I was asked on Mastodon what role Aaron Swartz played in developing RSS, since he is often credited with co-developing it. This is what I wrote. "There was a lot of confusion about what RSS was until RSS 2.0 came out and the NYT adopted it. There was a thread based on RDF, and Aaron was credited as a contributor to that. I would ask those people what he did. I never worked with him. I saw some of his posts on their mail list and met him a few times at conferences. He was a precocious young person, obviously smart, but he didn't seem interested in what I was working on. That's about it."#
A small favor from ChatGPT, now when I'm working on a writing tool (basically always) I don't have to use my own writing for test cases. For example, here's "150 words about the freshness of summer and how the best memories of love and happiness are summer memories."#
In general on social media if someone posts a bit that's an oft-repeated bit of wisdom from the cable networks, I delete it, esp if it's from someone I don't know. I could watch MSNBC if I wanted to. No need to practice such idiocratic punditry online, imho of course ymmv. #
You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)