Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
I’ve been on vacation/holiday/or whatever you call it. Work calls it Paid Time Off, or PTO. I call it time with the grandkids.
Kim and I spent most of the week camping with our grandchildren at Myrtle Beach State Park. This was our first trip to the park and I really enjoyed our time there. The amenities at the park were excellent. We had power and water at our campsite hooked directly to our trailer, a bathhouse about 30-yards away, and a nice camp store just around the corner. Oh, right, not to mention the beach about 100 yards from the campsite. We spent Tuesday and Wednesday mornings at the beach and kind of chilled or puttered around other places Myrtle Beach had to offer.
There are so many places to see and things to do we didn’t even scratch the surface. Next year we have to do seven to 10 days with our entire family in tow. ⛱️
Brian Merchant • Blood in the Machine
☢️ WARNING: Substack
Like a lot of figureheads in the AI industry, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says that ordinary people are not ready for the changes AI is about to unleash on the world. In a widely circulated interview with Axios, Amodei warns we are on the brink of what his interviewers describe as a “job apocalypse” that will wipe out half of entry level jobs and cause the unemployment rate to rise up to 20%.
I’m more torn than ever about using AI in the workplace. As I mentioned last week, I used AI to help with a CI/CD GitHub Action I was setting up and it provided clues to my issue but I never really found a true answer to the problem. It took an experienced human to figure out what I missed in my setup.
Poor prompting on my part? Probably. This is why AI will replace me someday. 😃
By that time I hope to be retired.
You’re probably wondering what happened. One day we were all-in on Arc. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, we started building something new: Dia.
This piece feels rambling to me. It’s obvious the author has a lot to say and feels the need to justify their move to sideline Arc. I don’t blame them. I know folks who love Arc and have gone all in on it. They’re extremely disappointed. Hopefully the like Dia. 🤞🏼
Jonathan M. Gitlan • Ars Technica
Verstappen slowed to let Russell through, then sped up into turn 4, opening up his steering and colliding with the Mercedes. Call it petulance or frustration; it was an inexcusable lapse of judgment from a driver. Using one’s car as a weapon against another competitor on track is unacceptable, and the 10-second penalty that Verstappen earned as a result dropped him to 10th place at the end, ruining his own race more than anyone else’s.
I don’t know Max Verstappen but I’ve never really liked the guy. Temper tantrums like this don’t have a place in racing but they do happen. Professional athletes get to their positions by being the best at their craft and often have large egos to go along with the skill. Verstappen is a prime example of ego and skill.
Firefox could be put out of business should a court implement all the Justice Department’s proposals to restrict Google’s search monopoly, an executive for the browser owner Mozilla testified Friday. “It’s very frightening,” Mozilla CFO Eric Muhlheim said.
It would be absolutely tragic if Mozilla was out of business. We need more browser engines, not fewer. Microsoft giving up on their browser was a huge blow to the ecosystem and competition.
The thing is, the only companies who could afford to bail them out want to control the internet and have corporate interests to fulfill.
Who could be a good steward? Facebook? Definitely not. They’re a super scummy company. Apple? They don’t need another browser. Google? Don’t need another browser. Microsoft? They should have their own browser and seem like a logical choice, but they wouldn’t embrace the open web as Mozilla does. Remember ActiveX controls in IE? Yeah, total nightmare in an otherwise good browser. And to think Microsoft was arrogant enough to declare IE complete.
The internet used to be limitless, open to anyone with an idea. Now, it’s a polished prison run by tech giants. Is this the future we signed up for? Here’s how Big Tech quietly turned freedom into captivity.
I think you could piece together a lot of what the big silos offer but it wouldn’t be as complete or cohesive. Blogs, Mastodon, and Micro.blog are great for social network replacements but so many people rely on Facebook for all of those activities. Heck, many businesses only have Facebook pages.
Side note: I once built a little website for a nano brewing company in Exeter, CA. I offered them the keys to it and they turned it down because Facebook gave them what they needed.
Also, they have a website now! Good move! The domain I got for them was better, but this works. I picked up bellcraft.beer for them.
They could’ve also picked up bellcraftbrew.co instead of the .com, but to each his own. I think that just proves the power of .com verses everything else.
It did not take any particular skill in forecasting to predict, at the end of 2024, that the unprecedented partnership between Donald Trump and Elon Musk would come to a dramatic ending. Both Trump and Musk are independently famous for their erratic leadership styles and abrupt purges of once-close allies, and neither shows any long-term patience for anyone who opposes them.
I’m here for the Space Karen and Marmalade Messiah breakup. Bring it! They’re both such petty man children. Each smoking his own supply and blaming everyone but themselves for their problems.
I can’t wait to be shot of both of them.
Please, send them to Mars to start a colony. They can own it and call it Muskland or Trumpville or whatever they want. At least I won’t have to hear about them ever again.
A collective of international animation unions, federations, and organizations are calling for action over the usage of artificial intelligence, citing its destructive impact on the craft and business of animation, as well as on industry workers.
I like this move. And like I’ve said before AI has its uses but for some things we should say ‘No.’
If you’re a craftsman of any kind I’d say no to using it for the craft part of my job. The thing I pride myself on. In this case it’s the artwork.
I was wondering what kinda things you, dear reader, like to read online?
I like all kinds of stuff but most of it boils down to tech related stuff. I read old timers like Dave Winer and Jeffrey Zeldman. I also like reading folks like Manton Reece, [John Gruber](daringfireball.net], and Joan Westenberg among many others!
But then in the mid 00s things changed, and since then the users have flocked to closed systems. It would be similarly wonderful if we had an open social web, but we don’t. Mastodon is open but it’s not simple like the web is, and Bluesky is simple, but it is not open. And neither supports the most basic features of the web.#
I’ve heard ActivityPub and Mastodon can be challenging to code against but I’ve also heard Bluesky is extremely difficult to understand from a technical perspective. Maybe it’s just me?
Folks are building open alternatives to many closed systems on ActivityPub. So it does work!
Dave continues to build excellent tools on top of technologies he’s created, like RSS. It’s different and it missing some of the things people like, like replies (as far as I can tell, it’s missing replies? I could be very wrong about that. I don’t know what I don’t know. Ya know?) 😃
If you haven’t seen WordLand you should give it a gander. It’s really the editor bloggers using WordPress really need. At least I think it is. It would be extremely cool if Dave and perhaps others could define a protocol for editors to connect to all different types of blogging systems. Heh, I think that’s what ActivityPub and others are for? 🤔
We need taco trucks on every corner of the White House sporting that picture, in poster size, on the side of their trucks. 🤣
