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Anil Dash

 * About Anil
 * @anildash
 * @anildash@mastodon.cloud


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ANIL DASH

A blog about making culture. Since 1999.


THERE IS NOTHING TO REMEMBER

The only time someone remembered September 11, 2001 to me in the last year was
when a stranger mentioned it as part of the reason he was trying to assault me.
So it's clear that the events of that day have fully passed into myth, useful
only as rhetoric in

Sep 11, 2022 • 10 min read


I WENT TO A COFFEE SHOP

[cw: violence] I just wanted to capture this story here once so I don't have to
tell it to anyone again. Because, while I am okay now, it is unpleasant to keep
having to repeat the story to new people over and over. The short version is, I
was violently

Jul 18, 2022 • 11 min read


ENDING HEALTHCARE

Just to document a conversation that I've had a number of times in the last
year, its important to understand the implications (and indeed, the motivations)
of much of current public health policy. Now that more than a decade has passed
since the ratification of Obamacare, the cultural memory of

Jun 24, 2022 • 1 min read


I AM THE ANSWER TO THE RITES OF SPRING PUZZLE

Somehow, improbably, I am again referenced in a crossword puzzle, this time it
was the Sunday Boston Globe from back on April 17th. This time, I have Joon Pahk
to thank! Who knew there were so many small fringe benefits to having a
four-letter name with two non-consecutive vowels? I'd

Jun 1, 2022 • 1 min read


I AM THE ANSWER TO THE SEXUAL TENSION PUZZLE

Listen, I'm not the one making this assertion. It's Vulture's daily 10x10
crossword puzzle for May 17th, entitled "The Sexual Tension Puzzle", in which I
am, apparently, a clue. (Sorry to spoil the answer to 25 Across!) Don't believe
me? Check it out for yourself. Thanks so much to Malaika

May 20, 2022 • 1 min read


EVERYTHING YOU THINK IS TRUE

The Webby Awards have recognized Kevin McCoy and I with their Lifetime
Achievement Award this year, for "developing a blockchain powered way for
artists to own and monetize digital work, which laid the groundwork for what
would be known as Non-fungible tokens (NFTs)". I have a lot of complex feelings

May 16, 2022 • 8 min read


THE CONTENT MODERATION BATTLE IS A REALLY JUST A FAILURE OF INNOVATION

If a company is debating whether a user's account should be suspended, they've
already failed to build a modern platform that follows best practices. Why are
today's billionaires competing for control of tech that’s broken by design? It’s
unusual to see the most powerful people in tech all

Apr 21, 2022 • 3 min read


A WEB RENAISSANCE

Thanks to the mistrust of big tech, the creation of better tools for developers,
and the weird and wonderful creativity of ordinary people, we’re seeing an
incredibly unlikely comeback: the web is thriving again. If you had to pick the
unexpected breakout consumer tech hit of 2022, you could

Apr 13, 2022 • 4 min read


COMMUNITY SAFETY AND IGNORING THE WORLD

Security reports from other sites are welcome. Why aren’t safety reports? One of
the most fundamental triumphs of the last few decades of open source culture is
the open sharing of bugs and how to fix them. There are mature, effective
systems for responsibly reporting things like security issues,

Apr 6, 2022 • 7 min read


THAT BROKEN TECH/CONTENT CULTURE CYCLE

Here’s how you do it. Build a platform which relies on cultural creation as its
core value, but which only sees itself as a technology platform. Stick to this
insistence on being solely a “neutral” tech company in every aspect of
decision-making, policy, hiring and operations, except for your

Feb 9, 2022 • 5 min read


YOU HAVE TO START WITH THE PRINCIPLE.

You can't win unless you know what you're fighting for.Many of the most
important and valuable milestones of progress in society have been achieved
through compromise and incrementalism. It's no surprise that idea of negotiating
a brokered future in collaboration with those who might disagree with your views
has

Jan 31, 2022 • 5 min read


HOW STEVIE CELEBRATES A BIRTHDAY

Though he’s one of the most gifted and important artists to have ever created
popular music, Stevie’s legacy as a tireless and fearless advocate for justice
may he even more powerful, and is too often overlooked. We should heed every
word he says. On April 4th, 1968 at

Jan 17, 2022 • 3 min read


TECH I'M WATCHING IN 2022

Each year, folks ask me for predictions about what's going to happen in tech in
the coming year. Generally, what they're really asking is what I hope/expect is
going to happen to the five or six biggest companies in the tech industry. That
matters, especially in the context of

Dec 23, 2021 • 4 min read


ON "INVENTING NFTS" AND HOW WE DON'T HAVE ANY GOOD WAY TO TALK ABOUT TECH

I've been blogging here for more than 20 years, and the only organizing
principle behind what I write here, if anything, is a fascination about how we
make culture, and especially how we make culture around, and with, technology.
Nothing has exemplified the complexity of that conversation more than my

Nov 14, 2021 • 7 min read


WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE 2021 M1 MACBOOK PRO

I've spent a couple weeks using a new 14" Apple MacBook Pro daily (as a
replacement for my last machine, which was a similar, but rather terrible, 2016
MacBook Pro) and thought it might be valuable to share a few observations that
might help you assess whether it's a useful

Nov 11, 2021 • 5 min read


BURNERS, POLLUTION, CONTROL & PRIVACY BY A THOUSAND CUTS

The key to protecting people's privacy on the internet isn't in trying to stop
users' data from being sent to different services, it's in poisoning the well by
having user data be so inconsistent, disconnected, spurious or expensive to
collect that today's surveillance infrastructures (often referred to as "ad
tech"

Sep 29, 2021 • 6 min read


COOPERATIVE OVERLAP

One of the biggest sources of miscommunication is people having different styles
of communication, or different norms about the right way to express emotion or
context even if there's agreement on more straightforward aspects of verbal
communication. Things like "ask vs. guess" cultures are one common manifestation
of this, and

Sep 25, 2021 • 4 min read


THE SPREADSHEET OF PRINCE RECORDINGS

Recently, a motivated Prince fan created a spreadsheet that attempts to catalog
the entirety of Prince's thousands of recordings over the course of his career.
Beginning in 1973 as a then-15-year-old Prince taped his first few tracks, and
going through (so far) the end of the 80s, it's a remarkable

Sep 17, 2021 • 5 min read


TWENTY IS MYTH

Every year, for twenty years now, I've written an observance of this day.
Sometimes it's for myself, sometimes it's for the small cohort of folks who've
checked back in with me on this day every year since then, a group which has
shrunk a bit over the years. But this

Sep 11, 2021 • 11 min read


GETTING EMBEDDED

Amongst the many new publications that's popped up in the current newsletter
boom, I've been enjoying Kate Lindsay and Nick Catucci's "Embedded". One of the
biggest reasons why is the recurring feature "My Internet", which details the
way one person uses all the common aspects of the internet that we

Aug 15, 2021 • 1 min read


THEN, NOW

Here are some before-and-afters from a set of photos my parents took on a visit
to Manhattan in 1985. I tried to replicate the angles as best I could in the
modern photos. MacDougal StreetSixth Avenue

Aug 11, 2021 • 1 min read


THE CODE BEHIND THE CODE

The Konami Code is one of the longest-running inside references amongst both
gamers and coders, acting as something of a shibboleth for a certain kind of
nerd. Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A. I never owned a
Nintendo Entertainment System, didn't care about most Konami games,

Aug 4, 2021 • 1 min read


VERIFIABLY TRUE

After a pause of a few years, Twitter announced today that they're going to
resume allowing any user to request the blue verification checkmark for their
account. The social and technical dynamics around Twitter verification remain as
fraught and fascinating as they were in the earliest days of the service,

May 20, 2021 • 4 min read


NOT FOR TOURISTS: ATTRIBUTION, PROVENANCE AND HARM REDUCTION

Anytime a big new market pops up, people rush in to stake their claims and make
their fortunes. Our culture loves creation myths, especially in technology.
Fables about lone geniuses are ubiquitous in the tech industry, with their
fundamental falsity doing nothing to undermine their utility for most people in

Apr 5, 2021 • 5 min read


DESIGN CHOICES OF BREATH OF THE WILD

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is one of the greatest games ever made,
and one of the breakout hits of the Nintendo Switch platform, which is on its
way to becoming one of the 10 most popular video game consoles of all time. But
now, years after

Feb 25, 2021 • 3 min read
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