Pondering Dave Winer's early Jan 2016 posts

My current bookmarks page of sites that I visit or feeds that I consume includes a link to DW's feed near the top of the list. I access his feed multiple times per day to see what new insights he has posted. I'm mainly interested in his thoughts and projects regarding web publishing.

I agree and disagree with his tech posts. I don't care about the other topics. I don't access his Facebook or Twitter pages, except in extremely rare occasions. I read the RSS feed from his blog.

Here is how I read Dave Winer's writings: feed page.

I use my custom "feed" command that is included within my Junco code that powers this site. The feed command also exists in the Parula code that powers my message board at ToledoTalk.com.

Here's how it works. The feed= is surrounded by two curly braces at each end. The line must begin at the start of a new line in order for it to work.

Scripting News - 2025-01-05T18:25:33Z

- 2025-01-05T18:25:33Z
Update: Bluesky images work again and thus the Great Art on Bluesky channel is back. If you're on Bluesky please subscribe.

- 2025-01-05T15:28:29Z
The crazy thing about Bluesky's API is they took already standardized things like links and enclosures, and after 20+ years came up with new definitions. Makes our apps more expensive to maintain, and we waste time and human wear and tear on stupid bullshit make-work. Developers are people, and our work is already horribly overly complex, we're working at the edge of comprehension, and what the fukc let's throw some more unnecessary complication into the mix. Arrogance, narcissism, whatever the source is, it's not a good way to introduce yourself. And, even better, after you go through the maze they break it, with an error message about legacy blob bullshit. They've already done this, and they're just getting started. It's why I say they should just adapt to RSS instead of trying to force us to adapt to them. I'll do it one more time, and then that's it. They can fix my code next time they break it.

- 2025-01-05T15:46:58Z
BTW, in defense of Matt Mullenweg and the culture of the developer community he built over the last 20 years, for better or worse, they don't do what Bluesky did. They look for prior art and implement it and they don't deprecate. They're still running the APIs we invented for blogging before WordPress even existed. The philosophy is "Let's not argue about decisions made a long time ago, because we want interop." People have all kinds of harsh things to say about their leadership, but unless you're a developer you don't understand that the reason it works is that they have a different code for their code, the only way we get interop is by not re-inventing. There are two competing ways to do things in tech. The blogging world has been taken over by the re-inventors, like the Bluesky people. They make a nice product, but honestly they don't reallllly want us to work with them, or we wouldn't be having this friction. Their API is bullshit. Plain and simple. They even thought of using RSS constructs and decided to reinvent the whole thing. There are places to innovate, like new freedom for users and developers, or there are ways to create hamster cages where everyone gets to run around in a very tightly defined space, that's fun. That's what Twitter was about, and that's what Bluesky is doing too. At some point we're really going to break free of this mess, but this isn't that time, yet.

- 2025-01-04T22:36:32Z
Just taking it easy. Thinking about stuff. Will resume blogging soon. 😄

- 2025-01-04T22:37:17Z
BTW, as promised, last night's Knicks game was great. Up until the end, when the other guys took over and sadly the Knicks lost. We need a stronger bench. The starting five are great but they're not totally super-human.

- 2025-01-04T01:00:24Z
Knicks on Friday night: A big offline day here in the mountains, the show will resume tomorrow bright and early, Murphy-willing. Enjoy tonight's Knicks game in OKC. Should be a great game. 😄

Gambling, sports, kids - 2025-01-04T01:45:48Z

Krugman writes about social media is poisoning children's minds.

I like that Krugman has resumed his blogging.

This means that sometimes I agree or disagree, or have mixed opinions, but I always learn something. That's what makes a blogger good imho.

I don't know if I agree that children's minds are being poisoned. But I am pretty sure when people like Krugman and myself reach a certain age, and we are the same age, we start looking at new media that way. Maybe our minds are poisoned. My father called television the "idiot box." But it eventually became the literature of my generation, often very good. But maybe laws can help.

One thing I am sure of is that sports is being ruined by gambling. I can't imagine that a parent in 2025 would let their kids watch the NBA on TV, because it makes gambling appear to be a normal part of being a fan. Yet the NBA, which has a reputation of being socially forward-thinking, has swallowed the pill, and gambling is an integral part of coverage of the NBA now.

Same with the NFL, MLB and tennis.

And is this why they can now afford to sign players to $765 million contracts?

They're all getting hugely rich, but I believe that they are certainly doing great harm to the new sports fans growing up now.

I am a no apologist for being a sports fan. I love the Mets and the Knicks, have flirted with the Niners, and have a place in my heart for the Cubs and Red Sox, and I know that gambling spoils what's fun about sports, can turn it into an awful addiction. I manage to be a fan without ever having bet on a game, even just a bet between friends. I don't see it as part of sports. It wasn't the way my family enjoyed sports.

I was a math major and a 50+ year programmer, and I know that if you gamble enough you lose all your money. And as an addiction no gambler ever gets up from the table to enjoy their winnings when they win.

PS: I wrote this post in WordLand on New Years Day, saving it for a good moment on Scripting.

Little Feed Reader on Bluesky - 2025-01-02T14:31:49Z

My little feed reader on Bluesky is ready for you to follow.

Technically, this is how the pieces fit together.

1. I'm using the OPML file for my blogroll category on feedland.social to determine what's posted on Bluesky. When I add or remove feeds from the category, the OPML adjusts dynamically.
2. I'm running a new Node app that has a websocket connection to feedland.social. It receives all the new items as they are found from all feeds over the socket. It's feedland.social's firehose. Since I'm currently the only user of that server, it's getting news from the all feeds I follow, not just the ones in the blogroll category.
3. The Node app checks each new item to see if it's in one of the feeds in the OPML list. If so, it reformats it to fit in a Bluesky post and sends it to the feediverse account.
4. If you're subscribed you should see the item, with a link, in your Bluesky timeline.

Notes.

1. The Node app re-loads the OPML subscription list every minute so any change is quickly reflected.
2. It's the same blogroll you see on my blog's home page.
3. The biggest problem in getting this running was rate-limiting. I have dealt with this on Twitter and other services, but Bluesky was not, for a while, letting anything through with the error message that we were over the limit. It was suggested that we should cache the accessToken rather get a new one for every message. I did that and cautiously turned the server on again at first with a 5 message per hour self-imposed limit, then gradually increased it to 10 per hour. The latest version only requires that there be at least five minutes between posts, so that means no more than 12 per hour.
4. Thanks to Mark Cuban for the initial idea and his support. He saw a river of news from FeedLand and asked if it could work in Bluesky. That was the idea. I have always wanted a tight coupling between Bluesky and RSS but didn't know how to do it. We may have just skipped a step.
5. We realllly could use some more formating features in Bluesky messages. This is a really strong use-case imho for the textcasting idea.
6. The coolest thing from my point of view is that I already had all the pieces, fully developed, the only thing that remained was to hook them together.
7. Finally, there's a this.how page for Little Feed Reader. It's purposely brief, but I have put a link to this post on that page.

- 2025-01-01T15:59:12Z
I wrote a few blog posts in WordLand this morning because it was convenient. It's good the same way I like to use a twitter-like app to write first drafts, when all I have to type into is my iPad. I've also started using it on my desktop for short things, but I just wrote and edited a complete blog post, a response to something Krugman wrote, about how gambling is destroying sports. And what for? It's like what Marge said at the end of Fargo. "There's more to life than a little money, you know." It feels like they're feeding the NBA into a wood chipper. What comes out the other side won't imho be recognizable as sport. And here you are, and it's a beautiful day.

- 2025-01-01T15:55:20Z
Welcome to a brand new year. The best one ever. 😄

- 2025-01-01T15:55:54Z
I've archived December in the GitHub repo, in OPML, as usual.

- 2025-01-01T15:57:09Z
I've got so much new stuff stacked up, on its way out. Hold onto your hats.

I'd like to excerpt from and comment about three DW posts that he made over the past couple days.

• Jan 4, 2016 - Leave nothing but footprints
• Jan 4, 2016 - Why tech insiders must be on Facebook
• Jan 5, 2016 - Re Twitter easing the 140-char limit

Dave claims that he likes the open web, and he often rails against silos, such as Twitter and Facebook. In the summer of 2013, I discovered the #indieweb group via a poster mentioning the https://indiewebcamp.com in a comment to one of DW's posts. Maybe the word "silo" has been used for a long time to describe social media sites, but the term got popularized in my conscience by the Indieweb site.

I added #webmention support to my Junco code because of the Indieweb group. The Indieweb people "use" social media sites differently. They own their own domain names. They post articles and notes to their own blog sites. But rather than manually cross-posting their info their many social media presences, they use software that makes it appear that the Indieweb users are using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. just like everyone else, but that's not the true.

Indieweb users may never log into their social media sites, but their content gets posted to those sites, and the comments, likes, shares, etc. at those other sites come back to their personal sites. It's interesting.

Since I don't "use" Twitter and Facebook, having my info posted automatically at those other sites is unnecessary. I use Instagram but mainly as a notetaking app and a place to store photos. But lately, I rely more on Flickr. Again. I've been using Flickr for many years. I don't use Flickr to network with others. I use it to store photos that I then embed into my own web publishing apps and sites.

This past summer, I created my Waxwing app to be a simple image uploader that speeds up the process of using images within my web publishing apps. But I still use Flickr too.

I'm not interested in networking with people beyond my own message board ToledoTalk.com that I started in January 2003.

I could be considered anti-social because I don't use the hot social media/social networking sites, and that's okay by me. I'm fine with being labeled and called names. I won't get offended.

I like message boards, wikis, and blogs. If that's old school or archaic, then that's okay too because I subscribe to the theory that every human being is unique. Why would zealot fans of social media sites assume that everyone should enjoy using those sites/apps? And why do these zealot fans get irritated that some people have the nerve not to use those sites?

I don't care if these social media sites exist. More amateur content gets created. That's a good thing. They all have pros and cons. But I'm simply not interested in them. And I'm not alone with this thinking.

I'm not going to get upset because people use Facebook, and I won't waste my time trying to convince people to stop using Facebook. I don't care if people use Facebook.

I enjoy building and using my own websites. That probably puts me into a minority of a minority. Many Indieweb users also build or install their own software to manage their personal sites. Different breed. What's wrong with diversity?

What's odd is when the zealot social media fans try to convince us that we need Facebook and we must post to Facebook, etc. I don't know why they seem to be upset when people decide to delete their Facebook accounts.

Again, what's wrong with diversity?

I have many interests. I post to my niche sites. I read the web in my own way. And I have been doing these activities for 15 years or more. I don't need help nor guidance from anyone in this area.

I wonder if the zealot fans of social media are creating a new form of acceptable intolerance that's directed at people who don't share their fandom of
the hot social media sites.

Excerpts from DW's post titled "Leave nothing but footprints":

The universe just laughs at your ambition. Hah! You're a mere speck of dust, says the universe, a speck that exists for an infinitesimally short period of time.

Don't try to change the world. Instead, try to work with other people.

Observe. Think. Share your experience, but strive to not change a thing.

That emphasized part seems like an odd thing for DW to suggest. I vehemently disagree with it.

My wife and I will continue to help change a small part of Toledo for the better by volunteering with an organization that helps parents to educate their children before they start school.

It's why I created the website http://babyutoledo.com/ for the non-profit. I'm better with technical functions, and my wife is better at interacting with people directly.

The goal of Baby U is to end generational poverty. That's a lofty goal, but if successful, it would be a positive change for the Old South End area of Toledo. How can that be bad?

DW ended that piece with:

It's better to just be kind to each other. Your name may not ring down through the ages, but at least you will have lived a good life that you can be proud of.

That's all good, but why can't changing something for the better and being kind to each other exist together?

It seems that DW contradicts himself a little with his next post titled "Why tech insiders must be on Facebook." Some excerpts:

I know a fair number of people who don't use Facebook or don't understand Facebook, and I think these people are hurting themselves, if they want to be part of tech as it goes forward, and in some sense they are hurting the web, by trying to be part of a network that does not involve Facebook.

My head hurts when I read his opening, authoritative statements.

Again, DW rails against silos, and he claims to support the open web, but in this post he believes that a tech person will miss out on future tech and hurt the open web if they don't use Facebook. That seems senseless to me.

And what about his previous post:

It's better to just be kind to each other. Your name may not ring down through the ages, but at least you will have lived a good life that you can be proud of.

Maybe people who want to live a good life are too busy to use the hot social media sites, or maybe they don't want to be a part of the vitriol that can exist with Facebook and Twitter.

It's possible that I don't use Facebook and Twitter because I've been running a message board for 13 years. In the past, I enjoyed using my own playground for heated debates. I've toned down my rhetoric over the years, which means the site's overall tone has softened too.

I'm no longer interested in flame-throwing with other message board users, and really don't want that kind of activity to occur on a site that I fund. And that's why I will never permit traditional comments to occur on my publishing apps Junco, Grebe, Scaup, and Veery. At most, I'll accept Webmentions.

I still occasionally write about my disdain toward local politicians, but even this activity has decreased significantly in recent years because it's so boring. I guess that I care less about what local officials do because nothing changes. It's better to attempt change by getting involved with other orgs.

But why does DW care if people don't use Facebook? Just move on. Don't worry about it. He added:

This morning Scoble got on the case of Bijan Sabet, out of the blue, as he often does, with a rant about how Facebook is the best place to be.

Scoble is the king of the zealot supporters of Facebook. Wow. I hope that it's okay to call him names.

Scoble said:

Deleting Facebook is idiotic.

Anyone who deletes Facebook is anti social. Best video distribution system. Best conversations. Best content.

Best conversations? No way. Not better than ToledoTalk.com FOR ME.

And selfishly, I'm more concerned about ME and not what others think, regarding the benefits of Facebook. I know that Facebook provides benefits, especially regarding updates from favorite small businesses, non-profits, and other orgs. Baby University maintains a Facebook page. I don't maintain it.

I was planning to delete my Facebook account this week because I don't use it. After reading Scoble's intolerance, I'm convinced even more that I don't need a Facebook account.

I'll gladly be an idiot and anti-social by not having a Facebook account. I won't lose sleep. I won't miss anything because the World Wide Web is still huge without Facebook. I know how to surf the web. I won't feel cheated or handicapped. I won't feel anything because I rarely logged into my Facebook account anyway. I don't have the Facebook app on my phone.

We are the new cool, hip people :)

Bijan Sabet ‏added common sense:

I'm not using these products for business. I want to use products that I love. And I don't love FB.

Simple explanation. And I don't understand why Facebook fans object to someone else's way of thinking. Intolerance?

DW wrote in his blog post:

I differ with Scoble on why you should be on Facebook, but not that you should be there.

DW rambles on for a while about the music industry 50 years ago or something. I didn't understand the relation. He finally got back on point.

If you want to be current with tech as it goes forward, you must be in the loop on what's happening on Facebook, if only because every person you hope to sell technology to in the future is using it. They will judge everything in relation to what they have experienced on Facebook.

Ah, okay. Well, since I don't personally sell technology, then I assume that it's okay for me not to use Facebook.

I can read about Facebook tech and their innovations by what shows up on Hacker News or Techmeme. I don't need to use Facebook to be aware of what the company is doing. I stay current with the tech that interests me.

DW concluded with:

So someday, if you withdraw from Facebook, you will face a competitor who embraced it, and you will lose. That's why you should be there.

Idiotic, anti-social, a loser, that's all fine with me because I'll continue to try to be kind to others and live a good life that I can be proud of.

And I don't need any of the social media sites to complete those tasks.

I could understand a small business owner needing a Facebook page along with a custom domain name that hosts at least a blog site. It infuriates me that some small businesses only have a Facebook page, and they don't maintain a site on their own domain name.

But hey, different strokes. Whatever works. It's fine with me.

Excerpts from DW's post titled "Re Twitter easing the 140-char limit":

This feature is good because people don't click links. It also brings Twitter to parity with Facebook, which means it can compete in the news distribution business that it pioneered.

Facebook needs competition, and we need Facebook to have competition.

Maybe DW needs Facebook to have competition, but I don't.

And I'll use links. I need links. Since I truly believe in the open web, then linking will always be a part of my web DNA posting. I'm fine with going against the crowd and being in a small minority.

It sounds like DW is an open web poser.

I'll adopt what I like, and if that's not part of the mainstream, I can decide on my own whether to continue down that path. And regarding the open web, I'm fine with being outside the mainstream. Maybe I'm more independent that way.

And I don't care about an audience or readership. I write because I enjoy writing. I like text. I build and use web publishing apps because those are activities that I enjoy.

I have enjoyed reading the play and watching the moving titled Glengarry Glen Ross. Great writing by Dave Mamet. Great acting by great actors.

Quote by the Ricky Roma character that was played by Al

I subscribe to the law of contrary public opinion: if everyone thinks one thing, then I say, bet the other way.