The Web as filtered (and hopefully enriched ;-) by Adrian McEwen
May 27, 2019
Interesting Things on the Internet: May 27th 2019
- Putting the Soul in Console. "maybe things like our gaming devices or the websites we visit should be created by people we know and like, instead of giant faceless companies, seems more essential than ever. We would never settle for replacing all of our made-with-love, locally-grown, mom's recipe home cooking with factory-farmed fast food, even if sometimes convenience demands we consume the latter."
- Council Estate Academics: Take Pride in Your Roots. Not just academics. I didn't grow up on a council estate, but lots of this rings true. The class system in this country has been finely honed over centuries to ensure there's always another level into which you don't fit. Sod that for a game of soldiers.
- “Like millions of others, I was fed the myth…It’s bollocks, mate.”. A good exploration of another perspective on the last link.
- Kolyma - Birthplace of Our Fear. Long, but really interesting documentary about the Russian Gulag, that era of Stalinist Russia and its legacy.
- Russell Keith-Magee - Keynote - PyCon 2019. Interesting arguments about how and why we should be funding open source projects (focused on Python, but it all applies elsewhere too). The section about Ostrom's work in how we successfully manage a commons and how that conflicts with open source licensing was especially interesting. Given that a commons, or a community, needs ways to protect itself from bad actors; how do we reconcile that with the four freedoms? Maybe we need to change the four freedoms.
May 20, 2019
Interesting Things on the Internet: May 20th 2019
- Why I (Still) Love Tech: In Defense of a Difficult Industry. Yep. Pretty much all of this. I do think that some of this is a response to the geeks gaining power. Some of us remember what it was like to be the outsider, and want to help others up onto our platform; others remember what it was like to be the outsider, and enjoy getting to be the school bully. So much work to do.
- Lets talk about Extinction Rebellion. I wanted to write more about Extinction Rebellion here, particularly when I visited the protests on Waterloo Bridge when I was down in London. Given that hasn't happened, this good write-up will have to suffice for now.
- Senate testimony on privacy and surveillance capitalism. Not as entertaining as his usual talks against the big tech companies, but important, considered arguments about the risks and how we should regulate tech from Maciej. Happy that I pay him for my pinboard.in account. "For sixty years, we have called the threat of totalitarian surveillance ‘Orwellian’, but the word no longer fits the threat. The better word now may be ‘Californian’."
- Freezing Executive Salaries to Pay Entry-Level Workers a Better Wage. "The conversation with our executives was straightforward. We were in the midst of a turnaround. We were demanding much from every corner of the company. Small financial sacrifices from those at the top could be life changing for those at the bottom of our wage scale."
May 13, 2019
Interesting Things on the Internet: May 13th 2019
- Tukey, Design Thinking, and Better Questions. Excellent thoughts on data science (I need to read the original paper too, written in 1962!). "Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise."
- Finance for non-accountants. Excellent primer on how to read a company's accounts, for non-accountants like myself (and most people).
- Radically Open Security: Non-profit Ventures. Interesting set of rules for setting up non-profit businesses. Good to see more examples like this knocking around.