FeedCity

A few days ago I wrote: ChatGPT is to Google what Google was to library card catalogs. The great thing about Google when it was first out was that unlike previous search products, they searched everything, including our blogs, and that opened up knowledge to us that had been previously, for all of our history as a species, not accessible. And LLMs are similarly revolutionary. I'm doing much better, deeper work, with great results for my users, than I could have accomplished with the network defined by Google.

WordLand 0.5.4. New feature, the Timeline.

A few days ago I wrote: ChatGPT is to Google what Google was to library card catalogs.

I got a chance to explain.

The great thing about Google when it was first out was that unlike previous search products, they searched everything, including our blogs, and that opened up knowledge to us that had been previously, for all of our history as a species, not accessible.

And LLMs are similarly revolutionary. I'm doing much better, deeper work, with great results for my users, than I could ever have accomplished with the system defined by Google. and for crying out loud it's not natural language search, all that tells me is you haven't bothered to use the freaking products before having a cynical opinion about them.

Ruben invited me to participate in a blog questions challenge, noting: I suspect James would find one of these viral blog series easier if it were about books and/or coffee, but I’m tagging him here! He may do with this as he wishes. This inspired me to think of what a “co...

AI 2027 is a good read. Both endings seem wildly unrealistic, but as a warning it did make me think. So it worked. Just seems greatly accelerated beyond a few years from now.

If we can't bring him home, then we are not the country we claim.

The automated voice said: Hi there. This voicemail is from Comcast Xfinity. We’ve received no response, and your 50% discount on monthly is now being removed from the system. This change is permanent and cannot be reversed. Call the number on your caller ID immediately before your billing returns to full price. Thank you.. The...

Thinking about the Tesla Superchargers that have been torched recently… Anyone who uses violence or property destruction to further their cause is actually undermining it. We’ve gotta be better than that.

Protests like the marches a couple weeks ago are the model. Peaceful, legal, effective.

[Tony Stubblebine on The Medium Blog] In the midst of some challenging cultural times, Tony Stubblebine and Medium are doing the right thing: "Over the past several months, I’ve gotten questions from the Medium community asking if we’re planning to change ou...

In today’s world, it is becoming more and more important to be embodied in the place we live in. To experience the changing of the season, the rhythms of nature. To feel the experience of place to our last nerve. And what is more indicative of nature as it exists in a certai...

Harvard could use this moment to bring some really new ideas back into the university.

Ran a few tests with the new GPT-4.1 family of models. I think I’ll go 4o → 4.1 for photo keywords and accessibility text, but maybe not immediately. The old pricing and capabilities are still really good. Currently using a mix of 4o, 4o-mini, and 4o-transcribe.

Monday session

Over the weekend I got to ride in a Waymo for the first time, in Phoenix. See @cheesemaker’s perspective in this video. It’s a surprisingly smooth, nice ride. It drives as good or better than an average human driver. I was expecting to be nervous but after about 30 seconds it feels normal.

I don’t have any expectations for the FTC vs. Meta trial starting today. It seems wild and unlikely that Meta would ever have to spin out Instagram a decade after acquisition. Feels too late, too closely tied up in the Meta empire.

Diffused (sunrise).

New Mac app for Micro.blog is out today with a couple improvements, including a little interface for editing the auto-generated accessibility text for uploaded photos. Here’s a screenshot:

I do still use Tumblr. I see great stuff there sometimes. I rarely import things from there to here. But for this, I am making an exception. And for you nerds, remember that every public Tumblr blog has an RSS feed but also culture on Tumblr means usernames may change which means urls change. But...

[Sean Tilley] Sean has been integrating We Distribute with the fediverse for years. It's been hard - particularly at the beginning, which is the plight of the very early adopter. This rundown is incredibly useful for anyone who wants to integrate their own p...

There’s a pretty significant difference between good AI models and great ones. I sometimes think about how I could integrate local models directly into the Micro.blog apps, but I wouldn’t want it to be worse than using (for example) OpenAI. How many of my users really have a Mac with 24+ GB of RAM?