👓 In One Tweet, Kylie Jenner Wiped Out $1.3 Billion of Snap’s Market Value | Bloomberg

Read In One Tweet, Kylie Jenner Wiped Out $1.3 Billion of Snap’s Market Value by Justina Vasquez (Bloomberg.com)
Snap Inc.’s flagship platform has lost some luster, at least according to one social-media influencer in the Kardashian-Jenner clan.
I’m surprised that platforms like this don’t have their biggest users doing beta testing of their product to prevent things just like this from happening.

It’s also a good example of why having my own site is valuable: no one can force changes on me if I don’t really want them.

👓 Anchor’s new app offers everything you need to podcast | Tech Crunch

Read Anchor’s new app offers everything you need to podcast by Sarah Perez (TechCrunch)
Broadcasting app Anchor, which helps anyone record and share audio, is relaunching its app today with a new focus on serving the larger podcaster community... Of course, there is one concern for professional podcasters migrating to Anchor’s platform – and that’s whether it will be around in the long-term. For now, the company isn’t generating revenue – it’s living off its funding. Podcasters who pay for hosting or self-host don’t generally have to worry with whether they’ll one day have to quickly migrate elsewhere because the company is shutting down or being acquired – and that’s always a concern with startups.
I appreciate that they both give and highlight some reasonable caveats about using this Anchor given its start-up nature. Mentions of potential site-deaths should have been de rigueur for the past decade and change.

It also makes me wonder why an app like this, which has some great and useful higher end utility, doesn’t offer its production service as the product? Sure they can offer the hosting and other bits to the general public, but for the professionals who are already out there, why not give them inexpensive access to the root production service and then allow immediate export so that the company could host the end product on their own website? This would amount to a very solid PESOS service. In fact, they could probably offer the production side for free for the big players for the advertising leverage to gain the smaller players in the space.

I’ve noticed some very large publishing concerns, notably The Atlantic Interview recently, who are sadly relying on third party services to host their podcast content. For large companies that actually have a team that manages their presence to at least some extent, there’s really no reason that they should be relying on a third party to be holding the URLs to their content.

I’m curious to try this out now for my own too-often-neglected microcast. Having a simpler and more straight-forward production flow would certainly help lower the bar for making it even despite my already low requirements for making it.

👓 Shriver Hall renovation expands to include more enhancements—and a longer timeline | The Hub

Read Shriver Hall renovation expands to include more enhancements—and a longer timeline by Dennis O'Shea (The Hub)
Homewood campus performance space now expected to reopen in early 2019 with improved sound system, seating, and much more. The Shriver Hall renovation project, now slated for completion in early 2019, includes replacing the auditorium’s uncomfortable and often broken seating. Seat removal took place in the fall.
A few years ago they actually took out the awesome sound system because it didn’t “fit in” with the new orchestra shell and handicapped elevator access to the stage that the HSO felt made it too “cramped”. I have no expectation that this will make it a better place for film screenings. I’m also sure the seating capacity will be far less than it was before. Alas…

👓 Winner-Take-All Electoral Practice Faces Voter-Rights Challenge | Bloomberg

Read Winner-Take-All Electoral Practice Faces Voter-Rights Challenge by Laurel Brubaker Calkins (Bloomberg.com)
Civil rights activists are challenging the legality of four states’ winner-take-all method of allocating U.S. presidential electoral college votes, claiming the practice magnifies some votes at the expense of others and violates voters’ constitutional rights.
This is a very creative way of attacking this problem. We definitely need to restructure our processes and get rid of the Electoral College

👓 Trump’s former bodyguard makes $15,000 a month from a GOP ‘slush fund’ | CNBC

Read Trump's former bodyguard makes $15,000 a month from a GOP 'slush fund' by Christina Wilkie (CNBC)
Keith Schiller left the White House in September and immediately started a lucrative consulting job with the Republican Party's 2020 convention.

👓 Ruby character | Wikipedia

Read Ruby character (Wikipedia)
Ruby characters (ルビ rubi) are small, annotative glosses that are usually placed above or to the right of Chinese characters when writing languages with logographic characters such as Chinese, Japanese, or Korean to show the pronunciation. Typically called just ruby or rubi, such annotations are most commonly used as pronunciation guides for characters that are likely to be unfamiliar to the reader.

👓 Jōyō kanji | Wikipedia

Read Jōyō kanji (Wikipedia)
The jōyō kanji (常用漢字, literally "regular-use Chinese characters") is the guide to kanji characters and their readings, announced officially by the Japanese Ministry of Education. Current jōyō kanji are those on a list of 2,136 characters issued in 2010. It is a slightly modified version of the tōyō kanji, which was the initial list of secondary school-level kanji standardized after World War II. The list is not a comprehensive list of all characters and readings in regular use; rather, it is intended as a literacy baseline for those who have completed compulsory education, as well as a list of permitted characters and readings for use in official government documents. Due to the requirement that official government documents make use of only jōyō kanji and their readings, several rare characters are also included by dint of being a part of the Constitution of Japan, which was being written at the same time the original 1850-character tōyō kanji list was compiled. The 2,136 kanji in the jōyō kanji consist of: 1,006 kanji taught in primary school (the kyōiku kanji) 1,130 additional kanji taught in secondary school Foreign learners of Japanese also often focus their kanji studies on the jōyō kanji list.
 

👓 Stroke order | Wikipedia

Read Stroke order (Wikipedia)
Stroke order (simplified Chinese: 笔顺; traditional Chinese: 筆順; pinyin: bǐshùn; Yale: bāt seuhn; Japanese: 筆順 hitsujun or 書き順 kaki-jun; Korean: 필순 筆順 pilsun or 획순 劃順 hoeksun; Vietnamese: bút thuận 筆順) refers to the order in which the strokes of a Chinese character (or Chinese derivative character) are written. A stroke is a movement of a writing instrument on a writing surface. Chinese characters are used in various forms in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and in Vietnamese. They are known as Hanzi in (Mandarin) Chinese, kanji in Japanese, Hanja in Korean, and Hán tự in Vietnamese. Stroke order is also attested in other logographic scripts, e.g. cuneiform.
The section on general guidelines is particularly useful.

👓 Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts | Wikipedia

Read Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts (Wikipedia)
Horizontal writing is known in Chinese as hengpai (simplified Chinese: 横排; traditional Chinese: 橫排; pinyin: héngpái; literally: "horizontal alignment"), in Japanese as yokogaki (横書き, "horizontal writing", also yokogumi, 横組み), and in Korean as garosseugi (가로쓰기) or hoengseo (횡서; 橫書). Vertical writing is known respectively as zongpai (simplified Chinese: 纵排; traditional Chinese: 縱排; pinyin: zōngpái; literally: "vertical alignment"), tategaki (縦書き, "vertical writing", also tategumi, 縦組み), or serosseugi (세로쓰기) or jongseo (종서; 縱書).
yokogaki and tategaki

👓 Furigana | Wikipedia

Read Furigana (Wikipedia)
Furigana (振り仮名) is a Japanese reading aid, consisting of smaller kana, or syllabic characters, printed next to a kanji (ideographic character) or other character to indicate its pronunciation. It is one type of ruby text. Furigana is also known as yomigana (読み仮名) or rubi (ルビ) in Japanese. In modern Japanese, it is mostly used to gloss rare kanji, to clarify rare, nonstandard or ambiguous kanji readings, or in children's or learners' materials. Before the post-World War II script reforms, it was more widespread.[1] Furigana is most often written in hiragana, though katakana, alphabet letters or other kanji can also be used in certain special cases. In vertical text, tategaki, the furigana is placed to the right of the line of text; in horizontal text, yokogaki, it is placed above the line of text.
So many great and interesting uses for this than one might have thought. I particularly like the pdeudo-parenthetical way this is sometimes used. I kind of wish that Western languages had versions of this.

👓 Genkō yōshi | Wikipedia

Read Genkō yōshi (Wikipedia)
Genkō yōshi (原稿用紙, "manuscript paper") is a type of Japanese paper used for writing. It is printed with squares, typically 200 or 400 per sheet, each square designed to accommodate a single Japanese character or punctuation mark. Genkō yōshi may be used with any type of writing instrument (pencil, pen or ink brush), and with or without a shitajiki (protective "under-sheet").
Looking up initially so I can buy some proper paper for practicing Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji.

It’s also often spelled as genkoyoushi in Romaji.

👓 Omeka Now Public for 10 Years | Omeka

Read a post by Sheila Brennan (omeka.org)
On February 20, 2008 the Omeka team released its public beta, version 0.9.0., and last week, a few days shy of this 10-year milestone, we released version 2.6. Back in 2008, I don’t think any of us from the original team imagined Omeka celebrating its 10th Birthday. It is time to celebrate and reflect on this journey.
Congratulations Omeka on 10 years! #omeka10years

logo for #omeka10years

👓 Reclaiming my blog as my thought space | Dries Buytaert

Read Reclaiming my blog as my thought space by Dries BuytaertDries Buytaert (dri.es)
Why I'd like to find a way to combine longer blog posts with shorter updates and cover a larger variety of topics.

👓 The Tech ‘Regrets’ Industry | Audrey Watters

Read The Tech 'Regrets' Industry by Audrey WattersAudrey Watters (Audrey Watters)
Silicon Valley has lost some of its shine in recent months, what with the “fake news” and the bots and the hacks and the hate speech. All the promises about the democratization of information and power ring a little hollow nowadays. I’d say they rang a little hollow all along. Of course that’s what I’d say. I’ve been saying it for years now. There’s a new tale that’s being told with increasing frequency these days, in which tech industry executives and employees come forward – sometimes quite sheepishly, sometimes quite boldly – and admit that they have regrets, that they’re no longer “believers,” that they now recognize their work has been damaging to individuals and to society at large, that they were wrong. These aren’t apologies as much as they’re confessions.
An essay about technologists saying the equivalent of “Do as I say, not as I do.” and “Don’t pay any attention to that man behind the curtain.”