onfocus by Paul Bausch

Drinks & Christmas Past

Dec 24^th, 2016, 10:18 pm

Thursday Links

More links from the link mill. We're past the solstice which means the days get lighter from here—literally at least if not metaphorically. If you only have time for one link, read the New Statesman article about mass false memories and the communites that have sprung up around them: The movie that doesn't exist and the Redditors who think it does.

Corruption

Center for Public Integrity: Donald Trump's sons behind nonprofit selling access to president-elect
Politico: Gingrich: Congress should change ethics laws for Trump
Teen Vogue: Donald Trump's National Security Advisor Met with 'Alt-Right' Freedom Party Leader
USA Today: Lawyer: 'Appalled' by FBI warrant that shook Clinton

Action

Resigning from Oracle
EFF: Your threat model just changed.
Schneier on Security: My Priorities for the Next Four Years

Online Community

Fast Company: Internet Comments Are Awful. Could They Be Awesome?
The Conversation: How news sites' online comments helped build our hateful electorate
Jeff Jarvis: Facebook Steps Up

Neat Tech

Misc.

Audio Engineering Society: The Effects of MP3 Compression on Perceived Emotional Characteristics in Musical Instruments
Bloomberg: The Pessimist's Guide to 2017 (it me!)
Against The Wicked City: On romantic fantasy and OSR D&D (D&D play style alternative via mefi)
The Conversation: A sacred light in the darkness: Winter solstice illuminations at Spanish missions (architecture aligned with nature via @somebitsLinks)
New Statesman: The movie that doesn't exist and the Redditors who think it does (see also: berenstein retcon. fascinating that more than one or two of these mass false memories exist.)

Dec 22^nd, 2016, 9:03 am

sun and ice

Dec 16^th, 2016, 8:52 am

Thursday Links

Corruption

Buzzfeed: Trump Must Give Up Hotel Before Inauguration
New York Times: The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S.
Politico: Source: Twitter cut out of Trump tech meeting over failed emoji deal (facepalm emoji)
Let Me Point out to you How Ridiculous the Trump Tech Meeting Was (nepotism)

Action

neveragain.tech (tech employees refuse to build religious database)
Atlantic: The Cure for Post-Election Malaise Is Civic Participation
Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda (learning from tea party tactics)
Programming is Forgetting: Toward a New Hacker Ethic (questions programmers should ask themselves)

Tech Criticism

We say we don't hate our audiences. Our mobile strategies suggest otherwise. (100x this!)
ZDNet: Evernote's new not-so-privacy policy will let employees read your notes (I did this uninstall)
Wired: 150 Filmmakers Ask Nikon and Canon to Sell Encrypted Cameras

Media

Five Things You Notice When You Quit the News
Freedom to Tinker: Disrupting The Business Model of the Fake News Industry
Kevin Barrett @ Postlight: Building Kind Social Networks
Secure the News (grading the security of news sites)
Wired: Meet the Ad Companies Ditching Breitbart and Fake News (see also: @slpng_giants)

Extra

Flickr: Christmas Ephemera Group (tis the season)
D&D Equipment Cards (neat DIY game accessory)
The Awl: Maybe Stop Using Your Cuisinart (laceration hazard!)
Gatebox - Virtual Home Robot (isolation hazard!)

Dec 15^th, 2016, 1:08 pm

frozen pumpkin

Dec 15^th, 2016, 10:04 am

snowcairn

Dec 15^th, 2016, 9:52 am

cold dog

Dec 14^th, 2016, 10:55 am

Monday Links

Anxiety-Producing

Teen Vogue: Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America
Politico: Electors demand intelligence briefing before Electoral College vote
Pew Research Center: Low Approval of Trump’s Transition but Outlook for His Presidency Improves
Washington Post: A big change to U.S. broadcasting is coming
@ericgarland: It's time for some game theory.
The Independent: China flies nuclear bomber over South China Sea as a 'message' to Donald Trump
Forward: Why Time's Trump Cover Is a Subversive Work of Political Art
Recode: Tim Cook, Larry Page, Sheryl Sandberg — and maybe even Jeff Bezos — are going to Trump's tech summit next week

Not as Anxiety-Producing

Programmer Competency Matrix (via HN discussion of What Makes A Senior Software Developer?)
Talks that changed the way I think about programming
Closure Compiler in JavaScript (easier minification automation)
Five Leadership Hacks (I love "continually fix small broken things")
Fixing Font Awesome's fonts (performance tweaks for hosted icon fonts)
Pull to Refresh.js
Developers' side projects (who owns what?)
Fun hacks for faster content (iframe streaming)
The Mysterious Talking Board (SFO exhibit about ouija boards)

Dec 12^th, 2016, 10:35 am

gas light

Dec 12^th, 2016, 9:06 am

snow day

Dec 8^th, 2016, 8:39 am

Recent Web Tuesday

First, a big congratulations to friend of the blog Anil Dash, new CEO at Fog Creek. And a 2nd big congratulations on their launch of Gomix—a hosted community app builder. I love the view source philosophy behind it. It'll be fun to see what people build with it.

And here are some recent links:

The State of Things