This time, on clevercast, I reminisce about one of my earliest personal websites. What happened to its content? How did I create it? Is there any chance of restoring it back to greatness?
I’ve still got a ways to go to recover some of my older content, but Jonathan has really done some interesting work in this area.
This time, on clevercast, I introduce the show, and then talk about a topic that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: going serverless for my personal website.
A nice new entrant to the microcast field. Subscribing immediately.
Summary: At long last, after about three weeks worth of work, David Shanske (along with help from Aaron Parecki) has added the ability for the IndieAuth plugin for WordPress to provide an IndieAuth endpoint for self-hosted versions of WordPress, but it also has the ability to provision and revoke tokens.
This week, David Shanske and I discuss IndieAuth and the WordPress plugin’s new functionality as well as some related micropub work David has been doing. To some extent, I alternate between acting innocent and serving as devil’s advocate as we try to tease out some of the subtleties of what IndieAuth is and what it means to the average user. As usual, David does an excellent job of navigating what can be some complicated territory.
If you need more IndieWeb content, guidance, or even help, an embarrassment of riches can be found on the IndieWeb wiki, including the following resources:
How technology can create, and can break, our filter bubbles.
We’ve long heard that the ways the web is tailored for each user—how we search, what we’re shown, who we read and follow— reinforces walls between us. Veronica Belmont investigates how social media can create, and can break, our filter bubbles. Megan Phelps-Roper discusses the Westboro Baptist Church, and the bubbles that form both on and offline. B.J. May talks about the bubbles he encountered every day, in his Twitter feed, and tells us how he broke free. Rasmus Nielsen suggests social media isn’t the filter culprit we think it is. And, within the context of a divided America, DeRay McKesson argues that sometimes bubbles are what hold us together.
An interesting take which takes filter bubbles and places them not necessarily just online, but often starting in the real world first and then extending from there.
The world exploded into a whirling network of kinships, where everything pointed to everything else, everything explained everything else.
— Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum
I wasn’t able to attend the original presentation, but I think it’s even more valuable to listen to it all alone rather than in what was assuredly a much larger crowd. There is a wonderful presence in this brief history of the internet, made all the more intriguing by Jeremy’s performance as if it were poetry about technology. I find that he’s even managed to give it an interesting structured format, which, in many senses, mirrors the web itself.
I hope that if you’re starting your adventure on the web, that you manage to find this as one of the first links that starts you off on your journey. It’s a great place to start.
This first half of the episode was originally recorded in March, abruptly ended, and then was not completed until April due to scheduling.
It’s been reported that Cambridge Analytica has improperly taken and used data from Facebook users in an improper manner, an event which has called into question the way that Facebook handles data. David Shanske and I discuss some of the implications from an IndieWeb perspective and where you might go if you decide to leave Facebook.
Show Notes
Articles
The originating articles that kicked off the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica issue:
3/21/18 Anil Dash: The Missing Building Blocks of the Web, an article bringing the Facebook issue back around to regaining the good parts of the “old web”
You’ve made the decision to leave Facebook? Your next question is likely to be: to move where? Along with the links above, we’ve compiled a short list of IndieWeb-related places that might make solid options.
Micro.blog for $5/month (or bring your own web site for free)
Refugees selling the food of their homeland to get a start in a new life is, by now, a cliché. Khaled (in the photo) joined their ranks a year ago. But cliché or not, selling food is an important way to give people work to do, wages, and hope. If it’s happening on your doorstep, which it is, and the food is good, which it is, what’s a hungry podcaster to do? Go there, obviously, and report back. Which is why, a couple of weeks ago, I found myself, microphone in hand, waiting patiently in line for a falafel wrap.
Truth be told, there aren’t that many Syrian refugees in Italy. The most recent official statistics put the total at around 5000 with a little over 600 in Rome. Hummustown is helping a few of them.
Somewhat different than the usual episode here, but in the best of ways. Still a wonderful look at food, culture, and humanity wrapped up in a fantastic story.
Mark Zuckerberg comes out of his Congressional testimony unscathed. China will dominate AI in the coming decade. HomePods are not selling like HotCakes. Apple leaks leakers leaking leaks. Waymo wants to test truly driverless cars in California.
Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief, faced a much tougher crowd in his second day of congressional testimony on data privacy. Calls for oversight are growing.
The Facebook chief faced tough questions on the mishandling of data. But a larger, more difficult question hung over his testimony: What is Facebook?
Painful to listen to how inept the questions were. How exactly do these people represent us? Was there no preparation at all? Even reading a few front page articles in the past two weeks would have better prepped them for questions than what we got.
Mark Zuckerberg answers Congress' questions. Is YouTube for kids? Google Photos automatically generates cat videos. Alexa for Business. Questionable fireplace placement.
Kevin's Stuff: indieweb.org
Stacey's Things: Nest Hello and Are We Already Living in Virtual Reality?
Mike's Joint: Taskade
The discussion about the Facebook hearings in congress makes me feel a tad better, but still they’re very unsettling, and they’re on a relatively simple and easy topic.
Facebook issues the latest in a long string of apologies.YouTube shooter and the lure of fame. Apple plans its own chips for 2020, Mac Pro for 2019. Is Amazon spending too much on video? Terry Myerson out at Microsoft - the end of the Windows era. FBI seizes Backpage.com.
The F.B.I. has raided the home of President Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen — the same man who acknowledged paying $130,000 to a pornographic film actress who said she had a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump.
What are investigators looking for?
On today’s episode:
• Matt Apuzzo, who covers law enforcement for The New York Times.
It kills me that we don’t have the morality and common sense people had in the 1990’s even. Thank goodness there are some solid institutions in the country left to handle these things.
After a suspected chemical attack in Syria, President Trump said Iran and Russia were responsible for backing “Animal Assad.” But Damascus may view the United States as being focused on a different fight.
President Trump has warned that there will be a “big price to pay” after yet another suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria.
But the suspicion that Syria continues to use those weapons suggests it views the United States as being focused on a different fight.
On today’s episode:
• Ben Hubbard, who covers the Middle East for The New York Times.
• There have been similar deadly assaults for years, including one in 2013 that killed more than 1,400.
Listening to this a few days on it sounds more like Trump has even more bluster than Obama, but he’s doing roughly the same thing. Yet again, small countries that should know far better are continuing to trod on their own people. Sadly, America is doing it to, just with far more sophisticated weapons. If we can’t figure out the right and wrong at the big obvious scale, how can we have proper morality at the smaller and more subtle scales?
Jonathan LaCour from cleverca.st
Jeremy Keith from adactio.com
Refugees selling the food of their homeland to get a start in a new life is, by now, a cliché. Khaled (in the photo) joined their ranks a year ago. But cliché or not, selling food is an important way to give people work to do, wages, and hope. If it’s happening on your doorstep, which it is, and the food is good, which it is, what’s a hungry podcaster to do? Go there, obviously, and report back. Which is why, a couple of weeks ago, I found myself, microphone in hand, waiting patiently in line for a falafel wrap.
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