Dave Winer

Thanks for the blogroll love! You can also see one in action on my blog's home page. http://scripting.com/ And on a special site.. https://blogroll.social/ A blogroll is a kind of feed reader.

First off, congrats on building a site that a lot of people use and respect. I've definitely heard of it and I'm not from Chicago, so it must have gotten coverage somewhere. The first question is probably a dumb one: Have you actually asked any of the journalists you work with to get you some coverage? Also, you may have some success following up with the many reporters and bloggers who are covering the whole "new journalism" and "death of newspapers" beat. Talk to Dave Winer (http://www.scripting.com). You're in Chicago. Do you have any contacts at Medill? Reach out to them and do a partnership ... you should definitely get some coverage that way.

> The news site which stopped updating in 2007, the blog somebody last posted to in 2011, that sort of thing. Interesting, that hasn't been my experience. There's a certain group of stubborn techies who have active sites lacking HTTPS. One example is Dave Winer's blog: http://scripting.com/ He's doing some really interesting things over at https://feedland.com, so I'm glad I clicked through the TLS warning on his blog.

Those interested in this branch of the discussion might find Dave Winer’s blog series about building an open social network on top of the RSS standard worth a read. Here’s one of many posts: http://scripting.com/2025/06/28/211301.html

I cannot believe that Dave Winer is still at it after 30 years: http://scripting.com

The openness of this approach will allow for great recall potential with GPT models when we eventually get them running locally. Dave Winer has already been experimenting with this (admittedly not locally) based on his large backlog of blog posts and has found it effective[1]. [1] http://scripting.com/2023/08/06/131842.html?title=miriamIsGreatAtSumma…

Perhaps the Living Videotex slogan can help you: -- "We Make Shitty Software... With Bugs!" http://scripting.com/davenet/1995/09/03/wemakeshittysoftware.html I think it is a good mindset to have. We must all assume that software is an imperfect thing done by imperfect beings. Even celebrate it. On this particular case, I recommend concentrating not on the fact that there was a bug, but on the fact that the code written so many years ago is still relevant for someone today. Focus on that. Try to make something that someone will find a bug in 30 years from now.

Kottke.org has always been a source of links to break me outside of my normal routines. I pretty sure I started reading in 2000. But maybe it was from the default feeds in the original 2002 NetNewsWire RSS reader Beside http://scripting.com, Kottke is one of the few personal blogs that has survived this many years.

To quote an original blogger, Dave Winer, blogs, at best, are 'The unedited voice of a person.' http://scripting.com/2015/02/07/theUneditedVoiceOfAPerson.html I don't read scripting.com much anymore, but it was the first blog I stumbled onto.

scripting.com doesn't use https either (went through a list of some older blog sites I could think of but most are https now.) The following was written years ago, but it is a lot easier to use https now. http://scripting.com/2014/08/08/myBlogDoesntNeedHttps.html

"What I'm trying to do with sponsors is what I strongly believe is the most responsible middle ground that keeps the greatest number of people happy, myself included." The like the fact Troy has his ^own^ blog and can make his own call. There are alternatives ways to think about ^how^ a blog makes money. [0] [0] Dave Winer, "How I made over $2 million with this blog" ~ http://scripting.com/stories/2009/02/11/howIMadeOver2MillionWithTh.htm…

> We’ve come to believe that the best way for us to improve people’s productivity going forward is to streamline the workflows that generate so much email in the first place. AKA Paper --> https://paper.dropbox.com I don't know if I understand what Dropbox is anymore. It's gone from: syncing file storage --> a decentralized app ecosystem that in some ways competes with PaaS (effectively an OS [1]) --> document and media collaboration tools. They might be one of the only companies whose products compete with Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon... Just to clarify, I think they've done all of these things well. 1: http://scripting.com/liveblog/users/davewiner/2015/12/07/0593.html

Dave Winer (whatever you think of him) had some pretty insightful commentary on this increasing usage of 'coder' and 'coding' by journalists, VCs, and politicians: http://scripting.com/2014/06/04/#a1401884889 http://scripting.com/2014/08/27/whatCoderMeansToMe.html Quoting the first: >I joked on Twitter that if VCs and reporters want to call us coders, maybe we should call them accountants or keypressers. Since the 'keypressers' at Motherboard seem to rely on interviews with programmers like Dave Shields for at least some of their material, perhaps we should stop cooperating with them until they stop calling us 'coders' and describing what we do as 'coding'.

Podcasts: * http://show.terrifyingrobotdog.com - new and near-future tech and its impact * http://www.unfinished.bz - web design, business, funny stuff * http://devchat.tv/js-jabber - JavaScript * https://boagworld.com/show - web development and business * http://www.relay.fm/rocket - general tech * http://spong.com/podcasts/tsf/ - videogame development Sites and blogs: * http://culture.vg/ - videogame criticism * http://acko.net/ - advanced JS * http://scripting.com/ - web, news, * https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/ web, writing Here are some of my favourites that I haven't seen mentioned (so maybe lesser known).

Microsoft's big blunder is that they assume that "developer" is synonymous with "Windows developer." They have excellent tools available for Windows developers. But step out of that silo and man, just forget it. You have to fight your own system every step of the way. This is an example of a strategy tax (http://scripting.com/davenet/2001/04/30/strategyTax.html): Microsoft's strategy for a loooong time was to pretend like Windows was the only thing that existed. When Windows was a majority monoculture, this worked pretty well for them. But now that it's just one ecosystem among many, it forces their developer-tools people to pull their punches so as to avoid undercutting their Windows people.

Good list. To complement this article, I highly recommend "Demoing Software for Fun & Profit" by Dave Winer. There are pretty good tips in it. http://scripting.com/davenet/1995/01/04/demoingsoftwareforfunprofi.htm…

Hmm. Perhaps if we expected more, then geeks wouldn't post up broken links for fear of under-delivering. Just go to http://scripting.com/ if you want to see the article.

Just go to http://scripting.com/ if the threads2.scripting.com subdomain isn't working.

I can't read this without wondering to what extent it is a response to the death of Aaron Swartz. Particularly considering that Aaron's suicide brought http://scripting.com/2003/06/29.html#When:9:33:43PM back to the attention of a number of people. In case you entirely missed this subtext, I recommend re-reading it, and seeing how well the glove fits on a possible perspective of Aaron's life.

http://www.scripting.com (1998/1999) -> http://philip.greenspun.com (sql for web nerds) -> http://joelonsoftware.com -> http://www.paulgraham.com (A plan for spam 2002) -> news.ycombinator.com -> profit? Something like that. Before this the Joel on Software forum was what I checked daily.

Dave Winer has been trying to do an open source version a while ago but didn't get too far — but I can really see the need for this. http://scripting.com

Followup: http://scripting.com/stories/2010/08/07/visualizingFailureDay2.html

My favorite paragraph: http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/04/03/verdictAfterOneDay.html#p6

This is a really interesting discussion, spurred by Dave Winer's posts on the need for a global namespace for dispersing microblogging away from centralised services: http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/08/06/anotherBrickInTheCloud.htm… http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/08/07/tradingOneCentralizedNetFo… http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/08/13/looselyCoupled140charMessa… What's the best way to resolve simple usernames to feeds (and other endpoints)? .tel? webfinger? i-names? Something else? All of the above?

Dave Winer - http://scripting.com/

> The reason RSS failed to reach mainstream adoption by users is because it is not user friendly at all. While I love RSS myself, no amount of tech nerd nostalgia is going to make it popular enough that your mom starts using it. I think it is a false premise that something is only valid if "mom starts using it". That is the profit-driven mentality. eg. "how can we market this? How can we expand RSS market share into valuable demographics?" etc Also, I actually did teach my Mom to use RSS a decade ago and she still uses it today. These concepts are really not that hard. I told my mom it was like she was getting a newsletter from her blogs delivered to a special dedicated inbox, but without cluttering up her email. She was delighted. I think if someone knows how to use email, and knows how to browse the web, and knows how to sign up for email newsletters, they can handle RSS. I would argue that it is in many ways more useful for less computer literate people. > Then comes the UX nightmare of actually finding the feed on each website you visit. If the site even has one. This UX nightmare was solved 15 years ago. Browsers displayed a little icon in the corner when RSS is detected.[1], Firefox later displayed an RSS icon prominently in the address bar[2]. The UX nightmare was then re-introduced as the RSS icon was de-emphasized[3][4] and eventually dropped completely, with a dubious justification.[5] [1]: https://www.hanselman.com/blog/FeedAutoDiscovery.aspx [2]:…

That is by the way not alternative history but where RSS started. Ok, not directly. First it started as a proto semantic web protocol, at Netscape to syndicate links and titles for their portal. Then Dave Winer used RSS to syndicate his weblog, scripting.com and started the marriage of blogs and feeds. But blogs at that time were more small paragraphs, less big articles. And every paragraph was syndicated. That's still visible in archives of long running blogs: • http://scripting.com/2001/09/11.html • https://kottke.org/98/12/ … which seems a lot twitter like. The focus on longer articles in blogging is something which started later, in 2001 or so, in my recollection. Btw: Following those blurb-like RSS feeds in a traditional RSS reader with read markers is overwhelming, in my experience. I banned all those feeds into a "High Volume" folder where I more often than not mark all as read just to get ahead.

The problem with name-and-shame posts, other than their juvenile premise, is that you can read up on what the people in question say, and call the author on their shit. Once you do this, you realize that one these objectors is not like the others, because once you discount the last few entrants' unjustified snake oil and utter quackery, you're left with Dave Winer's objections to Google's strategy on increasing the adoption of HTTPS by more and more explicit visual indicators of HTTP being 'non-secure' [1] and Mozilla's differently-worded, but comparable approach to 'deprecating' HTTP. By cherry-picking his most abrasive soundbites and his most entitled-sounding Twitter replies, Scott handwaves away Dave's more reasoned frustrations, such as his 2016 lament [3] that his current webhost doesn't offer a no-cost, push-button way of enabling HTTPS, and that his long-runing, statically-hosted blog would now require ongoing maintenance to stay compliant with the ever-changing list of requirements Chrome and Mozilla set in service of a larger goal. He wonders that if UI changes don't have the effect Chrome and Mozilla are hoping for, will more drastic changes follow, like refusing to display HTTP pages altogether, and reading his words he doesn't appear to buy that static, read-only sites need strong assurances of identity and resistance from third-party tampering, especially not at the risk of potentially making access to those pages impaired in the most popular browsers…

It's unfortunate that XML has fallen so out of favor that well-made, strongly-schemad formats specified in XML, like Atom, are suffering in turn -- although reasons for feeds' demise go well beyond its forms-on-the-wire. This trend frustrates me, but it's undeniable that a lot of web data interchange happens with JSON-based formats nowadays, and the benefits of network effects, familiarity, and tooling support make JSONification worth exploring. But even more frustrating is when a format comes out that's close to being a faithful translation of an established format, but makes small, incompatible changes that push the burden of faithful translation onto content authors, or the makers of third-party libraries. I honestly don't intend to offer harsh targeted critique against the authors -- I assume good faith; more just voicing exasperation. There have been similar attempts over the years -- one from Dave Winer, the creator of RSS 0.92 and RSS 2.0, called RSS.js [1], which stoked some interest at first [2]; others by devs working in isolation without seeming access to a search engine and completely unaware of prior art; some who are just trying something unrelated and accidentally produce something usable [3]; finally, this question pops up from time to time on forums where people with an interest in this subject tend to congregate [4]. Meanwhile, real standards-bodies are off doing stuff that reframes the problem entirely [5] -- which seems out-of-touch at first, but I'd…

[Dave Winer](http://scripting.com)