Human-sized Services

My friend Adam at omg.lol is building another special surprise for his customers. I have taken the pre-alpha version for a spin: A Weblog · Human-sized Services: There are now three blogging services that I admire, all of which are run by humans - not corporations. Humans making websites was what made 1.0, back in the Netscape Navigator days, great. Blink tags, under construction logos, and multi-colour Times New Roman font.

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Web App Barbarians

This article was originally written for the April 2022 edition of Hemispheric News, delivered as part of the Hemispheric Views podcast member bonus program, One Prime Plus. I love to use native software but it feels like I’m the last of the troops that has been put on the final line of defence, guarding against the marauding ‘web apps’. It appears that most users are more than happy to load a copy of Google Chrome and run a bunch of web apps in fullscreen mode.

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Microblogvember 2022, Day 30: I am having to watch online cybersecurity safety training videos. They suck, and the questions at the end are poorly worded.

I can’t sleep so I’m reading my book, Principles. I’m at the section where there are glowing references to amazing “shapers”, such as Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk. Yeah, those latter two are so amazing. 🙄 This book is perhaps not ageing well.

We Need a New Approach to Social Platforms

The Elon-gate’d Man | Jared White: Jared White mounts a solid argument as to where we have gone wrong with big tech celebrity, and talks about how me might be able to do better in the future. with this maturity has to come broader awareness that Big Tech can’t simply act like 21st century echoes of the robber barons. Either the tech sector must demonstrate its ability to police itself and show good corporate governance and a willingness to let bottom-up creativity and entrepreneurship flourish in the marketplace of ideas, or we must call for increased regulatory scrutiny on all fronts.

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Microblogvember 2022, Day 29: Is it wrong that I’m waiting for our fish to die? I don’t want to kill them, but if they were to not make it much longer, I’d probably be okay with that. 😬

When considering investing time and effort into a service, check to see whether it is VC funded. If it is, keep in mind that they are more interested in their financial return than you receiving a return on the investment you make in that service.

Microblogvember 2022, Day 28: I loathe the current trend towards the mullet haircut. Wasn’t good in the 80’s, isn’t good now.

We set the Christmas tree up today and in doing so crossed some sort of kid threshold. This year, our boys actually helped setup and decorate the tree. They enjoyed unpacking decorations and reminiscing about their associated memories. It was really sweet.

Microblogvember 2022, Day 27: I had to work hard to find the motivation to put up the Christmas tree. Didn’t I just take it down a couple of weeks ago?

I’ve figured out why Australia doesn’t have Thanksgiving. It’s celebrated on a Thursday, which would mean our entire country would then of course chuck a sickie on Friday. The productivity decline would be far too deleterious.

Seems host nation Qatar will be out of the World Cup. If this were basketball, I’d say “ball don’t lie”. Some degree of justice delivered for the payola World Cup. ⚽️