McFilter

Interesting Things on the Internet: October 31st 2016

• A Devil’s Dictionary of Educational Technology. "Asynchronous, adj. The delightful state of being able to engage with someone online without their seeing you, while allowing you to make a sandwich."
• The Rise and Fall of YPlan Is The Most Boring Tech Story Ever. Less reporting of money raised as "news" please.
• DJ Prime Cuts Hip Hop Don't Stop- The Greatest [Disc One]. Excellent mix of all of the early 80s hip-hop (or at least that's how it feels :-)
• Science fiction about AI never seems to talk about the interesting stuff, tax and geography and work. "A local job, and it’s associated tax, is potentially displaced by an algorithm charged by the hour run somewhere distant, written by person working somewhere else with the profits and costs, rolled up into intellectual property licensing, moved to be taxed in the most expedient territory. We can’t stop it. We shouldn’t stop it. But it won’t be comfortable if we don’t plan for it."
• welcome.js. A lovely hidden way to delight and encourage anyone poking around behind the scenes of James' website.
• The Weaponisation of the Working Class. Why is it that the working-class is "listened to" when they talk about immigration, but not when they talk about the dismantling of the NHS, the lack of jobs, university fees...?
• Remarks at the SASE Panel On The Moral Economy of Tech. "We should not listen to people who promise to make Mars safe for human habitation, until we have seen them make Oakland safe for human habitation. We should be skeptical of promises to revolutionize transportation from people who can't fix BART, or have never taken BART."