Scripting News: Sunday, June 22, 2025

Sunday, June 22, 2025

Today's song: Peace in our time.#

People talk about "regime change" as if the only regime that could change is the one in Iran.#

Note to linkblog readers: I just flipped a switch and am now using WordLand to do the linkblog. Today's links are good, but the ones from prior days were mainly test posts. They will scroll off in a few days, and it'll be as it always has been. Still diggin. #

One more thing about the linkblog, it no longer cross-posts to social media sites. I want to see if I miss having the links there. It also won't have the limits. Maybe it'll be better if my accounts are a bit more quiet. Also the RSS feed is in a new location, I want to wait a bit to make sure it works before publicizing the URL. #

WordCamp Canada in October#

• I'm keynoting the WordCamp Canada conference in October in Ottawa. It's the first conference I've attended since before the pandemic. #
• The timing is ideal, and the location is significant. As an American, I don't want to try to attract people from around the world to a meeting in my country. Right now, I wouldn't come here if I didn't live here. #
• I'm also not happy with the tech industry of the US. I'd like a fresh start, a return to our roots, with the assumption that the people control their destiny and the role of developers is to give them to the tools to try out new ideas. #
• With WordLand I've created a product for writers, filling a need that's been there since the beginning of the web, using the practices in writing tools we learned in the 80s. It doesn't have the artificial limits imposed by Twitter et al. I think they're senseless. So we're going to blow that door wide open. No character limits. Simple styling. Links. Editable. #
• And it's also a product for developers. There's no lock-in anywhere in this stack. So you can make a different style of editor. Or play with new ways to view timelines.#
• I wanted to take discourse in a different direction too. A good design for the social web shouldn't require intense moderation. The reward for spammers is practically nil. Also, it'll be good for small groups in a way that Twitter et al never have been. #
• So far I haven't invented any new formats. We're building on what works now. WordPress is a remarkably deep product, so deep it could be used as operating system. and that's exactly how I've chosen to view it and it works incredibly well. Some of what we're building on is based on work I did with Joseph Scott of Automattic in 2009, believe it or not.#
• And as a bonus we get a great bridge into ActivityPub, from the great work Automattic is doing in bridging WordPress to ActivityPub. Think about it and you'll see how connections in and out of WordPress can facilitate a lot of interop, not just via RSS, but any format that comes along that people want to use. #
• We'll have a lot to talk about in October! #

RSS on a timeline#

• More on the vision for WordLand and RSS. #
• Imagine that WordLand is the editor of a twitter-like system built around RSS. It saves your writing to WordPress, where it is published on a website and via RSS. You don't have to use WordLand or WordPress, because RSS is an open format. Any editor that generates RSS is part of the network. Designed to be simple. #
• All that's missing is a timeline viewer, and that's what I'm working on now. It's coming together pretty nicely, imho. Not an easy project, though on the surface it looks like it should be. Also there's nothing proprietary about my timeline viewer. There could be a thousand of them. Anyone who has written an RSS feed reader will have all the low-level bits they need. #
• Hoping to have all the connections working by the end of the summer. #
• Once done, it will be the completion of the vision for RSS as the foundation of the open social web, the place that all the open formats agree on, so we can get on with interop and say goodbye to lock-in. It can be done, I'm almost 100 percent sure of that now. Still have a little ways to go. As they say -- still diggin!#

No time for peaceniks#

• Trump may not want regime change in Iran, but he definitely wants regime change in California. #
• He's going to war with Iran to hide his war with the United States. #
• We need a war-ready Democratic Party. #
• Governor or mayor is not a job for peaceniks.#

Linkblog items for the day

What Did Elon Musk Accomplish at DOGE?

newyorker.com

Small change in how the Links page on Scripting News works.

scripting.com

How the Grateful Dead built the internet.

bbc.com

Copyright 1994-2025 Dave Winer.
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