• Should ad-supported networks be regulated differently from other platforms?  (TechDirt)
  
  That seems at least a reasonable idea to pursue.
  
  
• Working as a librarian gave me PTSD.  (LA Times)
  
  What?
  
  In Washington DC.
  
  Oh.
  
  
• RedHat has taken over management of OpenJDK 8 and 11 from Oracle much to everyone's relief.  (TheServerSide)
  
  RedHat did this previously for OpenJDK 6 and 7 when Oracle forgot those existed.
  
  
• Google and Amazon have buried the hatchet, and not in each other.  (The Verge)
  
  YouTube is coming back to Amazon's Fire devices, and Prime Video is returning to Chromecast.
  
  
• Is it possible to escape the Apple ecosystem?  (ZDNet)
  
  Wait, Apple has an ecosystem?
  
  
• Build your own blockchain in Crystal.
  
  The code and explanation are both clear, and it covers the principles of blockchains and what mining is all about.  It doesn't cover the networking side of things so it's not a distributed blockchain.
  
  
• But increasingly, neither is Ethereum.  (Coindesk)
  
  Running a full Ethereum node is a pain because the blockchain has grown huge as Ethereum has gained popularity.  (And the transaction rate of Ethereum, compared to real-world systems, is still indistinguishable from zero.)
  
  Running a light Ethereum node is a pain because light nodes suck so no-one will peer with you.
  
  So everyone wants to outsource that problem.
  
  And everyone is outsourcing it to the same platform - Infura.
  
  And that means you could replace the entirety of Ethereum with a single MySQL instance and maybe a couple of replicas for safety, and deliver 100x the performance for 1/100th the cost.
  
  That's the curse of decentralisation.
  
  
• The curse of centralisation, on the other hand, can be shown in WordPress.com's censoring of Jerry Coyne's blog at the behest of Pakistan.
  
  Run WordPress yourself: Get hacked.  Even if the current release of WordPress is secure, no-one runs it without extensions, and the WordPress extension marketplace is a disaster area.
  
  Use hosted WordPress: Get hacked anyway, get charged $50 extra a month.
  
  Use WordPress.com: Get censored according to the standards of the most repressive regimes on Earth.
  
  

Posted by: cxt217 at Monday, April 22 2019 01:17 PM (LMsTt)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, April 23 2019 01:05 AM (PiXy!)

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