onfocus

Rushkoff's talk at WebVisions last month. His premise: our underlying economic system is never disrupted and it's bad business.

Anil talks about the tightening APIs that are forcing ThinkUp to shut down. I've been a ThinkUp user since the days you installed it on your own server. ThinkUp tried to help you understand how you use services like Twitter and Facebook. Big thanks to Anil and Gina for helping us do that for so long.

This is Andy Baio's annual round-up of online movie piracy. This year: HD video makes leaked screeners irrelevant. "Already, with a month to go before the ceremony, 89% of this year’s nominated films have already leaked in high quality online, more than last year."

I had no idea that Oregon tried to keep minorities out in its early years. It's a depressing article but it's important to understand our history.

Ev expands on his Instagram comment by laying out the problems with Web metrics and measuring success.

This is a big shift in the world of online payment systems.

"This is an era of networked wealth, going to scale, first mover advantage, positive feedback loops, virtuous cycles, high concentration, and high disparity. These are some of the intolerable conditions of the time we call (with subversive hope) Late Capitalism." [via anil]

"[Technical separation] lets the trolls and the normal society stay safe, but it also prevents those two from ever running into each other, from ever having that chance to understand each other. I don’t know how to let the trolls and straights run into each other in a productive way, but it’s one more thing we should think about."

Tim O'Reilly reflects on his successes and failures in building a sustainable business. "While our ideals are what define us, combining those ideals with a results-oriented business culture is how we have continued to thrive." [via anil]

"The working consensus among technology intellectuals depicts a world of possibilities that seems starkly at odds with the American reality of skyrocketing political and economic inequality." [via anil]

"Remix 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."

"Like a service? Make them charge you or show you ads. If they won't do it, clone them and do it yourself. Soon you'll be the only game in town!" This is both absolutely true and heartbreaking.

"And we hate the rich? Come on. Success is the national religion, and almost everyone is a believer. Americans love winners.  But that's just the problem. These guys on Wall Street are not winning – they're cheating. And as much as we love the self-made success story, we hate the cheater that much more." Linked everywhere for good reason--this is an excellent take on the occupy wall street movement.

Chart: the top 1 percent has been doing ok for themselves for the past few years.

Hollywood should not control DNS. I can't believe I even had to write that sentence.

Interesting look at "password padding" to create memorable AND secure passwords. [via Ask MeFi]

"We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future." Painful post to read but it makes sense. Now what?

"When people say there are no easy solutions to our problems, I don’t think they are thinking hard or creatively enough. If our problem is that we don’t have enough technically trained Americans, why are we not focused like lasers on educating people?"

"The kind of naming policy that Facebook and Google Plus have is actually a radical departure from the way identity and speech interact in the real world."

"Admit it. You stereotype people by their email addresses." How Hunch user demographics break down by email domain. [via swissmiss]

"I've argued that the ultimate endpoint for Digital Rights Management (DRM) is the pay-per-swing hammer." MetaFilter member adipocere takes DRM to its logical end.

"A single meta tag to control prefetching reduced our DNS queries by 350 million per month." Wow, if you use subdomains extensively this is something to watch out for.

"...none other than Corvallis stands out as the top city in the country for innovation — after you account for its size. New York is merely average." Some theoretical physicists are looking at new ways to measure the creative output of cities.

Awesome vintage terminal emulator with a hilarious incentive to purchase. [via waxy]

And apparently the Web is for complaining. [via seanyboy]

Some auto-generated ebooks based on top Stack Overflow questions in various categories.

Bruce Sterling on Flipboard. "I would counter that what this thing really massacres is weblogs. Flipbook makes weblogs look archaic, much more than it makes magazines look archaic."

I always wondered about those people at library book sales with scanners. Now I know. [via TYWKIWDBI]

A browser extension that blocks all of those annoying 'Like on Facebook' buttons.

This work by a Slovenian painter in the early 20th century is eerily similar to our own century's Jim Woodring.

Learn the constellations the 1940's Navy way!

I don't care what science says, Mexican Coke is better! (Glass bottles alone are better.)