I love a good visualization...

I only wish it also had a "Most overfished species" listing somewhere to help id what to avoid.

GOOD.is | Eating the Right Fish (Raw Image)

Craig figures out what Tom knew, what, ten years ago?

Craig Newmark on the Web’s Next Big Problem

“Online culture,” he writes, “is dominated by trivial mash-ups of the culture that existed before the onset of mash-ups, and by fandom responding to the dwindling outposts of centralized mass media. It is a culture of reaction without action.”

Reading and the Web - Texts Without Context - NYTimes.com

So much this. The addendum in particular

I just don’t seem to feel fluent in anything much any more.

We talk about ‘flow’ quite a lot in software and I just have to wonder what’s happening to us all in that respect. Just like a conversation becomes stilted if the speakers keep having to refer to their phrasebooks and dictionaries, I wonder how much longer it will be possible to retain any sort of flowful state when writing software. Might the idea of mastery disappear forever under a constant torrent of new tools and technologies?

The stuff this article (and it's precursor) discuss has been growing in me for a few years, though I only realized it sometime in the past year or so. In part, it's overload... that feeling that Library / Framework Y might be better than Library / Framework X, and then while researching to decide, I learn about Z and my problem becomes another order of magnitude harder to figure out. This is Schwartz applied to programming -- the more choice is out there, the more intellectual overhead there is and the less confident I feel about just starting to work.

It's also why my interest -- though not yet my abilities -- have started to shift to UX and design quite markedly in the same time period. Writing code is less satisfying than it used to be, but beautiful design is a genuine accomplishment.

Whatever happened to programming, redux: it may not be as bad as all that

In its urgency to offer a me-too product, Buzz confuses the read/unread email paradigm with real-time messaging stream like Twitter. It adds insult to injury by co-mingling various cognitive spheres like blogs, photos, videos, status, etc into thin soup delivered through an unceasing firehose. The final blow is the embarrassingly unfocused layout: the complete absence of visual hierarchy and progressive disclosure, overabundance of visual cues/links for action, and clumsiness in using white space to strip away meaningful information density.

Buzz launch wasn’t flawed, Google’s intentions are « counternotions

Old, maybe posted here before (cursory search didn't reveal it), but gold star anyway.

Really interesting to look back in time at someone as smart as Eco talking about the promise and risks of the internet.

Eco (Coppock)

The Democrats are a clapped out, gut-free lobbyist machine. The Republicans are insane. The system is therefore paralyzed beyond repair.

Yes, I'm gloomy. Not because I was so wedded to this bill, although I think it's a decent enough start. But because if America cannot grapple with its deep and real problems after electing a new president with two majorities, then America's problems are too great for Americans to tackle.

And so one suspects that this is a profound moment in the now accelerating decline of this country. And one of the major parties is ecstatic about it.

Agree. I'm utterly dejected as regards the nation's future.

A Looming Landslide For Brown - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

interesting.

Internet ghost-towns: the blocked IPs where the bad guys used to live - Boing Boing

Is this as big a deal as I think it is? Anyone know more?

SSL/TLS Authentication Gap (SSL Gap) | PhoneFactor

Acidus wrote:
I mean really. This is not about right vs. left.

Oh, LOL, you still think there's anything -- ANYTHING -- too sacred for the average national politician to view through a lens other than, ahem, a political one. I applaud that you've somehow retained one or two shreds of idealism...

Of course this is an outrage, but look back over the last ten years or so. It's one outrage after another. One "What are they even talking about?!" after another. One example of utter and complete hypocrisy after another. One "How can *anyone* even think that way!? It doesn't even make the slightest bit of sense! zblergle flargen pzort *head asplode*" after another. I literally can't take it anymore... there's simply no way to wrap a logical mind around the situation in this country without stipulating that huge numbers of people are complete morons and just simple don't know or don't care that their representatives are out and out liars and opportunists. At which point said rational mind decides the only thing to do is bow out gracefully since there's no longer any place for it here and maybe it'd have more fun writing code or reading a nice book.

The majority of national politicians -- not to even mention the punditocracy -- now behave, without reflection, without any attempt to spend a few minutes to apply reason or logic, in knee jerk opposition to what they think the other party wants to do. Those 30 people would have voted against ANYTHING proposed by ANY Democrat.

I honestly believe that there is no action that could be taken by the president that wouldn't be maligned in some way by the majority of Republicans. He could literally cast down Osama Bin Laden with bolts of lightning and they'd be going batshit insane about him spending his precious time surreptitiously learning the Force and if it's appropriate for the president (and a Nobel Peace Prize Recipient!!!) to have the power to electrocute people with his mind. And I think that while the Democrats are marginally more capable of actually thinking, they either don't realize how utterly useless it is to engage in any such logical endeavor and end up losing when their opponent destroys them on trumped up ideology or else they just end up capitulating without a real fight in the face of a political ideology that's Lovecraftian in it's capacity to drive a man mad. (This is intriguing, actually... I think henceforth I'll refer to the various bleatings, tearful demagoguery and self interested pontificating of the "Right" as Nyarlathotep, the simultaneously singular God and incomprehensibly ramified multitude referred to as the Crawling Chaos -- each time I happen across some screed put out by these mendacious bastards I feel like my brain is trying to search every surface of a 3d fractal for something it can recognize as "thought", whence comes insanity.)

Reason is dead. Accountability is dead. Respectful debate on merits is so long dead it's mostly bones. Intellectualism is reviled and god forbid you should contemplate common ground... it's all now disputed territory and each square inch is won or lost in bloody battle (though, as in all wars, mostly it's the average person who suffers).

The last time I communicated with a Senators office (Chambliss, I think) I was treated like a fringe nutbag (by the podunk fuckwit responsible for answering phone calls from constituents) for having the temerity to indicate that basic human compassion is a universal Good. Glad that dick isn't "representing" me anymore.

Of course, now I live in DC where I don't even get representatives... part of me feels liberated by that. Having no voice means I don't have to worry about having it marginalized and ignored.

RE: Calling Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss