What’s up today? (Part 1)

Must watch for app developers:

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Again for developers, this blog by Ruben Verborgh explains what’s special about Linked Data and how working with it can be made easy and fun without dumbing it down in the way more traditional Web APIs tend to do (ie instead of returning flattened JSON objects, provide proxy JSON objects which query the whole Web when you access their properties, eg using LDflex).

Really good stuff:

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35th Chaos Communication Congress, 27 Dec - 30 Dec, Leipzig, Germany. Streaming tonight:

Lecture: A Blockchain Picture Book

Blockchain origins and related buzzwords, described in pictures.

Where is the blockchain, how long is it, and what does it have to do with cryptography? And is it really something completely new? I spent a lot of time in pubs explaining to people what this blockchain hype is all about. It turns out that the best way to do that is to use images - literally.

The idea behind this talk is to give you a rough understanding of the scientific background behind the Blockchain technology.

We make a short excursion into the field of distributed computing where we gain a rough understanding of the origins behind this technology - in a most abstract way.

We explore how different kinds of Blockchains are formed and what kind of properties we may achieve - good as well as the bad ones.

Be warned: This is not meant as investment advice. The goal of the talk is to give you an actual basic understanding of the topic so you can teach your uninformed friends at the pub, too.

Nearly 16,000 visitors, moderators in between presentations:

Drink your water, wash your hands. Also if you find overflowing bottle-drop-off points there’s information on how to report them right at the bottle-drop-off points.

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UI → ZUI

Just gonna leave this zoomable UI here…

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Getting dizzy just by looking at it :dizzy_face:

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:nauseated_face: I don’t think I could use that! :rofl:

It is very cool though. Maybe you just get used to the sickness!

Edit: VR with gloves could actually be very minority report like!

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Happy new year to all you super ants.

:stuck_out_tongue:

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Netflix has picked a side.

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This is actually great. Zooming in and out instead of opening/closing.

Have you heard of SOLU? It was an unsuccessful Finnish startup and attempt at building a pocket computer with cloud-only OS and principally somewhat similar UI.

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They mention the cryptocurrency community, and he is positively minded about it, but recognizes that it’s not feasible at the moment.

The guy is a fierce free speech defender, and the outlook for digital economies in the light of what payment providers do, and are capable of doing, is something he will probably feel very strong for, as it is in direct connection with the ability of people to exercise free speech.

SAFENetwork is definitely something to his liking, if only a bit further in development stage, and brought to his attention - the distinct nature of this project - he would no doubt spend time getting to know it, and spread the word about it.

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PANE is a prototype live, functional programming environment built around data-visibility. In PANE, all intermediate values are visible by default, and you construct a program by acting on these concrete values.

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I’m not sure it’s about picking sides as much as being powerless against a nation state scale bully (that, by the way, has been actively supported by the US while disregarding all the glaring human rights violations it’s rulers have been committing).

Of course they could’ve just left the country altogether, which might have been both the right and the wise thing to do. No person caring about morality should do anything with that pit of hell.

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I don’t know if this belongs here but I found it interesting. It’s about crazy ideas like that society should take back the control from corporations and such.

A few fun quotes:

America’s in it’s own category of country — a rich one of poor people, a powerful one of powerless people, a wealthy nation of broke people.

Before there are billionaires — a society should have no children living in abject poverty. No starving mothers. Nobody — not a single person — choosing between chemotherapy and the mortgage.

A “rich” society full of impoverished kids and a handful of billionaires isn’t really a rich one — it’s a poor one.

America feels like the Wild West — can’t afford a a doctor? So sorry, now you die — because it’s never outgrown that mentality.

… predatory capitalism itself was an extreme ideology — it said we don’t need any governance, of any kind, ever, whatsoever. Just get out of the way, and let the market do it’s job! it will self-regulate! LOL — it didn’t.

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No SAFE this time but Solid gets a mention.

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There was too much political rhetoric in that article for me to finish reading it but I did agree with a few of those quotes. There is a shocking statistic floating around about a large percentage (don’t remember the number) of Americans living paycheck to paycheck. This is like living in poverty, in my view. Whether “predatory capitalism” (the quote actually defines laissez-faire capitalism) is the cause is arguable.

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Well, given the state and its government facilitates and enforces incorporation, this should be simple. Let’s never confuse incorporation and its legal identity and powers with anything like freedom of association. To attack free markets under this scenario is a straw man argument.

I agree this is probably one for an off topic thread though.

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