By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jerks and the Start-Ups They Ruin
Dan Lyons, New York Times, 2017/04/03
I have long said that venture capitalists don't fund ideas, they fund people like themselves. Surely the latest round of business failures proves this. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Nothing will change until you start building.
Jonathan Z. White, Free Code Camp, Medium, 2017/04/03
I was at an IMS meeting ages ago and someone said to me, "Quality ships." I've never let that statement go. It doesn't matter how great your ideas are, if you don't make something out of them, they may as well not exist. "Start by building. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Games Pose Unique Accessibility Challenges
Pamela Hogle, Learning Soutions, 2017/04/03
This is probably the best advice, from Joshua Straub, editor-in-chief of DAGERS, a game journalism site for disabled gamer. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Thoughts on the UMUC IT Spin Off
Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed, 2017/03/23
This article offers reflections on a recent University of Maryland University College (UMUC) initiative to spin off its IT department into a for-profit company. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Brace Yourself For The Bitcoin Hard Fork
Rob Blasetti, Decentralize Today, 2017/03/23
There's a lot of history behind this one, but essentially the split is between the original developers, who want to keep the size of a block limited, and Bitcoin miners (ie., the people who actually encrypt the blocks), who want the size of the block to grow. This can happen in distributed systems. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. This Article Won’t Change Your Mind
Julie Beck, The Atlantic, 2017/03/23
Some time about 20 years ago I decided that i would stop arguing, and start explaining. It was no longer about convincing others, it was about making my own reasoning clear. Why? because after almost two decades in philosophy I concluded that nobody is convinced by argumentation. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Voice Is the Next Big Platform, Unless You Have an Accent
Sonia Paul, Backchannel, 2017/03/23
I have mixed feelings about the importance of voice commands. Yes, we will need voice - we frequently need to communicate with a computer when we are otherwise occupied, as for example when we are driving. And a computer can be a participant in a conversation, as for example on Star Trek. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Getting Web Services Up and Running on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Using Vagrant and the AWS CLI
Tony Hirst, OUseful Info, 2017/04/06
This is the sort of stuff I've been working on recently. This is a particularly useful project: "here’s an example of how to get a browser based application up and running on EC2 using vagrant from the command line." The description is pretty detailed and is probably not for everyone. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why we never think alone
David Gurteen, Gurteen Knowledge-Log, 2017/04/06
This short post is a restatement of something from Steven Sloman that has appeared numerous times in these pages over the years: "Humans have built hugely complex societies and technologies, but most of us don't even know how a pen or a toilet works. How have we achieved so much despite understanding so little? Because whilst individuals know very little, the collective or ‘hive' mind knows a lot.". More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How French “Intellectuals” Ruined the West: Postmodernism and Its Impact, Explained
Helen Pluckrose, Aero Magazine, 2017/04/06
I am more or less a post-modernist, though I arrived at my understanding of the core ideas independently of the authors cited in this article (though on reading them find myself nodding in agreement). So I appreciate this clear and articulate description of postmodernism, and the argument offered against it. More...
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