This is a daily (?) list of links I found worthwhile. Some of them are news, some are timely information, and some are things I should have known about a long time ago, but only now had pointed out to me.
This is a daily (?) list of links I found worthwhile. Some of them are news, some are timely information, and some are things I should have known about a long time ago, but only now had pointed out to me.
Back on track, sort-of. Links from just two days, lots of stuff left out.
This is a bit of nostalgia, a bit late for Thanksgiving. (Younger readers should take note that the “free speech” debate in the 90s was very different from the one going on now, and you should not, therefore, assume that the writer of this filk is a Nazi.)
A bit of info from the WSWS, which doesn’t exactly match the headline. Schmidt is proud of working to fight “fake news” and “weaponized content”. Since these categories include entirely accurate news from politically unacceptable sources like WSWS, it’s fair to call it political censorship, but they should do a better job making the connection in the lede of the article.
This should really not surprise anyone. I’m in search of a solution, but all the available ones make pretty bad compromises.
Want a computer or mobile device that really doesn’t spy on you, and really isn’t evil? Maybe try one of these refurbished older devices with pure Free Software distributions. They’re (IMO) overpriced for what you get, but that’s partly a knowledge/time/money tradeoff.
More on surveillance capitalism. Basically, points out that keeping user information secure is not profitable for Facebook, and costs them money. They’d rather only do it to the extent it’s necessary to get scandals out of the news.
More from the Web Of Shit.
Maybe the link is that gender is bullshit, and autistic people are not good at pretending bullshit doesn’t stink.
Well, my idea of doing daily link posts hasn’t quite worked out. But I’ve been collecting things nonetheless, so here are a few days worth of links.
This site provides social media sharing buttons with no JavaScript or third party requests, and therefore no tracking. The social media sites supported are still all corporate silos (except for email), but they make a reasonable choice for promoting your decentralized content on the centralized networks.
This site gives an estimate of what loading a page on your site costs, in US dollars, to load a single page of your site over a mobile network. It has average, high, and low costs for different countries.
James Bridle writes about a disturbing trend in monetization of engagement on YouTube. AI-generated content, or AI-generated scripts for human-generated or produced content, designed to optimize appearance in search results for characters or trends in children’s videos. Some of the content tends towards the surreal, some towards the horrific.
To be clear, I didn’t make this; I just found it, and it’s very much my thing.
A story from the perspective of a henchman, on how it looks like the villains of Gotham really act more in the interests of regular people than Batman (and Bruce Wayne).
An response to an article that was in favor of manipulating users. This response pulls no punches in condemning that behavior.
I confess to not having read this yet.
An article on A-B testing, and how it tends to serve the interests of site owners rather than users.
Back when I was on Facebook, I used the mobile website, rather than the app, and I was frequently annoyed by their aggressive A-B testing. They would frequently break basic features of their website, mostly related to sharing, in order to A-B test.
The perils of bad default settings.
Communication problems are a two-way street. Also, the importance of first impressions.
CW: Nazi iconography.
A deconstruction of why autistics are problematized and medicalized under certain regimes of gender norms — notably the group-orientation and hypermasculinity of Nazi Germany, and the relentless self-promotion of contemporary late capitalism. Contrasts the valorization of autistic traits in high modernist literature, such as Camus’ The Outsider.
A review of a book on how the collapse of capitalism will be an inevitable, but also ongoing, dystopic process, thanks in large part to the lack of any other social movements that exist to replace it.
A somewhat more positive view — how we can replace capitalism from within.
An explanation of the celestial navigation techniques seen in Moana.
Web components that emphasize accessibility and progressive enhancement.
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 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.
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.
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).
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.
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.