Weekly Thing for December 16, 2017
|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|
|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE| View this email in your browser (|ARCHIVE|) |END:IF|
** Weekly Thing
** by Jamie Thingelstad
December 16, 2017
With this weeks vote by the FCC to eliminate net neutrality protections I want to turn your attention to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (https://www.eff.org/) . I’ve been a member of the EFF for many years and I think their mission is getting more important, particularly since the government seems to not think this matters.
The EFF is the leading organization fighting for your digital rights! As we experience more of our personal lives using digital platforms, having basic protections is critically important not just to your privacy but to our society as a whole! The EFF has been fighting for those protections since 1990 (https://www.eff.org/about/history) ! They are actively working on a wide range of digital issues (https://www.eff.org/work) .
Sign up for the EFF mailing list so you can stay up-to-date with the work they are doing. But even better, join me and become a member of the EFF (https://supporters.eff.org/donate/) .
**
Giant Super Mario Bros. found in the Skyways of Downtown Minneapolis.
Dec 14, 2017 at 1:57 PM 801 Marquette Ave, Minneapolis MN
**
** Brandi Carlile - The Mother (Live) - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z865nKpgH0Q)
💬 I’ve seen Brandi Carlile (http://brandicarlile.com) perform this great song a few times live. This video of her singing it to her daughter, who it is about, is fabulous. Album comes out on February 16. 🎶
** 10 Reasons Why We Don’t Stick to Things : zen habits (https://zenhabits.net/wiggleroom/)
💬 I like that this enumerates the things that we often do, knowingly or not, and how we can fight those negative patterns.
** Jay Rosen: This is what a news organization built on reader trust looks like » Nieman Journalism Lab (http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/03/jay-rosen-this-is-what-a-news-organization-built-on-reader-trust-looks-like/)
💬 There is a lot of soul searching in news for how a news organization should work. I like how this one is approaching it.
** Universal Basic Income explained (https://kottke.org/17/12/universal-basic-income-explained)
💬 Nice video overview of the core concepts of basic income (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income) including examples where it has been tried.
** Some thoughts on social networks | mathew’s web site (http://meta.ath0.com/2017/12/social-networks/)
💬 Insightful observation that the negative aspects of platforms like Facebook don’t come from their specific implementation of social networking but is instead fundamental to the characteristics of the platform and business model.
** How Duterte Turned Facebook Into a Weapon—With Help From Facebook - Bloomberg (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-07/how-rodrigo-duterte-turned-facebook-into-a-weapon-with-a-little-help-from-facebook)
💬 When I read The Master Switch (https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empires/dp/0307390993) I was particularly struck by the claim that large monopolies are really helpful for governments to manage and control things. It makes sense, if the government wants to monitor communications it’s easier if there is one communication service. This was the cozy pairing that AT&T had with the government before it was broken up. This article shows how a malevolent government could leverage the monopoly of Facebook in their company to achieve there ends. Worrisome examples of pretty terrible practices to manipulate a society.
** Learning with Privacy at Scale - Apple (https://machinelearning.apple.com/2017/12/06/learning-with-privacy-at-scale.html)
💬 Some details on what differential privacy is and how it works in order to build more intelligent applications that use real data from real users without the negative privacy implications. Are there other companies applying rigor like this for privacy? I continue to see Apple making a long bet on privacy as a feature and I like that.
** Please invest responsibly — an important message from the Coinbase team (https://blog.coinbase.com/please-invest-responsibly-an-important-message-from-the-coinbase-team-bf7f13a4b0b1)
💬 I have a Coinbase account and have a very tiny amount of Bitcoin. This letter from the CEO should be read as “please, please don’t regulate us”! 😏
** Calm Technology (https://calmtech.com/)
💬 This reminds me of the slow food manifesto (https://www.slowfoodusa.org/manifesto) , basic principles that should be applied to the software and systems we build. 👏
** SQS & Lambda: teaming up – IOpipe Blog (https://read.iopipe.com/sqs-lambda-teaming-up-92c4096be49c)
💬 Cool open source project to bridge two very useful AWS services that aren’t natively connected.
** Maker vs. Manager: How Your Schedule Can Make or Break You (https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2017/12/maker-vs-manager/)
💬 This has a good writeup on the Maker v. Manager subject that Paul Graham originally wrote up. I like this article because it goes into more examples of how people use these and very importantly how people use both. I find that I need to effectively use both schedule types to achieve my objectives and being clear about which you are using at different points is critical.
** Time Well Spent (http://www.timewellspent.io/)
💬 We are building a new organization dedicated to reversing the digital attention crisis and realigning technology with humanity’s best interests. Sounds like a good idea!
** SEC.gov | Statement on Cryptocurrencies and Initial Coin Offerings (https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/statement-clayton-2017-12-11)
💬 Here is the SEC giving a warning to Coinbase and others that “hey, we might be regulating you.”
** Even more sieve extensions | FastMail Blog (https://blog.fastmail.com/2017/12/12/more-sieve-extensions/)
💬 I’ve paid Fastmail a very reasonable fee to host my email for years. They have a great service and I love the power features they have like full support of the sieve mail filtering language. If you feel like signing up use my affiliate link (https://www.fastmail.com/?STKI=12008209) .
** Lua for Programmers Part 1: Language Essentials (http://nova-fusion.com/2012/08/27/lua-for-programmers-part-1/)
💬 I continue to have a strange fascination with Lua. I really should find a project to learn it. This is a nice multipart writeup to easily learn basic Lua structure and syntax. If you ever need an embedded language Lua is a great choice.
** Millennials Are Screwed - The Huffington Post (http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor-millennials/?mobile=1)
💬 A treatise on the economic and financial challenges facing millennials. An interesting read. Related, I’m on the fence with this new way of packaging special news stories as mini-applications. I find it fun in ways, but it’s also frustrating when they involve new user paradigms that you have to discover through trial and error.
** You Give Up a Lot of Privacy Just Opening Emails. Here’s How to Stop It | WIRED (https://www.wired.com/story/how-email-open-tracking-quietly-took-over-the-web/)
💬 This article is worth a read to realize how much tracking can and often does occur in your email client. I think a lot about tracking in the browser but this is a very difficult place to deal with. I don’t think any email programs really offer good protection from this type of tracking. And, by the way, if you are using a tracker for personal emails? Yuck. (In full disclosure, the Weekly Thing is sent with MailChimp and it has trackers all over the place. I can’t remove them unless I pay MailChimp to take them out. 😕)
** The FCC just killed net neutrality - The Verge (https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/14/16776154/fcc-net-neutrality-vote-results-rules-repealed)
💬 As expected the Net Neutrality rules were voted down in a 3-2 vote at the FCC. Expect to hear from opponents of net neutrality that after the vote the internet is still working. Erosion of neutrality will take a while. Companies aren’t dumb, they will slowly start charging more. For the foreseeable future it’s important to start thinking about how to manage around this and put pressure on the corporations.
** Say Farewell to Putty as Microsoft adds an OpenSSH Client to Windows 10 (https://www.servethehome.com/say-farewell-putty-microsoft-adds-openssh-client-windows-10/)
💬 Wow! Finally Microsoft Windows based admins can just natively ssh from there machines! Microsoft really has changed! 😂 ⛄️🔥
** Popular Destinations rerouted to Russia | BGPmon (https://bgpmon.net/popular-destinations-rerouted-to-russia/)
💬 Wow – this is pretty interesting and a bit scary. A bad actor injecting routes into the BGP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Gateway_Protocol) system of the internet and routing large amounts of data onto foreign territory. This seems like it’s intentional and hard to imagine it’s not a state sponsored activity.
** Black Friday & Cyber Monday Performance Report 2017 - Catchpoint’s Blog - Web Performance Monitoring (http://blog.catchpoint.com/2017/11/29/black-friday-cyber-monday-performance-report-2017/)
💬 Interesting data collected by Catchpoint looking at the performance of various retail websites during the busiest time of the year.
** Moment – Automatically track your and your family’s daily iPhone and iPad use (https://inthemoment.io/)
💬 Interesting application that tracks how many times you look at your phone and how long you’ve looked at it. Helps you be cognizant of how much time you spend by just informing you in 15 minute increments. Interesting concept. I’m trying it out to see what I think.
** In digital innovation era, this technologist focuses on empathy in tech - SiliconANGLE (https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/12/11/digital-innovation-era-technologist-focuses-empathy-tech-topwomenincloud/)
💬 A very cool interview with Minneapolis-native and awesome tech community leader Bridget Kromhout (https://bridgetkromhout.com) ! Very cool! Her observations on the people side of working in tech are absolutely spot on! 👏 I think the “unconference” Bridget mentions is Minnebar (https://minnestar.org/minnebar/) ! 🤔
** Google sent more traffic to publishers than Facebook in 2017 - Recode (https://www.recode.net/2017/12/11/16748026/google-facebook-publisher-traffic-2017-increase)
💬 Wow! This is great to see. Is there a decline is people relying on Facebook to get their news? Let’s hope! 🤞
** Lua Records — PowerDNS Recursor 4.1.1-pre documentation (https://powerdns.org/auth-4.1.1-docs/lua-records.html)
💬 This is really nifty – putting Lua functions into your DNS server! I didn’t realize there were DNS servers that could do this type of function but it opens up some pretty interesting solutions. Word of caution though, perhaps they are a little too interesting. I could see this confusing people when troubleshooting.
** Former Facebook exec says social media is ripping apart society - The Verge (https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/11/16761016/former-facebook-exec-ripping-apart-society)
💬 Yet another Facebook executive that is frightened and disturbed by what they have built. You have to take a moment and reconsider when the people that build a thing don’t think it’s a good idea to use that thing!
** Book: Why We Sleep - Feld Thoughts (https://www.feld.com/archives/2017/12/book-why-we-sleep.html)
💬 Tammy read this book and really liked it. She found a lot of compelling information on sleep 💤 and the benefits associated. I put this on my book clubs list to read too. Was interesting to see Brad Feld write it up as well.
** Getting Things Done® | Get a Grip on Your Process, or Give It Up (http://gettingthingsdone.com/2017/11/get-a-grip-on-your-process-or-give-it-up/?ck_subscriber_id=137356052)
💬 David Allen getting real with some tough love. 💪💛
** AWS Lambda in Production: State of Serverless Report 2017 (https://blog.newrelic.com/2017/11/21/aws-lambda-state-of-serverless/)
💬 New Relic (https://newrelic.com) has access to some interesting data on usage of Lambda functions for serverless workloads. This has some really interesting insights into how people are using lambdas.
** 8 emerging trends in container orchestration (https://www.datadoghq.com/container-orchestration/)
💬 Datadog did some interesting aggregated statistics on container practices inside of Kubernetes (https://kubernetes.io) and AWS ECS (https://aws.amazon.com/ecs/) . Some cool insights they can see across many deployments across various companies.
** By the Time I Get to Phoenix - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By_the_Time_I_Get_to_Phoenix)
💬 This is fabulous story about this song. Thanks to Steve Yaeger (https://twitter.com/SteveYaeger) for the introduction to this. 👍 However, the drive is actually possible, driving at an average of about 65 mph. If he leaves Los Angeles around midnight, he can drive the 373 miles to Phoenix in about six hours to arrive when she “rises” at 6:00 am. If she “stops at lunch” to “give him a call” at 12:30 p.m. when he is in Albuquerque, it gives him six-and-a-half hours to make the 420-mile drive. The drive from Albuquerque to the Oklahoma border is about 390 miles, giving her plenty of time to get home and go to sleep.
**
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0451231899/?tag=thingelstad01-20** Freedom (TM) (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0451231899/?tag=thingelstad01-20)
** by Daniel Suarez
The New York Times bestseller Daemon unleashed a terrifying technological vision of an all-powerful, malicious computer program. Now, our world is the Daemon’s world—unless someone stops it once and for all…
After reading Daemon and it’s cliffhanger ending I had to move on to Freedom right away!
**
https://minnestar.org
Minnestar (https://minnestar.org/) is the technology community for Minnesota. If you are passionate about technology you need to go to Minnebar and Minnedemo. Did you know that Minnebar is the largest BarCamp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp) in North America and one of the largest in the world? Its also been going on for over 10 years? Minnedemo is the best place to hear about innovative tech and fun projects in the Twin Cities area. I am on the Minnestar board and I focus on Minnestar as one of the driving forces improving and expanding the technology community in the area. Minnestar is a 501c3 non-profit. Become a Community Supporter today! (https://minnestar.donortools.com/)
**
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/working-copy-enterprise/id965019520?mt=8&uo=4&at=1001lxyE&ct=thingelstad_com** Working Copy Enterprise (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/working-copy-enterprise/id965019520?mt=8&uo=4&at=1001lxyE&ct=thingelstad_com)
by Anders Borum
Access Git repositories on the go. Clone, edit, commit and push while allowing other apps access to repositories.
If you use Git as part of your toolchain and you want to do more on your iOS devices Working Copy is an awesome, fully featured Git app. Working Copy already supports the Files app as well so you can open up your Github repository, edit content in other applications and easily commit it back. Useful for coding or even blogging on your static site.
$14.99 5/5 stars
**
- Proud member of the EFF! Donate now! (http://micro.thingelstad.com/2017/12/12/proud-member-of.html)
- Somebody thought these red sunglasses with flashing lights were a good idea? 😕 (http://micro.thingelstad.com/2017/12/12/somebody-thought-these.html)
- Spent a lot of time in this while (sick) { sleep(); } loop today. (http://micro.thingelstad.com/2017/12/11/spent-a-lot.html)
- Earned the botanist badge in Forest! 🌳🌳🌳 (http://micro.thingelstad.com/2017/12/10/earned-the-botanist.html)
** The end 🎬
Thank you for subscribing to the Weekly Thing! If you know of people that would like the Weekly Thing please forward it along!
============================================================ (|FORWARD|) Forward (|FORWARD|) (http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=|URL:MC_SUBJECT|: |URL:ARCHIVE_LINK_SHORT|) Tweet (http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=|URL:MC_SUBJECT|: |URL:ARCHIVE_LINK_SHORT|) (http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?url=|URL:ARCHIVE_LINK_SHORT|&mini=true&title=|URL:MC_SUBJECT|) Share (http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?url=|URL:ARCHIVE_LINK_SHORT|&mini=true&title=|URL:MC_SUBJECT|) Copyright © |CURRENT_YEAR| |LIST:COMPANY|, All rights reserved. |IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE| |LIST:DESCRIPTION|
Our mailing address is: |LIST_ADDRESS| |END:IF|
Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences (|UPDATE_PROFILE|) or unsubscribe from this list (|UNSUB|) .
|IF:REWARDS| |REWARDS_TEXT| |END:IF|
This work by Jamie Thingelstad is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
My opinions are my own and not those of any affiliates. The content is non-malicious and ad-free, posted at my discretion. Source attribution is omitted due to potential errors. Your privacy is respected; no tracking is in place.