the Trinet and the rest of us

Discouraging post from a programmer about what he calls The Trinet (the internet as dominated by Google, Facebook and Amazon). Whether you accept the premise or not, the post piles on statistics regarding big three dominance. Conclusion: "we will have even more vivid exchange of information between people, but we will sacrifice freedom." Vivid!

Crooked Timber commenter doug has a list of basic suggestions for avoiding the Trinet, the main one being staying off social media. Not vivid!

One of doug's recommendations is using Webpage Archive to take html snapshots of current webpages. Unlike Wayback/Internet Archive, which supposedly captures everything on the web, this utility allows users to save pages and then adds them to a searchable database. As it describes its mission: "This can be useful if you want to take a 'snapshot' a page which could change soon: price list, job offer, real estate listing, drunk blog post... Saved pages will have no active elements and no scripts, so they keep you safe as they cannot have any popups or malware!"

From August, a somewhat relevant Vice piece: "Rural America Is Building Its Own Internet Because No One Else Will." Wireless on top of grain elevators, etc.

Update: Paragraph three above added after posting.

crit of stallman crit

Actrons posted a critique of Richard Stallman that manages not to say what he objects to about Stallman or what he believes in opposition to Stallman.

The subject appears to be a large schism in Linux over the GNU public license. Actrons' evidence that Stallman is in the wrong appears to be that Stallman was inordinately cranky in a YouTube interview.

From Wikipedia and hints of content in Actrons' post, this apparently relates to mudslinging between "open source" and "free software" advocates over the license. Somehow the pendulum has swung and the free software group (Stallman) is seen as obstructionist and capitalist and the open sourcers are somehow not capitalist. Last I read about this, open source was a corrupted version of free software ideals because it allowed a proprietary system to borrow what it needed from unrestricted source code without giving anything back. Now it appears the GPL is impeding the open sourcers from doing something they want to do. Just thinking aloud -- more study is obviously required.

Actrons has done a good deed by offering a modified Windows 10 that doesn't report all your home activities back to the mothership. No link, since Actrons isn't linking to it from his blog -- spread by word of mouth, i.e,, bulletin board (hat tip rene)

about that calligraphy class...

Ken Shirriff notes a bit of corporate self-puffery by Steve Jobs, back in '05, regarding the development of the Macintosh computer.
Jobs claims the first Macs had multiple typefaces and proportionally spaced fonts because of a calligraphy course he took after dropping out of college.
Shirriff reminds us that the Xerox Alto computer, which Jobs saw in the late '70s, had these features.

Here's a detail of Shirriff's photo of the Alto he's been restoring, with Jobs' 2005 commencement address at Stanford, where the "calligraphy" brag originated, typed in multiple, proportionally spaced fonts:

commencement-alto_crop

And Shirriff's detail from the above photo:

commencement-alto-closeup3

In fairness to Jobs, Shirriff adds that "[o]f course, Steve Jobs deserves great credit for making desktop publishing common and affordable with the Macintosh and the LaserWriter, something Xerox failed to do with the Xerox Star, an expensive ($75,000) system that commercialized the Alto's technology."

bank call

Citizen of India: Thanks for calling FleecemBank, how can I help you?
US Pigeon: I'm calling to authorize this replacement credit card you mailed me.
CoI: I can help you with that.

[Exchange of personal identifiers]

CoI: How else can I assist you today?
USP: That's it.
CoI: OK. In the future, you can authorize your card by going online at fleecembank.com or texting us at [number] to receive a download link.
USP: Yeah, I know. I don't want to do this kind of stuff online.
CoI: Yes, many customers prefer to speak to a live representative...
USP: It's not that, it's that online transactions are rife with fraud, "hacking," and identity theft. I'm reading about it in the news every day.
CoI: I'll pass that information along, is there anything else I can help you with?
USP: That'll do it.
CoI: Have a nice day.

[Call recorded for quality assurance or training purposes.]