TV network. I worked there for a couple years, in finance, at the broadcast center. CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainment Group division of Paramount Global. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBS (more)

HealthCare info (more)

hosting provider, using for FluxGarden: (2021-04-25) Move To DigitalOcean

Prodigy Communications Corporation (Prodigy Services Corp., Prodigy Services Co., Trintex) was an online service from 1984 to 2001 that offered its subscribers access to a broad range of networked services, including news, weather, shopping, bulletin boards, games, polls, expert columns, banking, stocks, travel, and a variety of other features... Prodigy was founded on February 13, 1984, as Trintex, a joint venture between CBS, computer manufacturer IBM, and retailer Sears, Roebuck and Company... By 1990, it was the second-largest (and 1993 the largest)[5] online service provider with 465,000 subscribers, trailing only CompuServe's 600,000.[6] Its headquarters were in White Plains, New York[7] until 2000, when it moved to Austin, Texas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodigy_(online_service)

CompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS) was an American online service provider, the first major commercial one in the world – described in 1994 as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the others are Prodigy and America Online)."[1] It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major influence through the mid-1990s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe

The Minitel was a videotex online service accessible through telephone lines, and was the world's most successful online service prior to the World Wide Web. It was invented in Cesson-Sévigné, near Rennes in Brittany, France. The service was rolled out experimentally on 15 July 1980[1] in Saint-Malo, France, and from autumn 1980 in other areas, and introduced commercially throughout France in 1982 by the PTT (Postes, Télégraphes et Téléphones; divided since 1991 between France Télécom and La Poste).[2] From its early days, users could make online purchases, make train reservations, check stock prices, search the telephone directory, have a mail box, and chat in a similar way to what is now made possible by the World Wide Web... In 1978, Postes, Télégraphes et Téléphones, the French PTT organisation, began designing the Minitel network. By distributing terminals that could access a nationwide electronic directory of telephone and address information, it hoped to increase use of the country's 23 million phone lines, and reduce the costs of printing phone books and employing directory assistance personnel.[6] Millions of terminals were given for free (officially loans, and property of the PTT) to telephone subscribers. At the time, France was undergoing a vision of socialism, where the state would develop high technology for the benefit of its citizens' lives. The TGV high-velocity trains also resulted from this vision... By early 1986 1.4 million terminals were connected to Minitel, with plans to distribute another million by the end of the year. This was met with opposition from newspapers worried about competition from an electronic network... France Télécom estimated that almost 9 million terminals—including web-enabled personal computers (Windows, Mac OS, and Linux)—had access to the network at the end of 1999, and that it was used by 25 million people (of a total population of 60 million). Developed by 10,000 companies, in 1996, almost 26,000 different services were available.[8] Minitel became a great financial success for the PTT, as using the service cost the 2022 equivalent of 30 euro cent per minute. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel (more)

Earth by David Brin (1990) ISBN:055329024X https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_(Brin_novel) (more)

Unique-but-abandoned Mac-only product, developed by Bill Atkinson (following an LSD trip). Could be a HyperText engine (Beyond Cyberpunk), could be a (mainly single-user) data-backed GUI CardDeck-based development environment. Launched 1987. (more)

I've been programming and designing software for over 25 years. My chief interest is in systems that allow end-users to visualize and manipulate complex systems. I've designed and built many systems that involve both complex user interfaces and an AI/KR component (such as a visual knowledge entry for medical expert systems, and a spatial visualizer for the Cyc knowledge base). I've also built many systems that involve end-user programming, for many different types of users including both children and scientists. My approach: the goal is to make software that lets people be smarter (Augmenting Human Intellect). http://hyperphor.com/ammdi https://www.linkedin.com/in/mdtravers/ (more)

30-plus years of HyperCard, the missing link to the Web. This piece originally ran on May 30, 2012 as Hypercard approached its 25th anniversary, and it appears unchanged below. (more)

Stanislav Datskovskiy: Why HyperCard Had to Die. do you now know why Steve Jobs killed HyperCard? (more)

Inside the Koch Brothers-Backed Effort to Block the Largest Election-Reform Bill in Half a Century. In public, Republicans have denounced Democrats’ ambitious electoral-reform bill, the For the People Act, as an unpopular partisan ploy. (more)

In the United States, a political action committee (PAC) is a 527 organization that pools campaign contributions from members and donates those funds to campaigns for or against candidates, ballot initiatives, or legislation.[1][2] The legal term PAC was created in pursuit of campaign finance reform in the United States. Democracies of other countries use different terms for the units of campaign spending or spending on political competition (see political finance). At the U.S. federal level, an organization becomes a PAC when it receives or spends more than $1,000 for the purpose of influencing a federal election, and registers with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), according to the Federal Election Campaign Act as amended by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (also known as the McCain–Feingold Act).[3] At the state level, an organization becomes a PAC according to the state's election laws. Contributions to PACs from corporate or labor union treasuries are illegal, though these entities may sponsor a PAC and provide financial support for its administration and fundraising. Union-affiliated PACs may solicit contributions only from union members. Independent PACs may solicit contributions from the general public and must pay their own costs from those funds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee

Citizens United v. FEC - Wikipedia. It was argued in 2009 and decided in 2010. The Court held that the free speech clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political communications by corporations, including nonprofit corporations, labor unions, and other associations. (more)

Tool to use Excalidraw to give a UX like The Brain for Obsidian. https://github.com/zsviczian/excalibrain

Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake. Charles Koch... the 15th-wealthiest man in the U.S., says he isn’t interested in more division. At age 85, he says, he is turning his attention to building bridges across partisan divides to find answers to sprawling social problems such as poverty, addiction, recidivism, gang violence and homelessness. His critics are skeptical, noting that his fierce Republican partisanship over the years blew up a lot of bridges. (more)

Watch Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse school Amy Coney Barrett on dark money. The Republicans, Whitehouse noted, seem to be getting their money’s worth. Their judicial nominees have voted in at least 80 cases where “there is an identifiable Republican donor interest” and ruled in their favor, to the detriment of workers’ rights, women’s rights, voting rights, and the environment. Whitehouse, who is a former US Attorney, sounded like someone delivering a closing argument in the courtroom. He blamed the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United, which allowed unlimited money to flow into political campaigns, for the current situation. (more)

How The Koch Brothers Broke Democracy & Stuck Taxpayers With The Bill. The background for this piece is Jane Mayer’s extraordinary book Dark Money, which came out earlier this year. The subtitle says it all: The Hidden History Of The Billionaires Behind The Rise Of The Radical Right. (more)

Steve Yegg on Why Kotlin Is Better Than Whatever Dumb Language You're Using (more)

Ben Hunt: The Anti-Anarchist Cookbook. Ask these three questions of any narrative – is it effective on a brain chemical level? is it resilient against narrative counterattack? is it authentic to what you truly believe? – is the right framework to achieve lasting policy success in a modern age of ubiquitous social media and culture-porn addiction. (more)