Scripting News: Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Tuesday, January 31, 2023

To journalists (and others) who are trying to figure out how podcasting was born, I suggest listening to the podcasts in Morning Coffee Notes starting at 6/11/2004. Work your way up the list. Those were amazing days, lots of firsts and imho lots of fun. I kept the archive because I hoped at some point someone would want to know how it happened. Maybe grad students will do a thesis on this stuff? This is a new medium being born. I tried to keep good records. Also recommend looking at Scripting News archives for 2004 as well. #

2001 was also a big year in podcasting. The first program to download podcasts was MUOTD, in January 2001, in conjunction with the Grateful Dead experiment.#

It's HTTPS week for FeedLand#

I have a group of testers working with me on getting the open source release of FeedLand ready to go. And this is the week we're working on HTTPS support. One of my friends thanked me for doing this work, and I thought my response deserved to be public, so here it is.#

Supporting HTTPS in FeedLand was the plan all along. The rule is if you're giving your identity to a service, you gotta have HTTPS. My commitment is to the web. I think HTTPS is shitty technology, I'm sure Google if they tried harder, or asked me, could have come up with more of a win-win. But it is what it is. They're a shit company, but HTTPS is not Google. I know that. Some people can't seem to get that I get that. Not everything is a political cause. I think they're accustomed to Republican politics where they'll burn the world down to assert their will. I'm genuinely in this for the good of everyone, not just me. And -- I don't blame HTTPS for Google. #

My profile on Twitter is something I think every technologist should agree with, like the doctors take.#

I work for the betterment of the network we all share. I'm not trying to get rich or famous, just fix the stuff that's broken. I hope you are doing that too.#

It's okay to want to be rich or famous, btw -- I like having money, and if you succeed at being famous I want to warn you there's a downside to it, but more power to you. #

Diego Rivera#

Portrait of the Knight Family, 1946.#

Last update: Tuesday January 31, 2023; 9:30 PM EST.

You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)