Next feature for Bingeworthy -- coming soon. A public page for each user that lists their ratings. Opt-in required. The data is also available in JSON so it can be shared with other apps. No lock-in, right from the start. #

I spaced out on renewing the radio3.io domain. It seems to be back now A little reminder of how fragile our Internet is. #

I don't share his faith in the crowd. I've seen them fuck too many people over, too many times. How can anyone, after the last election, and the way Hillary Clinton was treated, conclude that the crowd is fair. SMH.#

New version of Electric Pork for Mac supports 280-char tweets. #

What if Zuck's PhDs wrote him a memo, saying that unless Facebook disappears immediately it's a virtual certainty humanity will self-destruct, within days. What would Zuck do?#

Twitter poll: "Any gender, have you ever done anything sexual that you're now ashamed of?"#

Timothy Snyder says that America defeated itself in the 2016 election.#

Earlier this year I decided to revert my blog to its original (1990s) format and not try to fit it into Facebook, Medium or Twitter's models. It's working nicely. I feel no urge to go back, esp since Twitter expanded to 280.#

When you see someone online doing or saying something outrageous, consider the possibility they work for an Internet research center in St. Petersburg.#

I released the Bingeworthy that works with phones. #

October 2000: "How much money do you need to feel secure?" #

Robert Frank writing in the NYT says that a tax cut for the rich won't make anyone richer, because it's all relative. It's a bug to see your wealth as relative to other people's wealth. There comes a point, way before you're in the 1%, that more money can't buy you more than you already have that you can actually use. You can't use two bedrooms, or two cars. Owning a stadium with 50K seats does you no good because you can only sit in one. Having more money does not make you bigger. As Bill Gates said, wisely -- the hamburger is the same, no matter how much money you have. #

Bill Gates: "I can understand about having millions of dollars. There's meaningful freedom that comes with that, but once you get much beyond that I have to tell you, it's the same hamburger."#

When people say someone is tone-deaf, clueless, doesn't get it -- someone's mind is closed, one point of view is dominating others.#

One of the things that makes Mathew Ingram dangerous is that he asks what other people think. Which led to this thread with Ben Thompson, Rafat Ali and myself. #

Erin Gloria Ryan: "Morgan’s account reeks of naked political opportunism, of weaponizing victimhood in a way that is so morally bankrupt that it threatens to derail the entire #MeToo conversation for selfish political ends."#

Podcast: For news orgs, wouldn't it be nice not to be dependent on Twitter and Facebook? There may be a little pain at first, but on the other side is freedom to move, to innovate, to radically improve the news experience on the net. #

New Scripting News feature: If I tweet an item from the blog, which is more likely now with the 280 char limit, it's automatically set up to be expandable so you can see the tweet if you want. Like the item below. #

It would be interesting to see a list of billionaires, with a column for their net worth, annual income, and how much they would receive each year from the Repub tax bill. Let's see the numbers. Let's expose the billionaires who are pulling the Repubs strings. #

New BingeWorthy feature. The names on the Hotlist page are now linked to the voting panel for that program on the main page. So if you see a program on the Hotlist and want to vote, do a search, or the other features that are sure to come, click the link. #

There's now a JSON file that contains the hotlist data. It changes at most once a minute, so please don't read it more often than that. #

October 31 is when I started the Bingeworthy outreach.#

I only make software that I use. When I've tried to make software that I don't use, it usually comes out unusable. It's gotten so that I write software only for my own use. I don't even release some of the best stuff. That way I can break the entire user base and they don't complain. 💥#

The Repub tax law is a direct consequence of Citizens United. #

Please choose a browser from this list. #

A quick demo of a new hotlist feature. #

New BingeWorthy feature -- a standalone hotlist page, it does not require login. #

Hotlist notes. What is I, Claudius? Highly rated. Never heard of it. Nice to see my favorites being highly rated. Some exceptions. Fargo is #20, Silicon Valley is #47. Six Feet Under one of my #5's is rated 2.8. Bojack is #77? That can't be right! And Star Trek Discovery, which I have not watched, that everyone raves about is #98. It's still very early, but some programs have as many as 60 votes. Top 5: The Wire, Breaking Bad, Claudius, West Wing, Band of Brothers. #

This is how Republicans make love. #

A story I like to tell. At Living Videotext, our first office was a dark room in a former church on San Antonio Road in Mountain View. The church is gone, the land is probably now part of a Google sub-campus. It was kind of a slum of an office, but it worked, it got us to the next stage, a suite of offices on Elwell Court in Palo Alto, near the golf course and airport. The problem with the first office was that the windows didn't open and I was a smoker and they let you smoke in offices back then, even if the windows didn't open. So we made sure that the Elwell Court office had windows that opened. It was our top feature request. Then, we kept growing, and the next office was a standalone building on Charleston Road in Mountain View. By then we had forgotten about the windows opening, and as soon as we moved in realized oh shit the windows don't open here. #

The moral of the story. We elected Obama to fix the economy that Bush broke. We, collectively, forgot. So we elected someone even worse, who is proceeding to break the economy even more. We're going to need someone better than Obama to fix it, if it's possible. Also, don't expect the next president to be like Trump. It doesn't work that way. He or she will be total Establishment. A real intellect. Not flamboyant or a narcissist. He or she will have other flaws, that we will have by then forgotten to watch out for. #

Bingeworthy howto and a place to ask questions.#

Here's a screen shot of Bingeworthy on opening day. 🚀#

Here's the idea. I want to binge something good on Netflix or HBO or Amazon, or whatever. I ask friends for ideas. Then I pick something. It might be good. I want to systematize that. That's Bingeworthy. At first we produce a Top 100 list, because that's all we have the data for. The goal is to build a database of prefs so we can make better and better recommendations. #

Good morning CMS fans!#

If we are to believe Republican senators have principles that won't allow them to accept Roy Moore, how can they accept Donald Trump?#

Why are baby animals so darned funny?#

Just finished Big Little Lies. Great acting, characters and (no spoilers) it's a story for our time. 4 out of 5 stars.#

I just made a change to how permalinks and GUIDs are generated in my CMS. This is a test post to see how badly I broke things. ;-)#

Interestingly, that last post should have appeared twice because the GUID changed. I figured out how to fix things so it can survive an author time-zone change. More in the thread for this bug and its fix.#

With cannabis legal in so many states, why isn't there a cable news show that spends an hour a week exploring the changes this brings about? Such a large change, an end to Prohibition, seems there would be quite a bit of interesting stuff to discuss about it. #

One of my most frequently RT'd and Liked tweets ever. I don't keep track of these things. "Senator McCain, America has been humiliated by your president and party. Enough. Time to stop this. Speak up for impeachment." BTW, this is also the most responses I've gotten on Twitter from trolls. Wondering how many of them are real people, and how many are imitation people, Russians dressing up as Americans. #

Maybe John Dickerson should interview a group of Russian trolls to get their opinions on American politics. It would be more illuminating than listening to a bunch of Americans who were brainwashed by them. Skip the middleman, go direct to the source.#

Facebook replaced the web with much less than the web. This should get more attention than it does.#

There was a problem with Radio3 this morning. I rebooted the app and all is working again. I saw that it had been running for 222 days. That's one of the advantages of working in the Node environment. Once you get a piece of software stable, in this case nodeStorage, it pretty much takes care of itself. #

Couldn't watch the last segment on Face The Nation with a panel of Trump voters. It's time to stop asking them to explain themselves. Let's hear from other citizens. And let's stop putting reporters in the middle.#

Five years ago I wrote a tutorial showing how to set up AWS to host a website. I just brought it back online. I need to do more of this! ;-)#

Trump is one of the weirdest people ever. If there's a rational explanation for his behavior I hope to someday hear it.#

Why do we let the front-men and women of the Republican Party speak for the power behind them, their billionaire donors? How does it serve the rest of us to accept the farce that the politicians have a say in the future of the US. We've been snookered.#

In previous wars America had a big advantage -- an ocean on either side separated us from Europe and Asia. We no longer have that separation, the Internet removed it.#

Reader query: I've had a report by one user of repeated items from Scripting News in Feedly. Are other people seeing this? In other feed readers? I've seen no problems in River5. #

Poll: Should Louis C.K.'s work disappear?#

The allegations against Roy Moore, it seems, could split the Republican Party in two. It's hard to imagine, for example, Mormons in Utah, who are largely Republican, condoning what Moore is accused of. #

Everything in my world works better, post-280. I was sure this would happen. It's one of the things that was making the cost of Twitter too high to sustain. Facebook didn't have the 140-char limit, nor did my linkblog, or the RSS feed of links. But because I want all my links to flow to these four places, I was limited by the least capacity of them all. Now if Twitter and Facebook would support limited HTML, then we'd be really flying (though, depressingly, we would just be where we were in 1994).#

I mentioned my 2011 invitation to Moscow because it's worth considering if you see an American blogger supporting Russia, or an academic, or journalist, they might have taken the trip that I chose not to. Back then it wasn't clear that Russia was an adversary. In today's climate I wouldn't be tempted. But things were different then. #

An idea to balance all the writing online about ugly violent non-consensual sexual acts -- a place where people write about their loving consensual and adventurous sexual experiences. Otherwise people, esp young people, might get the wrong idea about sex. Seriously it's not all bad. (Quite the opposite.)#

I have to say I like the 280 char limit. It feels like legal cannabis. Something that was once forbidden that now is OK. It's like what, I can do that! Wow.#

One of the reasons 280 chars is great is that it means that links I post to Facebook can have longer descriptions. It may seem counter-intuitive, but I use Radio3 to post my links, to Twitter, Facebook, to my linkblog and to an RSS feed. I don't write different versions for each environment, so what you get is the least common denominator. Which is Twitter. When they up the limit, they do it for all other platforms, at least in my world. #

I was invited to a future-of-news conference in Moscow in 2011, all expenses paid, by a Russian news agency, Ria Novosti. I said yes at first, but in the end didn't go. Something didn't seem right. Soon after, their feed redirected to Sputnik, then to RT. #

Lindsey Graham this $5 is yours if you vote against the Repub tax bill.#

The 2017 election proved that the way out of our mess is with the people, not the pre-Internet political parties. This is true for everything, really. For tech, for news as well as politics. The institutions may fail, but that's not the end.#

In 2013 I wrote a piece on why men stay silent re sexual harassment. #

Re Google and antitrust, a little story. I have an Android phone. When it rings, if they think it's a spam caller, the screen goes red and there's a label under the number that says it's probably spam. I trust Google to not use this feature to censor political opinions, though technically they could, and we would never know. I want to believe they're saying it's spam because it is spam. The same way I trust Google not lower the rank of a site because it doesn't support HTTPS. The fact that they do this, and are open about it, means I don't trust the whole move to HTTPS that they're trying to force on the internet, without any public debate, oversight or recourse. This is exactly the kind of thing Google, a company, not an elected government, should not be doing. #

It's a good night for the U.S. Blues!#

Boring politicians are the best. Just do your jobs, help the people, and shut the fuck up. That's the lesson of Trump.#

Poll: Which is more revolutionary? 280-char tweets or Animoji?#

Many of the great things we have invented will not be discovered until long after we are dead.#

A change any publication could make that would quickly give lots of new ideas. If you have a public editor he or she should be a member of the public, not a journalist.#

Giving the finger to authority is the most American thing there is.#

What makes this so funny: everyone knew exactly what it was about.#

A gentler analogy for why I so despise Google's plan to rid the web of HTTP. It's as if I recorded on vinyl. Got really good at it. I have a huge collection of titles, converting them to digital would be completely diseconomic, and a very poor use of my time, and further I'd only be doing it to install Google as the owner of the web. We saw how well that worked for RSS. So no thank you. Go ahead and remove all the audio players that know how to play my 33 and 1/3 recordings. And I'll curse your name every night as I drift off to sleep, as Arya Stark does. #

Best. Tweet. Ever.#

Spoiler from The Crown, so beware. One of the threads in Episode 9 is Churchill sitting for his portrait at age 80. At the end, he sees it and is outraged. The artist has one of the best speeches about life I've ever heard. Basically, Sir Winston, you're not angry at me, you're angry at life. I know the feeling. I prefer to walk through the world in my spacesuit of a body. No point looking at it, it's just my protective layer. But when I do catch a glimpse, I have the same reaction as Churchill. BTW, the acting is superb. I rate it 4 out of 5 stars, which for me is a very high rating indeed. #

One of my takeaways from the Newsgeist conference is that the current journalism leaders will not try to own their own distribution independent of Facebook and the rest of tech. So I will give up on trying to convince them it is necessary to compete. Uncle. However I willl keep my eye out for journalism upstarts, hybrids of editorial and tech, who want to upset this cart by producing a superior news experience, independent of silos. Happy to help if serious. #

Most of today's posts are thoughts that came from a weekend at a future-of-news conference in Phoenix. #

More Newsgeist -- the subject of the massive bit-burning that the turn to HTTPS will cause did come up at one of the last sessions. I was getting the usual talking points from several participants from different organizations, the ones I get when this is discussed on Twitter. Since we had Chatham House Rule I can't say who they are. It was fun to get the pushback I always get when I write about it, in real time, face to face. It's all bullshit, masking the ridiculous power grab by Google and Mozilla. If HTTPS is so necessary, then selling it on its own merits should work fine, without destroying the history of the web. I'm kind of okay with Google using it as a "signal" to determine search rank, although it's a lie and makes me think very negatively of Google. But using their dominance of browserland to force this, there's no justification for that, and there should be a huge anti-trust outcry over it. If I have anything to say about it, there will. My blog may not have huge traffic, but I'll use whatever I have to expose this. They call me names, but it all amounts to one thing -- they don't want to be called out. I love the web, think it's very important, and only fascists want to destroy history. Google, you really are way out on a limb here.#

Poll: Will there come a time that Google Chrome will refuse to show pages with links in them? They're insecure, they might say.#

Lots of gender discussions. Earnest, well-intentioned, supportive, even at times loving. But most of it too dangerous for me, as a man, to write about in public. I will say this one thing. I heard the term "mansplaining" used several times, by people of both genders. I don't like it. I don't think you should either. Man is becoming a pejorative just as Jew was when I was growing up. I thought to be a Jew was dirty. I didn't want to be one, even though my family ran for their lives in the Holocaust, because we were Jewish. I both hated the term and myself. If the unfair effort to indict men, as a gender, continues, you're going to have a lot more angry self-hating men. If you think that's good you're crazy. You want to see how bad the term is. Imagine if the man in mansplaining were replaced with "jew." It's a hateful term, and if you use it, you're spreading hate. And you gotta know that's going to come back on you. No way around it. Find another way to get a person, of any gender, to listen. Without resorting to awful humiliating gender-slamming tricks. #

Even more Newsgeist -- Journalism should put extra effort to create high-density/quality news flows for people who really want to know what's going on. Out of that will grow new products, services, and news paradigms. It's the equiv of the way we developed first, in the 80s, for power users, and that helped us develop concentrated simplified versions for people who valued ease of use over power. That's how new ideas get developed. #

Trump-voter-on-Trump-voter violence is the least objectionable form.#

Newsgeist was good. It would be interesting to have the same conference without the journalists. Also they could use some more independent software devs. They look to Facebook and Google for everything. Independent devs are much more likely to give them what they want. #

Newsgeist was good but I totally felt like I didn't belong. None of the things I care about are on their radar. It was shocking how much it's business-as-usual. Shouldn't there be some self-examination of how they screwed up the 2016 election and implementing some defenses against making the same mistakes again? Right now the bugs remain not only unfixed, they aren't even reported or logged. #

In hindsight, I should have proposed a session about how Facebook and Google are actively destroying the open web. Maybe we can get some of the reporters to look at that? Right now they mostly still want Facebook to give them money. That sickens me because Facebook is not what I think of as a good news system. #

I just learned that Facebook has already implemented fake news detection. To see it you have to try to post a hoax news article. #

I'm at the Newsgeist conference in Phoenix. I spoke once, saying pretty much the only thing I have to say -- news has to own its own distribution. Their attention is focused on the tech industry, Facebook etc. The users don't know where to go to get real news, so we get the garbage that Facebook serves us. #

Watched the first three episodes of Mindhunter, it's reallllly good. #

Good morning sports fans and congratulations to the Houston Astros and condolences for fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers. I have some suggestions for the Dodgers, but they'll wait until a proper period of grieving has taken place. Just know that it involves an apology and a retirement. And you might want to consider a new stadium. It worked wonders for the Mets after our stadium was defiled by the hated evil Yankees.#

I think it's funny (in a sad way) that journalists have discovered that social media was exploited by Russians to screw with our system of government. Facebook is to blame. They should have known! But where were all the hard-charging investigative journalists during the campaign? They were taking the bait from Russians about Hillary's email. And Access Hollywood was soooo salacious. Ask if The Clintons are corrupt a few thousand times, and the question becomes moot. So now we're stuck with the NRA in the White House and WW III looming. Our whole system needs to have the money taken out of it. Until it is, journalism is in no position to point the finger. #

A question about emoji short codes. I want a simple JavaScript function that takes a short code like :shrug: and turns it into the corresponding emoji character that is maintained, so when more emoji characters are added, corresponding short codes are added. It seems this must exist, but if it doesn't it should. 🚀 💥#

Welcome to November! It's time to sign up for ObamaCare if you live in the US. Spread the word. #

Okay up front this isn't meant to be a funny or ironic post. I ride the bike path where the terrorism took place yesterday. It's one of my three favorite rides. It was cold yesterday, and I had an errand to do on the east side, so I walked instead of riding. But I know the path well, esp the segment where the truck driver mowed down the pedestrians and cyclists. But here's the thing -- there weren't supposed to be any pedestrians there. It's a bike path. There's a much nicer walkway about 50 feet west of the bike path, right on the Hudson River. Cyclists aren't allowed there. I love that segment of the walkway, in fact it's often my turnaround spot, where I stop, take in the scene, sometimes even take a picture. But please walkers and runners, stay in your space and we'll stay in ours. #

Trump is an idiot.#

Something else to note re yesterday's terrorism. Look at how lovely the city is by the river. There used to be an ugly eyesore of a highway where the park and bike path are now. Yes there's a small amount of violence, but actually much less than there used to be. Net-net the urban experience in the US is much-improved. To people in flyover country who hear how our cities are hellholes, Fox accidentally broadcast some evidence to the contrary yesterday. Ooops. :shrug:#

After last night's interview with White House Chief of Staff Kelly on Fox, there's a bunch of grousing about what he said. Was it a smokescreen, or is he really that bad. Imho yes he is really that bad. Two theories: 1. Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence and 2. Occam's Razor: If you had to guess who Trump would choose as Chief of Staff, would it be a babysitter or a fellow white supremacist? There was a lot of wishful thinking behind the idea that Kelly was effective "adult supervision." Now we're finding out what we should have assumed all along. He's just as much of a Nazi as Trump is.#

So, in the Internet History Podcast, I talked a bit about the idea of "working together," and somewhat unfairly used Marco Arment as an example of someone who wasn't receptive to my new ideas. I recorded this 10-minute podcast to explain what I had in mind, generally, not about specific products (it was a long time ago, the opportunity long-since passed). Most of the time when you knock on the door saying here's a free idea, people think you want something. But sometimes it goes somewhere and that's when really interesting stuff happens. This is worth talking about. #

I was up late watching the fantastic World Series game betw the Astros and universally hated Dodgers. Today I've been beating a new app into submission, with good results. Also the Knicks were great last night. We have some really tall players and as a result the defense is kind of working. It's a surprisingly good team, and fun to watch. #

One thing people don't get is Trump's real business is money laundering. That's what all those Trump towers are. Laundered money.#

I did an interview with the Internet History Podcast. #

America the land of the free and the home of fuck you.#

Some thoughts from the future-of-news meetup at CNN on Thurs night in NY. The panelists swirled all around what I feel is the obvious new direction for news. They must take responsibility for it, must define it. Letting tech define it results in Twitter and Facebook, neither of which are good at news. Twitter is sources. Facebook is friends. Both carry news, because there's a void, but not well. We should be much further ahead. News must create a new place for people who care to get vetted news. And become more inclusive of voices and ideas from outside their circle of comfort. Create an inclusive space that doesn't have deliberately misleading stories. This means also that news orgs are going to have to get the headlines in agreement with their stories. No more excuses about clickbait. News has waited for tech to lead them. That's the big mistake.#

An important point that I still haven't made well enough is that people could stop trying to get ahead and put an emphasis on working together to get us back on track. There are clear tradeoffs. I'm saying this -- take the other branch. Instead of getting ahead, work with others even if it means they get ahead not you.#

Watched my first full World Series game of the year last night. A couple of observations, one lighthearted, and one dead serious. 1. As a Mets fan, I see a win in the Yankees loss in the previous round, esp if followed by a Dodgers loss in the World Series. Almost as good as the Mets winning it all. Go Astros! 2. As an American who believes in the Constitution, I strongly believe God Bless America has no place in this game. Insisting that everyone stand and take off their hat while a soldier prays to your god, that's enough to get me to boycott baseball. It was wrong to start playing GBA after 9/11, but somewhat understandable. That was 16 years ago, come on MLB, open your doors to everyone, even people who think that religion, war and baseball don't have anything to do with each other. #

One of the nice things about Facebook that I will miss, if it ever goes away, is a simple act of Liking a post from someone I'm thinking of fondly, who I haven't seen in a while, and want to just say hey -- I'm thinking of you. ❤️#

My MLK button is coming back. I stopped wearing it a few months ago, but it's going back on my sweaters and jackets as fall is here. It's really a good idea. It says I am the kind of American who believes in respecting everyone regardless of the usual things that divide us: race, religion, gender, age -- basically appearance. I'm giving everyone a chance to be the good human that they are in their core. I felt the need originally, about a year ago, just after the election, when walking around in shell-shocked NYC, I felt people's eyes on me, and my eyes on them, wondering if they had voted for Trump, or them wondering if I had. Now, a year later it's a different question. I don't care if you voted for Trump. I want to know if you think there were very fine Nazis marching in Charlottesville. I want to know that you won't be breaking windows on the American Kristallnacht, should it ever come, or lynching a black man, or tormenting women who work with you. These issues are all related, rooted in the same cause, and I want to root that out and destroy it, or at least make it go back into hiding. Wearing a symbol on my jacket says all this. I hope.#

On the Internet no one knows you're Russian. #

What is the correct collective noun for a group for trolls?#

I've been trying to figure out how to put this idea in words. The world is teetering on the edge of nuclear war. The American president is provoking it. Meanwhile, most people are trying to get ahead as if everything was normal. Nazis marched in the street this summer, killed an innocent protestor, yet were defended by the same president. Very fine people, he said. Companies are ripping off customers, shutting down the EPA, and journalism is thinking about page views, and congress people are thinking about reelection. As if any of that has any meaning in a world where even one nuclear weapon is detonated in war. I don't think people understand how much danger we are in right now. #

One year ago today: Why I'm voting for Hillary Clinton.#

Some escalators are so tall they scare me. Examples: 1. The 34th St station on the 7 line. 2. The escalator connecting the E train to AirTrain in Jamaica. It's weird but I'm only scared of falling when going down, not up.#

A Scripting News reader asks if I can pre-expand all the videos and tweets. I should have seen this coming. The answer is no. Sorry, actually it's yes, I could do it, but no, I won't. Let me put it another way. Would you want to have all your Christmas presents opened at the same time? Would you like to be able to eat all 12 candies in a box at the same time, or would it be better to savor each one for its taste, texture, presence, the thought that went into its placement in the box? These are little gifts. You don't have to open them to get the value. But I do it this way to have a little fun with the presentation. So sorry, this is the way it is. However, I like to get feature requests and bug reports. If you have one please use the issues section on the repo for this site. Thanks! :-)#

This is just extraordinary. #

It's amazing how much undeserved faith we all put in John Kelly.#

Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem were on MSNBC last night talking about sexual harassment, Harvey Weinstein, Hollywood and the Women's Media Center which is giving an award to Hillary Clinton tonight. #

Repubs have am almost-credible explanation for the Steele Dossier. The Dems made a deal with the Russians to feed Steele false information about Trump's collusion with the Russians. There is a difficulty though. Why is Trump trying to delay implementation of Russian sanctions? #

We're emerging into a new age of McCarthyism. This time it's worse because there are multiple often contradictory dogma that one must be sufficiently pious about and fear being accused of. It's worse for Republicans. In the past 40 years we've developed some powerful tools, but were naïve to think they would always be used for good.#

We need a network with Rodney King as the guiding light. #