If you want to understand how we got to the Web that we have today, I would strongly recommend reading this beautiful piece by Mia Sato at The Verge on the theme of “Google shapes everything on the Web” It…
Jan 08
TDYR 414 – A New Plan For A New Year
It’s a new year and this year I’ve got a new plan that I’m aiming at for producing weekly podcast episodes. In this episode I talk about the plan an how it relates to other work I’m doing and content I’m creating. More info at: https://www.danyork.com/…
Jan 08
ULA’s Successful Vulcan Centaur Rocket Launch Is Good News
As I was posting about on Mastodon, early this morning United Launch Alliance (ULA) successfully launched their new Vulcan Centaur rocket into space from their launch site in Florida. The rocket carried the first US moon lander (Peregrine) from a private company (Astrobiotic), as well as a whole range of science experiments, part of the remains of several people, and even a collection of stories from writers. Some great coverage is available from ArsTechnica, SpaceNews, SpaceFlight Now, and Space.com (many photos). The key point is that the rocket launched successfully! As I wrote about back in my November 3rd issue…
Jan 07
A New Plan For Getting in the Habit of Consistently Publishing Podcasts and Newsletters
In thinking about my themes for 2024 and specifically about changing my habits, one change that I am going to try is to get consistent with both my “The Dan York Report” podcast and also my “A View From The Crow’s Nest” newsletter. Right now they are both “irregular” or “periodic”… meaning I just do them whenever I think about them or have some reason for doing them. Which means that sometimes I publish 4 of them in a week… and then I don’t publish anything for four weeks or more! 🤦♂️ I want to get in the *habit* of…
Jan 06
Crossing the 45th Parallel in Northern Vermont
From the Burlington, Vermont area, it’s only about a 45 minute drive to the Canadian border. (Yes, we are *that*close!🙂) As you get close to the border on Interstate 89, there is a sign on the right side that says: Latitude 45° North Midpoint Equator to North Pole Yes, indeed, once you drive past that point you are now getting closer to the North Pole than the Equator from a latitude perspective! Wikipedia of course has some interesting info about the 45th parallel, including that it has formed part of the US / Canada border at times. In fact, when…
Jan 04
Russ White On The Process Around Creating RFCs in the IETF
Have you ever been curious about the process of creating a Request For Comments (RFC) document within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)? These are the standards like, oh, “HTTP”, that power the Internet. Have you been interested in understanding…
Jan 03
20 Years Ago, LiveJournal Was My Home On The Web
This morning brought a reminder that it was twenty years ago that I opened up an account on LiveJournal. For about four years, “LJ” was my home on the web. It was where I wrote MANY articles, connected with people across their journals, and started interacting with a few people with whom I am still in touch today. My journal site is still there today, with a much younger photo of me (I still had brown hair!), but my last entry was 11 years ago in April 2013, and that was just an update to a post four years earlier…
Jan 02
The Rise of AI-driven “Virtual Influencers” (to no surprise)
Visit “Aitana Lopez” on Instagram. As you scroll down, the account looks like that of any of the hundreds (or thousands) of “influencer” accounts on Instagram. “Aitana” post photos from her travels, of her wearing various clothes, and making references…
Jan 01
AVFTCN 032 – Finding Hope Amidst the Chaos
Happy New Year! Climbing up into the proverbial crow’s nest as 2024 begins, it looks a bit bleak up ahead. LOTS of icebergs! Of course here in the USA we have the US presidential election, that is sure to bring out an added level of nastiness. We are not alone in this… a colleague of mine […]
Jan 01
My Themes for 2024
As I have been doing for the past 15 years (see list), my first post of 2024 across all my sites is of three words that are my aspirations or “themes” for the year ahead. They are not “resolutions” so much as guiding thoughts or principles. This year I decided on 3 H’s: Hope, Health, and Habits. Hope We live in challenging times… and 2024 looks to present even greater challenges. A colleague of mine noted that there will be over 100 elections in 67 countries in 2024 – all of which will undoubtedly create communication and societal challenges in…
