The Curmudgeon Speaks

If you use Apple mobile devices, you may have recently encountered a display such as the one that appears above. The new operating system for phones and tablets from Apple now blocks what are called third-party cookies by default. You can change this default if you want.

A third party in comparison to a first-party cookie is using information you have stored from a website you are not currently visiting. This is how you can see advertisements for cars on Twitter when you were searching for cars using Google. A first-party cookie shows you ads based on the website that is currently active.

I am against blocking cookies because this is the way you compensate the content creators and service providers for using their resources. I am not against blocking third-party cookies because the ads you see are not directly related to the site you are visiting or the service you are using. This seems fair.

More information from CNET.

Maybe I am just old and set in my ways, but the arguments rejecting traditional education practices (listening/watching presentations and reading books) puzzle me. I enjoy both ways of becoming acquainted with new things. Partly, I am confused with the approach some take to making the point these are inferior methods.

First, there is the guy who recommends abandoning the use of textbooks. He made his case by writing a book – Ditch the Textbook. If you wanted to explain your thinking on the superiority of ways to convey new ideas that are superior to a book, wouldn’t you make this case in a way other than by writing a book.

I listen to a lot of podcasts when we spend long periods of time in the car or when I exercise. I found a similar anomaly with this method of presentation – educators who drone on about the problems with lectures. While some of these sessions are entertaining, they are seldom very efficient in offering information explaining the limitations of the instructor-dominated presentation and the topic only makes sense if the presentation is intended to demonstrate the limitations of one or two people talking at you.

I think those who reject the lecture or the textbook have a strange understanding of how learning happens. Both lectures and textbooks tend to offer organized and efficient exposure to ideas. I read and listen to some things for entertainment, but I also read and listen to some things because I expect to be exposed to ideas from experts. I don’t expect exposure to be the end of the learning process and I don’t know a lecturer or textbook author who assumes listening or reading was the end of the learning process. I am looking for an efficient way to start the process of learning. I find myself irritated by presenters who decide I should be involved in social interactions or reflection experiences as a component of their presentation. I would rather the presenter allow me the opportunity to take ideas and process these ideas as I want. Peer discussion sometimes is helpful, but I want to start the process exposed to someone with something to offer and then to make my own decision whether discussion with other novices would be helpful.

Maybe the difference here is a matter of motivation. I read and watch/listen to things I am motivated to learn. Perhaps I would prefer less efficient and externally controlled approaches if I would be put in situations in which I was asked to learn things that I must know, but don’t find interesting. I don’t think so.

I have two online conferences on my scheduled and as a retired academic I think it likely this will be the way I continue my own professional development. For me, the online conference is now to some extent a financial matter. When I was still working, I supported the majority of the majority of my professional travel, but at least I was subsidized. Retired academics, emeritus of not, don’t continue to receive this perk.

I have written about the future of the academic conference before, but the present post was prompted by this post in Tech & Learning. Much of the content that that post focuses on the ISTE conference which is one I have already sent in my money to experience remotely in a few months. I would add one insight to the commentary provided by this author, online access allows a user to take in more presentations. Here is the problem I constantly found with the face to face version of ISTE. ISTE is a very large conference and the interest in many sessions often exceeds the capacity of the room and what is probably a fire code. An ISTE worker is stationed at the door to cut off admission when this capacity has been exceeded. In anticipation of this problem, participants line up outside rooms to gain admission when seats from the preceding session exist the room. This often meant that when you left one session and headed to the next you would arrive too late to be admitted. This resulted in two inefficiencies – staying in a room listening to sessions for which I had only moderate interest in order to listen to a session for which I had high interest or skipping every other session to make certain I would have a set for the sessions I really wanted to watch. No problems of this type exist when you participate online.

There are clearly disadvantages. I like to ask questions at the end of sessions or after a session. While those software supporting online access have attempted to find ways to provide some type of interaction with speakers or other attendees, these approaches have a long way to go in terms of the technology and the conventions that would make this effective.

The game Republicans continue to play in which participants must pretend that Trump did not lose the election is strange to the point it should embarrass anyone admitting to voting Republican. Taking positions on how the country should function should focus on core values and the representation of citizens and not these strange fantasies and conspiracies. The ignorance that follows from this mindless commitment to falsehood is damaging to the point people refuse to wear masks and be vaccinated in order to demonstrate their allegiance. I have little personal concern when it comes to whether Cheney continues in her leadership role, but I do wish Republicans could move past this charade.

A couple of years ago, we and the family of our youngest daughter took a trip south from Minneapolis to visit a cluster of Amish greenhouses. Both my wife and daughter Kim are big flower gardeners and this seemed like it would be a fun outing. As is my practice, I wrote a blog post about this outing.

Most of the posts I write draw some immediate attention. This is probably because each post generates a tweet. After a week or so, most of my posts seldom are visited again. This was not the case with the post about the visit to the Amish greenhouses. On occasion, I explore the data generated by my posts and I saw that the greenhouse post was probably the most popular post I have written.

I mentioned this to my daughter and she remarked that this is probably because the post comes up as one of the first search results when you look up Amish greenhouse Minnesota. She was looking for a map to identify the stops we might make on our venture and there I was. Evidently, I happened on a search topic that few have written about.

Of all the content I have posted on one of my blogs since 2002, this is probably the first time I have made the first page of the search results let alone the top hit.

Now that we can travel, yesterday we visited the Amish greenhouses again. Since I may have found the secret to social media success, I thought I would try again.

The greenhouses have evidently become a reasonable business for the Amish people and the tendency to purchase farms near each other and to collaboratively take on business ventures (many farms with greenhouses), they have identified a niche. There is nothing unusual about the greenhouses unless it is the use of wood furnaces to heat the structures and the somewhat lower prices which do draw crowds.

Like many ethnic groups any of us do not know well, we probably harbor some stereotypes about these folks. I grew up on a farm and I talked with a kid last visit who wanted to be able to purchase 80 acres to have a farm of his own. This is a very small farm within the scale of modern farming, but the Amish can somehow make it work. I have assumed that the use of horses and farming equipment suited to “horse power” was a way they ran a more economical approach. I noticed something interested in one of our stops. The farm seemed to have all new equipment.

The equipment was all new, but suited to using horses. I saw the company responsible for the equipment, Pioneer Equipment, and searched for them online. It turns out there is a company manufacturing farm equipment for this niche market. Capitalism has more facets than one might assume. This may be an ideal example of a small business not on main street.

A couple of stereotypical Amish country photos to end the post.

A map of “green house” country.

You may be familiar with the recent documentary “Nomadland“. This is the story of people facing financial challenges who work low wage and often temporary jobs and are in desperate situations because of the cost of housing. They have taken to living in old vans and campers often off the grid as a way to cope. The camaraderie that develops among these people as they move about to find work is the focus of the movie.

Nomadland was first a book and I moved on to read the book after watching the movie. You get details in the book that the movie cannot or decided not to include. One topic covered at length was Amazon Camperforce. The main character in the movie works as a temporary Amazon employee and the book explains how this is a thing (camping while a temporary Amazon employee) supported by Amazon. Many of the nomads are older and the book also describes the physical demands of working in Amazon distribution centers.

I like camping and we have spent time on lengthy camping trips. I understand the camper culture of those who have adopted constant camper travel of a lifestyle, but many of these folks do not do so because of finances. The book references the blog site of Bob Wells who was featured in the book. The book was published in 2017 so I was not certain if the web site and blog would still exist, but both are still available and current. For anyone who has viewed the documentary, read the book, or wondered about those who live in campers and vans, I think you would enjoy the content on this site.

I have been writing about the Brave browser and what I call the Brave ecosystem for several years now. This is an update based on a nice analysis I found on a stock market site. The connection between those who offer analyses of investment issues and those of us who explore issues related to technology may not be obvious. The intersection here is BAT – the cryptocurrency that plays a key role in the Brave ecosystem.

The development of Brave (a browser-based on chromium that works very much like the Chrome browser) and the Brave ecosystem were based on issues many find troubling in the Internet as we know it. The issues are wrapped up in the personal data collected to better target ads to get ad companies to compensate content and service providers. Users get this content and services without having to spend money because of this ad model. What users lose is their personal data and perhaps more important users are being shaped by some online services into spending their attention in ways that may result in their being misled about the world around them.

A common response to an awareness of this dilemma is that more and more Internet users are taking advantage of ways to block ads. The article I cite claims 60% use some form of ad blocker and this percentage is rising. This reality challenges the entire business model for the “free” internet which has unknown consequences. As a content author or service provider, this trend clearly predicts a decline in revenue that funds infrastructure and labor investments.

Now for BAT. BAT stands for Basic Attention Token and is a cryptocurrency. I would think any micropayment system would work, but I understand that a cryptocurrency allows a degree of anonymity some think is important. Users can purchase BAT or earn BAT for accepting ads Brave offers as a replacement for the traditional ads that it blocks. The Brave ads don’t depend as much on the collection and sharing of personal information. If content/service creators register with Brave and if Brave users accumulate BAT in one way or another and if users allocate some BAT as compensation to content creators, users continue to have access, companies can continue to advertise, and users are less exposed to targeted ads. I admit there are many ifs, but the Brave model is a workable model if the multiple parties buy-in.

I do see changes in the models used by other browsers, but I don’t see any of these models offering compensation to creators.

What is in it for Brave? They take a cut of the ad revenue. What is in it for Internet users? They can be compensated for their attention. Hopefully, to make the entire model work, they will share some of this compensation rather than keep it.

I have been online since being online was possible and I am still amazed what I find. Radio Garden allows immediate access to radio stations from around the world. Spin the globe and explore.

One of my favorite types of exploration is to listen to music from different locations. I am a big blues fan and the service allows you to search using different terms. Tonight it is blues from Istanbul.