Linked List: September 2014

The Importance of The Indie Web

Dan Gillmor:

We’re in danger of losing what’s made the Internet the most important medium in history – a decentralized platform where the people at the edges of the networks – that would be you and me – don’t need permission to communicate, create and innovate.

This isn’t a knock on social networks’ legitimacy, or their considerable utility. But when we use centralized services like social media sites, however helpful and convenient they may be, we are handing over ultimate control to third parties that profit from our work, material that exists on their sites only as long as they allow.

Even if most people don’t recognize what’s at stake – yet – I’m happy to say that a small but growing group of technologists does. And they’ve created what they call the “Indie Web” movement to do something about it, in an extended online conversation and at periodic in-person meetings.

Shellshock Critical Vulnerability in Bash

Uh oh.

Leonardo DiCaprio Addresses UN Regarding Climate Change

A celebrity doing important work.

Roman Vishniac Humanist, Photographer

Living with the memory of hardship, Vishniac was, “an absolute optimist filled with tragedy. His humanism is not just for Jews, but for every living thing.” He probably believed in God or some similar concept, but he was non-denominational and did not adhere strictly to the principles of any religion. He even clashed with Orthodox Jews in one well-known instance: The religious Jews he met on his trek around Europe would not let themselves be photographed, quoting the Bible and its prohibition of making of graven images. Vishniac’s famous response was, “the Torah existed for thousands of years before the camera had been invented.”

Vishniac was known for having great respect for all living creatures. Whenever possible, he returned a specimen to its precise home before it was captured and one time “[lent] his bathtub to tadpoles for weeks until he could return them to their pond”. In accordance with this philosophy, he photographed almost exclusively living subjects.

Picnic CSS

Lightweight CSS framework. A nice alternative to Bootstrap. See also Min.

Boyhood

Just finished watching Boyhood, a film shot over twelve years with the same cast — amazing work by director Richard Linklater, known for the Before Sunrise trilogy.

Here’s Deep Blue by Arcade Fire, from Boyhood’s soundtrack:

Gravit Open Source Design Tool

In the spirit of Macromedia Freehand, my favorite drawing program ever. Looking forward to seeing further development on this!

Falling in Love With The Dark

We need to solve the problem of light pollution so we can continue to see our galaxy with our eyes rather than only through monitor screens, even though the view through monitor screens can be awesome.

Jenga in JavaScript

Simulation of physical movement is one of the best uses of computers.

Some of Vivian Maier’s Contact Sheets

Looking at someone’s contact sheets is like taking a peek at their soul.