NotesWhat if we imagined âwealthâ consisting not of the money we stuff into banks or the fossil-fuel-derived goods we pile up, but of joy, beauty, friendship, community, closeness to flourishing nature, to good food produced without abuse of labor? What if we were to think of wealth as security in our environments and societies, and as confidence in a viable future?Unfurl
NotesSooner or later, every single conversation I have will be recorded and transcribed and Iâll be able to look back at it later â details from a phone call with the bank, in the hardware store asking a question, someone mentions a book at the pub, an idea in a workshop. Ignoring the societal consequences for a sec lol ahem⌠how should the app to manage all that chatter work?FeedUnfurl
NotesIt could well be that future generations spend a fraction of the time we do today in transit but see far more of the world. Like preindustrial humans, they may work mostly in their homesUnfurl
NotesThis place is not a place of honor.
No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.
Nothing valued is here.
This place is a message and part of a system of messages.
Pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us.
We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.Unfurl
NotesSo what do I want? I want a world where the core JS engine is swappable. Maybe Iâm deploying on an architecture not supported by V8 (Node on SPARC came up while working on SpiderNode). Maybe my employer only wants to use the JVM. Or maybe Microsoft can get some performance wins by using Chakra for Windows Azure. Back to modules, I donât want to get rid of npm. Or maybe I do and I want something that only supports ES6+ modules.FeedUnfurl
NotesBarring a civilization-ending event, technology is not going to move backward. More and more of our world will be controlled by software. Itâs already become so ubiquitous that, argues one of my colleagues, itâs now ridiculous to call some firms as âtechâ companies when all companies depend on it so much.FeedUnfurl
NotesGiven technology's focus on the latest and greatest, it's easy to forget that much of this "latest and greatest" wouldn't even be possible without the work Mozilla did for years with Firefox. Or that dominating the browser market was never Mozilla's aim with Firefox.
Quixotic as it may sound, the purpose of Firefox was always to spread Web freedom.FeedUnfurl
NotesI've been struck particularly by two things missing from the DS9 universe--one unpredictable in the 1993-99 span of the series, and one predictable but unattractive from the creators' standpoint.
Nobody uses social media, and nobody wastes time.FeedUnfurl
NotesWhile that fight is far from over, weâre now at a distinct point in the evolution of the web, and Mozilla has appropriately looked around, and broadened its reach. In particular, the browser isnât the only strategic front in the struggle to promote and maintain peopleâs sovereignty over their online lives. There are now at least three other fronts where Mozilla is making significant investments of time, energy, passion, sweat & tears. Theyâre still in their infancy, but theyâre important to understand if you want to understand Mozilla:Unfurl
NotesRemix culture is the new Prohibition, with massive media companies as the lone voices calling for temperance. You can criminalize commonplace activities from law-abiding people, but eventually, something has to give.FeedEmbedUnfurl
NotesBoth software developers and users should demand more. Developers should look for ways to reach their users unimpeded, through still-open platforms, or through pressure on the terms imposed by the closed ones. And users should be ready to try "off-roading" with the platforms that still allow itâhewing to the original spirit of the PC, perhaps amplified by systems that let apps have a trial run on a device without being given the keys to the kingdom. If we allow ourselves to be lulled into satisfaction with walled gardens, we'll miss out on innovations to which the gardeners object, and we'll set ourselves up for censorship of code and content that was previously impossible. We need some angry nerds.Unfurl
NotesLet me restate that simply. The Web (browser) is inside of every application instead of every application being inside the Web (browser).FeedUnfurl
Notes"Now there is hope that future implants might be powered not by batteries but by the fuels in our bodies that are used for energy. Scientists have shown that fuel cells implanted in rats can successfully generate electricity from sugar in the rodent's bodies. The devices kept going for months at a time."FeedUnfurl
NotesCharles Stross was right. "with Release 33-9117, the SEC is considering substitution of Python or another programming language for legal English as a basis for some of its regulations."Unfurl
NotesThis sounds so much more funny when read with a REALLY sarcastic voice. "Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works."Unfurl
Notes"The end of human civilisation is millions of World of Warcraft servers with only one human player on each of them. Dragon Age: Origins seems to bring that day one step closer."Unfurl
Notes"The end of human civilisation is millions of World of Warcraft servers with only one human player on each of them. Dragon Age: Origins seems to bring that day one step closer."FeedEmbedUnfurl
Notes"Yet what the media has failed to grasp is what 4chan can tell us about where we're headed. The Chans aren't the freak sideshow of the Internet. They are the heart and soul of the Internet. And they are the ones furthest ahead of the pack, leading us. At this point there should be little doubt that the Internet is mutating the human species into something completely different. Therefore it's instructive to look at the most extreme, freebased forms of the Internet to see where we're going -- and 4chan is that freebased version of mankind's new drug of choice."Unfurl
NotesHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh, wait, that's not The Onion. "Imagine for a moment that this trend continues â might Detroit become some sort of independent city-state, a mildly anarchic rough-and-ready town where the price of freedom is a willingness to work hard for yourself and with your neighbours?"FeedEmbedUnfurl
Notes"Now, more than ever, science and reason must prevail. The scale of the challenge is hard to overstate, but New Scientist is optimistic that we can succeed: our boundless doomsaying is more than matched by our boundless creativity and our ability to, eventually, do the right thing."Unfurl
Notes"If the mainstream of "college teaching" becomes a set of atomistic, underpaid adjuncts, we'll lose a precious academic tradition that is not easily replaced."Unfurl
Notes"if space flight is really going to take thousands of years, hundreds of generations, and immense resources that could be better spent on having a good time, why should millions of sentient beings be expected to sink their lives into making it happen?"Unfurl
Notes"So. What happens in 10â20 years time to the now quite large number of professional web developers.Do we all just do the same thing weâre doing now. Just with higher version numbers? ... Do we all become managers? ... Is their another industry that will have us?"Unfurl