The concept of antifragility is frequently misunderstood and misinterpreted, partly because Taleb contradicts himself when defining it and partly because most people haven’t actually read his book. Taleb defines resiliency as being suffering adversity and remaining the same. Antifragility builds upon resiliency; when an antifragile system suffers adversity it actually responds by improving itself.

The simplest path to resiliency is redundancy, for double the cost you can acquire two of everything and if the first one fails or runs out you have a replacement ready to go. This principle can be applied to many things. You can train two employees to do the same thing in case one quits. You can buy two rolls of toilet paper so you don’t have to run to the store with poopy pants. You can date two people at once in case one of them turns out to be a sociopath.

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The typical knowledge worker functions on some blend of the manager and maker schedules — sometimes they need to do deep work without interruptions, sometimes they need to look up from their desk and communicate to make sure their output is aligned with the company. A private space free of distractions facilitates the former but an open plan is actually pretty good for the latter.

The best solution (I’m surprised more companies have not implemented this) is to provide both environments and give the employee some guidance in terms of where they choose to work. Most knowledge workers will not benefit from the monastic strategy described in this article but almost all will benefit from a bimodal or rhythmic strategy.

If you already have an open plan office this is as easy as telling the employee he/she can work remotely a few days a week as long as they select a quiet space that’s free of distractions (so if they have kids running around at home during the day, maybe better to advise them to go to the library instead).

The manager should provide some guidance in terms of how much time the employee spends remotely vs. “on the floor” with everyone else. Graham’s maker vs. manager article is great on this topic, engineers often err a little too far in the direction of isolation, managers err too far in the direction of having everyone in the collaborative environment, the solution is a little dialogue.

With very light guidance and very little additional cost to the business you can improve both productivity and morale this way. Our team functions best very far down the deep work end of the spectrum — we have one day a week where everyone goes into the office or gets on calls and gets aligned. For the rest of the week communication is mostly async and work is mostly remote. Safe Affordable Credit Indiana

Salon now lets you choose between viewing ads or allowing them to mine Bitcoin with your spare CPU cycles.

I have no problem at all with websites using browser mining as an alternate monetization strategy to ads, as long as:

1) Permission is requested first

2) The UX is good (it stays out of my way and doesn’t slow down my device)

3) The mining finishes when I leave the site

Most of the problems with the modern web stem from the failure of browser vendors to implement a good user-centric permissions model. They all hold an unquestioned belief that more power in the platform is always better, and they’ve all spent the past 15 years kowtowing to developers, advertisers, and profit-motivated corporations instead of protecting their users from the above.

I want a simple, limited, fast, secure, document-centric platform which allows the site to request the execution of additional functions. Publishers unsurprisingly abuse the freedom they currently enjoy to throw up popovers on every page, secretly steal CPU cycles, load-on-demand videos that follow me as I scroll, and track every move I make online. I don’t want any of that to work by default.

A common, well-intentioned argument against my point of view in the last few years has been that the web platform needs to compete with native mobile apps. That argument carried a lot more weight when everyone was installing tons of native apps. But increasingly we’re at the point where we’re sick of native apps for all the same reasons we’re sick of the web — they too are bloated attention + data thieves.

We need a true user-first platform. I’ll pay for sites or apps on that platform, or I’ll let them use my CPU to mine crypto. I just want them to not suck.

Microsoft, Mozilla and Apple could all lead the way in shipping browsers that are pro-user. Mozilla’s got the heart for it, Microsoft and Apple have little to lose. Leaders at all these companies have failed to lead and demonstrate vision, relegating themselves to playing second fiddle to Google on the web because they think shitty popup ads will be the final word in web history.

I support @EFF because digital rights are human rights. https://eff.org/join

At Command Media we’re making our company donation to the Electronic Freedom Foundation this year. The EFF is at the forefront of defending your digital rights: privacy, free speech and more. Why is our 2017 donation going to the EFF?

#1) Bowing to the interests of big media conglomerates, the W3C standardized DRM in your web browser. Thanks to this new standard, Hollywood can now decide which web browser you must use to view its movies. And while the battle this year was over video, next year it might be over blocking ads, or listening to music. The EFF resigned from the W3C in protest and continues to lead the fight against DRM. I was very sorry to see the W3C take the wrong side on this, when my career began they were the good guys fighting for an open Internet.

#2) This was the year that Net Neutrality died in America when the FCC under Ajit Pai repealed the Open Internet Order. The rules had their problems, but the repeal paves the way for big ISPs like Comcast to charge you more for content if it doesn’t come from one of their corporate partners (in other words, other big companies who pay them).
This action will suppress competition in online services and limit which websites you can use.
We need new laws which guarantee Net Neutrality. I urge Congress and the President to support free enterprise and competition, and create these laws.
The EFF continues to be one of Net Neutrality’s strongest advocates.

#3) In 2017 global press freedom declined to the lowest level so far this century. And a new twist was added: in addition to arresting, detaining and prosecuting bloggers and journalists, a growing number of governments are coming down on social media users who like, share or post political content.
The EFF provides legal defense and advocates for the rights of Internet users who are prosecuted for speaking truth to power.

Consider all of the events above and what they mean for the big picture. If we don’t do something the future will be very different from today. We are entering a world where big corporations and governments decide what you can and can’t look at online, depending on whether it makes them more money or keeps them in power. Let alone what you can post.

Small actions do make a difference. Install a browser which respects your rights, like Firefox. Write your Congressman in support of Net Neutrality. Donate to the EFF or a related organization today.

It’s remarkable how well some of Richard Stallman’s quotes have aged. “With software, either the users control the program, or the program controls the users…”

The idea of a program controlling its users must have seemed very esoteric when that quote was first penned in 1985, at a time when home PCs (let alone ones with GUIs) were exotic: the first Mac had launched only a year ago. By the time I first heard of Stallman’s ideas in the ’90s, I was surrounded by PCs with GUIs, but still didn’t get it.

Now here we are, 30 years later. The first thing most of us do when we wake up is roll over, grab our phone, and look at some software. The existential costs of the non-free software are so high that we read new stories about them in the media every week, and the tech revolution’s architects are banning the products they built from their own homes.

For the less frequently cited ending to Stallman’s quote is this: “…If the program controls the users, and the developer controls the program, then the program is an instrument of unjust power.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia