ericthor

https://pinboard.in

Been a Pinboard user for several years. Simple and flexible. You can use tags to organize everything or fill in the bookmarks description field and use search. Have over 4,000 URLs saved with no issues. Easy to backup with a one line script.

  curl "https://api.pinboard.in/v1/posts/all?auth_token={$pinboard_api_key}&format=json" -o $pinboard_backup_dir 

Pinboard also has some good Twitter integrations that might speed up your Bookmarking process https://pinboard.in/faq/#twitter_archive_extent

They already have scanners with countdown timers that track and enforce an average time to scan. http://amazonemancipatory.com/time-to-pick-countdown-timer

This tracks pretty well with the beginning bit from the Manna short fiction. http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Next up Alexa headsets with an AI to direct and fire workers.

The other night I watched the 1989 movie [Patlabor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patlabor:_The_Movie) directed by Mamoru Oshii who went on to direct Ghost in the Shell in 1995. The plot is simple and there isn't too much grand philosophy, but the movies was prescient on issues of proprietary software, Internet of Things, urban waste, and Corporate/Government complicity/inaction.

The movie doesn't read as a gritty cyberpunk or even as super cyber/futuristic. It's visually light and the public is optimistic and satisfied with the present. It resembles our present to a certain extent which makes it all the more interesting. Its main divergences from our reality is with the mechs which can be seen as bit of fun or be read as metaphor for technology that is starting to seem divine/magic to all expect for the few technically savvy enough to understand whats going on. I haven't watched the other movies or anime yet, but look forward to checking them out.

[Spoilers] The general plot is.. A genius hacker creates a proprietary operating software(HOS) for a floundering robot/mech company. The company is able to not match competitors in creating robots, but is able to corner the robot OS market. The movie opens with genius hacker committing suicide. Shortly thereafter some robots/mechs sporadically go haywire. You follow from the perspective of a police unit who try to uncover why the robots are acting up and the mystery/motivation of the hacker. A small/funny scene..the police officers are concerned about their mechs own OS fearing that they also run HOS and have been compromised, but their chief engineer reveals that he lied to the higher-ups about installing HOS and chose not to install it because he couldn't see the code inside of it.

Edit: HOS not BOS

The rendered typeface is Stem Text. If you click on an element with the typeface and go to the computed tab that will show you what font-family style is applied.

Though often that flow of information on the internet is through Facebook and they have control over certain information valves as stated by earlier posters.

In application just because a piece of information exists on the internet doesn't mean folks will be exposed to it. Folks values are reflected, but are also molded by the information that is made readily available to them through there internet habits and social network. If entities censor or place greater emphasis on certain streams of information they can attempt to mold the resulting values of users.

Little Baby Bum 13 billion + Blu Toys Surprise Brinquedos & Juegos 6 billion views = 19 billion views. If 90% of those views are from bots that still leaves about 2 billion views from actual people. Not saying there are billions of people watching these videos. I'm saying that even if the vast majority of the views were from bots that still leaves billions of actual views. I would agree lots of folks would play the videos on repeat. The actual number of folks/children in this sort of video matrix would be even trickier to determine.

That is an important caveat and it's hard to accurately pin down since there is no idea of how many of these views are generated by users or by bots.

For the real view number of billions to be wrong bots need to account for over 90% of the views if we're only considering the two channels the article referenced.

That bot percentage would have to be much higher if you factor in other channels of similar veins. https://socialblade.com/youtube/top/500/mostviewed

Though you also have to factor in how many channels are just run of the mill content egg opening content vs more disturbing children's entertainment.

I guess there are two sections to it.

There is now a lot of media self created media for gay teens and young adults. Media in that YouTube realm occasionally leaks or crosses lines for folks. Depends upon the channel and upon the particular video. Some channels clickbait with decidedly adult thumbnails and descriptions. For example "Davey Wavey" their channel is mostly NSFW. Issue is some folks don't mark their videos as adult and thus are in younger audience streams. It's really on a channel by channel basis. I haven't dived into that space recently. Though I can see that market effect coming in play incentivizing folks to be more provocative in their thumbnails in return for more views. Nothing necessarily new or unique to the gay community. Main issue is creating lines between adult content and non-adult content and recognizing that channels are inclined to purposefully gray that divide. Channels want to be in larger more public non-adult area, but want to include adult/"clickbait" aspects in there videos to improve view counts.

On the propaganda bit I don't think this effect comes really into play with political/activist videos other than them not accruing as much attention.

On another end. There has been criticism within the gay community and it's objectification of relationships.

https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/zmbb45/how-gay-couple...

This would fall closer to the off/oversharing "Family Vloggers" who shoot daily videos of their families in hopes of turning a profit. Relationships like individuals are spun into brands and are monetized.

I would say they the author dragged the readers into the dark depths of YouTube, but the billions of views on these videos belay that metaphor.

The ending is as pointed as it can be. It's hard to define what the solution is and how to go about dividing up responsibility.

Technology companies create these relatively neutral platforms which then grow and are gamed. In this case these videos are vying for mass attention from children which is subsequently monetized. They optimize, tweak, and mass produce their only paying regard to amount of attention they can secure. Taste, morals, exploitation of children, and everything else are meaningless so long as their videos receive an adequate number of views.

They did a good job of extrapolating this issue to other problem areas such a radical left/right videos or conspiracy videos. Here is an example of this issue in the form of Google results from yesterdays mass-shooting https://twitter.com/justinhendrix/status/927335154707828736

I think the lion's share of responsibility lies with the technology companies and governments. I'm hesitant to have government involved in their inability to keep pace or understand new and developing technologies. It's also hard to define how to solve this problem without censoring speech or disenfranchising it. It's hard for me to define what is the absolute issue and what to call it.

A "seemingly neutral platform" can become corrupted or systematically abused. You constantly need to account for bad actors and gray actors.

It's a really great game that is best approached without too many spoilers. Know that the game becomes more complex and engaging as it goes on. There is a definite end and takes about 5 hours to complete if played well.

[spoiler]

It's the "Paperclip maximizer" thought experiment put into game form and you play as the AI. The game is divided into roughly three stages. The first you are the AI for some company and are tasked with producing a profit and using the profit to game trust and eventually conquer humanity. The second stage is post-human Earth stage where you convert the planet to paperclips. The final stage involves sending probes to explore space and do battle with rouge AIs and convert the universe into paperclips. There is end where you can select to either defeat the AIs and dismantle yourself into paperclips or you can listen to rouge AIs and start over in an alternative universe with some small modifier edited.

It does a really good job of exposing you to uncommonly large numbers and does a good job of presenting you with massive scale. There is a lot of joy seeing the game become increasingly complex.

[/spoiler]

Can any active users comment on the package ecosystem. Active? Running into any problems?

The third party service described in the article seems to no longer exist. Though if you look through there support information you can find that you can go to m.uber.com to request a ride. https://help.uber.com/h/b9dc6681-b346-4774-9ab1-ecaa3f22cabe

I still think my point that it requires upfront wealth and technical proficiency is still valid when related to public transportation systems.

Source of your information? Are you saying that over 2.32 billion people don't have access to clean drinking water? That seems way off.

Even though there may 2.32 billion people with smartphones there are large percentages of people who don't even in developed countries. For U.S.in 2015 folks who make less than $30k a year 50%. Folks older than 65 27%. Folks between 50-64 54%. Even if they own a smartphone that doesn't mean that Uber would be accessible to them.

Pew Research Poll from 2015 http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/01/chapter-one-a-portrait...

I agree it's a very important problem no doubt, but Uber aims to solve it in an exclusive way. Exclusive in that it requires the user to be wealthy and technically proficient enough to own and operate a smartphone. Further Uber, from my understanding, is under no obligation to serve all communities. If an area isn't as profitable as they like they can ignore it.

If a person's _primary_ concern is making mobility more accessible and affordable for _everyone_ especially the most needy then doing that by improving public transportation systems(buses and rail) and systems that are regulated by the governments(New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission). Those systems are obligated to serve the entire public.

Another case from 2013...

US Citizens, Phones stolen, detained without explanation, and officers refused to give names.

"OTM producer Sarah Abdurrahman, her family, and her friends were detained for hours by US Customs and Border Protection on their way home from Canada. Everyone being held was a US citizen, and no one received an explanation. Sarah tells the story of their detainment, and her difficulty getting any answers from one of the least transparent agencies in the country."

It's an audio podcasts, but there are transcript as well.

http://www.wnyc.org/story/my-detainment-story-or-how-i-learn...

More on the subject. http://www.wnyc.org/story/on-the-media-2014-02-28/

Oh yes the "chumbox" https://theawl.com/a-complete-taxonomy-of-internet-chum-de0b...

Adjusting font size with vw is fun, but often the rate at which the font scales is kind of loopy especially when compared to small type. This article takes the example you mentioned above and takes it much further. https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/05/fluid-typography/

Have used * + * before. It creates this huge dependence on the placement and ordering of your html you can't create psudo elements to pull off some style trick, there are often a bunch of exceptions when using it too that it kind of defeated the purpose of using it in the first place. Best to have a .class * + * in front of it to relegate it to a specific area.

I think the article is shortsighted. I can't argue for the merits of cable news, but there are many media organizations that have been increasingly shut out by this administration.

All media organizations not just the cable news channels, but also the AP, New York Times, and others are being shut out of many events which they formerly had access to.

http://www.onthemedia.org/story/frustration-white-house-pres...

http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/243894/aps-white-house...

Instead the clear strategy of administration has been to limit media access and to control the narrative by launching material through there own channels. Channels such as there youtube channel "The White House" where you can find the interview Hank Green is referencing. I haven't watched the entire interview, but if it is being hosted and potentially produced by the White House I can't consider it objective. I don't think I can consider it journalism either, but at the same time I don't think I can consider a lot of what is on Fox News as journalism either.

There are a lot of other people who I like to see interview the President, but never will. One person that comes to mind would be Amy Goodman. She isn't as hip as the Youtubers, but she has spoken at my college and many others. She definitely holds a clear leftists standpoint, but I know her questions would be unrelenting and would lead to a much needed discourse about actions of this administration.

There was this one instance were Bill Clinton accidentally ended up being interview by her.

http://youtu.be/FWx1bX4hWtM

Anecdotally I watched the State of Union last week. Not on CNN or MSNBC, but on Whitehouse.gov. Not positive, but it looked like is was using Youtube livestreaming services. In that stream alongside each of the points there preprepared supporting graphics.

>“in an era of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and mass killings in schools, police agencies need to be ready for whatever comes their way..."

There has always been terrorism in the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States

As well as mass shootings. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-m...

This current "era" isn't defined by the number or scale of these tragedies but by institutions' and the public's reaction to them. If we want to protect the lives and welfare of the average U.S. citizen our money and efforts would be better spent tackling some of the less newsworthy health issues.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_preventable_causes_of_d...

Also the time frame of the Sandy Hook Shooting was extremely brief. The shooter was believed to enter the school around 9:30 the first 911 call was made at 9:35 and the last shot heard was at 9:40 and the police enter at 9:44. The MRAP and other military artillery obviously wouldn't have made a difference due to time frame of the tragedy.

My little anecdote. I was at the library today and it was packed even though it was a Sunday and only open for about four hours. My library was is a definite hub of my community and if anything has only increased its presence over the past few years. It's an amazing resource and there are a tons of programs for folks of all ages. The selection at my local library is a bit limited, but I can reserve books online from the county network and they will ship and hold them at my local library for me.

There was a similar article to this on /r/books a while back I was really struck and inspired by this comment. It touches on the importance of libraries in larger communities.

I created an account just to join this discussion. I am a professional librarian and work in mid-sized city downtown library. Those of you who say that libraries do not end ignorance or stop illiteracy are correct. Those of you who say you can find just about anything you could ever want online are also correct. However, every day I assist grown adults who can barely read (and have zero computer skills) sign up for food stamps. I help people who have worked for years in food services apply online for fast food jobs because there are no more paper applications. I help construction workers apply for unemployment online. I assist people who can not afford attorneys with legal templates so that they can file for divorce or for child custody (no we do not give out legal advice.) I help people make copies of their IDs and receipts so that they can send a fax so that they can get their electricity cut back on. I proctor tests for college students who are taking distance ed classes. I maintain microfilm and digital newspaper collections of the local newspapers. Staff at the library, over the decades, have indexed the newspapers to make them searchable. (BTW the local newspaper is so badly staffed now that they rely upon the library exclusively for access to content that is over 15 years old.) We maintain local history documents. We maintain old and rare books that pertain to regional history. We select and provide assistance with databases that we feel meet the informational needs of the community. We answer mail sent from inmates in prisons asking for the addresses of half way houses and food stamp offices for when they get released. I have old out-of-print books of historic stock information for the odd guy trying to find out if the stocks he found from the 1940s in his grandfather's closet are worth anything. I have price guides, car repair manuals, and old city directories going back to the 1920s. My library is also a government documents repository, which mean we house both print and digital documents that were created by the various federal agencies. Looking for the City and County Data book from 1974? We got it. Staff have been trained to use the government resources. They will help you find what you need if it exists. Not only are libraries a place for information gathering and assistance. It is also a place for the community to come together. In an environment of drive-thru restaurants and online shopping, its one of the last few places where you can run into your neighbors and not have to buy something. It is a place for tutors to meet with their students. I see people everyday who come to the library just to get out of the heat or the rain, who come on their lunch breaks, who come after school, or walk over from the bus station (dragging luggage) because they missed their bus out of town and the next one will not come for hours. I don't know where communities will be without libraries. I imagine communities would be poorer without them.

http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1m8l01/the_price_of_l...