(date: 2024-05-17 10:40:40)
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/the-history-of-tetris-world-records
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-17, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a social web toolkit with the basic building blocks so we could experiment with different UI and behaviors. Why, after so many years are we still so controlled. When and why did we give up?
http://scripting.com/2024/05/17.html#a164545
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-17, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
People get all moral about AI, but I for one would never go back.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/17.html#a164217
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-17, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Today’s song: That’s the way god planned it.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/17.html#a162904
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044641-a-2022-report-adds-to
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-17, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
On
MSNBC yesterday I saw a discussion where two black panelists were asked
to comment on Trump’s idea that black people go for him because they can
relate to his awful prison mug shot. How incredibly insulting. It’s just
like what Trump says about Jewish Americans being loyal to Israel. Such
an un-American idea. We all got here different ways. Some for a better
life, some for life at all, others as slaves. But the United States is a
big-hearted idea – the United States. It’s unfortunate that such
a small-minded disunited person is so powerful now. We still have
a long way to go.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/17.html#a161950
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044640-heres-something-that-i-be
date: 2024-05-17, from: Om Malik blog
I write with a 100 year old pen and ink made by a company that is almost 300 years old. There is something gratifying about the technology perfected in the past, allowing me to dream about the future. I have enjoyed reading Manuel Moreale for quite a while now. When I saw his email pop up, I was …
https://om.co/2024/05/17/interview-my-blogging-process/
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044642-whoa-classic-console-emul
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/danny-macaskill-goes-mountain-biking-with-friends-in-scotland
@Ayjay blog (date: 2024-05-17, from: Ayjay blog)
From John Ruskin’s Fors Clavigera, Letter 7: You are to do good work, whether you live or die. It may be you will have to die; — well, men have died for their country often, yet doing her no good; be ready to die for her in doing her assured good: her, and all other […]
https://blog.ayjay.org/46229-2/
date: 2024-05-17, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
Dave to ChatGPT: I just read a news story that the Knicks won the last game in the playoffs because of an epic fart in the locker room. Can you draw a light-hearted illustration of that event?
Then I asked for a serious and dramatic illustration.
I imagine you can bet on who the farter was.
My guess would be Hartenstein.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/17/134201.html?title=theKnicksAndTheEpicFart
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-17, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044639-this-week-in-crossword-hi
date: 2024-05-17, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
It’s overwhelming how much ground Google has to cover to get AI into all their products, but that’s what they think they have to do, and I more or less agree. They feel they have to because their main product, search, is undermined by ChatGPT.
Clayton
Christensen called
this
The
Innovator’s
Dilemma in a
book
published in 1997. It’s why Netscape was able to undermine Microsoft
when the web came out. Microsoft had a huge beast they had to move,
Windows and all its apps, and while they had a hardcore, scrappy and
rich culture, they couldn’t overcome the inertia that comes from being
dug in, with their cannons pointed at the already-defeated IBM, not the
upstarts that came from the VCs in Silicon Valley.
Microsoft and the rest of the PC industry had written off Unix, but there it was, again – ugly as ever, but with networking that realllly worked and was easy, and the users wanted networking even though Microsoft wanted them to want Office.
Google did the same thing with AI. As did Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. They had AI projects, and used AI in limited areas, as did Microsoft with Unix in the early 90s. But they couldn’t bet everyting on it like a startup can. Now they have to. But the they don’t have the tools needed to fight the new war. That’s the dilemma.
This is the toughest corner any tech company has to turn, but there is an approach that could work for Google. Their strength is distribution. They have all the users. They can take a product that’s ready for the world to market in a day. But they can’t develop it. You can’t snap your fingers and have a good new UI for every one of their products, ready in a year, although they will try as MS tried to adapt Office to the web. They don’t have the right people or corporate culture to do that. Instead you have to hope you can find a great bootstrapper outside to work with, and use their strength as a distributor to help them. This is what I recommended for Microsoft in the 1990s, and I think I was vindicated, it would have imho worked a lot better than the path they chose.
But now, their second time around this loop, Microsoft has learned! With their OpenAI partnership they’ve done exactly what I recommended in the 90s. They still have to convert all the old software and their user interfaces around the new capabilities, but at least they also own a share of a bootstrap that’s booming.
PS: I am blessed to have lived long enough now to have been part of now six different rearrangements like this. I love that we have now gotten there again. There’s absolutely no doubt now, imho. The six rearrangements – minis, PCs, GUIs, web, Napster, and now AI.
PPS: This is all my opinion, and from the polls I did yesterday, it’s obvious that many of the people in earshot don’t agree or have seen the light yet.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/17/131008.html?title=googleAndTheInnovatorsDilemmaIn2024
date: 2024-05-17, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Bruce Schneier blog
The FBI has seized the BreachForums website, used by ransomware criminals to leak stolen corporate data.
If law enforcement has gained access to the hacking forum’s backend data, as they claim, they would have email addresses, IP addresses, and private messages that could expose members and be used in law enforcement investigations.
[…]
The FBI is requesting victims and individuals contact them with information about the hacking forum and its members to aid in their investigation.
The seizure messages include ways to contact the FBI about the seizure, including an email, a Telegram account, a TOX account, and a dedicated page hosted on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)…
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/05/fbi-seizes-breachforums-website.html
date: 2024-05-17, from: Ayjay blog
From Evelyn Waugh’s biography of Ronald Knox: For three days he lay in a coma, but once Lady Eldon saw a stir of consciousness and asked whether he would like her to read to him from his own New Testament. He answered very faintly, but distinctly: ‘No’; and then after a long pause in which […]
https://blog.ayjay.org/last-words/
date: 2024-05-17, from: Daniel Stenberg Blog
You can of course use curl to access hosts through Tor. (I know you know Tor so I am not going to explain it here.) SOCKS The typical way to access Tor is via a SOCKS5 proxy and curl has supported that since some time during 2002. Like this: curl –socks5-hostname localhost:5432 https://example.com or curl … Continue reading curl, Tor, dot onion and SOCKS
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/05/17/curl-tor-dot-onion-and-socks/
date: 2024-05-17, from: Robert Reich’s blog
In appreciation
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/when-an-old-dear-friend-passes
date: 2024-05-17, from: Tracy Durnell Blog
Periodically, I try keeping track of everything I read online for a day or two. Previously. Today I tracked where I found links, too, though I couldn’t for anything I saved or opened before today 😉 Via micro.blog: The Phones of Normal People by Lou Plummer “Observed while driving L to school” by Annie Mueller […]
https://tracydurnell.com/2024/05/17/articles-i-read-today-may-16-2024/
date: 2024-05-17, from: Doc Searls (at Harvard), New Old Blog
Newsletters are all the rage now. In recognition of that, I blogged here two years ago about the idea of writing a solo newsletter. Since then I’ve been co-producing this one with Katherine Druckman at Reality 2.o. It’s a Substack one, so I know how that game works on the production as well as the […]
https://doc.searls.com/2024/05/16/blog-newsletter/
date: 2024-05-17, from: Om Malik blog
OpenAI strategically overshadowed Google’s AI ambitions that it announced at I/O. In doing so, it showed the contrasting approaches to the AI race and Google’s challenges when it comes to public perception.
https://om.co/2024/05/16/how-openai-stole-googles-thunder/
date: 2024-05-16, from: John Naughton’s online diary
The late arrival Dingle peninsula, Ireland. Quote of the Day “There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.” Marshall McLuhan Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news Samuel Barber | Agnus Dei | Voces8 Link A hauntingly … Continue reading
https://memex.naughtons.org/friday-17-may-2024/39457/
date: 2024-05-16, from: Dan Rather’s Steady
What will happen if Trump is convicted?
https://steady.substack.com/p/the-big-what-if
date: 2024-05-16, from: Tracy Durnell Blog
(Not sold on the article’s conclusions but this bit was interesting. I’d like to hear more on cultural appropriation from someone with a big picture view on culture like Marx.)
https://tracydurnell.com/2024/05/16/cultural-arbitrage/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-16, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Poll 2 on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads: “Has ChatGPT replaced Google (or other search engine) when you look up something for a development project, environment, etc.?
http://scripting.com/2024/05/16.html#a212631
date: 2024-05-16, from: Om Malik blog
With tech giants unleashing ever more powerful models and piles of money to accelerate their AI efforts, startups find themselves in a precarious position. Startups must hustle to find and defend their AI niches as the landscape rapidly evolves. Startups’ advantage is agility and singular focus. They can build superior solutions in specific verticals and use cases. A good lesson from …
https://om.co/2024/05/16/the-age-of-ai-ambiguity/
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/nfl-games-on-netflix
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044620-in-case-anyone-else-is
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-17, from: Daring Fireball
https://twitter.com/SamsungMobileUS/status/1790824457365594487
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Daring Fireball
https://9to5mac.com/2024/05/16/new-ipad-pro-bend-test/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-16, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Poll 1 on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads: “If you’re a developer, how much has ChatGPT or its equivalents affected the way you develop?”
http://scripting.com/2024/05/16.html#a200647
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/strange-side-effect-of-parenting
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/addicted-to-exercise
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044619-theres-nothing-in-human-d
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/diary-comics-dec-26-28
date: 2024-05-16, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
You know the joke, right? In the far future, somebody, somewhere, still wants to use IRC.
I’ve been working on a bot that can connect to both Discord and IRC. It connects to Discord because this is where I found people to game with. Discord comes with audio chat. It catapulted my gaming to a whole new level. So much so that I decided that I’d be a paying customer. Still, I want to be prepared for the day when Discord goes down. When it inevitably missteps and becomes untenable. I want to have systems ready to go.
The idea is to have something read that does chat for us all.
Behind the curtains, I run an IRC server using ngIRCd. I was able to configure it and I was able to federate with @kyonshi’s IRC server. IRC has been federated for all these years and it’s so incredibly light weight, very much unlike XMPP and Matrix and the other options I’ve seen.
There are a number of web-based IRC clients that give it a Discord-like user interface. I personally run two instances of The Lounge, one that’s free for all and one with accounts. If you register for an account, you can upload a small amount of files for easy image sharing and the like and it also keeps logs for you (so you don’t have to learn how to use an IRC “bouncer”).
Other options would be Kiwi IRC or IRC Cloud, if you want a paid service.
The bot I was talking about is called
Norn. Right now we
have an #open-table or #next-games channel on
the Discord servers where people announce their games. As players sign
up, the messages get edited. It’s not really events, it’s not reminders,
it’s not a calendar, but it’s simple and it works. You can search it.
But if you’re on IRC, it doesn’t work so well. So Norn does that.
On one of the Discord server, there’s a bot called Wettergoblin (the weather goblin) that keeps track of in-game events. Every channel has its own time-axis and you can get an export of all the events. This is great for coordinating the many games in the same setting, each happening in their own channel. I really wanted something like that but instead of using in-game time, I wanted to use real time. This simplified the requirements for me, so Norn does a bit of that. The Wettergoblin also does in-game weather, keeps a Greyhawk calendar, shows a timeline comparing where the various channels are compared to each other and all of that, which Norn doesn’t do.
Norn also acts as a dice bot and as a knowledge repository.
Game dates, sign-ups, in-game events, knowledge base, all of that happens per channel. It’s great!
If you look at the bilingual help page of the bot on a phone, prepare for a bit of confusion as the German and the English bits are interleaved. On a bigger screen, you’d get two columns…
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-05-16-irc
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/cicadas-and-prime-numbers
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044614-the-movies-that-influence
date: 2024-05-16, from: David Rosenthal’s blog
Mining a Bitcoin block needs to be costly to ensure that the gains from an attack on the blockchain are less than the cost of mounting it. Miners have two sources of income to defray their costs, the block rewards and the fees for the transactions in the block.
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Our key insight is that with only transaction fees, the variance of the miner reward is very high due to the randomness of the block arrival time, and it becomes attractive to fork a “wealthy” block to “steal” the rewards therein.
The key takeaway of this paper concerns the interaction of these two limitations: proof-of-work can only achieve payment security if mining income is high, but the transaction market cannot generate an adequate level of income. … the economic design of the transaction market fails to generate high enough fees. A simple model suggests that ultimately, it could take nearly a year, or 50,000 blocks, before a payment could be considered “final”.”
The last time I wrote about this issue was in 2021’s
Taleb
On Cryptocurrency Economics.
https://blog.dshr.org/2024/05/fee-only-bitcoin.html
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/trailer-for-season-two-of-the-rings-of-power
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044637-i-was-shot-in-vermont
date: 2024-05-16, from: mrusme blog
“Granada is the capital city of the province of Granada, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, at the confluence of four rivers, the Darro, the Genil, the Monachil and the Beiro. Ascribed to the Vega de Granada comarca, the city sits at an average elevation of 738 m (2,421 ft) above sea level, yet is only one hour by car from the Mediterranean coast, the Costa Tropical.”
https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/travel/spain/granada/
date: 2024-05-16, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
@taichara pointed me to a blog post that Creative Commons (CC) wrote in 2023 about the court cases against GitHub, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and the claim that their use of copyrighted works to train the machines is copyright infringement. CC does not agree.
As Creative Commons has argued elsewhere, and others agree, I believe that this type of use should be protected by copyright’s fair use doctrine. In this blog post I will discuss what fair use is, what purpose it serves, and why I believe that using copyrighted works to train generative AI models should be permitted under this law. – Fair Use: Training Generative AI
I guess I don’t mind that blog post. For one, Fair Use is a very USA thing and I don’t live there. Furthermore, the CC licenses don’t say “this material is fine for AI training” – so whether this is fine or not will be decided by the courts. I would only worry if CC turns out to be working on a version 5 of their licenses with an explicit exception for AI training. And even then, we can keep on using version 4 of the license. There is no automatic upgrade option.
This is why I feel fine.
Imagine the Dude from The Big Lebowski saying, “Yeah, well, that’s just, like, their opinion…”
It doesn’t look as if CC will be changing the license. The courts still get to decide. If the courts decide in favour of free-for-all AI training, then rich people win for the moment. But even then, we can still nationalise their businesses, or prohibit AI training, or raise prices on electricity and water. The fight isn’t over. Not by a long shot.
Maybe this is a thing with lawyers. We trust people who share our values and we’d trust somebody when they write something along the lines of “AI training is terrible and AI use is dubious but what can you do, it’s in the hand of the courts, we certainly don’t support it.” But lawyers trust other lawyers who say “we’ll see what the courts say but our understanding is that nobody should stop AI training because that’s the trade-off copyright makes and we support people and corporations exercising their rights.”
The apparent moral support on copyright grounds is revolting, but this approach seems typical to me. They say: The point of the law is this or that. We say: The result of these actions is bad for society and bad for the climate. They are externalising all the costs. The artists and authors who want to produce new works are losing their jobs. The people double-checking the computers and their training are burning out. The communities where these corporations build their computing centres suffer from water scarcity because the water is used to cool the computers. The countries where these corporations build their computing centres need to build more power plants because so much electricity is required to train their models. The move to renewable energies is delayed. Phasing out nuclear power is delayed and more radioactive waste ends up on our lands.
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor… no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here. – Long-term nuclear waste warning messages, Wikipedia
Or we can believe in nuclear fusion:
AI models made up of billions of parameters require huge amounts of energy to train. OpenAI’s old GPT-3 system reportedly consumed 936 megawatt hours … the average household consumes about 10.5 MWh per year. That means training GPT-3 consumed as much energy as about 90 households consume in a year. – Energy breakthrough needed to build AGI, says OpenAI boss Altman, The Register
Sadly, nuclear fusion only seems to be working inside the sun:
1955: At the first Atoms for Peace meeting in Geneva, Homi J. Bhabha predicts that fusion will be in commercial use within two decades. – Timeline of nuclear fusion, Wikipedia
And what for? The people who are looking for answers get served bullshit slop that’s wrong and hurtful and racist and misogynist. We see this in customer service degrading, in search engines degrading, in websites degrading. The corporations don’t mind that they’re feeding us slop as long as they are making money.
We are enabling this because these corporations are powerful and rich. They buy our politicians with money and promises of jobs, they don’t pay the taxes they ought to pay and then they don’t deliver on the jobs, and the jobs they offer are menial and subservient when we’d prefer to be creative and free. We thought we’d be writing and painting all day while the machines serve us but we end up serving them while they do the writing and painting, badly!
It’s hard to defend against these corporations because the knowledge required to defeat them is not known to us all. We don’t read about it in the media. Instead, they volunteer for all the posts, offer their experts, pay for their own research, write their own glowing press releases and commission promising reports. This is how regulatory capture works.
So yes, we should nationalise them, regulate them, force them to pay for the true cost of resources they use, outlaw their energy waste, force them to label their output, shun them. We should kick them from our company. Like a creeping disease their rot spreads, destroying the technology we built, the search engines, databases, websites, turning it all into AI slop. It is revolting.
And maybe copyright is not the right tool to stop corporations from training their machines on our works. But in the big picture, they are still wrong.
@eloquence says:
The folks who are calling such training “theft” might regret what they seem to be implicitly asking for, i.e. much stricter copyright. Copyright law won’t prevent Microsoft, Google, OpenAI or Adobe from making shady licensing deals, but they’ll prevent the free/open community from keeping up.
It’s true, I don’t want to ask for stricter copyright. But I still oppose all the things that are wrong with the current AI bubble.
@mcc recently wrote about a similar thing: We use free software licenses in order to distribute our software for the benefit of our fellow humans but not necessarily to train the machines of corporations that are responsible for all the slop.
Like, heck, how am I supposed to rely on my code getting preserved after I lose interest, I die, BitBucket deletes every bit of Mercurial-hosted content it ever hosted, etc? Am I supposed to rely on Microsoft to responsibly preserve my work? Holy crud no. We want people to want their code widely mirrored and distributed. That was the reason for the licenses. That was the social contract. But if machine learning means the social contract is dead, why would people want their code mirrored? – mmc
We’re using copyright to keep the software free. If AI regurgitating our software from its impenetrable memories circumvents copyright it also circumvents our licenses and therefore pulls the claws and teeth free software has to fight for its freedom.
This is why opposing the current AI bubble is important. No matter how I look at it, the big picture shows that this kind of AI is our enemy. It’s just that copyright is the wrong weapon.
This is why we continue fighting all the negatives these corporations bring to the table. And if it turns out that their business model doesn’t work unless they bring all these negatives to the table, then I guess that’s just that. We are under no obligation to support their business model. In fact, it is our right and our duty to regulate the world in order to improve it for all of us. We’ve been doing it for a very long time.
Here’s to hoping for the next AI winter.
In the history of artificial intelligence, an AI winter is a period of reduced funding and interest in artificial intelligence research. The field has experienced several hype cycles, followed by disappointment and criticism, followed by funding cuts, followed by renewed interest years or even decades later. – AI winter, Wikipedia
#Copyright #Artificial Intelligence
2024-05-16. Cory Doctorow also thinks that copyright is the wrong weapon:
Creative workers who hope that they can use copyright law to prevent AI from changing the creative labor market are likely to be very disappointed in court … Individual creative workers rarely have any bargaining leverage over the corporations that license our copyrights. … Rather than going to Congress alongside our bosses from the studios and labels and publishers to demand more copyright, we could go to Congress alongside every kind of worker, from fast-food cashiers to publishing assistants to truck drivers to demand the right to sectoral bargaining. – AI “art” and uncanniness
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-05-09-ai-copyright
date: 2024-05-16, from: Dave Rupert blog
Last Monday was my first day as an official employee of Microsoft where I’ll be working on web components as part of the Fluent design system team. As longtime readers already know, I’ve had a long term relationship with Microsoft – from Paravel’s 2012 responsive redesign of the Microsoft homepage to the five year #davegoeswindows stunt – it feels like a new chapter in the career story arc to finally acquire one of the famous blue badges. I’m still new and have barely setup my computer but so far my team of peers, the larger group, the project itself, and the other folks across Microsoft I’ve connected with are all great.
Going from a company with two coworkers to a company with 200K coworkers is certainly an adjustment. It’s my first job in 18 years where I’m not working for myself but by far the biggest eye-opener throughout this process was doing tech interviews! I learned a lot about myself; like how after decades of coding in a room by myself, performing in front of someone else isn’t natural for me. Weirdly for me, a live demo in front of thousands of people… no problem. A random generated coding challenge in front of one person… palms sweaty, mom’s spaghetti levels of difficult. I also learned that too much caffeine and the panic-flavored adrenaline of interviewing is a lot of chemistry for my active brain to process.
I eventually figured out how to interview and I had a lot of great conversations with great people at great companies. That said, this experience left me with lingering qualms about the tech interview process. A lot of it comes down to the information asymmetry where the seller (the hiring company) has more information than the buyer (the job candidate) and it’s hard to get any feedback for self-improvement. Even in my limited experience, it’s not uncommon to sink 15+ hours into a take home coding test and interview loop only to receive a terse rejection. Granted there’s promise of a six figure salary at the end of the rainbow, these jobs don’t fall out of the sky so you need to put in work, but I think that situation needs to be a bit more equitable to candidates – a Newtonian dynamic of matching effort.
One question they ask you at interviews is “What are you looking for in your next role?” and while that sparks thousands of ideas, I boiled my needs and wants down to two core concepts:
I think I found that in Microsoft. There’s a multitude of people I can ping about niche technology choices. There’s even access to a library of research papers. And already I can see how operating in a product support role seems to provide more opportunity for strategy to the broader needs of the organization as opposed to reactivity to the needs du jour that happen in Productland.
I’m sure throughput will be a bit slower without direct access to the publish to production button. I’m sure there’s topics I won’t be able to talk about on this here blog (but I tend not to blog about specific work-related activities here anyways so that won’t change). And I’m sure I’ll have to put a disclaimer here and there that these ideas are my own and not reflective of my employer. Henceforth and furthermore all bad ideas are copyright of Dave Rupert LLC®.
It’s the end of an era for sure but also the beginning of a new one and potentially the beginning of lots of new ones, who knows. Thanks to Trent and Reagan. Thanks to everyone who provided emotional support on this journey. Thanks to esteemed friends who provided referrals. Given the current macroeconomic situation, I feel lucky to have landed somewhere familiar with great opportunities and many Dave Rupert-shaped problems.
https://daverupert.com/2024/05/dave-goes-microsoft/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-16, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
The thing that Casey Newton predicts for Google and news has already happened for the huge base of reference info and know-how for software development. We no longer go to the sources, don’t need to, the ChatGPT version is an order of magnitude better. What we do need is people to keep asking and answering questions for each other, so the knowledge can be added into the AI database. We’re going somewhere here. It’s worth going there, imho, having experienced the before, and only starting to glimpse the now and near-future. But it’s as big a step as the move to PCs, then GUIs, the web, mobile.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/16.html#a135637
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044633-scope-of-work-is-holding
date: 2024-05-16, from: Ayjay blog
The perception of colour is a gift just as definitely granted to one person, and denied to another, as an ear for music; and the very first requisite for true judgment of Saint Mark’s, is the perfection of that colour-faculty which few people ever set themselves seriously to find out whether they possess or not. […]
https://blog.ayjay.org/ruskin-on-color/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-16, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Something
I’d like from ChatGPT or a plug-in. I’d like to create a notebook of
info I’d like it to have available for people who inquire about a
product I’m developing. As I’m working on the code, I develop features
that sometimes don’t make it into the docs. But when I’m working on the
feature, I take lots of notes in my work outline. I’d like to give that
outline to a LLM and let it figure out which product I’m talking about
by the context it appears in. Maybe all I have to do is publish the
notes when the product comes out, and eventually, like a search engine,
my favorite AI will crawl it. I wonder if it makes sense to somehow
pre-digest it. I wish I had a panel of experts about this stuff, but I
guess they’d have to be human, at least at this point in time. If this
makes sense to you and you know how to get started,
post a
note here.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/16.html#a130419
@Ayjay blog (date: 2024-05-16, from: Ayjay blog)
I believe every man in a Christian kingdom ought to be equally well educated. But I would have it education to purpose; stern, practical, irresistible, in moral habits, in bodily strength and beauty, in all faculties of mind capable of being developed under the circumstances of the individual, and especially in the technical knowledge of […]
https://blog.ayjay.org/46215-2/
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Bruce Schneier blog
Microsoft is working on a promising-looking protocol to lock down DNS.
ZTDNS aims to solve this decades-old problem by integrating the Windows DNS engine with the Windows Filtering Platform—the core component of the Windows Firewall—directly into client devices.
Jake Williams, VP of research and development at consultancy Hunter Strategy, said the union of these previously disparate engines would allow updates to be made to the Windows firewall on a per-domain name basis. The result, he said, is a mechanism that allows organizations to, in essence, tell clients “only use our DNS server, that uses TLS, and will only resolve certain domains.” Microsoft calls this DNS server or servers the “protective DNS server.”…
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/05/zero-trust-dns.html
date: 2024-05-16, from: Robert Reich’s blog
The backstory of the trial
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-loathsomeness-of-trump-world
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.threads.net/@mikeyk/post/C6_feeSr0Q4
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Daring Fireball
I conducted the same poll on Twitter/X, Mastodon, and Threads: “Thoughts on Apple no longer including stickers with new devices to reduce waste?”, with two options: 👍 or 👎.
https://daringfireball.net/2024/05/no_more_stickers_follow-up
date: 2024-05-16, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Daring Fireball
https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-16, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
I wonder if anyone named their dog Alexa, and if any hilarity ensued.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/15.html#a004548
date: 2024-05-15, updated: 2024-05-15, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044635-pulitzer-prize-in-fiction
date: 2024-05-15, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Daring Fireball
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/05/14/no-bounty-for-kernel-vulnerability/
date: 2024-05-15, updated: 2024-05-15, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/on-sports-parenting
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-15, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
My AI bot is a library, a librarian, a programming partner, tutor and executive assistant. And we’re just getting started working together.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/15.html#a204359
date: 2024-05-15, updated: 2024-05-15, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044632-tracing-the-history-of-em
date: 2024-05-15, updated: 2024-05-15, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/delia-browns-portraits
date: 2024-05-15, updated: 2024-05-15, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044629-paul-ford-writing-about-a
date: 2024-05-15, updated: 2024-05-15, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044626-my-love-of-farm-fresh-fro
date: 2024-05-15, updated: 2024-05-15, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/the-trailer-for-francis-ford-coppolas-megalopolis
date: 2024-05-15, updated: 2024-05-15, from: Daring Fireball
https://underpassapp.com/StopTheMadness/
date: 2024-05-15, from: Ayjay blog
Next month I have an essay coming out in Harper’s called “Yesterday’s Men: The Death of the Mythical Method.” In it I look at the rise — a rise that started a looong time ago — of myth as the central category of discourse among poets, novelists, and humanities scholars; and then I look at […]
https://blog.ayjay.org/the-archetypal-future/
date: 2024-05-15, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Daring Fireball
https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2024/5/2.html
date: 2024-05-15, updated: 2024-05-15, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044623-til-that-some-tiny-bits
date: 2024-05-15, updated: 2024-05-15, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.platformer.news/google-io-ai-search-sundar-pichai/
date: 2024-05-15, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
They needed fresh blood, and they got it.
Knicks won in a blowout.
I had no idea that was coming.
Next game on Friday.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/15/160638.html?title=theKnicksWonLastNight
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-15, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
AI
is not over-hyped, imho. I’m discovering new significance for it
every day. An example. I had to go back to some very complex code I
wrote a week ago. I wanted to give it new flexibility, that would be
simple from the user’s point of view, and in order for it to work
technically it has to maintain that simplicity internally. It’s a tall
order to go back to something complex a week after writing it, and rip
it apart and put it back together and have it retain the simplicity it
had before. But I had an advantage this time that I had never had
before, a programming partner with a perfect memory. I had written the
original code with ChatGPT. So I went back and asked it to review my
plan, and then worked with it step by step as I had before. It had
perfect recall, right, of course where my recall is pretty sketchy. It
took two sessions to get it done, but it works now, and I’m confident
I’ve covered all the bases. How do you put that story in a press
release? If you want to understand a new technology, don’t talk to the
CEO of the tech company that made the product, their lives are
whirlwinds, they don’t have time or the capacity to understand how big
the idea is, they just know that it is big. If you want to understand
you have to use it and you have to talk with other users.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/15.html#a155730
date: 2024-05-15, updated: 2024-05-15, from: Daring Fireball
date: 2024-05-15, updated: 2024-05-15, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044625-whoa-a-5500-piece-lego-se
date: 2024-05-15, updated: 2024-05-15, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044624-google-is-replacing-their
date: 2024-05-15, updated: 2024-05-15, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/hot-frank-summer-starts-now
date: 2024-05-15, updated: 2024-05-15, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044600-love-this-phrase-decantin
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-15, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Martha My Dear is the essential Paul McCartney love song.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/15.html#a132630
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-15, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
This
is a
typical
dialog you see when you
visit
a site with an ad blocker installed. They say that turning off the
ad blocker will “support” them. No, I don’t think it actually will do
anything for them. It might expose me to malware or having my interests
shared with businesses who will use that info for who-knows-what. Much
better would be to let me click a button to give them $0.50 to read the
freaking article that’s behind that idiotic dialog, and btw, the payment
would have to be anonymous or I’m clicking the Back button. I really did
want to know what happens if Trump is found guilty and sentenced to
prison. I still do. But I don’t think I’m going to turn off my ad
blocker. I’ll think about it. In the meantime if they had let me pay
them $0.50 to read the freaking article, I might have linkblogged it to
people who follow me via RSS or email, or on Bluesky or Mastodon, thus
giving them a chance to sell others on paying $0.50 to read the freaking
article. Not promising I’d do that, but if they really answer the
question, if I really learn something I certainly would pass it along.
Come on USA Today, get conscious. We’ll happily support you for giving
us info we wanted, just let us actually help you in a meaningful way,
not by penalizing us for having the audacity to use an ad blocker.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/15.html#a131828
date: 2024-05-15, from: Ayjay blog
Drafts is a fantastic app, so well-designed, so capable, so powerful. For my money it’s the best “bucket” app, ideal for holding onto chunks of text. But I have a problem: I put things into Drafts and then forget about them. Yes, I tag them, but that doesn’t help. They just disappear into the bucket. […]
https://blog.ayjay.org/temporary-storage/
date: 2024-05-15, from: Robert Reich’s blog
Friends, In a few weeks, Donald Trump may be a convicted criminal. It’s hardly a sure thing, of course. All he needs for a mistrial is one holdout juror. But the evidence so far seems overwhelming and damning. So we have to face a daunting reality. For the first time in history, a convicted criminal may be the nominee of one of our major parties and on November’s presidential ballot.
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/office-hours-272
date: 2024-05-15, updated: 2024-05-15, from: Daring Fireball
date: 2024-05-15, from: Jeff Geerling blog
microSD cards’ SBC days are numbered
<div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><img class="insert-image" width="500" height="auto" alt="Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+" src="https://www.jeffgeerling.com/sites/default/files/images/raspberry-pi-m2-hat-plus.png"></p>For years, SBCs that aren’t Raspberry Pis experimented with eMMC and M.2 storage interfaces. While the Raspberry Pi went from full-size SD card in the first generation to microSD in every generation following (Compute Modules excluded), other vendors like Radxa, Orange Pi, Banana Pi, etc. have been all over the place.
Still, most of the time a fallback microSD card slot remains.
But microSD cards—even the fastest UHS-II/A2/V90/etc. ones that advertise hundreds of MB/sec—are laggards when it comes to any kind of SBC workflow.
The two main reasons they’re used are cost and size. They’re tiny, and they don’t cost much, especially if you don’t shell out for industrial-rated microSD cards.
<span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Jeff Geerling</span></span>
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/microsd-cards-sbc-days-are-numbered
date: 2024-05-15, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Daring Fireball
A “pro” device that goes pro by getting thinner and lighter, not heavier and thicker, is not a non sequitur.
https://daringfireball.net/2024/05/the_m4_ipad_pros
date: 2024-05-14, from: John Naughton’s online diary
Help? For one awful moment, it looked like a human arm. Quote of the Day ”The mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed … Continue reading
https://memex.naughtons.org/wednesday-15-may-2024/39448/
date: 2024-05-14, updated: 2024-05-14, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044621-hey-if-youre-looking-for
date: 2024-05-14, from: Ayjay blog
Fraudulent academic papers are on the rise, and will continue to be on the rise as long as academics substitute counting for judgment. The fetish for sheer numbers of publications should have ended decades ago, but the professoriate can’t confront its addiction, or accept its responsibility for creating this vast system of perverse incentives. It’s […]
https://blog.ayjay.org/try-not-to-think/
date: 2024-05-14, updated: 2024-05-14, from: Bruce Schneier blog
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:
The list is maintained on this page.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/05/upcoming-speaking-engagements-36.html
date: 2024-05-14, updated: 2024-05-14, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/out-sick-today-1
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-14, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
BTW, I’ve been to three Stevenotes, the first one, the rollout of the Mac in 1984, then the rollout of NeXT in 1988, and a random press event in 1997 announcing they were going with Unix server products instead of the homegrown much easier to use Mac server products. We could have had both of course, but Jobs never really wanted developers imho, truth be told. We were inside in 1984 because Mike Boich and Guy Kawasaki were doing the evangelism.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/14.html#a131234
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-14, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Yesterday’s OpenAI big press event was a nothing burger. I thought they already had all of that stuff, they certainly had been at least telegraphing it. Also there never will be another Steve Jobs, it’s too bad everyone is using his template for product announcements. It only works if you’re Steve Jobs.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/14.html#a131039
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-14, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Someday I’ll make a list of people who I wish would read this blog.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/14.html#a130819
date: 2024-05-14, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
In this picture he either looks dangerous or defeated, or both. I wouldn’t want to have to play against him tonight.
Here’s my two cents. If Brunson has heavy legs tonight, as he clearly did in the last two games, he should be used as a decoy, to draw a double team, to free up one of the Knicks’ assassins. Or maybe he’ll be more effective with just one Pacer guarding him, instead of two or three.
And for crying out loud, start one of the excellent bench players, McBride or Sims or Burks, or all of them, and make sure the heroes of games 1 and 2 get plenty of rest.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/14/125908.html?title=brunsonAsBadManOrDecoy
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-14, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
It’s
a crazy world, so crazy that RFK, Jr could be elected president
via a third-party. He’s a better speaker than either of the other
candidates. If he didn’t a speech impediment I’d say he was basically a
sure thing. I don’t know how crazy he actually is, but he cleans up
nicely, having seen him interviewed on MSNBC a few days ago. He had good
PR training somewhere, it’s probably not just from the genes, he is a
freaking Kennedy, his mother was a wife of a Kennedy, and clearly raised
him well. I’m voting for Biden of course. I’m not that crazy. But people
are tired of Biden, I understand why – and they want a president they
can look up to, not one that reminds them of their 80-something
grandfather. And people are also understandably fed up with Trump.
Before it’s over we will come to think of him not as a spoiler but as a
possible future president, where “future” is less than a year away.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/14.html#a123837
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-14, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
If a baker may not be forced to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding on the basis of religious freedom, surely a woman can’t be forced to give birth to an unwanted child.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/14.html#a123404
date: 2024-05-14, updated: 2024-05-14, from: Bruce Schneier blog
Google has patched another Chrome zero-day:
On Thursday, Google said an anonymous source notified it of the vulnerability. The vulnerability carries a severity rating of 8.8 out of 10. In response, Google said, it would be releasing versions 124.0.6367.201/.202 for macOS and Windows and 124.0.6367.201 for Linux in subsequent days.
“Google is aware that an exploit for CVE-2024-4671 exists in the wild,” the company said.
Google didn’t provide any other details about the exploit, such as what platforms were targeted, who was behind the exploit, or what they were using it for…
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/05/another-chrome-vulnerability.html
date: 2024-05-14, from: Robert Reich’s blog
David Zaslav exemplifies socialism for the rich
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/how-to-make-50-million-a-year-while
date: 2024-05-14, from: Daniel Stenberg Blog
Welcome to the 11th annual curl user survey. This is a once a year poll that we ask as many curl and libcurl users as possible to respond to. >> Take the survey << This is in many ways the only real way we get to know what curl users think about all sorts of … Continue reading curl user survey 2024
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/05/14/curl-user-survey-2024/
date: 2024-05-14, from: James Fallows, Substack
Let’s talk about how our candidates talk.
https://fallows.substack.com/p/election-countdown-176-days-to-go
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-14, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
FSD gets confused and does some incredibly stupid things. With ChatGPT it’s amusing but with FSD it’s your ass on the line.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/13.html#a015747
date: 2024-05-14, updated: 2024-05-16, from: Daring Fireball
https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/13/openais-newest-model-is-gpt-4o/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-14, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Imagine a social web without, by default, the right to drop turds where ever you like.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/13.html#a015349
date: 2024-05-14, from: Dan Rather’s Steady
Treat the polls as a motivator, not a misery
https://steady.substack.com/p/time-out
date: 2024-05-13, from: Melanie Mitchell, AI Guide for Human Thinking
“[O]ne thing is clear: LLMs are not human. But they are superhuman in their ability to extract information from the world’s database of text. Some aspects of their behavior appear to be intelligent, but if it’s not human intelligence, what is the nature of their intelligence?” — Terrence Sejnowski,
https://aiguide.substack.com/p/evaluating-large-language-models
date: 2024-05-13, from: Tracy Durnell Blog
Discuss in pairs Hand signals for remaining time needed No straight questions Diminish responsibility Hand down, not hands up
https://tracydurnell.com/2024/05/13/tricks-for-getting-a-group-talking/
date: 2024-05-13, from: Tracy Durnell Blog
👏 I appreciate the work you’ve done on this gRegor! I know I’m unlikely to attend any in-person event soon, in part due to not traveling and in part from worry over event logistics, so I haven’t bothered to get into the details of what would make me feel safe to attend. I worried that […]
https://tracydurnell.com/2024/05/13/reply-to-gregor-covid-safety-at-events/
date: 2024-05-13, from: Jeff Geerling blog
Quick NVMe performance testing with fio
<div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>I've recently been debugging some NVMe / PCIe bus errors on a Raspberry Pi, and I wanted a quick way to test NVMe devices without needing to create a filesystem and use a tool like <code>iozone</code>. I don't care about benchmarks, I just want to quickly push the drive and read and write some data to it.</p>
fio is the tool for the job, and after a quick install
sudo apt install -y fio, I create a configuration file
named nvme-read.fio:
[global]
name=nvme-seq-read
time_based
ramp_time=5
runtime=30
readwrite=read
bs=256k
ioengine=libaio
direct=1
numjobs=1
iodepth=32
group_reporting=1
[nvme0]
filename=/dev/nvme0n1
Then run it with:
sudo fio nvme-read.fio
Easy way to put some stress on the drive, and test your PCIe setup and the drive itself.
<span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Jeff Geerling</span></span>
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/quick-nvme-performance-testing-fio
date: 2024-05-13, from: Om Malik blog
Apple’s launch week was lost to the brouhaha over the “Crush” ad. As I explained last week, the real cause of this ad with poor taste is an outcome of the tyranny of large numbers, which is also not just an Apple problem. During Apple’s Lost Week, there was an announcement that was of primary interest to …
https://om.co/2024/05/13/some-thoughts-about-the-m4-chip/
date: 2024-05-13, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
I asked ChatGPT to draw a weather map of the mid-Atlantic states, but it drew the usual garbage for technical images.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/13/205122.html?title=weatherMap
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-13, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
I’ve been trying the new 4o version of ChatGPT. It’s much faster. It certainly is a search engine. And it covers news. I asked it about Michael Cohen’s testimony today in the Trump trial, and it gave me a summary. I asked for the weather forecast in Kingston NY. It wouldn’t give me the lyrics to Martha My Dear by the Beatles. I asked it to draw a weather map of the mid-Atlantic states, but it drew the usual garbage for technical images.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/13.html#a204138
date: 2024-05-13, updated: 2024-05-13, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044613-this-is-a-good-piece
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-13, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
I
can’t wait for the UIs of settings on systems like Mac or Android to go
through the AIs. No more hunting through menus to not find the setting
where you’re sure it should be.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/13.html#a191544
date: 2024-05-13, updated: 2024-05-13, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044615-just-27-of-civilian-worke
date: 2024-05-13, updated: 2024-05-13, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/the-kids-are-right-and-alright
date: 2024-05-13, from: Matt Haughey blog
I flew though LAX yesterday and forgot how hostile free airport WiFi used to be in the mid-2000s.
LAX uses Boingo Wireless (aka Earthlink dialup's follow-up venture) which first tries to sell you a $15/mo plan (that used to be adopted by other airports).
To get
https://a.wholelottanothing.org/remember-free-airport-wifi/
date: 2024-05-13, updated: 2024-05-13, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044601-lauren-groff-has-opened-a
date: 2024-05-13, updated: 2024-05-13, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044607-currently-listening-to-at
date: 2024-05-13, updated: 2024-05-13, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044609-incredible-fact-none-of-t
date: 2024-05-13, updated: 2024-05-13, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/the-demon-of-unrest-by-erik-larson
date: 2024-05-13, updated: 2024-05-13, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044604-geologist-finds-setting-f
date: 2024-05-13, updated: 2024-05-13, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/0044603-a-new-lotr-movie-is
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-13, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
BTW, that’s what my blogroll is turning into. My contributors. The people I keep an eye on through my work day. Where I get new ways of looking at the same world we’re all looking at. We used to call this “watching them watch us watch them watching us etc.”
http://scripting.com/2024/05/13.html#a131145
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-13, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
The way MSNBC has contributors, I want contributors for my blog. One of the first people I’d invite is John Naughton. See next item.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/13.html#a130651
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-13, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Here’s where we’re headed now that we have AI programming partners. Creating software will be possible the way popular music is created. Watch Get Back to get an idea. George Martin was the Beatles sherpa, the same way my AI partner is my guide through unknown programming lands. It now doesn’t matter if I have less experience building MySQL apps than others. I have the collective experience of all of them here to help. My George Martin. What got me thinking about this is John Naughton’s piece about AI and programming.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/13.html#a130409
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-13, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
The canonical Knicks fan, a video.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/13.html#a121316
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-13, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
I absolutely abhor news sites that make you turn off your ad blocker only to reveal their paywall.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/13.html#a120949
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-13, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
I
feel like crap today, the Knicks were blown out by the Indiana team, the
series is tied 2-2 but it feels much worse. The headline in the
Daily
News reads “Pacers blow depleted, dead-legged Knicks out of the
water in Game 4, tie series 2-2.” Yeah. I don’t know how we recover from
this loss. In a way I imagine the Knicks issuing a resignation. “It’s
been a great season, but we’re tired. We’re headed to the beach, we’ll
see you in October Knicks fans. Thanks for your support.” I would nod my
head and say “Yeah that makes sense.” Whatever. I may spend today
sleeping it off. Next game is tomorrow night. Yes, they will play, for
sure, and yes, I will watch.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/13.html#a120359
date: 2024-05-13, updated: 2024-05-15, from: Bruce Schneier blog
Back in the 1960s, if you played a 2,600Hz tone into an AT&T pay phone, you could make calls without paying. A phone hacker named John Draper noticed that the plastic whistle that came free in a box of Captain Crunch cereal worked to make the right sound. That became his hacker name, and everyone who knew the trick made free pay-phone calls.
There were all sorts of related hacks, such as faking the tones that signaled coins dropping into a pay phone and faking tones used by repair equipment. AT&T could sometimes change the signaling tones, make them more complicated, or try to keep them secret. But the general class of exploit was impossible to fix because the problem was general: Data and control used the same channel. That is, the commands that told the phone switch what to do were sent along the same path as voices…
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/05/llms-data-control-path-insecurity.html
date: 2024-05-13, from: Ayjay blog
The Richard Brody review of Perfect Days is a tone-deaf review by the most reliably tone-deaf reviewer out there. Every reviewer has limits to his or her catholicity of taste, because every human being is thus limited, but Brody’s cinematic sweet spot seems to be tiny, and when he doesn’t like a movie he simply […]
https://blog.ayjay.org/perfect-days/
date: 2024-05-13, from: Robert Reich’s blog
If Trump is elected, he’ll make it worse
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/americas-second-civil-war-has-already
date: 2024-05-13, from: Tracy Durnell Blog
See also: We cannot have bodily autonomy in a surveillance state An improvisational walking newsletter Challenging the “rights” of cars for the rights of people Recursive human thought To stay or to go?
https://tracydurnell.com/2024/05/12/control-of-thought-control-of-movement/
date: 2024-05-13, from: Jeff Geerling blog
Import unsupported camera RAW files into Apple Photos
<div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Many years ago, I decided to <a href="https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2017/i-made-switch-aperture-photos">migrate my photo library from Apple's now-defunct Aperture to Photos</a>, so I could take advantage of Apple's iCloud Photo Library (don't worry, I still have three full complete local backups, plus a separate cloud backup besides Apple's iCloud originals).</p>One pain point is RAW support. As camera manufacturers add new models, their proprietary RAW codecs are updated, and software vendors like Apple, Adobe, and Microsoft have to update photo editing tools to work with the new camera models.
I don’t envy them this task, but as Photos was Apple’s official successor to Aperture (a pale shadow to be sure, but it has its merits as a semi-decent library organizer), they’ve generally done well supporting new camera models. The compatibility list for macOS Sonoma, iPadOS 17, and iOS 17 is a testament to that effort.
<span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Jeff Geerling</span></span>
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/import-unsupported-camera-raw-files-apple-photos
date: 2024-05-13, updated: 2024-05-13, from: Jason Kittke’s blog
https://kottke.org/24/05/the-sky-was-purple-and-red-and-yellow-and-on-fire
date: 2024-05-12, from: John Naughton’s online diary
Drakes! You can tell what they’re thinking: where did those dratted females go? Quote of the Day ”There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self. Ernest Hemingway … Continue reading
https://memex.naughtons.org/monday-13-may-2024/39435/
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Every social web should offer the two same author-level moderation controls that Facebook does. 1. The author can delete comments. 2. The author can say who can respond. Here are screen shots of the menu and dialog. We assume each site already has the ability to block users. No more spammer trolls.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/12.html#a230238
date: 2024-05-12, from: Robert Reich’s blog
Friends, This weekend, tens of thousands of students are graduating from American colleges and universities. Some graduation ceremonies have been cancelled or at least inconvenienced by student protests. Just so there’s no confusion, let me state clearly that I’m deeply opposed to Hamas. I was appalled by the atrocities it committed on October 7 that left 1,200 Israelis dead and took 134 people as hostages, including babies, children, women, and older people. And I firmly believe in Israel’s existence and its right to protect itself.
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/student-demonstrators-and-bidens
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Today’s one sentence provocation: Imagine a social web without the default right to drop turds where ever you like.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/12.html#a151149
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
ChatGPT
is like a worldwide encyclopedia that comes with a free librarian, 24
hours a day, who never gets tired and thinks all your questions are
super insightful. I suppose everyone projects their ideal best friend on
this thing. You just learned something about me. Heh. But the cool thing
is it’s not a yes-person, if they think you’re wrong they say so. Which
I really like. One more thing I’m really glad I got to be alive
when this stuff came online. I feel much smarter and better organized
and it’s harder for me to get lost in the weeds, as I do sometimes. I
guess what want next is a librarian who also is a great executive
assistant. Takes notes on what I’m doing and figures out what I need to
be reminded of and roughly when.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/12.html#a143142
date: 2024-05-12, from: Dan Rather’s Steady
A Reason To Smile
https://steady.substack.com/p/love-can-build-a-bridge
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2024-05-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Sometimes
I just put one idea on my blog for a day and leave it at that because I
think the idea is important enough on its own, and that any explanation
would dilute it. Yesterday’s one sentence
comment was
based on decades of reading the NYT, and the story told by their
executive editor in a recent
interview,
who has imho completely lost his way. Using polls, which have proven not
reliable, and are subject to manipulation by the NYT and other opinion
leaders, to determine what they cover, that’s marketing, not journalism.
Journalism would tell us what to expect if we elect one candidate over
another, if the differences are obvious, as they are in 2024. The NYT is
not doing that, by its own admission, and based on observation. I ask my
readers, some of whom are influential people themselves, do we accept
this, and keep trying to get the NYT to understand and deliver on their
responsibility, or take the problem on ourselves. I believe we have the
tools and resources to do so, all we need is determination.
http://scripting.com/2024/05/12.html#a115836
date: 2024-05-12, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
The main problem seems to me that nobody knows. So how do we find a way out of this uncertainty? What should or priorities be?
Before we even start, let me just say that I’m never interested in debating climate change. It’s real, it’s here, and people denying it are just trying to waste our time.
The first category of action, I think, would be political: Vote green, on all levels of government. And by “green” I mean the most radical green possible but not necessarily a Green Party member. It all depends on the voting system, on the actual parties you have. If you live in a one or two party state or if your Green Party is run by fascists, I have no idea what you should do. Something about political change, something about local politics, and so on.
On the individual level, I think uncertainty arises because we’re not sure. No littering looks nice but probably doesn’t help much against the climate. Perhaps it helps against the micro-plastic? But how many plastic bags from land-locked Switzerland actually end up in the ocean? How much plastic is that compared to the fishing nets lost at sea? The oil spills? And here’s the moment where it spirals out of control. Stop! I need to stop because there’s no “thinking it through” when things are so complex unless you’re a scientist working on it. I hope the scientists can do their research, and somebody else can compile the research into arguments, with weights attached, so that politicians and individuals know what to tackle first.
This is why I appreciate lists of priorities, even if they are slightly wrong. They don’t have to be perfect because perfection is a goal used to derail the conversation. If you think the top priority is to get rid of cars, and you have a lot of arguments against cars, then getting involved in a discussion where the other party argues about electric vehicles, lithium batteries, hydrogen storage, road access for emergency vehicles, mobility for the disabled, then yes to all of that, but also: get rid of cars. We can have nuance as long as we also start doing something. We can start by making large, private cars illegal. Then medium, private cars. Then add fees for long haul trucks. Build railways. Build trams. Get rid of public parking spaces without special permits. And on and on. This allows us to pull back out of car society with grace. We can get started and keep the things that we think are precious.
The alternative is living as we do, followed by uncontrolled collapse, I fear.
Yes, it’s expensive. Not doing anything, however, is fatal.
Here’s what @peterdutoit recently posted:
In order of impact:
🚫 Live car free
🚙 Shift to BEV [i.e. Battery Electric Vehicle]
✈️ One less flight (long return)
☀️ Use renewable energy
🚋 Shift to public transport
🔨 Refurbishment and renovation
🥗 Vegan diet
🆒 Heat pump
⏲️ Improved cooking equipment
♨️ Renewable-based heating
He offered these two sources:
The full report of Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change is a PDF with 2042 pages. So there’s an answer if anybody is claiming that we don’t know what to do. But also: there’s your answer if you’re wondering why nobody is doing anything. Politicians at the top need people who read this report for them and my guess is – given what little I know about Swiss politics, for example – that there is only a very small number of people that have actually read this report, let alone understand enough of it in order to make informed decisions.
This is why a public “chain of trust” needs to lead from interviews with public figures to interviews with experts. The media, including social media, needs to mediate this. Then people can at least go along with people they trust, even if this trust is built on public appearance, hollow campaign promises, good looks, height and whatever else engenders trust in people.
Anyway, number one: 🚫 Live car free. If you can. Make the kind of choices that make this easier in the future, or for your children, or for your friends and family. If you can. But this is one of the goals we need to pursue. We need to get our priorities right.
(We don’t need them to perfectly right, as discussed above. But we cannot save the planet and car culture, both. One of them will have to go.)
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2024-05-12-uncertainty
date: 2024-05-12, from: Chris Heilmann’s blog
Yesterday was the final of Eurovision. Lots of people use this as an opportunity to post pictures of dead babies. I get it, we live in pretty rough times. But the ESC is not an official European vote, or political platform. So how about we concentrate on the real elections going on. We have enough […]
https://christianheilmann.com/2024/05/12/about-yesterdays-european-song-contest-2024/
date: 2024-05-12, from: Chris Heilmann’s blog
Friday I released Issue 115 of the WeAreDevelopers Dev Digest Newsletter This time you learn how AI changes how code is taught, cryptography, the history of passwords, how the internet is declining and you can play Super Mario on a type writer. News and Articles Some cool new things to try out: The Netlify Image […]
https://christianheilmann.com/2024/05/12/dev-digest-issue-115-password-beefstew-is-not-strog-n0ff/
date: 2024-05-12, from: Robert Reich’s blog
And last week’s winner
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/sunday-caption-his-thoughts
