Republicans fear blowback from a Holocaust denier’s run for Congress.
Links
👓 Spending a Morning on the Indie Web | Interdependent Thoughts
When Hossein Derakshan came back on-line after a 6 year absence in 2015, he was shocked to find how the once free flowing web ended up in walled gardens and silo’s. Musing about what he presented at State of the Net earlier this month, I came across Frank Meeuwsen’s postingabout the IndieWeb Summit starting today in Portland (livestream on YT). That send me off on a short trip around the IndieWeb and related topics.
The other two are where the open web is severely lacking: The seamless integration into one user interface of both reading and writing, making it very easy to respond to others that way, or add to the river of content.
As I read this I can’t help thinking about my friend Aaron Davis (h) a member of the IndieWeb, whose domain name is appropriately https://readwriterespond.com/.
Earlier this year, the New York Times released a WordPress plugin that will help sites that use editors to proofread and edit others’ posts or sites where writers collaborate on the same post. The plugin, called Integrated Content Editor (or ICE), allows changes to a post to be tracked and then accepted or rejected, much like the Track Changes feature in Microsoft Word. Here’s a glimpse of the plugin in action: In an interview with Poynter.org, Chief Technology Officer Marc Frons from the Times explained why the paper first had the tool developed for their own use.
👓 How Did the Nazis Gain Power in Germany? | New York Times
Benjamin Carter Hett’s “The Death of Democracy” traces the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Third Reich.
👓 How an Affair Between a Reporter and a Security Aide Has Rattled Washington Media | New York Times
The seizure of email records from a Times reporter alarmed First Amendment groups. Her relationship with an intelligence aide set off an ethical debate.
👓 Trump Leaves His Mark on a Presidential Keepsake | New York Times
Under President Trump, once stately medallions have gotten glitzier, and at least one featured a Trump property. Ethics watchdogs are worried.
👓 I’ve Been Reporting on MS-13 for a Year. Here Are the 5 Things Trump Gets Most Wrong. | ProPublica
The gang is not invading the country. They’re not posing as fake families. They’re not growing. To stop them, the government needs to understand them.
👓 How Square Made Its Own iPad Replacement | Wired
Square has always made hardware, but its new Android-based tablet shows it’s serious about controlling the payments experience.
👓 Firefox Is Back. It’s Time to Give It a Try. | New York Times
Mozilla redesigned its browser to take on Google’s Chrome. Firefox now has strong privacy features and is as fast as Chrome.
🔖 Supramolecular Chemistry. Concepts and Perspectives. Von J.‐M. Lehn. | Angewandte Chemie – Wiley Online Library
Von J.‐M. Lehn. VCH Verlagsgesellschaft, Weinheim, 1995. 271 S., geb. 128.00 DM/Broschur 58.00 DM. ‐ ISBN 3‐527‐29312‐4/3‐527‐29311‐6 https://doi.org/10.1002/ange.19951072130
👓 Icon request: icon-highlighter (icon-marker) · Issue #2095 · FortAwesome/Font-Awesome | GitHub
A representation of a highlighter, similar to the pencil. I would use this in my Whiteboard app. Could also be named "icon-marker"
I may have to follow up on my threat to build a particular Post Kind for highlights on my website.
👓 Stonehenge builders used Pythagoras' theorem 2,000 years before Greek philosopher was born, say experts | The Telegraph
The builders of Britain’s ancient stone circles like Stonehenge were using Pythagoras' theorem 2,000 years before the Greek philosopher was born, experts have claimed.
👓 The role of information theory in chemistry | Chemistry World
Is chemistry an information science after all?
In the 1990s, Nobel laureate Jean-Marie Lehn argued that the principles of spontaneous self-assembly and self-organisation, which he had helped to elucidate in supramolecular chemistry, could give rise to a science of ‘informed matter’ beyond the molecule.
👓 Koko The Gorilla Dies; Redrew The Lines Of Animal-Human Communication | NPR
Koko fascinated and elated millions of people with her facility for language and her ability to interact with humans. She also gave people a glimpse of her emotions.
👓 An Invisible Rating System At Your Favorite Chain Restaurant Is Costing Your Server | BuzzFeed
In data-hungry, tech-happy chain restaurants, customers are rating their servers using tabletop tablets, not realizing those ratings can put jobs at risk.
And Ziosk could be a roundabout way for employers to discriminate against employees. Employers are legally restricted from evaluating employees based gender, age, race, or appearance, according to Karen Levy, an assistant professor in the Department of Information Science at Cornell University — but nothing is stopping Ziosk users from doing that, even though those ratings can affect a worker’s pay or employment. “If you outsource that job to a consumer, you may be able to escape that,” she said.
“Customers who might discriminate against a certain class or group of workers can use the system to leave negative comments that would affect the workers,” said Cornell’s Ajunwa. She compared the restaurant system to student evaluations of professors, which determine the trajectory of their careers, and tend to be biased against women.
Having low scores posted for all coworkers to see was “very embarrassing,” said Steph Buja, who recently left her job as a server at a Chili’s in Massachusetts. But that’s not the only way customers — perhaps inadvertently — use the tablets to humiliate waitstaff. One diner at Buja’s Chili’s used Ziosk to comment, “our waitress has small boobs.”According to other servers working in Ziosk environments, this isn’t a rare occurrence.
This is outright sexual harrassment and appears to be actively creating a hostile work environment. I could easily see a class action against large chains and/or against the app maker themselves. Aggregating the data and using it in a smart way is fine, but I suspect no one in the chain is actively thinking about what they’re doing, they’re just selling an idea down the line. The maker of the app should be doing a far better job of filtering this kind of crap out and aggregating the data in a smarter way and providing a better output since the major chains they’re selling it to don’t seem to be capable of processing and disseminating what they’re collecting.