wish the problem away. We've been doing that for three years. Now resistance is more than symbolic. We've blown through every chance we've had to stop Trump. He will continue to ignore the Constitution. You want to live in that country? There only way to say no at this point is to impeach. This is a good timely podcast. Proud of how it came together. #
It's too hard to publish something to the open web. It has to be available as simple content. Not rendered inside a commercial template. Technically it's a very simple problem, actually. And the raw serving capability is dirt cheap. But it needs a corporate entity to run it.#
An idea for The Crimson -- interview scholars at Harvard Law School, ask this question. What could a corrupt president unrestrained by impeachment and thus the rule of law do between now and Inauguration Day 2021.#
I stopped on the street yesterday to talk with a couple of neighbors. The question of whether they should use Facebook came up. They read the NY Times and hear how bad FB is, they don't want to use it. They say the same phrases the NYT uses. Educated thoughtful people, want to do what's right, but they're getting their truth from a conflicted organization, imho. I thought about it, and here's a follow-up email I wrote.#- Nice to meet you X, and see you Y! ;-)#
- I thought some more about Facebook, of course it's a choice whether to use it or not, and they are the worst most greedy people in the world, they took from the web and refuse to give back, and there's very little nice I can say about the company. #
- But I think the news pubs are doing a disservice by trashing FB so thoroughly without offering an alternative that works the way it should. What they really want is the rest of us to be quiet and listen to them. That is not going to happen because what goes on on the net is too valuable and people won't give it up.#
- I would love to see a world where we could use these great tools without giving up anything. We knew how to make that and it existed before FB, but they made it easier and figured out how to give it away free, and people didn't care to know about the cost...#
- Anyway -- I've decided this isn't my battle. I'm going to get the benefit, and not worry about the cost. Nothing I can do about it anyway. ;-)#
- Dave#
- PS: I should probably make this a blog post. #
Happy 4/20!#
BTW, the corrupt president now has a corrupt attorney general. That's something to factor into your thinking.#
- Ignore the Constitution?#
- Those who say impeach is not the answer, what would Trump have to do in order to make impeach the right answer? #
- Well here's the thing, what makes you think he won't do much worse between now and inauguration day in 2021?#
- He wouldn't have any restraints between now and then.#
- And BTW, what restraints would there be on the next president? Maybe not such a buffoon as Trump. If we don't impeach and remove, we no longer have a Constitution that's enforced re the president. This guy has been ignoring it. We would all be ignoring it if he isn't impeached and removed.#
- Corrupt attorney general#
- The corrupt president now has a corrupt attorney general. That's something to factor into your thinking.#
- One implication of this is that all the other DoJ cases that are open now, will soon be closed. It's within his power to close them. So if you're thinking about SDNY cases, forget it. They're not going to happen.#
- The only thing the people control now is the House. Are we going to let the Democrats make this a partisan thing? If you're an independent, now's the time to express that independence. You shouldn't care if a Democrat gets re-elected, if they're just as corrupt at the Repubs.#
- Trump's corruption is a moving target. He's found new people who go along with his most wantonly destructive acts, so the future offenses will be worse than the ones we're reviewing now.#
This is like the NBA playoffs of politics. Barr made a huge mistake in shipping the report when Trump Sports addicts can obsess over all this fresh plot.#
There comes a point when the sins of the president are so huge that Congress, no matter which party occupies it, has an obligation to start impeachment. Think about it this way. How would you feel if the Repubs held the House and refused to impeach, at this point.#
I think the House should decide whether to start impeachment hearings in a few weeks, after the Mueller report has been a bit more settled in. Unlike the gun debate, Dems won’t lose the power to act in a few weeks.#
The only question at the Austin conference wasn't really a question. In the back row a woman said I was talking about privilege when I was telling the story of the very earliest days of blogging. I said there were no barriers to entry. I guess she imagined the barriers were there, and I would have seen them and felt them if I weren't a privileged white male. She wasn't so nice about the way she said that, btw. And I didn't figure that out in the moment. The truth is, as I said, there were no barriers. So they couldn't have stopped anyone if they were another race or gender, they just weren't there. If a 40-something black woman from the east coast tried to start blogging, I think it would have worked, and instead of coming out of Silicon Valley, blogging might have come out of some other community, and have evolved in a different way. No matter what they would have had to know a little scripting, and be curious about how the protocols of the Internet worked. Maybe my privilege made it more likely I'd be interested. But I think it was more hereditary, and as I said at the conference, the impulse to blog was something I inherited from my mother, not a white man. Anyway, at first, I promise you, it was more a question of courage and imagination than any deep skills. That came later when we tried to create end-user software for blogging. For that you'd have to know a lot of programming techniques. I for one would have been anxious to work with whoever was the first blogger. Working together is what I'm all about. #After buying a house, moving, then going to a conference in Austin and getting a cold, I tried to have a productive programming day and got absolutely nowhere. That hasn't happened in a long time. Partially I think it's because I'm relaxed? Maybe I don't give as much of a shit? Or who knows. But it's a fact, I got nothing done today. I guess it happens. I'm going to spend the rest of the day doing the following: 1. Watching Big Little Lies season 1. 2. Catching up on the latest in The Mueller Report. 3. Watching a bit of NBA Playoff action. 4. Are the Mets playing? #
Does anyone have a BitTorrent link for the Mueller Report?#
This is the default setup for remote management of my new Spectrum router. The sysop username and password is admin and admin respectively. It's printed on the side of the router. It appears my router open to the world with the default password? If you use Spectrum wifi and haven't looked at the setup page on your router, I recommend that you do so. #
I always thought foot pedals would become a standard part of the UI. They haven't, but I think they would have if Apple had decided to try them out. When I write, my feet are doing nothing. However they are capable of driving a car, so why aren't we using them??#
Apple TV, if Apple had their heads screwed on right, would be able to play music and video it finds on the local net, so I don't have to attach a Mac mini to the TV just to do that.#
Maybe 5 times out of 10 when I use Google I'm really looking for the Wikipedia page on that topic. They're making it harder and harder to find this on Google. So much so that I'm thinking Wikipedia has to do a search engine. I would learn to use it.#
Let’s call it The Barr Report.#
- I've been slowly rebuilding my home entertainment system, in a bootstrapping kind of way. My old system was built around a huge Denon receiver I bought in 2007, two Polk Audio towers (also 2007), and a 45 or 55 inch Sony Bravia screen bought in 2010 when I moved to NYC. #
- A lot has changed in all those years, and I wanted to get caught up. First, I bought a 65-inch 4K TCL Roku screen and a cheap Onkyo receiver. I wanted immediately to get 2019-level equipment. Still using the Polk Audio towers. The picture quality was an amazing improvement over what I had before. Like many others, the picture was weird until I made the motion smoothing change. #
- Yesterday I got a cheap Polk audio subwoofer. I never thought about how it would connect to the receiver. Then I assumed there would be speaker wire ports on both ends and I would hook it up as I did with the towers, using banana plugs. I was surprised to learn how subwoofers connect to receivers these days. Using some very legacy tech, totally non-digital -- simple old RCA plugs. I went on to Amazon hoping to find some, then I realized of course they would be easy to find. An entire new market has developed here. Super long mono RCA jacks, with gold plating. As someone who studies standards evolution in tech, this is both odd and gratifying. The old way just worked and no one screwed with it. Bing.#
- I also was pleased to learn about ARC, a protocol that allows sound to flow back out over an HDMI wire. It means you only need one HDMI cable to hook up a receiver to a screen. It allows the receiver to play audio that's coming in through the TV. I was getting ready to set up an optical connection, as I did in the old setup. It's not needed any longer. I love factoring. Some good standards work. Met the customer need (I had actually thought of this while I was hooking up the TV and the receiver). #
- Another great connection is now you can access the user interface of the receiver on the TV. It's weird to use their remote on a screen I usually use via the Roku remote, but it works. Onkyo's UI was understandable, but there are some very simple best practice type changes they should make. And it's hard to find out how to get the configuration screen back. I think part of the reason the sub-woofer doesn't work yet is that when I configured it initially, I told it I didn't have a sub-woofer. I think it was a mistake of them to ask, and a mistake of me to tell the truth. #
- Ultimately I'd like to be able to control the receiver through the Roku settings hierarchy. I imagine there either is a way for a receiver to do this, or they're working on it. It's too obvious a direction to head in. #
- BTW, I assume Apple has tried to buy Roku. They have an incredibly valuable asset, the desktop of the digital entertainment world. It could be a franchise like Windows. #
- I'm learning a lot about a tech in an area I have loved since I was a kid. Pretty cool.#
Killing Eve season 2 in the same class as Breaking Bad. The most depraved comedy action series in a very long time.#
I love this scene in the movie Amadeus. What's cool is how incompetent yet good-natured the Emperor is.#
BTW here's a picture of two very sweet and generous people dancing at #isoj2019. They understand the importance of symbolism and have the courage. This picture illustrates working together, which they do IRL, which is so damn important in this crazy world of ours. #
Another offline conversation at #isoj2019 -- I got to say to a NYT editor, in a congenial way, that I thought: 1. The NYT should have a public editor and 2. It should be a member of the public, not a journalist. The current situation is not getting them the benefit they need. #
In this Twitter thread I invite a major publisher, Trei Brundrett of Vox to endorse the Instant tech bootcamps for journalists idea. Help turn it into reality in time to help us have a good 2020 election. #
- Don't read this if you don't want an incredibly brief summary of last night's episode of Game of Thrones. #
- You have been warned.#
- I'm serious.#
- This is it, the summary is below.#
- It's not too late to turn back.#
- This time I mean it.#
- It's mostly reunions between two or more amazing characters who had never met or hadn't seen each other in decades and assumed were dead. #
- I predict in coming episodes we will see reunions with characters who are long dead, as White Walkers. #
Sitting in the Austin airport early this morning hearing the names of Muslims on the PA system, such an ordinary thing in normal times, I wondered where we would be in a couple of years. Will those people still be fully righted Americans, or will the rule of law have completely collapsed. I wondered what must go through their minds. How conspicuous they might feel. And who would be next. When will we start putting Americans in concentration camps, and what comes after that. I couldn't convince myself that these were foolish thoughts. #I just spent a few days in Austin at the ISOJ conference. I had a great time. Thanks to all the people who put on this complicated affair. I was interviewed yesterday morning by my longtime friend Rebecca MacKinnon, and co-conspiritor of original Berkman Thursday clan, and co-founder of Global Voices. Made a lot of new friends, and stayed true to my rather radical opinions about the course journalism should take into the future, and found to my surprise a lot of support among the assembled journalists and academics. #
I now find myself on a longish layover in Philadelphia, in Terminal F. Never been to this airport (no reason to, because my endpoint is usually JFK or EWR, but this time it's Albany). Looking forward to bingeing on the NBA playoffs which have so far been quite exciting. The Nets won and Orlando won, against teams that were thought to be superior. I doubt if I'll ever be a Nets fan, but they're the only quality act in NYC these days. And of course Game of Thrones and Killing Eve tonight. A great time to have a TV and a couch! :-)#
This idea came up in Austin and was well-received. When journalism discovers a tech issue that appears to be a scandal, I proposed there should be a quickly convened flash conference, hosted by a university journalism department in conjunction with its computer science department. A two-evening bootcamp for journalists in New York, where the tech behind the scandal is examined dispassionately and objectively, by computer scientists who speak the language of journalism. A "poets" course. It is possible to understand the basics of an email server, for example, in a couple of hours, even if you only have a user's understanding of email technology. In the second evening, a smaller group convenes with journalists and techies, to write a concise backgrounder on the tech, and it is published, quickly. #- The organization that does this would be something like Politifact, but rather than fact-checking a story, it's providing the necessary background for all reporters working on a controversy, so the delay in getting seriously factual reports on the problem is minimized. It would also likely quickly evolve, and set a baseline for the kind of information every news org should publish along with a story about tech malfeasance. #
- The reason this is needed is that our political system has (imho) overreacted to sensational stories, such as Hillary's emails, or misunderstood the extent of Facebook's API. And also completely missed looming crises, failing to catch them in time for them to be prevented. It seems journalism should aspire to do this as well.#
I spent the whole day on airplanes flying from Albany to Chicago to Austin, and watched the whole first season of Dr Foster on Netflix, and really enjoyed it. #
There's a chain of beating hearts going from your heart all the way back to the first animal on earth with a heart.#
I'm going to Austin tomorrow, and thought I should have a look at the weather. The first words that emitted from my mouth were Holy Shit. I'm not ready for a high of 91 (today) and only 81 on Thursday and Friday. In other news this will be my first flight from Albany via Chicago, where there is a "significant winter storm" expected. I am totally not ready for this. What a crazy situation. I'm going through all this to talk for 45 minutes on Saturday? Probably a bunch of schmoozing too. I think I'm getting too old for this! 💥#
An idea for banks as social/financial networks. I have a checking account at a major bank. I use it to pay bills. It's not a great user interface, and they don't keep my records indefinitely (I wonder why not) but it's way better than the old way of paying bills by hand with paper checks. Some companies have a special deal with the bank, so when I pay their bill, no paper check is written and mailed and they get their money much faster. An example is my credit card company. When I pay their bill, they get the money the next day. I just added another bill-to account for a business that has an account at the same bank. Why can't they optimize that so the money arrives in their account faster? In this case, they are actually mailing a check, which then has to be deposited at the same bank. Ridiculous. It's 2019 not 1992. Optimize. And give more people an incentive to bank with you. #
A podcast is a series of digital media files made available over the open web through an RSS feed with enclosures. Podcasts usually are audio, but you can distribute any media object this way. I've used podcast feeds to distribute videos, even code. #- If an audio file is not available over the web, or is behind a paywall, or is otherwise exclusive it may be a very fine worthwhile thing, but it is not a podcast. Being accessible openly in a standardized format, RSS, is essential to something being a podcast.#
- It's kind of amazing that until 2019 this hasn't been an issue. Everything that claimed to be a podcast actually was a podcast, meeting all these conditions. But now podcasting is being siloized by companies trying to dominate. It's understandable and predictable. But let's not dilute the qualities that make podcasting so useful.#
A new feedBase feature. Now you can view the contents of a feed from its Feed Viewer page. Here's an example, the TechCrunch feed. Click on the wedge next to Items to see the contents.#
The request package and all its weirdness is baked into all the Node apps I’ve made and depend on. Same as everyone. Deprecating it is the wrong answer. Freeze it. Make new things that do similar things if you want. But don’t mess with the foundation.#
When I sit down at a lovely dinner, with interesting, humor-filled friends in a beautiful spot, I am as rich as I can possibly be. A billionaire couldn't have more. I first realized this at a sushi restaurant in Sausalito, where the chef had prepared the most amazing looking and tasting bouquet of fresh fish and rice. Literally this is as rich as you can get. #
Just set up a new receiver. They keep changing these things. Once I had the speakers hooked up, I turned it on and it says INITIAL SETUP ON TV. I had no idea what it meant. So I sat down and thought. Hmm. Try hooking up an HDMI cable to the receiver's HDMI-out connection and into one of the HDMI ports on the TV. Reboot the receiver. Voila. There's a cheesy setup screen. I go through the first few pages, give it access to the net (probably a bad idea, even though I told it not to send data about me back to Japan). Then we got to ARC. I have no idea what this is. It said Your TV does not support ARC. I couldn't believe it because I have a new 4K highly recommended TV. Looked at their docs, which are better than the receiver's. I learn ARC lets HDMI flow sound back, out of the TV into the receiver. Ahhh. No need for the optical cable I bought (glad, because it was hard to get it working with the TV). Once I told the TV I didn't have a subwoofer, the sound became incredible, I guess because it started sending the low notes to the big speakers I have. I will of course eventually get a subwoofer and rear speakers. But right now I'm glad I figured out what a receiver is in 2019. Very different from the receivers of my youth.#
Facebook is instrumental in news, not just in distribution of stories, but also for access to sources. The private groups are a gold mine. I just moved to a small town in the mountains outside NYC. The private FB group has been a godsend. Any reporter working a specific beat, either find the FB group that gathers sources, or start one. If you start it off Facebook, the problem you're going to hit is that many people you want to include will only be on Facebook. In a way the news media, if it wants to regain control of distribution, it has to first get control of its sources. #This isn't going to be popular, but much of what's funded in grant-based journalism is meant to keep journalists employed, not to make journalism more useful to the people.#
Credible j-schools, in conjunction with their CS departments, should hold boot camps for reporters when aspects of tech become hot news. In 2016 it was email servers. Last year it was Facebook's API.#
- Impeachment is political, it's not about violating statutes, that's what the DoJ is for. Impeachment is when the country can't tolerate what the president is doing, and no remedy other than removal can protect the country. POTUS using Nazi genocide language qualifies. #
- Impeachment is an act of the people, as the founders saw it. It's our representatives in Congress, specifically the House, who make the call, but they should only do it when the people demand it of them. Right now that demand is not there. Can't blame the Democrats for that. It's our job to make our will clear to our reps. We have not done that, yet. #
On Tuesday I wrote a draft of my talk at ISOJ a week from tomorrow. The piece begins with a cartoon by Doug Marlette. I was told by a vehement reader that I didn't understand the cartoon, Marlette wasn't criticizing bloggers, he said, he was mocking the people (journalists) who criticize them. I thought this was a ridiculous stretch, even though it doesn't weaken my point. But I don't want to call him out on it if he was being blogger-friendly. Marlette was from North Carolina, and luckily I have a friend, John Robinson, former editor of the Greensboro News & Record, who now teaches journalism at UNC, and I guessed he would have known Marlette. He asked me to say this is just his opinion, he never discussed it with Marlette, who died in 2007 (or else I would have asked him). Robinson said: "I knew Doug. He was a feisty SOB; a perfect trait for a cartoonist. I didn't see the cartoon the way the reader did. I think Marlette was criticizing the blogger. It was 2004; newspapers were still strong (we thought). Blogging was still new to journalists. (It's the year I started blogging as an editor and I got all kinds of skepticism from other journalists.) He was feisty as a journalist. As a person, he was as gracious and generous as could be."#
BTW, people who think the web is over don't understand imho how technology flows. The web is basically repurposed Unix. It arrived the decade after the PC revolution. Conventional wisdom said that Unix was a small niche OS that programmers liked, but users primarily used Windows with a smattering of Mac. Along comes the web just as Bill Gates thought he had it all sewn up. Unix! When I first saw an HTTP url I thought "users will never do this." Six months later there were billboards on Hwy 101 in Marin with URLs on them. They were talking about the web on radio and TV. Unix had the last laugh. So when the web reboots it might not be called the web. But look closely, at whatever geeky new technology people are raving about, and you'll see that at its core it's open technology. And that will build on the open stack, and the web will be the next layer down, and under that it's Unix.#- First, do not get a financial advisor. You need to get a feel for driving your own money. That imho is the most important thing. You can do it. If you hire someone to take care of your money, you'll have even less of a feel for it than you do now (assuming you're keeping your money in a checking or savings account). And you'll grow to resent the manager the way you resented adults when you were a kid. Money has all that stuff tied up in it, sense of self worth, powerlessness, being an impostor. Money is a symbol for every personal issue. Okay good for you -- you now you have some money, don't rush to give up your power. Embrace it. #
- Open an account at one of the famous companies, Schwab, Fidelity, Vanguard, E*Trade. They'll have a minimum amount to open an account of say $1000. That's how much you have to have to play with. And you should be prepared mentally to lose it all, even though if you follow my advice that is very very very unlikely to happen. #
- If you read their advice they make it sound really complicated. I'm going to make it simple. Put the $1000 in the S&P 500. It's a stock that's made up of 500 companies' stocks. You can think of it as a meta-stock. A stock of stocks. They're chosen by a company named Standard and Poor. The companies are chosen because they're solid earners, have been around a while, and together they reflect the performance of the stock market. Each of them is relatively low risk, but combined, they are very low risk. They track the performance of the stock market. If the market goes up, the S&P 500 goes up, and down if the market goes down. #
- Historically, the S&P 500 mainly goes up. That's why it's a relatively safe investment. Here's a graph of the S&P 500 over the last 20 years or so. At times it does go down. There was a stock market crash in 2008, you can see that in the graph. But look what happened after that, it started going up again. There's a reason for that, btw, politically it's very bad for an incumbent president to have the stock market go down. So they do things to make it go up. You can buy a little piece of that with your $1000. It's why investing in an index fund like S&P 500 is a no-brainer. #
- Only put $1000 in this fund at first. And then track the value of your investment. That's all you should do until you feel comfortable that you know what you're doing. It should happen pretty quickly. It's not even as complicated as the lottery. What I've told you here is really all you need to know. You can of course read up on it. But you've only risked $1000, so the most you can lose is (drumroll please) $1000. And unless the economy completely melts down, and then you have other huge problems, your investment over time is pretty safe. And you can make a lot of money doing this. Doesn't seem fair does it? (It really isn't.)#
- Now comes the fun part. Every day check the value of the S&P 500 compared to the price you paid. Do this forever. Think about what it means. And it may give you ideas to look at other meta-stocks. And you may see yourself differently too. #
- A note, they ask too many questions when you open an account at these services. They insist you answer questions you have no way to answer. Why not have a fast path to signing up. A button that says Hey I'm a Newbie Here and I don't want to answer any questions. I just want to put a little money in an index fund to see how this works. #
- A week from this coming Saturday I'll give a keynote talk at the ISOJ conference in Austin. The way it works is I talk for 20 minutes or so, then I answer questions from the host, Rebecca MacKinnon and from the audience. Here's my current thoughts on how to approach it. #
- I'll start by showing the cartoon done by a Pulitzer-prize winning editorial cartoonist about the bloggers who were invited to the DNC in Boston in 2004. I was one of them. The cartoon betrays a point of view. His was that bloggers only had a PC, where reporters covering the DNC had a wealth of experience. It's a bold, condescending, arrogant statement and it's nonsense. I was 49 years old that year. My credentials at the time were as impressive as his. I had a good education from a good school. At the time I was a research fellow at Harvard. I had spent decades proving myself in my field and had risen to the top. I had invented a bunch of technology that were in very wide use, and would form the foundation for all computer networking to come. I had been writing my blog for nine years at that point, and if I do say so myself, was a good writer. We were in the process of starting podcasting at the time. And I was just one of the DNC bloggers. The others were just as accomplished. You had to be someone special to be at the DNC in 2004. If he had bothered to find out who he was dissing, if he had any humility at all, he would have been embarrassed to be so wrong. Yet this is so much of what bloggers heard from professional news people. I don't mention this because my feelings were hurt, rather because it's a blind spot that has kept journalism from rising to the opportunity that is the two-way web. It's why Facebook is growing like a weed, and journalism is crumbling.#
- So dear ISOJ people. I come to you from tech. I have tried to work with journalism, many times. I've even succeeded a few times, in spectacular ways. Most of the time, I'm brushed aside as irrelevant, even when I'm an expert in the fields I am offering insight into. Areas that are all of a sudden very important to journalists. And I have some of the answers they seek. But they can't hear me, because they don't understand what I am. What am I? To you, I am a source. #
- Successful collaboration with journalism#
- Back in the 80s when I was rising through the ranks of the software industry, one of the basic skills of being a tech CEO was to get journalists to write about you often and favorably. This, along with thoughtful product designs, were my big strengths. I wasn't a great manager, or money-raiser. But I could get good coverage, and my products were interesting, and one of them was a hit. (I didn't make Craig Newmark level money, but I did well.)#
- In the 80s journalists were an important part of our distribution system, as was advertising, which was 1/4 of our budget, along with product development, support, sales, cost of goods, administration. If we stopped getting coverage and stopped advertising our sales would also stop. #
- We didn't have the web in the 80s, so talking on the phone with journalists was the way we traded information with others in the industry. I was a frequent source for the columns, Spencer F Katt, the Talking Moose et al and when new products came out from the big vendors, I was a reliable quote. When my copy of PC Week or MacWEEK came in, I closed the door and read the whole issue cover to cover. It was our pulse. We put news and gossip in and got the same out. #
- How different that is from the way news works today, and at the same time how similar! #
- How did this transition happen? I actually know, because in 1994 the journalism system I described above had collapsed, as had the software distribution system. I was a Mac developer, but the consensus among journalists was that the Mac is dead, there is no new software for the Mac, and no reason to create more, because it's dead. Dead. Basically when reporters wrote about the Mac they just said it's dead and Windows is booming. Which was weird because they all used Macs. And there was new software, esp for the web. In fact the web was happening on the Mac. But the reporters were stuck in their groove about Windows' dominance the same way they are stuck on Facebook today.#
- So while I had an excellent product, there was no way to get it past this barrier in the minds of the press. When Apple came out with a product that was positioned against ours, but really wasn't competitive, that was the end of public comment about us. And of course the company never recovered. So I was lucky, in a way, in 1994 when the web started taking off, I had the free time to see it, study it, and launch new ideas into it. #
- By following a formula for product development I've used my whole career, I tried an idea out to see if it worked, if it did, I'd build on it, see if that worked, etc. If you're chasing something good, it'll just keep building, each step will give you ideas of where to go next. I had a glimmer of an idea that using the Internet, I could do for myself what journalism had been doing for me. I had a good rolodex, in it were the email addresses of all the people I hoped to communicate with using the journalists as I did in the 80s. Instead of going through the middleman, the journalists (they thought I was dead) I went direct. And boy did it work. Right from the start it was a phenomenon. So I fed the flames with more ideas and a little dirt too. I did projects with the local Bay Area news orgs. I wrote about how I thought IBM and Apple should get together. And that PDAs were going to be tethered to desktops. And then I wrote a letter about Bill Gates and how the Internet spelled doom for his plans of world domination. And then I got an email response from Gates, and I ran it. And in just a couple of months, I had created, out of nothing, a news channel of my own. I was a source, going direct, without a middleman. I called it DaveNet, it was me, just me, as a net. No organization. I was free to say what I wanted to say. I wasn't covering for anyone. It was one of the most incredible periods of my life. #
- This process, sources going direct, has been going on ever since. At one point I radically proclaimed that every member of Congress would be a source that goes direct. Turns out I wasn't radical enough. Today the president of the United States got there because he went around journalism and talked directly to his constituents.#
- This form of communication, sources going direct, is with us for good. It's the reason Facebook makes billions and journalism is collapsing. Had journalism, instead of fighting the sources, or ignoring them, and created systems to organize them, how much better everything would be. This is what we're waiting for, imho, for journalism to realize that the architecture of news has changed, and that they should embrace the change instead of fighting it, and find their new role in this new world. #
Is there an iPhone app that records sound, but only saves bits where someone is talking or there is some other loud-enough sound?#
Serverless is one of those unfortunate names that confuse the hell out of people because it’s a lie. Your software most definitely runs on a server.#
A funny thing happens when I listen to Bruce Springsteen. I can't stop singing his songs when my mind is idling. Two songs mainly. 1. Rosalita and 2. Thunder Road. #
There is a divide between the elites and the people, it's why the news orgs are constantly writing about how huge social networks are hurting journalism, but say nothing about how they hurt blogging. In their minds blogging was some kind of ridiculous idea that ordinary people could write about what they see. #- My mother would have told me it's because they're scared of you. I believe she was right about that. But it's a shame because if you want to crack the journalism puzzle (not the membership puzzle a former colleague talks about), we're going to have to de-elite journalism. It's going to be democratic. Written by you and me. It will be a civic thing, like voting or jury duty.#
- Facebook could have been a home for this, if they had embraced blogging, but they didn't. They removed important features from the web like linking, simple styles, titles and enclosures for podcasting. Technically these are minor projects for a company with the engineering resources of Facebook. Like the journalists they were too arrogant to think there was value in what their users were writing. They just wanted to be the envelope within which we all lead our civic lives. But they didn't really believe in it.#
- This is the big picture for journalism in 2019, imho.#