Links for 2017/11/13

November 13, 2017 · 2 minute read

The Super Wealthy Oxycontin Family Supports School Privatization With Tactics Similar to Those That Fueled the Opioid Epidemic

Reporting by Sara Darer Littman about the Sackler family, who allegedly have used ethically questionable tactics to push oxycontin through FDA approval and onto doctors and patients. They are using the same forms of aggressive advertising to push a pro-charter-school agenda.

IBM Type

IBM releases a set of fonts (Serif, Sans, and Mono) in a variety of weights. They’re intended for internal use, but also released under the SIL font license. Some people like the monospace font for programming.

Something is wrong on the internet – James Bridle – Medium

Monetization of engagement, deep learning, and capitalism produce strange and disturbing channels and videos on YouTube, aimed at children. The children’s version of the political bots we see on Facebook and Twitter.

Social Media Sharing Buttons. No JavaScript. No tracking. Super fast and easy.

These social media buttons are static HTML, so they contain no JavaScript or tracking. Easy to add to your static website.

Of course, they all (except for email) provide sharing to toxic corporate silos. But at least the people still using those silos will be able to spread your words. And if you still use those silos, they could make it easier to POSSE (Publish on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere).

Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web - Neustadt.fr

Parimal Satyal writes about the wonder and promise of the early web, and the corporate hellscape it is today. Both qualitative and quantitative measures of how much the web in 2017 sucks.

Things both users and web professionals can do to fight the trend.

The Death of Transit

A talk on why the internet in general is basically living on borrowed time – because everything is on private networks between content providers and CDNs, and CDNs live inside the ISPs networks.

The next free internet will be UUCP nodes exchanging data via accoustic couplers at 300 baud, over a VOIP phone network. The legacy TCP/IP network will only be usable to reach Facebook.


Stay safe out there on the internet, friend, whatever you are.