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Response to
by JamesLeon Paternoster wrote of the IndieWeb:
"I’m nearly convinced that the possibility of a decentralised network of websites talking to each other through comments sections and pingbacks (known as the web) has probably passed."
Colin wrote:
"WordPress may have all of the building blocks available but it's still not native. Plugins, themes, tweaks to get just so and working properly. Micro.blog is the closest we have but it's still a platform with its own way of doing things."I agree with Leon and Colin. There's a lot to unpack in both of these posts and I agree with all of it. But I'll chime in my 2.2 yen anyways.
The masses aren't going to adopt their own websites instead of visiting and posting on one of the large social networks. That's a feature, not a bug.
An interconnected IndieWeb the size of Twitter would present each user with the opportunity to filter and moderate the dregs of internet. That's something I'm not interested in and I doubt many on the IndieWeb today would be either.
The utility of the IndieWeb technology is that it helps us find and connect to like minded people in a decentralized matter. But still, discovery is still not solved. Without micro.blog (and perhaps the IndieWeb WebRing ) we'd all be blogging alone. And without the IndieWeb community, I'm not sure if I'd even be blogging, let alone building my own engine.
We should do everything we can to lower the barrier of entry to participate in the IndieWeb. Getting started with Wordpress is confusing because, as Colin says, it's not native. There's Wordpress Post Kinds and there's IndieWeb Post Kinds. How do they interact? Why's there two? You need to select one of a couple of microformatted themes and hope you don't break the formats if you try to customize it. Plugins conflict and break randomly (more of a general Wordpress issue). Data's stored in opaque formats (do you own the data if you can't really re-use it?).
The standards for UX have risen a lot over the past decade. Being able to participate with a single click in software that is native to the IndieWeb is table-stakes for growing the community beyond it's current size or rate. And it needs to be hosted, because most people aren't capable of or have interest in maintaining their own server.
That hooks into my dilemma with Tanzawa. My goal is to make an IndieWeb native blogging engine that's easy to use is achievable. Provide people with clean apis and transparent / logical data formats so they can use their data how they want. I can do that. I'll get there one step at a time.
But hosting? I want people to use my software, but I'm not sure I want to start a niche hosting company just to improve the UX of being on the IndieWeb. -
Response to
by JamesRichard Sapper may not be a household name, but he's on the same level of greats like Dieter Rams and Jonathan Ive.
Look at that Thinkpad that has the keyboard that slides together when you open it. :chef-kiss: -
Response to
by JamesElectrifying a bike can be electrifyingly easy
Coolest thing I've seen all day (granted it's still 6:30am). -
Response to
by JamesThe fundamental goal of the adults in any society is to protect their young and do everything they can to leave a better world than the one they inherited. The current generation of adults, and those that came before, are failing at a global scale.
I agree with that and I can't understand why the older generation doesn't seem to care. Is it really just "change is hard" and "not gonna effect me"?
Using my talents to make a direct impact to allow for systemic change is my major motivator for changing jobs. -
Response to
by JamesSelf hosting is about freedom, you can choose what server you want to run, which version, which features and which configuration you want. If you self host at home, You can also pick the hardware to match your needs (more Ram ? More Disk? RAID?).
Excellent post about the importance of self-hosting. It also rightfully points out that buying new hardware isn't necessarily ecological to save 20 wants. ( As we learned in Frugal Computing the lifespan of a server needs to be 10 - 20 years to offset the energy used to manufacture the computer).
More people should self-host. I'm self-hosting where it makes sense (my blog) and paying for hosting where it doesn't (Fastmail).I have a strong opinion on the subject, hosting your own services is a fantastic way to learn new skills or perfect them, but it's also important for freedom.
Amen. (Which reminds me, I was planning on moving my server to a BSD. I should really get around to doing that). -
Response to
by JamesI have asked a few people lately when they drink coffee. I am interested in this because I understand that we all drink coffee at different times, in different quantities, and in different contexts. I want to learn more about how others consume coffee.
I'll indulge in talking about my coffee habit. The method that I brew coffee has changed over the years. In college I used either a hand-drip, a french press, or at times a peculator.
My standard method was a hand-drip until my son was born. Then taking the 15 minutes in the morning to brew a cup of coffee became too time consuming. Especially when I wanted more than 2 cups in a go.
These days I use a Cuisenart Automatic Grind and Brew. It has storage for beans on top and a built in bur-grinder. The carafe is also insulated so it doesn’t burn the coffee keeping it warm.
My first cup is usually around 5am with breakfast (slice of thick toast with peanut butter and banana). Second cup is shortly there after.
Around 8 when I start work I’ll have my third cup. This one is kinda sipped over the course of an hour or so.
I try not to drink coffee in the afternoons. But sometimes I feel like a candy coffee after lunch. Those times I’ll have a instant cafe latte.
One thing I haven’t done in the past 18 months is go out for a nice coffee at a specialty shop. I’ve got to Starbucks, but I miss the hand brews ala Blue Bottle sometimes. -
Response to
by JamesA few days ago, I decided to purchase the Adafruit Thermal Printer, which was compatible with the Raspberry Pi. This thermal printer has been on my mind for a while but this week a reason for buying one came to mind (aside from the fun of experimenting with a thermal printer which was obvious to me).
Really enjoyed this series from James about hooking a thermal printer to a cronjob that'll print his weather, webmentions, and news off in the mornings. Brilliant! I've got some Pi's laying around collecting dust, I should use them for something fun like this. -
Response to
by JamesModern society has come to rely so heavily on mobile apps that any phone manufacturer must ensure that such a healthy ecosystem exists as table stakes for anyone to buy their phones.
I wasn't concerned when the iPhone first came out and third party apps could only be installed via the App Store. Unlike Android, having a single place to go to install apps is arguably a much better customer experience. Having the manufacturer manually approve each app that's installable on your phone seemed warranted as data was super expensive and you didn't want an app misbehaving on your 3G connection giving you surprise bills. This approval process provided some assurance this wouldn't happen.
However in the years since the AppStore's release, mobile phones have become central to modern society. Even in Japan, a country famous for holding on to fax machines and personal stamps, it's becoming harder to exist without one of their devices.
Because of the cellphone's new role as the interface for interacting with society, a closed AppStore and closed devices that only allow you to interact with society via a benevolent dictator's approved was feels increasing anti-democratic.
No matter how benevolent of a dictator they may be, they're still a dictator. -
Response to
by JamesEnvironment values are strings. True becomes "True" and False becomes "False".
And, well, what does "False" evaluate to? True. True.I think the best way to handle settings with Django is to use django-environ. Not only does it handle .env files. It also has a lot of utility methods for converting values to native python types ( bool, list etc..) and using database urls. It's great.
My airbot settings.py uses it. My airbot settings also lets you specify the path for your .env with the ENV_FILE environment variable, so you can create different files for different environments. -
Response to
by James1. No more societal and political discussions at Basecamp.
2. No more paternalistic benefits.
3. No more committees.
4. No more lingering or dwelling on past decisions.
5. No more 360 reviews.
6. No forgetting what we do here.I don't work for and don't use Basecamp/Hey, but this was a difficult and disappointing read.
Not allowing societal and political discussions at work is a tough call, depending on the internal state at Basecamp. With so much injustice in society finally coming to a head, people are going to want to talk about it with other members of society (their co-workers). If the company chat (though this is Basecamp, maybe they don't have one?) is a dumpster-fire 9 - 5 with non-stop political discussions, it speaks to a larger issue with the company culture and individual impulse control.
Blanket disallowing political discussion removes the opportunity to teach employees a valuable life skill on the internet: learning to not argue on the internet and ignoring the trolls because they will always have more time than you. It seems to me that you'd be better served by taking the instigators aside and having a frank conversation about time management. Learning to turn on the blinders and focus on the task at hand is an important skill.
Removing the "paternalistic benefits" was also disappointing to see. We know without a doubt that exercise is good for us. Getting food from the farmer's market not only gets you quality product, but also strengthens your local community. These are things we should want to encourage.
Saying that we're giving you a profit share and you can spend your money how you'd like ignores the psychological aspect of these kinds of benefits. Having that little bit of "extra" or "free" makes it mentally much easier for employees to make better choices that benefit everyone.
