Articles from TnL
Why not just be you? On the internet even! No, sincerely. Do you have a different ID for the bar and the bank? Do your passport and your driver's license represent two different, incompatible people? So why can't your online identity work the same way, letting institutions we trust confirm attributes about you, while you decide what each site gets to see?
Open source that I grew up with in the 90s is dead. The new open source looks more like a revolution than a new idea to rally around. I think that's important and efficient, because when I was a teenager, I could talk to devs building new ideas and features on bulwark projects. Now, most technologies already exist in multiple forms, and we're not exploring new territory as much. What we need to do is focus on the things we all need and use.
One of the harder things to realize is that the loudest voice of any given thing is an idiot and should be ignored. Part of the problem is we had this asinine campaign to give everyone a voice as if they didn't already have one, but ultimately the incentives of the attention economy or the engagement economy is that we respond to feelings instead of information. It's time to be the adult in the room and tell people with strong feelings that they aren't allowed to have an opinion until they get past their emotions into the real work.
Programmers are some of the most powerful people on the planet, and not in a John Galt kind of way, that's just stupid. I mean that software has given extreme leverage to individuals and businesses alike, and the barrier to entry has always been extremely low. In the last 20 years, we have collectively given up that power and consolidated it in the hands of a few major tech companies. We did this because we're either lazy, incompetent, or more often than not, both.
You shouldn't hate yearly subscriptions, but you should absolutely hate how they're done by some companies. You might be on the ball about them, having a list to check and evaluate, but grandma isn't, and that's how they get her.