Kyle Baxter:
Dan Benjamin, obviously, will no longer be a part of it. There are things that you would never expect to happen, and this is one of them.
I don’t want to comment on the circumstances of this, because I don’t know anything about them and I am sure it’s very personal to Dan and John, but I will say this: I’m sad to see that the show is finished in this form. The Talk Show was the first show that got me hooked on podcasts.
Me too. In fact, The Talk Show is the first podcast I ever listened to at all, period. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say I wouldn’t be listening to any 5by5 podcast were it not for The Talk Show.
Sad.
Recently, I’ve had some discussions with a friend of mine about the graphic user interface. It started with a comment by him that he thought we should abolish the GUI. This made me really, really angry. I didn’t understand what could possibly make him think this, so I talked with him some more, and suddenly it clicked. He has something very common on the internet, which I suggest we call Linux User Syndrome. Linux User Syndrome at its best is a refusal to recognize that you’re different from most other people, and at its worst, an insistence on a sort of tech elite (“If you don’t understand the command line, you shouldn’t be allowed to use a computer.”). The argument usually begins like this:
iOS can’t be that popular because it lacks [a removal battery, a physical keyboard, access to the filesystem, the ability to run non-approved code].
Ultimately, what this argument is is an insistence that the key to people enjoying using their computers is some sort of increased technical power over the computer. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a nerd myself. I know from experience that iOS is less powerful because it doesn’t give you access to the filesystem. I know from experience that iOS is less powerful because it doesn’t let you run unsigned code. But most losses have an associated gain, and while I don’t deny that you lose something by having no filesystem or unsigned code, you also gain something enormous: user trust. Which matters, because people are typically scared of their computers. Especially older people. My grandmother uses Windows and fears it. She’s terrified of breaking something if she so much as touches it. My grandfather uses an iMac, and while he’s certainly not afraid of it, he doesn’t understand a great deal about it and needs help occaisonaly. But they’ve both used my iPad with absolutely no trouble. They didn’t have to ask me anything about it.
The iPad is easy enough to use that orangutans can use it. That’s not incredible; it’s flat-out historic. A computer so simple, so easy to use that other animals can use it. That is the Apple dream. That is what the iPad is supposed to be. And to say it won’t succeed because it’s not complicated enough…
That is Linux User Syndrome.
How the National Security Agency has gone rogue -
Amy Goodman:
I asked Binney if he felt that the NSA has copies of every email sent in the US. He replied, “I believe they have most of them, yes.” Binney said two US senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, have expressed concern, but have not spoken out, as, Binney says, they would lose their seats on the Senate select committee on intelligence.
Incredible. Via Dustin Curtis.
Moonstruck Timberwolf:
At long last, I have been inspired for topic with which to kick off this blog. No, I’m not talking about ugliness in people. I’m talking about ugliness in art.
Specifically, I mean art that displays ugliness without celebrating ugliness. That description is a bit vague, so let me give an example. I recently read Stephen Greydanus’ review of the film adaptation of The Hunger Games, and the comments were awash with people proclaiming that no good Christian parents could allow their children to be exposed to such a thing because of the rampant immorality portrayed within the story. They claim, rightly so, that good art should have as its root the good, the true, and the beautiful. However, while I agree with this basic claim, I think that these detractors have an overly narrow concept of how one can root art in these values.
Right. It’s also worth bringing this up in the context of this article in which Jeffrey Weiss sees that religion seems totally absent from the world of The Hunger Games and concludes that Suzanne Collins wants there to be no religion. The problem with that is that The Hunger Games is dystopian, not utopian. It is clear that Suzanne Collins purposely purged religion from the series entirely–even the names are never Christian ones. I don’t know what her personal religious beliefs are, but regardless of her intent, the series clearly recognizes that a world like the one portrayed in The Hunger Games could not coexist with religion.
How Frictionless Sharing Could Undermine Your Legal Right to Privacy -
Oh boy.
Matt Langer on the insanity of “curation”.
Mark Steyn:
No, the most basic issue here is not religious morality, individual liberty, or fiscal responsibility. It’s that a society in which middle-aged children of privilege testify before the most powerful figures in the land to demand state-enforced funding for their sex lives at a time when their government owes more money than anyone has ever owed in the history of the planet is quite simply nuts.
Everyone’s talking about Rush Limbaugh right now. Regardless of where you stand on the actual issue (whether religious organizations should be mandated to pay for treatments they believe to be immoral), and BTW, I agree with the Catholic Church on this, it should be obvious to anyone that what Rush did was inexcusable and that his joke of an apology made it worse. Fluke’s testimony had almost nothing to do with sex in the first place! Her testimony was wrong because it betrayed a basic misunderstanding of economics–if the insurance started covering birth control, it would have to stop covering other treatments, or pay less of every treatment, or raise prices, or something else. But her testimony had almost nothing to do with “reproductive freedom” and certainly it had nothing to do with her personal love life.
What Limbaugh said was disgusting. Nobody deserves to be spoken to that way. When he speaks like that, he makes a mockery out of a serious argument. He makes his own viewpoint seem illegitimate. Shame on him.
Kubrick -
A new project of mine.
John Gruber’s Review of ‘Steve Jobs’ -
Gruber at his best.
DHH:
The world is full of ideas that can be executed with 10 to 20 hours per week, let alone 40. The number of projects that are truly impossible unless you put in 80 or 120 hours per week are vanishingly small by comparison.
Mat Honan wrote an article calling Google’s new “privacy” (or lack thereof) policy evil. I concur. But writing blog posts is not going to be enough to get them to change. So today I deleted my Google account, and I’d advise you to do the same. Really. It’s all gone (if Google really deleted it). Even the Gmail account. I even blocked access to Google’s website in my hosts file. I don’t want one cent of money going to Google because of my actions. I have no interest in funding a company like them. So I’ve done my best to prevent that from happening. I’ve switched all my email to iCloud (roboteti at me dot com), my search is DuckDuckGo on the Mac and Bing on iOS.
If you have any interest in protecting your online privacy, you should think very deeply about doing this yourself.
[video]
White House joins SOPA, PIPA opposition -
Looks like the Obama administration doesn’t mess everything up. Via John Gruber.