Within the Solid ecosystem, you decide where you store your data. Photos you take, comments you write, contacts in your address book, calendar events, how many miles you run each day from your fitness tracker… they’re all stored in your Solid POD. This Solid POD can be in your house or workplace, or with an online Solid POD provider of your choice. Since you own your data, you’re free to move it at any time, without interruption of service.
You give people and your apps permission to read or write to parts of your Solid POD. So whenever you’re opening up a new app, you don’t have to fill out your details ever again: they are read from your POD with your permission. Things saved through one app are available in another: you never have to sync, because your data stays with you.
This approach protects your privacy and is also great for developers: they can build cool apps without harvesting massive amounts of data first. Anyone can create an app that leverages what is already there.
Tag: Reading.am
👓 One Small Step for the Web… | Stephen Downes
On Saturday Fast Company broke the story that Tim Berners-Lee was launching a startup to develop and distribute his SoLiD application (which stands for Social Linked Data; I've covered it here before). This is a part of his plan to restore the web to its original decentralized vision. His new company is called Inrupt (which will be way easier to search for than 'solid') and is launching this week. "Solid is guided by the principle of 'personal empowerment through data' which we believe is fundamental to the success of the next era of the web. We believe data should empower each of us.... With Solid, you will have far more personal agency over data - you decide which apps can access it."
👓 UK journalists on Twitter: how they all follow each other | The Guardian
How much do journalists just follow other journalists on Twitter? This visualisation suggests one answer
👓 UK Journalists on Twitter | OUseful.Info, the blog
A post on the Guardian Datablog earlier today took a dataset collected by the Tweetminster folk and graphed the sorts of thing that journalists tweet about ( Journalists on Twitter: how do Britain&…
👓 Where Will the Current State of Blogging and Social Media Take Us? | jackyalciné
Jacky Alciné (jacky.wtf)I’m not an veteran blogger but I do wonder what blogging or just sharing our thoughts on the Internet will look like in the next decade or so.
👓 Fragment – ROER: Reproducible Open Educational Resources | OUseful.Info, the blog
Fragment, because I’m obviously not making sense with this to anyone… In the words of David Wiley (@opencontent), in defining the “open” in open content and open educational…
👓 Nobel Prize for Medicine Goes to Cancer Immune Therapy Pioneers | Scientific American
Karen Weintraub (Scientific American)Two men are recognized for basic research that unleashed the immune system against cancer, becoming a new pillar of therapy
A nice quick overview of some basic cancer immune therapy.
👓 Shavian alphabet | Wikipedia
The Shavian alphabet (also known as the Shaw alphabet) is an alphabet conceived as a way to provide simple, phonetic orthography for the English language to replace the difficulties of conventional spelling. It was posthumously funded by and named after Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. Shaw set three main criteria for the new alphabet: it should be (1) at least 40 letters; (2) as "phonetic" as possible (that is, letters should have a 1:1 correspondence to phonemes); and (3) distinct from the Latin alphabet to avoid the impression that the new spellings were simply "misspellings".
hat tip to
Quotes in #Shavian writing. This one, from Christopher Hitchens:
"One test of 'un homme sérioux' is that it is possible to learn from him even when one radically disagrees with him."#hitchens pic.twitter.com/r0svJipeLx
— William Borix (@boricensis) September 30, 2018
👓 Why you should learn the Skwxwú7mesh language | YOUR CONTEXT
As the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger puts it, Squamish is a ‘severely endangered’ language. However, the picture is not so gloomy. Current efforts to revitalize the Skwxwú7mesh language, and culture, include the amazing work by Kwi Awt Stelmexw, which has been collaborating with SFU for a full-time immersion program that produces fluent native speakers. Obviously, the venerable goal of this initiative it to ensure future Squamish generations speak their language and live their culture, as their natural, historical right.
I like where this piece is going, but at the rate we’re losing languages, it’s awfully difficult to know where to start… Sometimes just picking one and going with it can be of immense value.
This also reminds me of a powerful infographic about languages.
👓 undo | IndieWeb
undo is a common action you can take (often a button or menu item) to reverse the effects of the previous action, as if the action had never occurred; on the indieweb, you may want to undo a post, a deletion, or an update.
👓 How Some Men Fake an 80-Hour Workweek, and Why It Matters | The New York Times
A look at how the professional world differs for men and women, and an implicit critique of a corporate culture that values long hours above all.
👓 Atiyah Riemann Hypothesis proof: final thoughts | The Aperiodical
After Sir Michael Atiyah’s presentation of a claimed proof of the Riemann Hypothesis earlier this week at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum, we’ve shared some of the immediate discussion in the aftermath, and now here’s a round-up of what we’ve learned.
I’m not sure I agree wholly with some of the viewpoint taken here, but I will admit that I was reading some of the earlier reports and not as much of the popular press coverage. Most reports I heard specifically mentioned the proof hadn’t been seen or gone over by others and suggested caution both as a result of that as well as the fact that Atiyah had had some recent false starts in the past several years. Some went as far as to mention that senior mathematicians in the related areas had not commented at all on the purported proof and hinted that this was a sign that they didn’t think the proof held water but also as a sign of respect for Atiyah so as not to besmirch his reputation either. In some sense, the quiet was kind of a kiss of death.
👓 Every time Ford and Kavanaugh dodged a question, in one chart | Vox
There was a striking difference in style — and substance.
An impressively telling visualization here.
👓 Sorry, Internet, Brett Kavanaugh's Missing Wedding Ring Isn't New | Gizmodo
Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court nominee repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct, is currently blubbering before the Senate Judiciary Committee in an attempt to paint himself as a victim, a champion of women, and a family man. Naturally, some viewers noticed that, curiously, Kavanaugh’s left hand is absent of a wedding band.
I noticed this as I was watching the hearings today too. I’m curious if there’s more research to be done and what it looks like with some additional runway or follow-up.
👓 CV of failures: Princeton professor publishes résumé of his career lows | Education | The Guardian
Johannes Haushofer bravely posts document listing degree programs he did not get in to and academic positions he did not get
This is a brilliant idea. More people should have these.