Η Ώρα του Ηλίου
1η Μαΐου. Ο ήλιος λάμπει στην Αθήνα, κι’όμως η διάχυτη κατήφεια τείνει να χρονίσει στην ελληνική πρωτεύουσα. Προϊόν δεκαετιών οικονομικής εξάρτησης και δ…
Περί Πλαστικού χρήματος
Πανταχού παρούσα η είδηση σήμερα πως η κυβέρνηση σκοπεύει να προωθήσει, με ποικίλους τρόπους, την χρήση ‘πλαστικού χρήματος’, ήτοι χρεωστικών και π…
Δυο ημέρες με το Myo
Πριν από τρία περίπου χρόνια εξετάζαμε το ενδεχόμενο ανάπτυξης του AthensBook ως ένα ‘φυσικό’ αντικείμενο (κιόσκι) το οποίο θα βρισκόταν σε συγκεκρ…
The 'Net As A Utility – Arcs of Political Discourse
In the years between his sensational appearance as a Junior Senator before his colleagues at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 and his election in late 2008, Barack Obama carefully built a public profile of a quasi-radical reformist who, at the same time, is in touch with the world and realistic about the limits and power of politics. He consistently and systematically demonstrated his eagerness to make things better and fairer for the average citizen of his country, the economy and the world. You could argue, and many have since the early parts of his campaign in 2008, that Obama…
Unwarranted Takedown
A few days ago Microsoft, in what is probably the silliest action they’ve taken in a while now, took down 22 domains belonging to dynamic DNS company noip.com. We know ’cause we use their services at Cosmical. Their move, against a service provider of this sort, is unprecedented and somewhat dangerous from a legal perspective; their argument was that hosts using the dynamic DNS services of noip.com were spreading malware and engaged in illegal activity. Instead of engaging with noip.com to disable those hosts and block those accounts, they opted to go to (US) Federal Court and get warrant seizing…
Fira Sans and Fira Mono
After many years of using Inconsolata Hellenic on my linux and OS X boxes as the monospace font of choice for development, I switched to Fira Mono, commissioned by Mozilla for their Firefox OS and designed by Erik Spiekermann. Inconsolata might have been one of the best looking monospace fonts I've ever seen – and the fact that it was free made it an insanely great choice – but it was time for a change. Oh and one more thing, Fira has full support for (monotonic) Greek.