🎧 Gillmor Gang 05.13.17: Doc Soup | Tech Crunch

Listened to Gillmor Gang: Doc Soup by Steve Gillmor, Doc Searls, Keith Teare, Frank Radice from TechCrunch

Recorded live Saturday, May 13, 2017. The Gang takes nothing off the table as Doc describes a near future of personal APIs and CustomerTech.

Keith outlines an excellent thesis about media moving from “one to many” to increasingly becoming “one to one”. It points out the issue for areas like journalism, which can become so individualized, and democracy which often rely on being able to see the messages that are given out to the masses being consistent. One of the issues with Facebook and the Cambridge Analytica problem is that many people were getting algrorithmic customized messages (true or not) that had the ability to nudge them in certain directions. This creates a lot more control on the part of major corporations which would have been far less likely when broadcasting the exact same message to millions. In the latter case, the message for the masses can be discussed, analyzed, picked apart, and dealt with because it is known. In the former case, no one knows what the message was except for the person who received it and it’s far less likely that they analyzed and discussed it in the same way that it would have been previously.

In the last portion of the show, Doc leads with some discussion about identity and privacy from the buyer’s perspective. Companies selling widgets don’t necessarily need to collect massive amounts of data about us to sell widgets. It’s the seller’s perspective and the over-reliance on advertising which has created the capitalism surveillance state we’re sadly living within now.

In the closing minutes of the show Steve re-iterated that the show was a podcast, but that it’s now all about streaming and as such, there is no longer an audio podcast version of the show. I’ll have something to say about this shortly for those looking for alternatives, because this just drives me crazy…

👓 Rosenstein Tells Trump He’s Not a Target in Mueller, Cohen Probes | Bloomberg

Read Rosenstein Tells Trump He’s Not a Target in Mueller, Cohen Probes (Bloomberg.com)
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told President Donald Trump last week that he isn’t a target of any part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation or the probe into his longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, according to several people familiar with the matter.

RSVP to Friday Morning Coffee Meetup: 13 Questions to Help You Cut Out Small Talk and Build Genuine Connections

RSVPed Attending Friday Morning Coffee Meetup: 13 Questions to Help You Cut Out Small Talk and Build Genuine Connections

Tom Amestoy, Founder & CEO of Focus Out, talks about the missed opportunities to genuinely connect with others when we engage in “small talk.” Scientific studies have revealed that the types of conversations we have truly impact our wellbeing. These findings show that the good life is social and conversationally deep rather than isolated and superficial. Tom will tell us about groups that have banned small talk to great effect. He will offer tips on how to host such an event and will share 13 questions to start great conversations that lead to deep and genuine connections.

Friday, April 27, 2018
8:15 AM to 9:30 AM

Cross Campus
85 N. Raymond Avenue
Pasadena, CA

Venue is located on the 2nd floor. Free street parking until 11:00 am; except where valet signs are posted. 90 minutes free parking is also available at nearby parking lots.

👓 French researchers pledge to go without Springer journals | Times Higher Education

Read French researchers pledge to go without Springer journals (Times Higher Education (THE))
‘No more direct access to Springer’s latest papers? No problem,’ says petition, signed by nearly 4,000
Earlier in the week I noticed how well reading.am dovetailed with Huffduffer. Now I’m noticing that my listen posts (aka my faux-cast) also now translate to micro.blog’s podcast discovery page. The secret to this seems to be having an .mp3 file in a post that feeds across. I do notice at least one post without an .mp3, but which includes the word “podcast.” Are there any other criterion for this @manton?

I wonder if there’s a way for more posts to display the inline audio player without being hosted directly by micro.blog?

micro.blog’s podcast discovery page

🔖 List of geometry topics

Bookmarked List of geometry topics (Wikiwand)
This is a list of geometry topics, by Wikipedia page.
h/t to @mathematicsprof

👓 Pearson Embedded a ‘Social-Psychological’ Experiment in Students’ Educational Software | Gizmodo

Read Pearson Embedded a 'Social-Psychological' Experiment in Students' Educational Software [Updated] (Gizmodo)
Education and publishing giant Pearson is drawing criticism after using its software to experiment on over 9,000 math and computer science students across the country. In a paper presented Wednesday at the American Association of Educational Research, Pearson researchers revealed that they tested the effects of encouraging messages on students that used the MyLab Programming educational software during 2017's spring semester.

👓 Harper’s Editor Insists He Was Fired Over Katie Roiphe Essay | New York Times

Read Harper’s Editor Insists He Was Fired Over Katie Roiphe Essay (nytimes.com)
The essay stirred controversy on Twitter. It was also the subject of debate at the venerable monthly. Now the editor, James Marcus, is out.
Today I finally ran into a particular IndieWeb problem I knew would eventually come. Uploading so much of my content that I’d eventually need to bump up the storage capacity of the server for my online presence. The 12GB cap I ran into does bring into much sharper focus the amount of content I post online.

While Facebook and Twitter may be proverbially endless buckets, even with small inconveniences, I still prefer doing it my way.

Following Song Exploder

Followed Song Exploder (Song Exploder)

Song Exploder is a podcast where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.

Each episode is produced and edited by host and creator Hrishikesh Hirway in Los Angeles. Using the isolated, individual tracks from a recording, Hrishikesh asks artists to delve into the specific decisions that went into creating their work. Hrishikesh edits the interviews, removing his side of the conversation and condensing the story to be tightly focused on how the artists brought their songs to life. Guests include Björk, U2, Metallica, Solange, and over a hundred more. Full list of episodes.

Song Exploder is an independent podcast, and a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Learn more at radiotopia.fm.

The team:
Hrishikesh Hirway, Host and Producer
Christian Koons, Assistant Producer
Carlos Lerma, Illustrator

🎧 Song Exploder | The Daily

Listened to Bonus Episode: The Daily from New York Times by Hrishikesh Hirway from Song Exploder

Wonderly – “The Daily” theme song

The Daily is the New York Times’ daily news podcast, hosted by Michael Barbaro. In this special edition of Song Exploder, composers Jim Brunberg & Ben Landsverk (aka Wonderly) break down how they composed the show’s theme song. You can listen on the New York Times website at nytimes.com/dailysong, or below:

footnotes:

Theme to HBO’s Westworld, by composer Ramin Djawadi (hear his Song Exploder episode on Game of Thrones’ theme song here)
A fantastic little podcast breaking down music. I always wish I knew more about music and structure and have some real appreciation for analysis like this. I’m considering subscribing to the rest of their content. Interestingly this looks like the same host as The West Wing Weekly. I suspect this may be how I came across it originally.

🎧 Former Facebook Insider Says Company Cannot Be Trusted To Regulate Itself | NPR

Listened to Former Facebook Insider Says Company Cannot Be Trusted To Regulate Itself by Ailsa Chang from All Things Considered | NPR.org

NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with Sandy Parakilas, who worked as an operations manager on the platform team at Facebook in 2011 and 2012. In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Parakilas says Facebook cannot be trusted to regulate itself.

A bit “I-told-you-so” without any indication of how hard he may have fought for better handling of the data, but there were certainly others outside the company decrying their practices at the time.
Maybe I wouldn’t hate spam calls so much if people weren’t spoofing telephone numbers, pretending that they knew me based on two data points, or they didn’t so obviously sound like they were calling from the noisiest boiler rooms on the planet. If you’re going to try to waste my time you could also be a bit quicker about it.

On the other hand it is nice to get old school in person phone spam instead of the auto-dialed, pre-recorded nonsense I have been getting.

In addition to being dead simple to use to track my reading, I love that Reading.am is able to add things I’m currently listening to and watching. Even better, some sites like Huffduffer.com dovetail with it incredibly well and provide in-line audio files without needing to click through to the original. What a lovely win for UI!

Huffduffer post on Reading.am

Following Clevercast

Followed clevercast by Jonathan LaCourJonathan LaCour (cleverca.st)

Hello, there! My name is Jonathan LaCour, and this is “clevercast,” my microcast. A microcast is a short form podcast that is published on a regular basis. Topics for this microcast range broadly, but its mostly about my life as a technologist, and will include:

To learn more about me, you should visit my website, where I post photos, articles, microblog posts, recipes, and more.

I’ve been following the inimitable Jonathan LaCour for quite a while, but I’ve just discovered the link to his new microcast which I’m immediately adding to the growing list of interesting microcasts I’m following.