But it recently came out that a legislator in Montana was attempting to have the state officially renounce the findings of the scientific community. And, if the federal government decides to believe the scientists and do something about emissions, he wants the Treasure State to somehow sit those efforts out.

Montana legislator introduces bills to give his state its own science

I remember reading about the battles between science and the church back in the Middle Ages. And look at us, centuries later, politicians are still at odds with the power and truth that science brings when it’s not convenient to their agenda. 😡

In light of “meaningful regulation” from UK lawmakers Facebook continues to pat itself on the back for all of its “progress” they’ve made in the name of user privacy. 🙄

Facebook praised itself for recent changes it's made, but the company said it's willing to face tougher laws. Facebook's statement continued:

We are open to meaningful regulation and support the committee's recommendation for electoral law reform. But we're not waiting. We have already made substantial changes so that every political ad on Facebook has to be authorized, state who is paying for it and then is stored in a searchable archive for seven years. No other channel for political advertising is as transparent and offers the tools that we do.

Facebook is a law-breaking “digital gangster,” UK government report says

But the Reuters report describes the use of enterprise certificates to distribute pirated versions of popular iOS software like Minecraft, Spotify, and Pokémon Go. For example, a free version of Minecraft (which is normally a premium app) is distributed by TutuApp using the method. Another pirate distributor, AppValley, offers a version of the Spotify app with the ads that support Spotify and the music artists stripped out completely.

Samuel Axon @ ArsTechnica

I'm going to make a bet that WWDC in June Apple will announce, or simply roll out a new policy and process for enterprise certs for the entire iOS platform. My second bet, it's not going to be friendly, easy, or enjoyable to use. A reckoning is most certainly coming.

The cable lobby working towards their investor bottom line, not in consumers best interest.

Powell said there is "common ground around the basic tenets of net neutrality rules: There should be no blocking or throttling of lawful content. There should be no paid prioritization that creates fast lanes and slow lanes, absent public benefit. And, there should be transparency to consumers over network practices."

Cable lobby asks for net neutrality law allowing paid prioritization

Its sounds like Powell is advocating for Net neutrality, but is a cable lobbyist at this time. In his next breath he uses words like, no need for regulation and “light touch”. I simply can’t trust any angle from cable companies that have time and time again abused their position and monopoly over a must have utility service. In a space with absolutely no competition or incentive to actually serve consumers these companies will continue to take advantage until they are forced to by government. Don’t tell me the market will regulate itself. There is no competitive market in the ISP space. It’s a joke.

“Given the escalating crime and lack of public safety resources, Baltimore was a great place to try something new,” Frame said of the new market. “Citizen can now help Baltimore residents in the way it has helped New York and San Francisco, with real-time notifications that let a user escape a burning building or rescue a four-year old from an abductor. Citizen, with its real-time information, may be just what Baltimore needs.”

Taylor Hatmaker @ TechCrunch

Um, yeah. The Article goes on to compare the app to popular neighborhood sharing Nextdoor, which if you've ever checked out is a dumpster of bias and negative gossip.

Tesla released version 9.0 of its software, which featured a number of updates, including a new UI on the center display and the ability to use the forward-facing camera. The dash cam feature is available only in Tesla vehicles built after August 2017.

TechCrunch

I find it more and more unbelievable that other automakers haven’t built a platform to continually update a vehicles software and add new features. We expect it from our $1,000 mobile devices, why don’t we have the same expectations for our car or truck that is 10-100 times that expensive?

In the year of content I’ve been thinking a lot about how blogs and self publishing have made a comeback in some areas from those that want to take back control of their content. Moves away from Medium for self hosting, moves away from twitter for Micro.blog, and of course the #deletefacebook trends. So how to get the mainstream to move from these centralized, locked in platforms to more open friendly places? I have no idea really, so I’ll list something out more as food for thought.

1. Easy to engage
2. Connection with most of the people they know
3. Easy to share images and re-share
4. Marketplace, options, the idea of not being locked in. The idea of take your content / timeline with you
5. RSS is an implementation detail, not a feature.
6. People understand the idea of subscribe and share.
7. Public vs Private sharing. The ability to share with select people.
8. Clean, ad free interface. The tracking and aggregation is needs to curtailed. So what is the business model? Free / Pro / Business tiers ? I dont know. :-/
9. Cross models Reddit, wordpress, micro.blog ?

So what would a open platform using open internet standards look like ?

Pretty sure at this point most people have heard of Slack or used Slack. The chat app that has made huge inroads into enterprise and small communities alike. I used to have a Slack with friends that replaced or irc channel, now I have more than 1/2 a dozen across a variety of groups and work. It’s a lot of messaging. 🙄 Slack is currently poses for IPO, and valued around 7 billion, which brings up the point -

Is there any reason for Microsoft not to buy Slack for $20 billion? Seems like a perfect fit and at $20 billion could be a bargain.

@jyarow

I agree with Jay, Slack (right down to the new rgb color scheme from their new logo) would be a good fit for the new MS.

Hell. I’ve already got a dozen groups on my Surface Book. 😉

Spurred by Ron Miller’s piece Someone could scoop up Slack before it IPOs.

the fact that the state of much of America’s infrastructure is appalling on its face, and even moreso when compared to nations which are on paper nowhere near as rich.

Techcrunch

I lived in London for a bit coming and going from college, and one of the things I truly miss was the public transportation. It was so quick and easy to hop a bus or train and get all over a giant city like London or Paris. That is in stark contrast to living out west in Arizona. Where the closest place to get a sandwich or a cup of coffee from where you live is often 2-3 miles away. Bus's run every 30-40 minutes during peak times, so without a car to get around it will easily take you several hours of your day to get to and from work. Sadness is a good word for it. 😭

Little Spoon gets $7M for its organic baby food delivery service

subscription-based service delivers meals — a fixed $3 apiece — to customers’ doorsteps. To date, Little Spoon said it has delivered 1 million meals

I’m not sure what this says, good or bad about the current state of parenting ?

It’s only February so maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, but this post by Claus Matzinger, author of Data Structures and Algorithms with Rust, was very encouraging.

Initially, a book was this unsurmountable challenge, but, one chapter at a time,

It’s nothing profound, but a great simple explanation of the benefits you as the author get out of tacking a project as massive as a book. You bet the resources listed are in my amazon book list for down the road. 😉

Bringing the blog back in-house

Rework Podcast

This move by Basecamp, along with other antidotal moves from others, maybe some research later, on moving away from curated platforms like Medium and other spaces where the author or company don’t really own the content or experience, to a self hosted content service like Wordpress or Ghost is really on the rise. Maybe I’m just hyper aware of it from building out my own stream of content that is not tied to a specific platform, but I’m definitely seeing a growing trend.

I know, you're likely going to tell me "welcome to the party", about just how blatantly gross Facebook's actions towards users and their data have been for a long, long time. And you're right. I've largely been absent from FB, still have an account, since college, but the platform has never really resonated with me. Twitter, on the other hand, I check an unhealthy amount per day. Let's chalk up the bad actions of FB that has come out, just in the last 7 days:

• Facebook Project 'Atlas', paying teens to install their snooping VPN with enterprise certs.
• Facebook blocks Ad Transparency Tools
• Facebook Friendly Fraud, kids unwittingly spending money connected to their parents credit cards.

Now for most companies they would be in full PR mode. Interviews, opinion columns, talk shows, the spin machine out in force. For Facebook it seems more like just business as usual. The logic is most people using the service are unaware to the level that FB is targeting them to feed the monster advertisement and revenue machine, or they know and simply don't care. There have been waves over the past year to #deletefacebook, and that might raise awareness, it might just be noise in the thundering hose of content and ads.

Here's what I know. A lot of people like Instagram and What's App, I mean a lot. Anecdotally, I haven't seen people checking facebook or talking about it as much as the previously mentioned 2 apps. I do feel like something has to give sooner or later. Most like FB's deceitful practices will quietly find their way into all their products like a cancer sooner or later. Maybe regulation and strict privacy rights for users will force change, or another service that offers to connect you to people will come along and spark more joy than facebook does. When that happens, you can properly thank facebook, and delete your account, like I did today.

Following an avalanche of stories breaking right now, like this one from ARS Technica

Users have discovered a bug in Apple's FaceTime video-calling application that allows you to hear audio from a person you're calling before they accept the call

I only FaceTime with family, I guess we’re gonna find out how many people actually use FaceTime! My guess? Pretty few use it outside immediate family.

Now does that mean that this bug doesn’t apply to me? Not at all, anyone can FaceTime my phone, and now they can listen in, even if I don’t pickup on my end. Software is hard, it will come down to how quickly Apple acts on this one.

With a bit of luck and a lot of trying, I've been able to figure out how to add Markdown support to wordpress via the REST API. This servers as a reminder to myself, and I hope it helps someone else if they come across this.

• REST API is enabled by default for wp v4 and above, so all good there
• Default Auth only has cookie support, and since I'm looking to interact and make quick publishing as easy as possible, this will not do.
  • JWT Can be enabled with this plugin , so that solved that.
• Now we can post without the admin dashboard, how do we get it to format the markdown? We can add another plugin that gives us wp-com support for markdown in Posts, Jetpack.
• With those enabled we can stringify a markdown file, and HTTP POST it to our wordpress endpoint and BOOM 🎇 we've been able to write in markdown, and send posts.
• Next item, post and publish in a single request? Possibly ?

“As a result of recent events, we have decided to end our arrangements with data aggregators,” a Sprint spokesperson told Motherboard in an email.

Motherboard

I feel like there was a story recently, oh yeah here we go, that exposed much the same practices from cellular providers. There was outrage then, and promises of swift action and change.

Tim Cook recently penned an op-ed in Time Magazine, You Deserve Privacy Online. Here's How You Could Actually Get It.

"I and others are calling on the U.S. Congress to pass comprehensive federal privacy legislation—a landmark package of reforms that protect and empower the consumer. Last year, before a global body of privacy regulators, I laid out four principles that I believe should guide legislation:"

Tim Cook

Tim goes on to outline several key points that any legislation would include. Things like avoid collecting unnecessary, consumers have the right to know, and the right for consumers to access and delete their data that companies have.

Following up Tim's op-ed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has announced a new bill American Data Dissemination (ADD) Act

"provides overdue transparency and accountability from the tech industry while ensuring that small businesses and startups are still able to innovate and compete in the digital marketplace."

Marco Rubio

Here's the catch, in the text of the bill as it currently stands is the phrase, "shall supersede" , which has wide sweeping implications. Jon Brodkin's article at ARS Technica, Sen. Marco Rubio wants to ban states from protecting consumer privacy goes into the reaction from several groups, and sufficed to say, none of them are positive. Super seeding any state action in this area clearing isn't going to stand. California for instance, has already passed privacy law in 2018 that was passed unanimously.

To say that things in the privacy data sector are heating up this year is an understatement, while federal and local governments historical move very slow, this battle will likely play out over the next several years. You can bet that it will be a hot issue in the run up to the 2020 election.

I came across RRS feed in the early 2000's through great Indie apps on the Mac like Net News Wire and others. It was a great was to aggregate all the news for hundreds, and when things got really crazy more than a thousand sites into a single convenient location. You could sync all the read articles, star and favorite ones you wanted to keep around, and share via IRC or AIM the ones you thought your friends should see, or even email something to family member or co-worker. It was a deep well of knowledge, and easy to flip through a couple times a day and stay in the know. This same publish and subscribe model of RSS is the underpinning to podcasts, which makes it beyond the reach of a single company, but also makes discovery a bit of a challenge.

You could set your watch to the regular occurance to which someone will announce that RSS is dead, today it just happened to be MotherBoard with an article, The Rise and Demise of RSS . With quotes like -

The future once looked so bright for RSS. What happened?

MotherBoard

In Author, Sinclair Target's, defense the article is a well written history as it played out from the 90's up til today. And I think is correct, that RSS isn't consumer friendly or easy to understand. But I don't think it needs to be. The gritty details of how SMS isn't something consumers pour over, they just send their messages and have a certain level of expectations in regards to what will happen on the other end. RSS powers podcasts subscriptions, and regular people find, listen to, and are coming to the medium in big numbers than ever!

Point is RSS isn't every exciting to most people. The question I'd pose is, what is exciting that you can do with a feature powered by RSS ?

Ars is reporting to have a new 5GHz chip, that will not exactly be available for retail sale this year.

the chip company is asking system builders to bid for the chips in an online auction. The auctions will be held quarterly, with apparently only three system integrators bidding in the first.

[arstechnica.com/gadgets/2...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/intel-reported-to-have-a-new-5ghz-chip-thats-literally-priceless/#p3)

With some relatively positive news coming out of CES that Intel will actual ship a 10nm chip later this year, this seems like another flailing swing from a falling giant.

There is something about a new setup. You get to start over, clean, void of distractions. The possibilities are endless. That is the part I really enjoy, like many I assume. I recently set up this publishing site, a backend to manage it, a service to backup and secure the data, and on and on. I also setup a physical desk in my house for the first time in 10 plus years. Getting space set up, the monitor just the way I like it. All of this was fun to do.

The opposite of a new setup is - consistency. Coming back to something again and again. Slowly chipping away at the progress until you've achieved something. This is more akin to getting in shape, writing that great american novel you've always talked about. There is a long arduous process involved. For a lot of use it is a constant state of self doubt lows, and small achievement highs.

It will come as no surprise that one of these is vastly more rewarding that the other.

With Apple and other companies out of runway on growing smart phone revenue, where will they turn? We can probably figure out a lot of possibles by looking at how this has played out in other industries over time. The PC went through this very recently, maybe to much so to be of any help. Have industries like auto or luxury good gone through market saturation? If so, what could we learn from it?

I often have thoughts about all the things I can learn or knock out as the weekend approaches. Won't it be great to take time out to figure out X, or know how exactly to do Y? My plans are usually so beyond doable in a single weekend, even if I don't have anything else planned. Things like ready that entire book cover to cover. These things are technically possible, but with even the slightest amount regular things to do, like laundry and the grocery store, these things are unrealistic. But won't it be great? Yeah of course it would, but it's definitely not practical.

I realize more and more, maybe it's getting older, or having kids to steward, but the mind frame I try to put things in is less big push, and tons of little tiny pieces that I can chip away at. One small nibble at a time, that's what is successful. I know that. It still doesn't stop me from constantly setting up my weekend or time off to some level of disappointment when I don't read that entire book, or complete that whole project start to finish. I guess there's always next weekend.

I gave a talk at my local meetup for React, the part I left out of my previous post was the meetup was hosted at my work. This had the added benefit of home court advantage (sports ball) I knew more people in the audience that usual, and was very comfortable. The side effect that I didn't anticipate was the following day. I had a couple people, people not on my team, I might recognize them in the halls, maybe even say hi to them from time to time. These people stopped me and complimented me on my talk last night! ♥ This absolutely made my day. It really extended the excitement, the buzz, the high I get when I present something I like in front of a group that I really look up to.

This has an adverse effect that I'm never ready for, the crash. Coming down emotionally from a talk is, for me is physically painful. I am not sure you would categorize it as a chemical withdraw of good feelings, but that is the best way I can describe it. While I recover, my show is running late, I need to get it out the door, but I feel like nothing more than crawling into bed for the weekend.

To all those who attended and took the time to provide feedback, I sincerely thank you.

I gave a talk tonight at the local React meetup. As always a ton of fun, it did however solidify that I am less and less interest in React, and more interested in Elm and Haskell as tools to use for solving and creating. Maybe you’re thinking, well duh Jesse, you have a JSToElm podcast?!? Are just realizing this now? And actually, yeah, it’s just sort of dawned on me. It’s not a question or a thought I’ve explicably had, but something that occurred to me while I was sitting there looking up at code on a giant projector, what would this look like in Elm, and I wonder what the type signature of that method would be?

It’s a small thing, but having moments like this can be very clarifying.

There is always a time during the week when I think, "what have I been up to this week?" What do I have to show for being on the computer at night, checking my phone 139 times a day? What do I get out of this? In the spirit of 'More Content', I am giving time tracking a shot. So were all on the same page, here's a short description of time tracking.

Historically, time-tracking has been being used as the simplest way to measure work and calculate payments. In today’s world, it is often used as a source of essential data on how work is performed, what can be improved, and what trends of the work process require closer attention. Advanced time trackertools are used for collection and analysis of this vital information.

[www.actitime.com/time-trac...](https://www.actitime.com/time-tracking/time-tracking-software-essay)

For my goals, I am more concerned with what trends of work have been done. I haven't set any goals yet, I won't even know where to start, but i figure the information gathering stage is good enough. Along with that I've forced myself to Pomodoro Technique every activity I do for side work. I've got my Toggle Time running now while I write this. And we'll see what the graph shows in a week, and then a week after that.

For course there are plenty of apps and tools to help with all this tracking. Mac Stories has a great run down of Siri Shortcuts that will run a lot of the manual process of time tracking, removing all the excuses I have come up with to avoid it. And the really, I just want to be more productive with the time I have, and not commit more time than I already am to content. We'll see ..