Link archive: January 9th, 2015

Less than Zero

I have to admit, my initial reaction to the idea of providing free access to some websites for people in developing countries was “well, it’s better than no access at all, right?” …but the more I think about it, the more I realise how short-sighted that is. The power of the internet stems from being a stupid network and anything that compromises that—even with the best of intentions—is an attack on its fundamental principles.

On the surface, it sounds great for carriers to exempt popular apps from data charges. But it’s anti-competitive, patronizing, and counter-productive.

The Perils of an All-Digital Movie Future

Dropping our films down the memory hole. Welcome to the digital dark age.

As a new developer | Charlotte Spencer’s Blog

I’m not a new developer, but I can definitely relate to this. In fact, when I’ve spoken to any developer about this, it turns out that everyone feels overwhelmed by how much we’re expected to know. That’s not good. We should open up and talk about this more (like Charlotte is doing here).

The Real Roots of Midlife Crisis - The Atlantic

As someone entering their mid 40s, I find this research into “the U-curve” immensely reassuring.

Abstractivate: Systems Thinking about WIT

As always, systems thinking makes a lot of sense for analysing problems, even if—or, especially if—it’s a social issue.

Internet Under Fire Gets New Manifesto

There’s more than a whiff of Indie Web thinking in this sequel to the Cluetrain Manifesto from Doc Searls and Dave Weinberger.

The Net’s super-power is connection without permission. Its almighty power is that we can make of it whatever we want.

It’s quite lawn-off-getty …but I also happen to agree with pretty much all of it.

Although it’s kind of weird that it’s published on somebody else’s website.

ping.gg | the world’s most simple monitoring service

A cheap’n’cheerful way of monitoring uptime for domains.

How we use web fonts responsibly, or, avoiding a @font-face-palm by Filament Group

Smart thinking here on the eternal dilemma with loading web fonts. Filament Group have thought about how the initial experience of the first page load could be quite different to subsequent page loads.