I wrote and recorded (though not always in that order) a couple dozen tracks over the last year, and decided it was time to put many of them into an album.
It's now available on my archive, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Tidal, etc.
I look forward to continuing this journey, though I'm running out of old artwork to reuse for album covers.
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I've had nothing but contempt for Bitcoin and everything (afaik) that has spawned from that ecosystem, though apparently I've never written about it here. I have nothing but contempt for Bitcoin and everything that has spawned from that ecosystem! I'm hopeful that it's on its way out, but made sad by the fact that so many people have been scammed.
Having said that, it seems that the "Web3" movement wants to move the web past where we are now (which is where Facebook/Google/etc are almost everything), which is an admirable goal. If we can do it in a reasonable way. There's just no reason to build systems that try to be trustless or fully distributed, we already have a fantastic hierarchically distributed infrastructure for this: DNS.
In 2012, I had a thought along these lines -- and I wrote a Google Doc (irony much?) -- don't bother reading it though, it's very outdated and lacking in specifics.
To make the web more open and decentralized, what we need is a new protocol and piece of software!
WATCH - "We Are The Cloud Hosts"
The web that we live with today is largely because people want the following capabilities:
- the ability to publish content to the public
- the ability to publish content to trusted people
- the ability to subscribe to content creators
Anybody can do all of these things without using Facebook/Google/blah, but it's not easy. Let's break it down:
- the ability to publish content to the public
Typically these require a web server to server the content. WATCH envisions a system where you could run software on multiple systems (your desktop, laptop when it's connected, cloud provider, etc), and it would automatically reproduce and sychronize your content. The protocol would allow connecting to a WATCH domain index in order to connect to the WATCH servers that contain data.
- the ability to publish content to trusted people
When making WATCH content requests, the requesting user could be identified by digital signature to ensure access rights.
- the ability to subscribe to content creators
AKA RSS. RSS feed generation and feed display would need to be integrated into this software.
This could all be accomplished by developing one peice of software: the WATCH server. In a typical scenario, the system would be setup as such:
- An instance of the WATCH server running as e.g. watch-index.mydomain.com. If you have your own domain you could run it on a cloud VM, presumably email providers would be able to provide this service for your accounts if it ever caught on, etc. If a user wants data from user@mydomain.com, it would connect there, and (assuming it had permission), would receive a list of WATCH content servers for that account (which could possibly include watch-index.mydomain.com).
- A few instances of WATCH servers running wherever. If you want your web presence to be very reliable you'd put them on VMs in a few AWS zones. If you don't care much you'd leave it running on your laptop or your desktop computer or whatever.
How it would be used:
- Part of your WATCH account state would be a feed of content
- To access WATCH feeds (yours, others, a mix of both, whatever), you'd point a browser at any of your own WATCH servers or indexes
- For purely-public web pages, there could be a lot of opt-in shortcuts to this, having the index servers redirect links to content, things like that.
- The WATCH server could provide browser-based and/or filesystem-based interfaces for posting content.
This is obviously not fully thought-through, but it does seem like some open software implementing this sort of infrastructure could be a really nice thing to have, and a good way forward for the web.
5 Comments
I recently got my first e-bike, and I have some thoughts:
(I've been riding in NYC for a number of years, most days, somewhere in the thousands of miles per year. Most of the time I ride a Salsa Casseroll Single with fenders, rack, panniers, 20 tooth cog for easier climbs, and most recently a Surly Open Bar handlebars and a stem riser for upright posture. Side note: a video of a recent ride. )
The last few (six?) months I've been dealing with a hamstring issue (too much running with poor biomechanics, curse you teenage self), and bicycling does seem to aggrevate it, so I decided to get an e-bike with a throttle in order
to be able to rest a little while still living life and going places by bike. I got a
RadRunner 2 (it seems pretty decent, reasonably priced, and you can set it up to carry passengers. I have some qualms from setting it up but I'll save those for another day).
This morning I rode from Tribeca to Union Square to pick up a few things from the green market, and back, usingthe throttle almost exclusively. I found myself going a lot faster than I normally ride, and worryingly defaulting into a "driving" mentality. It left a bad taste in my mouth.
Later in the day, I rode to my office/studio in Red Hook, via the Manhattan Bridge, and made a special effort to go at a usual (leisurely) pace. It worked, and I managed to stay in a better, more peaceful frame of mind, but it took mental effort. I will have to continue that effort.
I find I definitely prefer the peacefulness of riding regular (*cough* acoustic *cough*), but my hamstring appreciated the electric-ness. What's interesting, though, is the economics:
I recharged my battery after riding 15 miles (which would be about 90 minutes of riding at city speeds), and using a Kill-A-Watt, I measured 360Wh of power use at the mains power. I looked up electric rates, and a ballpark we're talking about $0.05 worth of electricity, and the battery probably had less than 0.05% (or $0.25) of its lifetime wear. If I had ridden my regular bike, I would've burned a few hundred calories at least, and unless I was extremely frugal in my eating (I am not), there's no way I would spend only $0.30 on replenishing those calories. So in some ways, this is more economical (and probably more efficient, too?). Obviously there are benefits to exercise but let's assume I have that taken care of anyway.
Delivery people all moved to e-bikes ages ago. There were stories in the news about how they needed them in order to keep up, but I never really realized that the economics of it, even if you are as fit as possible, made generally cheaper to use electricity than to eat the extra food!
It's very good that e-bikes have been made legal in NY, hopefully the parks will follow (it feels like there should be an ADA claim against the parks that ban them, as there are people who can ride e-bikes but can't ride acoustic bikes). I'm still stunned by the efficiency of this bike, even with its massive 3" wide tires and weighing in around 65lbs.
(Update March 19: I was curious how much electricity electric cars use by comparison… sounds like typical is 34kWh per 100 miles, or 340Wh per mile… assuming that holds up in the city, that’d make the electric bike use about 1/15th the power. which is roughly in line with the mass ratio...)
Recordings:nothing that will be missed
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