I like to share posts from Threads on Bluesky and Mastodon to illustrate the incompatibility, the ignorance of one to the other. These guys should all be using the same protocol. It's a travesty that each of them considers their product to define the social web -- they don't understand the first thing about the web, what the miracle the web was. Before the web, the tech world was as it is now, fragmented by huge companies that didn't care about anything but their own internal drama. The last thing they would consider was reusing something that was already running. While all that was going on Unix basically agreed on a core set of functions that formed a basis for interop. They weren't perfect, there were differences in each of the Unixes, but you could reuse most of what you knew on each of the platforms. But Apple, Microsoft, Sun and IBM each ran their own ecosystems. And then one day along came the web. Instead of bookshelves of docs, it wasn't even a booklet. You could be up and running with a "website" in ten minutes. I speak from experience. My first website was authored with a freaking email. Today Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon are the IBM, Microsoft and Apple of 2024. It's ridiculous if they think this is a web. To paraphrase the late great Lloyd Bentsen, I knew the web, the web was a friend of mine. You are not the web. #

I've been alternating days here on my blog. One day, lots of posts, maybe even a podcast. And then a quiet day. Today started out quiet, and then the ideas started flowing. #

Programming work: I was trying to work out a feature for WordLand that isn't cooperating, having to do with the clipboard and the MediumEditor package, which does all these nice things for us with the clipboard, but it isn't willing to share custody, or perhaps more accurately we can't figure out how to. The feature I want is when you paste a URL and there's a selection, the selected text is turned into a link. A video explanation. I've burned two full sessions on this, seeking advice from ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity. They all pretend to know what to do, but in fact they don't. The clipboard is one of those areas of the browser that is held together with rumors and confusion, as is MediumEditor, and the intersection is rumors and confusion squared. Tomorrow I'm going to work on other things, and the day after until I have an idea for another way to approach this. I really want this feature because apparently it's supported in Slack, WordPress and other software that supports links. #

BTW, we could use a few more testers with good experience with bug reporting who use WordPress. I'm sure there are more bugs we haven't gotten reports on yet. #

I've figured out more precisely what WordLand is meant to compete with --> the tiny little text boxes of the social web. Ours is slightly bigger, and grows as your piece gets longer. Neatly arranged like the others, and all your writing flows through WordPress and RSS, where each of the TLTBs only flows into their limited and incompatible views of the social web. RSS and WordPress are a powerful distribution system. Lots of software works with those two protocols, as do many programmers, and they're both marvelously open, stable over more than twenty years each, and can't be owned by billionaires. Pretty powerful place, kind of amazing that there's so much room here, and the people are friendly. 😄#

Amazing that the tech industry hasn't tried to retrieve its reputation from the ones who are repping us in DC nowadays. Software doesn't have to treat their users like nobodies. Quite the opposite. I come from the school that says our users are the smartest most powerful people in the world and it's our privilege to create tools for them.#

One more thing. I love taking the time to craft a delicious piece of software. I have never really done that in the 50 years I've been doing this. This time I decided there's no rush. I'm going to wait until people want what I've created. We're not there yet. 😄#

Podcast: ChatGPT is encyclopedic but is not good at strategy. It will drive you down blind alleys. It rewrites your code to conform to its standards. It has a terrible memory. Forgets things you told it specifically not to forget. It does not keep promises. People who say the bubble is fully inflated on this stuff are not paying attention. We're still dealing with very basic features. #

A tuneup for WordLand confirms that it's publishing.#

I'm thinking maybe we'll do a Kickstarter for WordLand. It'll cost money to run the server and continue to develop the sofware. It fills a big enough need to ask the users to support it financially, at least to get it off the ground. The server is open source so theoretically anyone can run one. But in practice most people will probably just want to use the service. I just want to solve this problem so we can start building a developer ecosystem around WordPress that it's never had. Think of WordLand as a pump primer. 😄#

I watched Ari Melber last night and noted he isn't yet on Bluesky or hasn't updated his show graphics to include it? He usually tries to be leading edge in this, and at this point he looks a bit behind the times, imho, ymmv etc. After Melber, I stayed through the opening segment of Joy Reid and was charged up by her intro. She's clicking on all cylinders. They must be thinking about gutting or reconfiguring MSNBC at this time. It's up for sale, I wonder if a billionaire will see the wisdom of owning that piece of real estate as Musk saw the value in Twitter, far beyond what the stock market valued it at. (BTW, I should add that I benefited from his largesse, I was a very small shareholder in Twitter at the time. I did not want to sell, but my vote didn't matter. Heh.)#

I've been thinking about Blogger Of The Year for a few months, and had a choice (not yet final), but then Paul Krugman left the NYT, set up shop on Substack, and has been totally kicking ass every day for the last week. Presumably these are all things the NYT wouldn't let him run? Or if he submitted them, would they edit them into mushy nonsense. I've been there, I quit Wired when they edited my pieces, with my name on them, where I said things I thought were inane, things that I most definitely did not say. There's never been a better illustration of the importance of blogging and the value that's removed by publishing in the NYT. If a Nobel Laureate like Krugman can't get his ideas out that way, with the huge advantage in circulation they have (as Wired did over my humble blog), then there must be a reason to have blogs after all. I don't think he will be my BOTY for 2024, but maybe next year, if he keeps up the intelligent irreverence. #

I've got a new project called davegpt, it's in GitHub, open source of course. I also created a ChatGPT project with the same code. Presumably I can ask it questions about the code. Because I have a worknotes.md file in the GitHub project, ChatGPT understands where I want to take this project. Most amazing, it wrote a summary of what it saw in the project. I added that to the GitHub project, of course, and since it was in Markdown, it fit right in with no mods. The power of standards. I love it when things that should work, do. The next step is to implement a feature in the new Bingeworthy that can only be done with an AI bot like ChatGPT. It's such a thrill to be working on this stuff as it's happening. And what a delight that it has an API. I don't mind that I'm paying for it, I love the idea of paying to break down walls to create new things that couldn't have been created before. #

The Democrats are, of course, failing to lead the 75 million who voted for them in the last election, which was a bit over a month ago. Maybe they should factor that into their thinking, what kind of relationship would you have with an organization that only cared about what you thought if they needed something very specific from you in that exact moment. Any other time, who are you again? We are without leaders.#

What could journalism do to help the country? Move your shows out into the red territories. Make it a requirement that Chris and Joy, Lawrence or Rachel, if they want to stay on the air, have to broadcast from one of the red states. It could be a large city in a red state. The reason is symbolic and practical. The red state voters wouldn't be such a mystery if you knew some of them from your everyday life. And you might have a few of them on the show. You have some selling to do, the idea you're selling is that you care about the people you don't know. #

I'm farting around with the OpenAI API. I have a nice encapsulation for calls to ChatGPT, one that hides all the tricky stuff, all you need is an apiToken to make it work, something that is available for free. The first place I put it is in an outliner. Basically I can write a question in a headline, click an icon and the response from ChatGPT is placed in a series of sub-heads. Interesting to see that they use Markdown to convey the response. The logical choice. I'm not sure how or if I will use this in my writing, but now I have an idea what it's good for. Here's a screen shot of a question I asked and the answer. Also the API is very slow. A question like that would be displayed instantly in their app, in my app it takes a half minute. And I have to pay for it, whereas in their app it's all covered by my $20 a month subscription.#

I get my greatest ideas walking, riding my bike, on a ski lift, or sitting in a hot tub esp when it's really cold out and there's a full moon as there was last night. Sometimes the ideas prove workable and other times they're like the great brainstorms one had with cocaine in the 80s, not that I would know, but have heard. Anyway, I was daydreaming about what I'd do with Bingeworthy if I was going to continue working on it. I thought about the mode I want to use it in. I want to watch a series that I would like, not that Netflix thinks I'd like, because their idea of what I'd like is bullshit. I find that I'll like almost anything that's rated in the 80s by Metacritic, but really only if the NYT reviewed it well. I'll give almost any NYT critics choice a go. So what I really want in the middle of the Bingeworthy display of a program is 250 words about the program aggregated from various critics as Metacritic does so well. Unfortunately neither Metacritic or the NYT offer an API for this as far as I know. Oh too bad, same old thing. No access to the data where you need it (btw, ideally Bingeworthy would be baked into the TV set, or all the streamers could be played in the context of Bingeworthy). Anyway, then boom it hit me, holy shit the thing I was farting around with in the outliner could actually do this. Now I'm going to need to be able to call ChatGPT from a Node app. #

Interesting episode of the Daily podcast about AI in Hollywood. They specifically mention a new movie starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, with bodies and faces edited by AI to be various ages other than what they are (mid-late 60s). The movie Here, was rated not too great by various critics including the NYT. #

Martin Luther King Day is January 20 in 2025, also is Inauguration Day. #

What if you had a twitter-like system that was embedded in a ChatGPT-like app. What would you do with that?#

The journalism I pay attention is labeling itself as truth-based -- but it most definitely is not. When it comes to topics I am expert in, they tell a mushed up version of extreme points of view, that (surprise!) favor the continued existence of their jobs. The choice of the truth-based label is kind of a clue. 😄#

This post spawned quite a thread on Bluesky: "The AI industry could give us easy tools to build our own models, from our own archived writing, for private use. This may be a blind spot. It's as if when personal computers started, instead of spreadsheet editors, we were offered great sets of tabulated recalc'ing data. Fun to watch, maybe useful for researchers, but nothing compared to the utility of playing 'what if' on our own models."#

Deep in the thread: "I want to give a huge volume of writing to ChatGPT or something much like it, and then ask it to give me an outline of what I wrote, and allow me to massage the outline, churn out a synopsis. I'd like to see what's there, and there's far too much writing for me to do that."#

ChatGPT gets projects. Haven't had a chance to explore, but I desperately need this. I organize all my work as projects, and need to have my ChatGPT work be part of that. #

Possibly the last moment when the Dems really kicked ass.#

It's a big enough umbrella but it's always me that ends up getting wet. #

BTW, I hear that Safari now defaults to using HTTPS. Not sure exactly what that means. But if they ever actually stop showing scripting.com, which will always be plain old HTTP, I'll probably ship an Electron product that browses the web, and doesn't care if it's HTTP or whatever new fad Google is promoting. I'm going to hold the fort for the original web. I can't change scripting.com to HTTPS, it would break all the images and probably a lot of other stuff. #

Bingeworthy has an RSS feed (not public yet), and new ratings show up in my blogroll, of course. #

I have United Healthcare insurance. I got it as part of my Medicare package when I turned 65. I've had good experience with them. I had major surgery in 2002, cost hundreds of thousands, included a one-week hospital stay and lots of followup treatments. I know the hospital did all the work with them, I was shielded from any complications, but as far as I know there were none. Never had a treatment questioned or denied. I had another insurance provider for many years after that, but when given a chance I went back to United. Just want to say, so far -- knock wood -- I am a happy customer. #

Just added to my todo list -- add the option to use the WordPress REST interface in place of the WPCOM interface, this will give WordLand the ability to edit WordPress sites anywhere, not just on wordpress.com. When I made the choice to go with WPCOM I didn't have ChatGPT to look at the other options, I was surprised to find that WordPress actually had a good JavaScript API. It doesn't look like the conversion will be too bad. It's obviously better to be able to work with all WordPress sites. #

No more elections where Hope is the main theme. Better: Kicking ass. Kicking ass is for ass-kicking Americans. I personally like Hope, but I'm also a sports fan and understand the value of kicking ass. #

This time of year every day feels like Sunday.#

Here's a sad fact. When something open takes off, the vultures swoop in and try to own it. You wouldn't believe the greed I've seen. It's a virus, and it needs to stop, or at least be exposed as it's happening. #

Yesterday I did a podcast about why it's important to choose humble names for groups of developers working on open formats, using podcasting as an example. Another case in point, the Social Web Foundation, which is about ActivityPub and the Fediverse, when there are many other forms of the social web. Here's where the rubber meets the road. They're having a meeting in Brussels where people can demo their social web apps, but it's only about ActivityPub. If you have a project for Bluesky, or Threads, or non-ActivityPub Mastodon, or RSS for that matter, you should feel welcome there, regardless of what their Call For Participation says. #

Podcast: We all own and no one owns podcasting. 11 minutes. #

Anyone can build on an open format. That's part of what it means for it to be open. Developers and users are free to use anyone's ideas, or not use them, even if they claim to be the Holy Church of Some Open Format. No one can form an organization that owns the future of the open format because then it wouldn't be open. #

I've got the new version of Bingeworthy running here. When I saw how the database code worked, I had to redo it from scratch. It was probably my first SQL project, and I barely knew what I was doing. It's too bad, because looking at it from that point of view I could see how SQL could have been much simpler by making some of the optional features automatic. A higher layer on top of SQL is possible, it seems to me. Having ChatGPT review my ideas has been invaluable in this project. I'm going to use it myself for a while, and see how I want to reorganize the user interface. There were opportunities for factoring I didn't take back then because I was in a rush to do something else. #

How I know Twitter was great. When something was going on anywhere, any kind of thing, I'd go to Twitter and it happened there 14 minutes ago. It was the pulse of the news. And somehow they couldn't figure out how to make a business of that! Amazing.#

I bet a lot of people who voted for Trump hoped they were voting for Jimmy Stewart in Mr Smith goes to Washington, or It's a Wonderful Life. I think they may be surprised to find that they actually voted for Mr Potter or Ebeneezer Scrooge. Look for a lump of coal in the stocking. #

If you want to get excited about the future, I highly recommend this week's Jon Stewart podcast interview with Bernie Sanders. I recognize these ideas, it sounds like what we're waiting for in the social web and in journalism. And working for and with each other.#

Mozilla has repositioned itself as "a global crew of activists, technologists and builders, all working to keep the internet free, open and accessible." These are all worthy goals, but in my experience Mozilla has been an obstacle to these things. I wrote in a comment on Mastodon, "A long time ago they invited me to present my ideas, and like an idiot I thought that's what they wanted, instead it was an ambush, people mostly wanting to ridicule me because they thought anything that a person does can't be any good, it has to come from a big company like Mozilla or Google. I thought then and still do now, how do they justify wasting their time on such a ridiculous thing. I kept on doing what I was doing, but switched off their browser first chance I got." If they really want to get behind projects that make the open web stronger, I'd be happy to help guide them, but only if they've sobered up and take that mission statement seriously, instead of just as a justification for holding on to their jobs a little bit longer. #

Screen shot of my blogroll on Scripting News. It's dynamic. Shown are the latest posts on the emptywheel blog. When a blog updates it moves to the top of the list. A 2024 adaptation of a concept from early blogging days. It should be part of the social web. You can try it out realtime at scripting.com. #

2018: I’m not picky about where I get new ideas.#

As Trump's cabinet takes shape it's as if the cast of HBO's Silicon Valley is taking over the US government. I'm glad to be alive. I really liked the show, it was incredible satire having lived through pretty much the whole thing, I swear some of the scenes felt like they were set in my backyard at the hacienda in Woodside or at one of our offices, esp in the early days of DaveNet and this blog or the early days of TechCrunch. #

When Bluesky was experiencing its huge post-election surge, it was exciting because lots of users were experiencing the surge in followers and engagement. It was exhilirating. That has slowed to nothing now, no more engagement there than on Threads, Masto or Twitter. The character limit on Bluesky being considerably less than the others makes it harder to rekindle interest imho. And btw the euphoria being gone is neither good or bad, it just is.#

ChatGPT is also a tutor. I'm learning new ways of coding SQL through drill and it's also improving my JavaScript code. It's infinitely impatient. It does make mistakes, but that's also good for the drill, catching the mistakes is instructive too. And in programming you always have to be looking for errors, because you'll almost always find them. "Runs the first time" is a rare occurrence, no matter who wrote the code."#

I drive a Tesla Model Y, the best car I've ever owned. I wish Elon Musk wasn't associated with it. If there were a good alternative to the Tesla, I would divest in a minute. I could afford to do it and would welcome the opportunity.#

I'm getting a new Apple Watch today, the latest model. My current watch, which I wear all the time (except when it's charging) is a 5th gen. The new one is 10th. I had to upgrade because there's a Tesla watch app out now that won't run on my old watch. It's the most rational add-on for the car. A must-have.#

Looking for more excellent WordLand bug report writers. 😄#

Chuck Shotton: "Posting a video to YouTube is infinitely easier for a lot of people than understanding how to publish a podcast." True. #

17-minute podcast I recorded on Tuesday after hearing that the president of South Korea had declared martial law. #

Dom Christie has an interesting idea related to listening lists. Aggregate all the shows from all the feeds in a list into a single feed. This seems brilliant because it reduces the implementation in the client to almost nothing, just rebuild a feed periodically, it could be done entirely in the client app. But it also could be something users could share with other users, sort of a meta-channel. I think it's brilliant with the caveat that sometimes when you implement it you find something that makes it more complex than it seems at first. This is the second idea I've heard that the initial listening lists idea spawned. I think there's a lot of unexplored possibilities here. #

As if in response to Dom's idea, overnight, via email Leslie Joyce sends a link to a feed containing first episodes of new fiction podcasts. First comment, how useful! I love this idea as a user. And second, how innovative! I love this idea as a media hacker, what a clever use of RSS. I've added it to my blogroll and to my shared list of podcast feeds. #

I filled out the Podcast Ideas page I started as a placeholder on Nov 30. If you have a friend who works on a podcast client, please send them a pointer to this piece, or link to it from your social web accounts on Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads or via your blog. Let's nurture and feed new features to the open podcast world, ones that helps creators and influencers build new networks that can only work outside of the silos. It's time to start moving the market again, it's been stagnant for far too long. #

I am definitely the last person to hear about ListenNotes search engine for podcasts. It's incredible. Just starting to explore its capabilities. #

Today's song: Where is the love?#

President Biden pardoned his son. I have no problem with that, because his son was accused as a proxy for his father. If there is any legitimate use of presidential pardons, this is it. Perhaps relatives of the president should also be immune from prosecution. Does anyone really think Hunter Biden would have been tried for such petty crimes if he weren't Biden's son? The journalists, as always, have equated two very different things. They're playing their own game, trying to self-pardon in a way, to avoid being a target for the incoming administration, which we're all scared of, and I guess that's the point, to scare us. #

BTW, another thing journalism is getting wrong, the FBI is not the squeaky clean organization they present it as. #

We're looking for a Busy Developer's Guide to Bluesky's feed format. #

I frequently have trouble remembering the names of things I want to use in my writing. I've come to rely on ChatGPT for help. So I wrote to ChatGPT: "I'm trying to remember the name of the stone that has the key to understanding a language." To which it replied: "You're likely thinking of the Rosetta Stone. It was crucial in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs because it featured the same text written in three scripts: Greek, Demotic, and hieroglyphic. The Greek text provided the key to understanding the other two scripts."#

WordLand is the easy editor that writers using WordPress always deserved. I updated the docs this morning to include very basic getting started stuff, and it now includes a link to a form where you can apply to be a tester. At this time it's limited to people who know how to write a bug report, how to find and read the JavaScript console in a web browser, and take a screen shot that shows clearly what went wrong. This the hardest part of getting a product fit for general use, and I'm too old to try to wrangle workable bug reports from well-intentioned users who basically aren't scientists. This time I'm determined to do this the right way without excess wear and tear on me. 😄#

The Big Interview with Dan Rather podcast is gold. Just listened to his interview with Steven Van Zandt of the E Street Band and the Sopranos. There are nine seasons of this podcast between 2013 and 2021. Going to keep me busy for a while. The RSS feed works. #

One way to help RSS-based podcasts is to promote individual episodes from the past. Sometimes shows are done, but the archive contains good stuff. Not everything is based on current events. Music, art, history for example. Also bring the feed out from hiding. At least the nerdy people should understand how this stuff works. One of the big crimes was when the browser makers tried to hide the feeds. I like to be able to lift the hood even if I don't understand what I'm looking at. #

I'm using the term "RSS-based podcasts" in place of "podcasts" to make sure whoever reads it knows to ask the question of other "podcasts," are you RSS-based? The best answer is to encourage YouTube et al to just connect their "podcasts" to RSS and everyone's happy. Like "organic cheeseburgers." :-)#

For the record, Bluesky has completely taken over from Threads. Threads is basically at zero, needs something to shake it up. Obviously this could be different for everyone. And engagement on Twitter is pretty close to zero. I still check there periodically because despite what people say a lot of people I follow still post there. And I do too, since cross-posting costs me nothing. And it has been pointed out that deleting your Twitter account comes with a fairly huge risk. And if you do it, I wouldn't announce it, because anyone apparently can claim your account once it is completely deactivated. And that could create some problems for you. Probably better to hold the account indefinitely. #

I've exported the data from Bingeworthy 2 in JSON and uploaded to a new public repo. It can be used to seed the ratings table for the updated instance. #

Welcome to the last month of Scripting News in the year 2024. Each year goes by faster and faster. And as we move forward in time, there's less room in front of us on the runway of life, and more behind us. At some point in the next decade my plane will probably take off. I feel a sense of urgency about getting it done. Still a fair amount on my todo list, but I'm making progress. As someone once said many times: Still diggin! #

And welcome to the time of year you can't remember what the day of the week is. For what it's worth today is Sunday. Feels like Monday? #

And here, for the record, is the archive for November. A relatively lite month, only 87K worth of text. The norm is about 120K. #

Today's song: I guess the lord must be in New York City.#

I've been working on a reboot of Bingeworthy over the last few days.#

I wasn't clear enough yesterday. We're losing the word "podcast" very quickly. It's coming to mean video interviews on YouTube mostly. Our only hope is upgrading the open platform in a way that stimulates the imagination of creators, and there's no time to waste. If you make a podcast client, it's time to start collaborating with competitors and people who create RSS-based podcasts to take advantage of the open platforms, otherwise having a podcast will mean getting approved by Google, Apple, Spotify, Amazon etc. And they, as we know, are nuzzling up to the new government, who will want to impose severe limits. This isn't a casual request, it's urgent.#

Heres's where I'll post ideas to help podcasting stay open.#

I want to add an important feature to podcasting that can only work with RSS, it can’t work with Spotify, Google, Audible etc. The idea is subscribing to subscription lists, which the influencers are likely to really love because they can create networks of podcasts. And when they want to edit the list, if this is done right, the users will automatically be updated. The RSS-based podcast industry just hasn’t been moving and if we don’t add features, improve the tech with new features for creators and users, then we deserve what we get. More on the technology to come in subsequent blog posts. But this is the core idea, just to get started. #

Think about primarying Democratic candidates not from the right or left, but from courage, intellect, and power in communication. People who say what they think and know if the press excoriates you, you can survive it, and the users will love you for it.#

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate the holiday. What am I thankful for? Peloton for one. And living in the most beautiful part of the United States, except for all the other most beautiful parts. I know we're going to find our way out of this mess. My hope is we all start listening to each other more than we need to be heard. One way for sure to hear yourself is to listen to others. One of those paradoxes, true nonetheless. I'm very grateful for ChatGPT that has made me a much more proficient programmer. Amazing what an always-ready expert-in-everything programming partner is. It has a terrible memory for things I tell it to remember, but it remembers all the things it got from reading the web. I thank the friends who make the effort to stay in my life. And most important I thank you, dear blog reader. We got through 30 years of this crazy michegas. I think there may be a couple more innovations to come before we hang em up for good.#

Every generation or two you hear about a few tech wiener boys who think after getting founders stock at a Silicon Valley company and getting his picture in Business Week or TechCrunch that he should run Africa or make up some country and for a minute tries doing it and no one pays much attention and a generation or two later it happens again, and the conclusion is that being a tech wiener boy doesn’t really prepare you to do anything but make a bunch of money once, be bored, and really nothing else. First time I witnessed this phenomenon was with a few product marketing wünderbrats at Apple in the early 80s, smart people (not kidding) but not nearly as smart as they thought they were. A big part was the serendipity of being in a Hobee’s or Buck's when Steve Jobs or a Kleiner partner was having breakfast after a big IPO.#

Podcast: We elected Archie Bunker. 17 minutes.#

Carville gets close to the answer. The Dems shut down their online operation on Election Day, go off the air for 3.5 years, then reboot. The Repubs never sign off. Trump is Archie Bunker. People vote for him, even if they don't agree, over the stranger they don't know. Voters kept saying this, but somehow this didn't register. Never nominate a candidate again who isn't well known to and tolerated by the electorate. Forget about gotchas. The old Dems revolve around fear-of-gotcha. No longer a problem. A flaw proves you're genuine, authentic. Dems need a complete overhaul top to bottom. Their next leader should have a top podcast, because that's how you will govern from now on. Expect to be surprised how Trump does this starting Jan 20.#