Author: Chris Aldrich

I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, IndieWeb, theoretical mathematics, and big history. I'm also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media.
Read Introducing aboutfeeds.com, a Getting Started guide for web feeds and RSS by Matt Webb (interconnected.org)

There’s a better way to read websites and it’s called web feeds a.k.a RSS. But web feeds are hard to get into for new users, so I decided to do something about it.

I posted about suggested improvements to RSS the other day and top of my list was onboarding: If you don’t know what RSS is, it’s really hard to start using it. This is because, unlike a social media platform, it doesn’t have a homepage. Nobody owns it. It’s nobody’s job to explain it. I’d like to see a website … which explains RSS, feeds, and readers for a general audience.

So because it’s no-one’s job, and in the spirit of do-ocracy:

I built that website.

Or to slightly abuse a phrase, Be the change that you wish to see in the world wide web.

Read JavaScript, WebASM, Freedom and More by Nathan DeGruchyNathan DeGruchy (degruchy.org)
The web is perilously close to complete vendor lock-in. Mozilla, having recently laid off another 250 workers after having (in the same year) laid off 70 workers, is teetering on the brink of death, with only Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome being the remaining contenders. One wonders where th...
Read Employees vs. Independent Contractors (www.nolo.com)
As far as the IRS is concerned, there are only two types of workers in the world: employees and independent contractors ("ICs"). Independent contractors are people who are in business for themselves. Employees work for someone else’s business. Being classified as an independent contractor instead of an employee has enormous consequences. Because they are supposed to be in business for themselves, ICs don't get the same legal protections that employees do--for example, they don't qualify for unemployment insurance and are not protected under most labor laws. Moreover, hiring firms need not provide ICs with benefits ordinarily provided to employees such as health insurance or vacations.
Read Open Letter to the Gatsby Open Source Community by Kyle MathewsKyle Mathews (Gatsby)
Gatsby is a React-based open source framework with performance, scalability and security built-in. Collaborate, build and deploy 1000x faster with Gatsby Cloud.
Given the accusations and specifics that prompted this letter, it definitely comes off as disingenuous and fake corporate speak. I don’t want to touch the platform with a 10 foot pole… He addresses some of the controversy, but doesn’t actually indicate any actual plan for change.
Read - Reading: Design for Cognitive Bias by David Dylan Thomas (A Book Apart)
We humans are messy, illogical creatures who like to imagine we’re in control—but we blithely let our biases lead us astray. In Design for Cognitive Bias, David Dylan Thomas lays bare the irrational forces that shape our everyday decisions and, inevitably, inform the experiences we craft. Once we grasp the logic powering these forces, we stand a fighting chance of confronting them, tempering them, and even harnessing them for good. Come along on a whirlwind tour of the cognitive biases that encroach on our lives and our work, and learn to start designing more consciously.
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Read ‘Christianity Will Have Power’ (nytimes.com)
Donald Trump made a promise to white evangelical Christians, whose support can seem mystifying to the outside observer.
I still don’t get the persecution complex part at all. Has Fox News and others really been pushing the “culture wars” bit this far? How do they not understand how these viewpoints clash so heavily with the message of The Bible? Love your neighbor as yourself? 
Read Passphrases That You Can Memorize — But That Even the NSA Can’t Guess by Micah LeeMicah Lee (The Intercept)

IT’S GETTING EASIER to secure your digital privacy. iPhones now encrypt a great deal of personal information; hard drives on Mac and Windows 8.1 computers are now automatically locked down; even Facebook, which made a fortune on open sharing, is providing end-to-end encryption in the chat tool WhatsApp. But none of this technology offers as much protection as you may think if you don’t know how to come up with a good passphrase.

Read OMG! Twitter release an OFFICIAL conversations API! by Terence Eden (shkspr.mobi)
One of the most requested Twitter API features is now available – the ability to get replies to a Tweet as a thread.
Long time readers know that I’ve long been a fan of Visualising Twitter Conversations in 2D Space. But up until now you had to use horrible hacks to get the data. As trailed in th...