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oliverdamian

295 karma · joined January 2, 2011

I make systems that enable people to live in desire, flow and connection.
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oliverdamian··on The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking
We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all machines are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of open source firmware, operating systems, & the freedom to connect via open standards.
oliverdamian··on My journey into Scandinavian design
From a visitor's point of view, I think fika complements or is a manifestation of the fluid, open, consensus-based way Swedes get things done.
oliverdamian··on How Google Retooled Android With Help From Your Brain
General AI may become closer as Google plays with neural networks for Android.
oliverdamian··on Why a CEO should develop a habit of daily meditation
I studied meditation for many years at http://www.clairvision.org and what I learned there made me a more robust yet fluid person. Now I intend to go back for further studies.
oliverdamian··on Science and Truth - We’re All in It Together
This is how I feel Hacker News works. I read Hacker News precisely because of the comments section which often illuminates and provide more context and grit to the referenced article.
oliverdamian··on One example of why you should do your own back-ups
Or have something like the EFF but focused on young web businesses which could be funded by web business elders [those who already made money from the common web ecosystem] to protect the rights of web businesses especially those who are just starting-up and to advocate/design/lobby for legal systems that are conducive to the web ecosystem as a whole. For legal practitioners, this would arguably be a better place to work for(if one can earn a living from it) rather than let's say working for patent trolls.
oliverdamian··on Forget Self-Improvement
"There are two types of people in the world: lovers and the others; we don't want to be part of the others".
oliverdamian··on Jotform domain seized by US due to user generated content
How about Iceland? At least this web hosting company http://www.orangewebsite.com/ is touting "better level of privacy and lower censorship" as a selling point. (Although, I note it itself is using .com) Anyway, I think it won't be long until some countries or territories will wisen-up to create internet freedom friendly jurisdictions as a competitive advantage to lure tech capital and talent away from the increasingly hostile US with its IP and military industrial complex weapons of wealth destruction.
oliverdamian··on Podcasts for Hackers
I recommend Econtalk http://www.econtalk.org/

In addition to the good topics on economics, they also cover technology, e.g. Kelly on Technology and What Technology Wants - http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/11/kelly_on_techno.htm... or Hazlett on Apple vs. Google - http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/10/hazlett_on_appl.htm...

My latest favourite is Taleb on Anti-fragility - http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/01/taleb_on_antifr.htm...

oliverdamian··on Scoble: I'll go down with the ship
We need more people like David. I think every developer should pursue to create the internet according to the way they think it should be and users should use apps and software that make sense to them and which they want to use.

Variety and alternatives are good. Opinionated software is good! Mono-culture, design by committee and one single way of doing things (no matter how good or efficient) are all bad.

For example, look at what happened to the US shuttle program, the public manned space program is now limbo because of dependence on a single way of doing things. Thank goodness for the private space enterprises bubbling along and competing on the periphery where there's a glimmer of hope.

Let structures emerge from the outer edges of the internet that are in constant flux. As long as we all agree on the basic protocols in the core of Internet, we'll be fine.

On the other side of this wider debate, my friends think I'm crazy for switching from a very nice Mac GUI, MS Office, QWERTY keyboard et al to Ubuntu et al and work my way up the command line, emacs and relearn Colemak keyboard typing.

I'm starting to enjoy the pay-off of my crazy efforts. My 'sensible' friends don't know what they are missing.

oliverdamian··on The New Humanism
I found this article very inspiring too. It sort of synthesizes the topics and lines of inquiry I have been drawn into in the past few years. What he failed to mention though is the role played by advances in the research into evolution of consciousness which show that our higher mental faculties were born out of the necessity of working with each other in order to survive.
oliverdamian··on What Stupid Things Do Smart People Do?
I agree. People of the future who are truly going to change the world as we know it have insights and points of view that would not really make sense to us people of today. Some times today's crack-pots are tomorrow's visionaries.
oliverdamian··on Technology: Print me a Stradivarius
I think the command & control aspect of the Industrial age happened because of the need for and the benefits of economies of scale. There was a need to marshal together huge pools of capital, equipment, management structures, assembly lines, etc. With 3D printing and additive manufacturing, there is the hope of bringing peer-to-peer production that has successfully been implemented in software, information, culture & other intangibles, to the tangible physical realm. This is the direction we should be heading to, not the other way around of trying to apply Industrial age property laws and scarcity paradigms to the abundant fractal scalability of peer-to-peer production.
oliverdamian··on JavaScript simulation of an iPad
good job!
oliverdamian··on Why We Desperately Need a New (and Better) Google
How about a P2P search/bookmarking platform where peers could publish search/bookmarking histories ranked by like/dislike/spam votes which other peers can subscribe to. Publishing peers can also be ranked according to number of subscribers. Actually P2P curation could be the next level up from raw centralised search. Is there anything like this out there already?