Scripting feed

Dave Winer - Scripting.com

Scripting News - 2017-08-19T15:01:00Z

- 2017-08-19T14:43:23Z
Somewhere in America someone is devising plans for mass extermination. For once I hope the good people of this country get out in front of the progression. At every step we've not been willing to consider how it could get worse, and do what's needed to head it off. Then it gets worse and we do it again. Right now we have a Nazi president (I don't credit him with being a "sympathizer" as some do). We still have a political system that's capable of dealing with him, but the people who have the power refuse to use it. People already have died. We have to be ready to deal with the thugs and their violence, either way. The question is can we handle having the American government leading them? One more Supreme Court appointment and we'll have open carry everywhere and you'll have to be a white male non-Jewish property owner to vote.

- 2017-08-19T15:01:00Z
God is goofing on me. After I wrote the super-serious post above, I dropped my Apple Watch and broke the screen. I've only broken one mobile device screen in all the years I've been using them, and after that I developed a routine to keep it from happening. Can't wear it. Too broken. Not safe. But my wrist feels totally naked without it.

- 2017-08-18T19:26:40Z
For some crazy reason I'm tempted to go down to Washington Square Park tomorrow to observe the Nazis. I'm guessing most of them come from Staten Island and New Jersey, maybe some from out on the Island. Tomorrow also is the final Summer Streets bike ride from 7AM to 1PM starting at Park Ave and 72nd St, through 4th Ave and onto Lafayette St, to the Brooklyn Bridge. Nazis coming by car should be aware that there will be limited cross-town access. Anyway, Summer Streets riders end up pretty close to Washington Square Park which tomorrow is Nazi-Land in NYC.

- 2017-08-18T20:54:46Z
Doc is going on an Eclipse Safari in Wyoming.

- 2017-08-18T15:54:15Z
Andrew Sullivan says that Charlottesville is even worse than it might appear at first because it has shown that Trump can blow through another level of normalcy, and not pay a price in support from Repubs. Until this weekend, Nazis and the KKK were unimportant fringe groups. This is no longer true. This is the United States, our world leadership is based on our defeating the Nazis in World War II.

Tina Fey on sheet caking - 2017-08-18T15:27:52Z

Google says this blog is insecure - 2017-08-18T12:56:50Z

I got an awful email from Google last night saying that my blog has a security issue and Chrome would start warning people about it in October. Right off the bat you know it's bullshit, because if it were a real security issue, how could they justify waiting until October?

Here's the story. At one time I had my own search engine because Google wasn't yet doing a great job of indexing blogs. There was a small search form on every page. The archive pages from the blog in this period, in 2006, eleven years ago, are still there. Here are the examples they cited. The forms don't work, the search engine is long-gone. They're afraid someone will type their SSN in that form and it will be observed and recorded by an intermediary. On a decade-old archive page.

Don't worry. The pages aren't going anywhere and I'm not modifying them. I try to keep the archive of this blog intact and unmodified. It serves not only as record of the events on the blog, but also the technology of the blog. If you've read this site at all you'd know it was central to the development of blogging and other technologies. The blog's HTML and scripts are part of the record.

I have an uncountable number of domains I have used over the years. I try to keep the sites running to the best of my ability. I've been doing this since 1994. Converting them all to HTTPS isn't going to happen unless HTTPS becomes much more manageable. And as I've explained many times here, I like storing my blog content on Amazon S3, and HTTPS and S3 are not happy partners, if you want to use your own domain name, which of course I do.

Google will lie about security to accomplish a strategic objective. And a lot of people will believe them when they say Scripting News is a bad site. But over time, if they abuse the trust, they will lose it. That's the way this works.

They've certainly lost me. I don't trust Google even a bit. They don't own the web, they didn't create it, and I'm not going to submit to them. If you can't read this site with Chrome, so be it. That's their choice.

I think the EFF should stand up for the rights of individual bloggers vs the giant corporation, but don't hold your breath. EFF is funded by Google. Same old shit, just a different industry.

Siskiyou chickens - 2017-08-18T13:22:12Z

My longtime friend Stan Krute took this picture of three young contestants waiting to be judged at the Siskiyou County Golden Fair.

When I saw the picture on Facebook I wasn't sure if it was a Norman Rockwell painting. Stan really captures a sense of pride and anticipation. Human qualities, in young people, and their chickens.

- 2017-08-17T16:58:50Z
Philip Bump, a friend from Ye Earlie Blogging Dayse did a bot that RTs everything Donald Trump sees in his Twitter timeline. No wonder the guy is so hyper (Trump, not Bump). This led me to a business model that Trump himself would appreciate. Let me buy ads aimed at a specific user. Let's load up Trump's timeline with messages of Trump-Love. We love you Dear Leader. We love you soooo much. And then tell him what we want him to do. ❤️

- 2017-08-18T02:22:46Z
Arnold Schwarzenegger knows about Nazis. Watch this.

- 2017-08-17T16:13:58Z
Another concept I'm becoming more formal about is grooming. I tend to move on to the next project without iterating over the loose-ends of the one I'm leaving. I still do it. Have to. Because projects are like pies. They aren't ready for eating until they've had a chance to cool off on the counter a while. While that's happening I like to still be "there" and ready to tune things up here and there, to make things work more smoothly. And when the time feels right, go back to the pies I left on the counter a month or two ago. 🍄

- 2017-08-17T15:09:57Z
I shifted my approach to development a few months back, with the turn to Old School, and decided to build where the users were going. Scripting News was still getting most of the flow, despite all my efforts to create new more compelling flows.

- 2017-08-17T15:10:55Z
Another shift happened a few years ago, when I decided it was okay to develop just for myself, with no intention of ever releasing the stuff I was working on. That led to a new style of product, and a happier developer. I was always doing it for myself, and fooling myself into believing it was for other people. I'm no less a narcissist than anyone else. Once you own that, you get a lot more powerful, I have found. 🚀

My defense of Electron - 2017-08-17T21:55:24Z

Here's a screen shot of the Dock on my Mac. Lots of Electron apps. How many are running right now? Seven. And that does not include Slack. Now look at the Activity Monitor in the Dock. Very little resource utilization. A bunch of Electron apps sitting there doing nothing doesn't use very much CPU. Here's a screen shot of the Activity Monitor window. Dropbox is using 34 percent. After that, a lot of Chrome helpers and a few of the Electron apps. The most expensive is about the same as iTunes. Today's machines have lots of memory and very capable CPUs. Electron is not the issue. I'm sure some of the apps written in Electron suck, but that's not the fault of the platform.

New technology in the works - 2017-08-17T13:49:52Z

I don't know why this never occurred to me before, but we can do better than the realtimeness of RSS. One thing that's always been a concern of mine about RSS is the inability to update a post after it's been published. There's no allowance for this in the protocol.

But in the new scheme I'm creating, called for now Instant Dave just to keep it manageable in my head, not only are updates instantaneous but if I update a post, it flows back out to the subscribers at the same instant rate that new items go out, at the same rate that new posts go to Twitter and Facebook.

I'm working on one of the pieces of that puzzle today.

Do we have test posts? Oh yes we do! - 2017-08-17T21:40:25Z

We're still at it. More rock and roll! 💣 💊 💣 ❤️

I want the best performance.

A test post for the ages. One that can be added to. Etc etc ad nauseum. Seriously folks. Unbelievable.

That feeling after you threw all your cards in the air and spent a day putting the house back together and now it works.

- 2017-08-17T03:04:41Z
Problem with the president is that he and the country he's supposed to lead have very different values.

- 2017-08-16T20:44:34Z
Sorry friends, I am doing test posts again.

- 2017-08-16T18:05:26Z
Another good day of programming. Still working on Instant Dave. Lots more functionality in the second iteration. One thing I must have is the ability to update. If an item on my blog updates, it must also update in the Instant Dave interface. I often edit after I post initially. Correct spelling, tighten up the wording. Add links. These should all flow through to the people who are reading my stuff in Instant Dave.

Another day of look-away - 2017-08-16T12:37:13Z

I was having a good day yesterday until I started seeing tweets about the press conference. With dread I turned on MSNBC at 6PM and watched. When they started airing his full press conference I switched to a Law & Order rerun. By the time Maddow was over it was just one more thing. She did run a clip of Fox, when first processing the press conference. It was cause for hope. But of course by the morning I'm sure they've reconnected with their bosses, found their spin, and are ready for another day of look-away.

How does this end?

- 2017-08-16T02:31:07Z
A simple way to show solidarity. Wear a MLK button for America.

- 2017-08-16T02:16:15Z
Maddow asked a question tonight, wondering if what Trump said today helps the Nazis grow their movement. The answer is yes. The same way Al Qaeda and ISIS crave publicity for their atrocities, American terrorists use publicity to drive recruitment, to grow, so the next march and uprising is bigger. More campus invasions. A clash between the First and Second Amendments. Liberal college towns: Austin, Berkeley, Madison, Ann Arbor, Boulder, Cambridge, Portland, Raleigh. Every time POTUS does a press conference and whistles loudly saying he's behind the movement, expect more deplorables to step up. The people at the marches looked like people who last year at this time were going to Trump campaign rallies.

- 2017-08-15T18:02:46Z
When the journos talk about Trump "appealing to his base" they are being too generous. He is a narcissist. There is no base. Just people who like him and those who hate him. If you like him you're cool (like the Nazis and KKK). If you criticize him, he's being treated unfairly.

- 2017-08-15T14:17:07Z
People puzzle over Trump. Really? Two things to remember. 1. This is a replay of his refusing to disavow the support of the KKK during the election. 2. The president is a narcissist. There is no one else in his mind. His thoughts involve only himself. He likes the Nazis because they like him. That's all there is. If they were ever to criticize him he would flip on them in an instant.

Fairness only matters when it's Trump - 2017-08-15T14:27:39Z

Trump says he was treated unfairly.

What about Heather Heyer, the young woman who was killed?

What about Deandre Harris. Was he treated unfairly?

- 2017-08-14T14:37:43Z
Here's the third in a series of new NPM packages I've produced in the last few months. This one is called githubpub. It's close to the ideal for the #indieweb storage system. You put your web content in GitHub repositories, and they are served directly from there from the public API, with a domain name associated with each site. It's not as easy as Dropbox, and requires a bunch of setup, probably not something for end users, but a bunch of the pieces are there and work.

- 2017-08-14T20:56:15Z
We are right now at peak peach. If you love a peach as I do now's the time.

- 2017-08-14T14:11:31Z
Poll: Do you have a relative who Trump reminds you of?

- 2017-08-14T23:23:31Z
Protestors in Durham NC topple confederate monument.

- 2017-08-14T23:25:45Z
Just a place where I can fart around testing out the new stuff.

- 2017-08-14T15:42:35Z
Venture capitalist Bijan Sabet says "people in the workplace should not face any form of discrimination for their own personal politics and preferences." I agree, strongly. But then he struggles with what it means when Peter Thiel, a board member of Facebook supports Trump. I felt that Facebook should fire Thiel as a board member because his views about free speech are in conflict with Facebook's mission. But I also objected strenuously when Brendan Eich was forced out at Mozilla because he gave money to an org that opposed gay marriage in California, before the Supreme Court ruled on it. I could see how Thiel's actions re Gawker presented a problem for Facebook, but I felt that Mozilla and the tech industry blew the Eich call.

- 2017-08-14T13:49:50Z
I've always loved the style of New Mexico homes. Here's a great example. I have Zillow send me listings like this one, think of it as real estate porn, so I can dream about the kind of life one would have in such a place. It was easier to dream when I was younger. Now I'm too wise. I know that the picture a house paints has little to do with the lives that are led inside it. Sometimes the most beautiful surroundings are home to the most miserable people. And there can be much happiness and love in humble even ugly surroundings. The beauty of a house is a symbol for us, a symbol of beauty inside the people living there.

- 2017-08-14T03:27:54Z
The best interview I heard about Charlotteville was with retired General Russel Honoré last night on MSNBC. He said a militia attacked the city. The combination of lots of high powered guns and protests overwhelmed the small-city police. Haven't been able to find it online.

- 2017-08-14T03:15:29Z
Game of Thrones took a turn to idiocy. In one moment the Mother of Dragons didn't want to finish Cersei off, now she's sold on Jon Snow's vision of the army of the dead attacking from the north. What changed her mind? We never saw it happen. Was it the note from the three-eyed Raven? Who knows. After last week's glorious battle scene, they shot their wad. Back to the story which consists mostly of reunions and weird pairings of characters doing really really really really stupid things.

- 2017-08-13T16:48:39Z
Occam's deduction. If he quacks like a duck, he's probably a duck.

- 2017-08-13T21:34:42Z
Two words cover the last week with Trump: 1. brinksmanship and 2. careening.

- 2017-08-13T16:56:44Z
I'm usually totally against SJWs attacking people on the net, but in the case of Nazis who crawled out of their holes to show their faces in Charlottesville, please, go right ahead.

- 2017-08-13T21:06:44Z
Part of Trump's comments yesterday about children playing with their parents, more than the usual Trump creep factor.

- 2017-08-13T21:16:00Z
I can't figure out why people are so psyched about the eclipse. There was a very-near-total eclipse in Palo Alto in 1989 or thereabouts. I was there. It got dark. Then it got light. I looked at it in one of those special cards. Yeah there's the eclipse. What's next? I don't get fireworks either however. Maybe it's the same kind of thing.

- 2017-08-13T16:11:39Z
In the future, every segment on Face The Nation, Meet The Press, Rachel Maddow, will be available as a YouTube video within minutes of it airing. Their interviews should not be proprietary. We all have an interest in them. And they should circulate easily over the web.

The #indieweb storage system - 2017-08-13T13:44:12Z

I've tried to explain this idea many ways over the years. This time I'm going to explain it technically, without any detours or analogies.

• Call the service WebStor. It's a storage system for the web.
• There's a website that allows you to browse your files. Upload new ones, delete them, change the attributes of files individually or as groups. It's a lot like the browser interface for Dropbox but it does more than Dropbox does.
• You can attach a CNAME to any folder, like mycoolblog.org. When a request comes in for mycoolblog.org, WebStor serves the content out of the folder that had the CNAME attribute.
• There's an API, based on OAuth, that lets blogging tools post to a user's account, possibly limited to a specific folder. That way Mary, an independent developer, could write a blogging tool worked with WebStor. And so could Sue and Megan and Arnold. And because it's OAuth, the user can control which one has access to which folders.
• The user pays for the service. No advertising. Unless the site gets huge traffic the cost should be at most a few dollars a month.

That's the idea. If we had this then users could own their own space in the web and developers could create tools for the users. Instead of just having a few developers, all of them large, creating silos, a thousand tools could bloom, as could many cloud-based storage services. But we need one to go first.

I've also posted this as an issue on the GitHub repo for Scripting News, so there's an easy place for people to ask questions.

- 2017-08-13T02:50:54Z
NYDN front page.

- 2017-08-12T14:19:25Z
How to oppose white supremacists safely and effectively.

- 2017-08-12T14:35:13Z
I believe a "fractional horsepower" Twitter has a place. Twitter itself is like a major news organization. FHPT is a blog.

Mr Kim's bar mitzvah - 2017-08-12T14:27:09Z

What to do about North Korea. I've thought about this, as has everyone else, for a long time. Read a bunch of stuff. Listened. Discussed. And I have two takeaways.

• Accept it. North Korea has nuclear weapons. and can deliver them anywhere in the world at any time. It's time for the world to transition. Accept North Korea as a nuclear power. Have a bar mitzvah for Kim Jong Un. Say a prayer. Wish Kim Jong Un well. He's a man. Welcome North Korea to the league of nations.
• Embrace the people of North Korea as citizens of the world, our equals. To survive they have to trust us, and like it or not we have to trust them. In the meantime, send them all our programming. Starbucks. Amazon. HBO. JavaScript. YouTube. Eventually they will exert power over their leadership. Hope they have better judgement than the voters of the United States.

- 2017-08-11T18:47:53Z
The question is what if anything is left after Trump is done.

- 2017-08-12T01:11:04Z
When Trump hosted Russians in the Oval Office everyone thought they planted listening devices. Now in August they're tearing it down.

- 2017-08-12T01:05:28Z
As the war situation gets worse, the thought of Trump supporters going crazy with their guns seems tame. The NRA needs to get them nukes.

- 2017-08-11T18:52:25Z
Think about offering Trump a few billion dollars to resign. Most presidents would be insulted, but I have a feeling Trump would be tempted.

- 2017-08-11T15:25:27Z
During the campaign Trump very openly said he might use nuclear weapons. That disqualified him to be the person who decides when to use them. Yet here we are. It was 100 percent predictable we'd be where we are now. And it's likely to get even worse. It's hard to see how we come back from this.

#rss