👓 When Unpaid Student Loan Bills Mean You Can No Longer Work | New York Times

Read When Unpaid Student Loan Bills Mean You Can No Longer Work by Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Stacy Cowley and Natalie Kitroeff (New York Times)
Twenty states suspend people’s professional or driver’s licenses if they fall behind on loan payments, according to records obtained by The New York Times.
This has to be one of the most un-ethical and painfully stupid laws out there. Far better would be for them to focus their efforts at shutting down the predatory for-profit schools which are causing students to have some of these unpayable loans in the first place.

It’s almost as a nation like we’re systematically trying to destroy ourselves and our competitive stance within the world just for spite.

🎧 Episode 79: IndieWebCamp venue | Timetable

Listened to Episode 79: IndieWebCamp venue | Timetable by Manton Reese from Timetable
Manton discusses hosting (and attending) his first ever IndieWebCamp.

I’m excited to hear there will be at least one more IndieWebCamp before the end of the year.

Manton, I too once hosted an IndieWebCamp without ever having attended one myself. My advice is don’t sweat it too much. If you’ve got a location, some reasonable wifi, and even a bit of food, you’ll be okay. The interesting people/community that gather around it and their enthusiasm will be what really make it an unforgettable experience.

Incidentally it was also simultaneously the first ever Bar Camp I had attended and one of the originators of the concept attended! I remember thinking “No pressure here.” It was a blast for me, and I’m sure will be great for you as well.

🎧 This Week in Google 430 Uber’s Lyft-Off | TWiT.TV

Listened to This Week in Google 430 Uber's Lyft-Off by Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, Stacey Higginbotham from TWiT.tv
A wave of technopanic is sweeping the world. Or is it intelligent concern over the power wielded by internet giants like Facebook and Google? Plus,Uber's flying cars, Trump's DOJ tells Time-Warner to sell CNN, Marissa Mayer apologizes to Congress, and Facebook wants your nude pictures (for security's sake).

https://youtu.be/-I49Sv0jAtA

📺 Wisdom of the Crowd Season 1, Episodes 2-4

Watched Wisdom of the Crowd Season 1, Episodes 2-4 from CBS
A drama about a visionary tech innovator who creates a cutting-edge crowdsourcing app to solve his daughter's murder, and revolutionize crime solving in the process. Inspired by the notion that a million minds are better than one, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jeffrey Tanner, develops "Sophe," an online platform for publicly shared information he's certain will find his daughter's killer.
I managed to miss the first episode. Episodes 2 and 3 are a bit stilted and feel a bit preachy, but I’m willing to watch a few to see where it goes.
It seems like a relatively timely concept though they could do a better job explaining the science behind what they’re doing. They do manage to do a reasonable job on the drama though.

I haven’t read any of the recent articles on Jeremy Piven, but I’m a bit curious how long this series will last given his recent PR scrape. It seems relatively interesting and has some potential, but I’m not sure if it’s got traction to go more than a season. If allegations pull on it, it may not make it very far. Piven is pretty good in the show, but I actually think he could be better if he removed his stereotypical “geek” glasses. They somehow drag on his performance.

I thought it was pretty funny that the series uses the fictional search engine “Chum Hum” which also appeared as a search engine in the CBS series The Good Wife.

Episode four delves into some interesting moral questions about technology and follows in the footsteps of Law & Order in their “ripped from the headlines” plotting. I’m curious if they’ll follow some of the nebulous moral endings that Law & Order had as well?

📺 New Perspectives – What’s Wrong with TED Talks? Benjamin Bratton at TEDxSanDiego 2013 | YouTube

Watched New Perspectives - What's Wrong with TED Talks? Benjamin Bratton at TEDxSanDiego 2013 from YouTube

Benjamin Bratton, Associate Professor of Visual Arts at UCSD and Director of The Center for Design and Geopoltics at CALIT2, asks: Why don't the bright futures promised in TED talks come true? Professor Bratton attacks the intellectual viability of TED, calling it placebo politics, middlebrow megachurch infotainment, and the equivalent of right-wing media channels. Does TED falsely present problems as simply puzzles to be solved by rearranging the pieces?

👓 The Case for RSS | MacSparky

Read The Case for RSS by David Sparks (MacSparky)
If you are thinking about using RSS, I have a little advice. Be wary feed inflation. RSS is so easy to implement that it's a slippery slope between having RSS feeds for just a few websites and instead of having RSS feeds for hundreds of websites. If you’re not careful, every time you open your RSS reader, there will be 1,000 unread articles waiting for you, which completely defeats the purpose of using RSS. The trick to using RSS is to be brutal with your subscriptions. I think the key is looking for websites with high signal and low noise. Sites that publish one or two articles a day (or even one to two articles a week) but make them good articles are much more valuable and RSS feed than sites that published 30 articles a day.

👓 Building Digital Workflows by Aaron Davis

Read Building Digital Workflows by Aaron Davis (Read Write Respond)
Whether it is how we write or stay organised, technology is always adapting and evolving. Here are a few of the recent changes to my digital workflows.
An interesting philosophy of regularly changing workflows. I’ve done this for a long time, but never really given it a name.

There’s a nice tip about the Listen functionality in Pocket which I hadn’t yet heard about. I’m also curious how they’ve implemented highlighting and what I might do with it.

I suspect that if Aaron hasn’t come across Huffduffer as a tool yet (with a bookmarklet), he’ll appreciate it for both discovery as well as having his own audio feed to push to his mobile player.

👓 ‘How dare they’: Nutella changes recipe, sending its fans to the edge | Washington Post

Read ‘How dare they’: Nutella changes recipe, sending its fans to the edge by Travis M. Andrews (Washington Post)
A legion of snackers live for the hazelnut spread. And they're not happy.
Some interesting food history here that I didn’t know about.

🎧 It’s 2017. Why does medicine still run on fax machines? | Vox

Listened to It’s 2017. Why does medicine still run on fax machines? from Vox
How a plan to kill the fax machine with policy went awry.

This is a painfully sad and frustrating story. It also seems like something that business/capitalism isn’t going to solve on its own, but something which is crying out for an open spec to help things along. (And after that, if a business can come up with a better/faster solution, then more power to them.)

I can only think of the painful inefficiencies that are lurking in our healthcare system. And we wonder why things are so stupidly expensive?

This is a great example where applying César A. Hidalgo’s theory from Why Information Grows to decrease the friction for creating links can eliminate inefficiencies and create larger value. I still want to refine his statement into something simple and usable for both business and governmental use as well as to come up with some reasonably understandable math to provide a “proof” of the value.

🎧 This Week in Tech: #639 Anywhere but Albany | TWiT.TV

Listened to This Week in Tech: #639 Anywhere but Albany from twit.tv
The iPhone X is the best phone a huge pile of money can buy. Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, cashes out $1 billion in Amazon stock. Congress has some words with Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Can Facebook be fixed? Can Twitter? Animoji, poop emoji, and burger emoji continue to be news.


🎧 This Week in Google: #429 Quesoff | TWiT.TV

Listened to This Week in Google: #429 Quesoff from twit.tv
Google, Facebook, and Twitter testify before Congress about Russian interference, bad ideas on how to 'fix' Facebook, Google's CEO promises to fix the hamburger emoji, Google locks users out of Docs, California wildfires burned irreplaceable documents of Silicon Valley history, and a heated argument about how Queso should be.

Dark Stock Photos is an awesome and interesting Twitter feed. Macabre-ly cool.

👓 Journalists Boycott Disney Films After L.A. Times Snub | Hollywood Reporter

Read Journalists Boycott Disney Films After L.A. Times Snub (The Hollywood Reporter)
The L.A. Times is currently barred from attending advance screenings of Disney movies.
I’m betting this doesn’t end well for Disney’s corporate image. How shortsighted can they be?

📺 Don’t Worry Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin

Watched Don't Worry Be Happy from YouTube
Music video by Bobby McFerrin performing Don't Worry Be Happy.
Most will think that Robin Williams’ cameo in this video is the headline, but to me it’s Bill Irwin! I’ve been enamored of his work (and clowning) since watching My Blue Heaven in my youth. There’s nothing better than running into his work anywhere on film and television. I hope he ultimately gets the recognition he deserves for his work, which I think is sadly underrated. If you haven’t seen his Mr. Noodle work, go out and track it all down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-diB65scQU

👓 Something is wrong on the internet by James Bridle | Medium

Read Something is wrong on the internet by James Bridle (Medium)
What concerns me is that this is just one aspect of a kind of infrastructural violence being done to all of us, all of the time, and we’re still struggling to find a way to even talk about it, to describe its mechanisms and its actions and its effects.
This may be one of the must read articles of the year. It describes just a small microcosm of what is happening on the internet that needs to be fixed. It seems innocuous, but it’s long term effects will be painful.

I think this fits the definition of a Weapon of Math Destruction.