McFilter

Interesting Things on the Internet: June 22nd 2020

• Anti-Monopoly Thinking. Good thinking about breaking up the big tech companies, from Tim Bray (who's worked at a few of them).
• Democracy as a Platform: Learning from Taiwan. Alistair Parvin asks why "we have tended to frame digital technology and the Web as an exclusively private sector phenomenon". I think the default assumption that we should build everything to scale is another aspect of tech that we should be scrutinising too.
• You have reached the next level. "This is big-time news, and I think probably the biggest and most important part of the book. Why? Because if Uber is doing it, then all the other comapnies are likely doing it too.
  
  And what this means is that, not only are our private communications not safe from the CIA, NSA, and advertisers, they’re also not safe from companies coming in to impersonate people we trust, if those people are tied to sketchy companies.
  
  Ok, granted, all of this this is a little tinfoil-hat-y, even for me. But if Uber did it, where else is it happening [...]?"
• Russ in Cheshire's the [half] week in Tory for this week. These Twitter threads (it's a regular, sadly, series) are well written, and good summaries of just how much shit this Government is doing. A couple of them jumped out in particular this time: "9. Meanwhile, the Housing Minister admitted he knew he was breaking the law when he saved a billionaire Tory donor dodge £50m tax, - half the cost of feeding 1.3m children" and 13. In March, student nurses nearing the end of training were asked to forego exams and volunteer to fight Covid19 on the front line; 14. This week their contracts were dropped, so from July they have no work, no pay and no qualification; 15. And their July wage won’t be paid". I appreciate these collections of the deplorable actions of the Tories, but also feel that this bringing them to light isn't enough. Harking back to this other Twitter thread from another recent "Interesting Things..." post. How do we find the pressure points to hold these politicians to account? Do we need to help and encourage our journalists? Do we ask the many more backbench and junior Tory MPs why they're happy to enable this behaviour? Do we take to the streets? Build a queue of issues and a solidarity movement where we keep the focus on the first one till it's resolved and only then move onto the next outrage? Something else? What else?
• Datasette: A Developer, a Shower and a Data-Inspired Moment. "Willison maintains 73 open source projects, and he says the only way you can maintain 73 projects is if you treat every single one of them as if you’re not a core maintainer. Each must have a ReadMe and tests and detailed issue threads discussing what he was working on." This is a big part of my habits too.

Netflix have put a bunch of their documentaries on YouTube for free, including this beautifully shot worrying look at how small changes in global temperatures are disrupting our ocean ecosystems

The cameras they use in this are awesome assemblages of 3D printing, Arduino and Raspberry Pi too.