Interesting Things on the Internet: July 31st 2017

• The new Patreon economy. James Governor talking sense (as ever) about increasing the ways we support open source.
• "A cohort of young nerds believes they've hit on the solution to a Big Problem & it involves code...". Good Twitter thread from Jon Stokes on history, power, and naively optimistic coding.
• A Rant on Usable Security.
• Let’s Get Excited About Maintenance! "a fantasy common among Silicon Valley types: that the best path forward is to scrap existing reality and start over from scratch". Yep, less fawning over the shiny, more recognising the ongoing work of making things work, please.
• Hill for the data scientist: an xkcd story. Excellent explanation of some statistical issues, through the medium of xkcd cartoons.