Casey Rollins 🔵 @realcaseyrollins@qoto.org

"Randy Suess, a computer hobbyist who helped build the first online bulletin board, anticipating the rise of the internet, messaging apps and social media, died on Dec. 10 at a hospital in Chicago. He was 74.

His death was confirmed by his daughter Karrie.

In late January 1978, Mr. Suess (rhymes with “loose”) was part of an early home computer club called the Chicago Area Computer Hobbyists’ Exchange, or CACHE. He and another club member, an IBM engineer named Ward Christensen, had been discussing an idea for a new kind of computer messaging system, but hadn’t had the time to explore it. Then a blizzard hit the Great Lakes region, covering Chicago in more than 40 inches of snow."

RIP, Randy, thank you.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/technology/randy-suess-dead.html

me_irl #meme #funny https://redd.it/edlsfg

Think about this. I've been posting about privacy issues for quite some time. It's real. Folks are too willing to give up their privacy in exchange for an 'app.' Check this out and pass it along. The article is long by today's 'short attention span' standards. But, it's worth it.

"It doesn’t take much imagination to conjure the powers such always-on surveillance can provide an authoritarian regime like China’s. Within America’s own representative democracy, citizens would surely rise up in outrage if the government attempted to mandate that every person above the age of 12 carry a tracking device that revealed their location 24 hours a day. Yet, in the decade since Apple’s App Store was created, Americans have, app by app, consented to just such a system run by private companies. Now, as the decade ends, tens of millions of Americans, including many children, find themselves carrying spies in their pockets during the day and leaving them beside their beds at night — even though the corporations that control their data are far less accountable than the government would be. . ."

". . .one thing is certain: We are living in the world’s most advanced surveillance system. This system wasn’t created deliberately. It was built through the interplay of technological advance and the profit motive. It was built to make money. The greatest trick technology companies ever played was persuading society to surveil itself."

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/location-tracking-cell-phone.html

some things are pretty okay