The article, Why Generation X will save the web, makes an important point for those concerned about new laws written regarding the Internet:
Government and policy – the mechanics and grunt work, not the media showmanship – are powered by an army of hard-working, very young people who have all of the academic knowledge and very little of the practical experience. Those young folks, now, in 2021, who were in nappies when I was on the Hill, now run whatever corridors of power they (virtually) travel through, in professional support of those older politicians.
And it’s these young professionals – not the boomer career politicians – who are setting the tone of internet policy.
As the article suggests, we tend to think it’s gray haired Senators, who don’t understand the Internet, who are going to write new laws against encryption and other parts of what we call the open Internet, and that is wrong. The laws will be written by millenials who have never known the open Internet. The only Internet millenials know is the bad, closed corporate Internet of Facebook and Twitter and Medium.
We shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t protect that which they have never known nor experienced.
Celebrating day 2,190
A year ago we spent a few days in Detroit, not knowing then that it would be our last social outing of the year. A year later and we have no idea when we will do something like it again.
We are making super bowl chili. That is all.
I am using Things to manage my personal lists on my iPads. Things is a really nice app but one frustration I have is that when I tap a lost item to expand it tapping it a second time does not collapse the item. It seems the only way to collapse is to tap on another list or try to find a blank space, which is inconsistent and not intuitive.
It’s been a hectic week at work. Heads down analyzing a problem since Wednesday and then another problem came in to the inbox on Thursday. Murphy is still on his game. My wife informed me she noticed my pre-occupation by my leaving the inside door to the garage open today, quickly noticeable to her on a sub 10 degree wind chill day.
I am happy to report that the keyboard shortcuts are back in the Pocket web app. Made my day.
One good thing about COVID-19, it’s caused a very mild flu season.
Is it a good thing that more and more citizens, as a consequence of 401ks and easier accessibility (Robinhood) are capitalists? I am skeptical because it feels to me more like assimilation by corporations resulting in people in rural areas voting against their true interests.
It seems to me that in many ways the current Apple culture is similar to the culture that famous 1984 commercial claimed it was against. Ironic. Tyranny of the big company.
Oh, Aaron Burr, sir., you did so much damage because you could not see…source
In 1806, on the advice of Vice President Aaron Burr (who thought it redundant), the Senate dropped the “previous question” — a motion to end debate and bring an item up for immediate vote — from its rules. Without a motion to call the previous question, however, an individual senator could, in theory, hold the floor indefinitely.
Fresh snow fall can make one wonder what the heck goes on outside at night. Note we do not have a dog or cat, but we do have a sump pump.
Home Computer Repairs
Given the number of Raspberry Pis I have, you might get the impression that I am a maker, but I am not. I’ve just been enamored by these small, inexpensive single board computers. The closest I’ve come so far to a real project is what I call my desk clock, which is a Pi installed behind a five inch monitor that displays Chromium kiosk mode with a screen I configure using Dakboard.
I originally built the desk clock using a Raspberry Pi 2 that stopped working a few weeks ago. This past weekend tried to troubleshoot the problem. First I built a new SD card and it seemed to boot fine, but after a few more tests I found that the USB WiFi dongle was not reliably connecting to the home network, so I decided to re-purpose a Pi 3 that was on my desk for the desk clock.
To retain the backup and archive functions that Pi 3 was performing, I moved it’s SD card to a Pi 3b+ and then built a new SD card for the desk clock, except this time I cheated by using a pre-built image that dakboard provides.
The net result is that I now have one less Raspberry Pi sitting on my desk. Last night as I was putting things away I found another Pi 3 I already had been storing, which if I had known about would have simplified things, but not resulted in one less Pi on my desk.
For a summary of my Raspberry Pis, expand the Every Day Tech branch of my Technology outline.
There are currently 34 national emergencies, the oldest dating from November, 1979.
Pretty snow came down overnight.
Just found that Pocket also removed the copy link from the sharing option in the web app. I am beginning to think that I need to start considering other reading options. I could revert back to Instaper, but had grown frustrated with it’s lack of development.
While I am venting about Pocket, I have a feature request. Provide readers the option that when they are reading an article and then archive that the next article in the list is loaded rather than returning me to the list. The current process really slows down the reading flow for me.
Think US Evangelicals Are Dying Out? Well, Define Evangelicalism source
Religious evangelicals may look at these numbers and think, “This is not what the term evangelical means.” The assumption is that the term describes those who place high value on the teachings of the Bible and strive to evangelize other people into their faith. However, that understanding of the term seems to be fading, replaced with a more amorphous concept that melds together religious doctrine and an affinity for conservative politics that experts are only beginning to understand now.
The above is a bug, not a feature. One can argue that the assimilation of Christianity into the Roman Empire in 313 huge negative consequences on Christianity, and it probably was not good for empire either.
Secular power always, always, seeks to consolidate power with religion.
I rely heavily on Pocket for my reading workflow because when I find an article in my RSS feeds that I want to read I send it to Pocket. Yesterday the web version of Pocket got an update and it broke the keyboard shortcuts, and I am finding that incredibly frustrating. It’s a failure of regression testing, and frankly not acceptable for a commercial software product.
Amazon sells this home test kit:
For $110!
I don’t get the newsletter craze. I guess it’s just all about making money.