ChatGPT is getting smarter. Just did a project, where I was setting up a playground just to ask ChatGPT how to get it to do what I want. Because CSS is impossible imho for me to ever understand, it has mastered it, and was able to answer the question I brought before I asked it. It got it right. I asked how did you figure out that's what I came here to ask you about?? It gave me an exact technical reason. If we keep going this way soon we're going to wonder at the human hubris to think we could develop systems that could in any way equal to the systems it can develop. We've been thinking about this eventuality for my whole life, now it's here.

2019 on Facebook: People are too judgmental, which is a shame because in the end, which is coming soon enough for all of us, your opinion of other people doesn’t matter. Sorry if I’m telling you something you don’t already know. On the other hand, we can't help but be judgm...

When I was a kid we went to a bungalow colony in upstate NY, around where I live now. I was less than 10 years old, so were my friends. We used to do things together that the adults didn't know about. There was an abandoned house we used to hang out in, mostly open to the elements. We also played in a graveyard and talked about what the families whose names were on the headstones were doing. Having dinner maybe? Listening to the Mets on the radio? (No TV in the mountains.) So the thought had occurred to us at that point in life that behind doors there were things happening that we could only imagine. I guess what you learn later is that your imagination is almost certainly wrong.

I know where I was when I really understood this, not because I read it somewhere, or a teach told me about it. I was riding on the 4 train north in the Bronx, where the train runs as an elevated on Jerome Ave. I had ridden this train for three years as a high school student, and never thought about all the six story apartment buildings whose backs faced the train. As you went by, you passed by one family for every two or three windows. A whole set of people with relationships, problems, tragedy, joy, dreams, the whole thing. They don't come from where you come from, inside each house there's a story. You'll never know anything about any of them. I wasn't sad about this.

On the other hand, we can't help but be judgmental. It's programmed into our DNA at a very deep level. You have to form an instant opinion of other animals, any delay could cost your life. Better to assume the worst. Fight or flight. This happens esp if you don't know you're doing it, so don't know to watch out for it. It isn't until their 40s that most people understand that what they see isn't what everyone else sees. You may think you understand, but you don't. There's a moment when you realize hey I don't know everything.

People are too judgmental, which is a shame because in the end, which is coming soon enough for all of us, your opinion of other people doesn’t matter. Sorry if I’m telling you something you don’t already know.

I usually only drink iced coffee, even if it's cold outside, but lately I've been craving a single cup of hot coffee esp when a basketball game is about to come on. I'm one of those old guys who falls asleep watching their favorite team kick NBA ass. So anyway I decided to treat myself to one of those fancy new-fangled Keurig single-cup coffee makers. I'm drinking my first cup. Works as advertised. Took a few tries before it woke up. I am now drinking a fresh cup of hot coffee and thinking now I finally have everything I could possibly ever want.

Podcast: What Would Firefox Do?

I learned about a feature in Inoreader that's like a river in my earlier feed readers and in FeedLand Their feature is called HTML clips. Here's a link to an HTML clip I created for my podcast list. Not exactly sure what it's doing, it appears to show news in reverse chronologic order like a timeline, as in a river. Otherwise Inoreader seems to be a mailbox style reader. Thanks to Randy Lauen for the tip.

You have been warned, spoilers follow... The whole thing is the book Carol is writing, about writing a book, inside the book she's writing another book. The book I'm speaking of is the one where it's all about Carol. Everywhere she goes people stop and say hello, and address...

1997: A big tree falls!

1997: When a big tree falls, sunlight shines on smaller plants and they get a chance to grow.

Billy Crystal: "There is a line from one of Rob’s favorite films, It’s a Wonderful Life, 'Each man’s life touches so many other lives, and when he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?' You have no idea.

Maybe a good name for dynamic OPML is "feed sharing."

I have a free account at Inoreader. They sent an email asking me to upgrade, so I went to the site and was reminded that they support OPML Subscriptions, a simple idea, which I have been evangelizing for a long time. You can subscribe to an OPML subscription list. Exactly t...

If a new CEO of Mozilla took an oath to restore the web to its former greatness, they would find a lot of business models open to them. Instead, they’re trying to be part of the tech industry which places no value on the web being a place for open development. I am pretty su...

Last night while I was on the phone, ChatGPT started talking to me in a British woman's voice. It's something that my Android phone does every so often, when I haven't said the magic word that activates it, even if I'm not in the same room as the device. It's a tiny bit funn...

Web means something. It's about creating networks between writers. When it's allowed to work remarkable things can be accomplished. Most people who think they're using the web have never used it. The original web is still very much here, ready for us to start building on it again.

Listened to a podcast interview with the CEO of AWS. It's a $107 billion business with hundreds of thousands of employees.

The NakedJen film festival is coming up.

I wrote, in a reply to Ben Werdmuller on Bluesky: "I’ve had 66K followers on Twitter for many years, but when I post something there it gets 250 views, not even sure what that means. These days all I use it for is communicating with insiders on certain tech platforms, and ev...

I wonder if MAGAs like Archie Bunker too? It would be funny if Rob Reiner in the afterlife could bring us together. Speaking as a kid from a liberal NYC family, we had a bit of Archie Bunker in our own family. We all felt an affection for Archie, and he was actually right about some things, and he was funny and underneath his highly opinionated exterior you could see he had a heart of gold. Is it too much to hope that Meathead and Archie could be the cultural bridge we need to get Americans to pull together? Neither of them were perfect, but we can all agree they were both American.

I asked ChatGPT: "Has anyone ported QuickDraw to SVG in the form of something you can include in a browser-based JavaScript app?" No. I wish the answer was yes, so I could create UIs that are at least as good as the stuff we did in the 1980s on the Mac, inside a web browser. I keep learning new ways simple things are impossible in CSS. Clipping for example, is torture.

One more thing, people are posting Trump's vicious eulogy for Reiner and his wife. Why are they helping him piss on the fresh memory of the life of these people who gave us so much. Stop and think before you express your outrage at Trump, and realize you're giving him exactly what he wants, and you tarnish the memory of good-hearted and generous people. Just don't do it.

For some reason, I'm hit especially hard by the death of Rob Reiner. And it's coming at a time when I understand a lot more about how movie directors work, having watched the fantastic Mr Scorsese 5-part documentary series on Apple TV. The movie director can be as involved i...

It's not just me that says that our social web is connected by RSS.

• Cory Doctorow said it.
• Molly White said it.
• And last week Ben Werdmuller said it.

If they all did it, we'd have all the freedom we could ever want.

So what's holding it up?

Let's make a resolution for 2026, that we the people, will demand that the social networking software we use get in tune with the web, and support two-way RSS.

I will help any and all to get this going.

I'm just like you, if you don't want your online world to be owned by billionaires.

Dave

An idea I posted on Facebook in 2021 about an app I wanted. Here's an idea. I have a drone that communicates with my peloton via satellite, so it's not constrained by range. I can send the drone anywhere I like, but I have to ride there on my peloton. Obviously what I see ...

Just wrote a post for Scripting News, then flipped over to Daveverse to see what it looks like. See for yourself. I think we've come pretty close to cloning Scripting in WordPress.

As a lifelong Mets fan since 1962, I say they blew it. And if you follow my sports writing here, mostly about the Knicks and Mets. I can usually see a pro and a con to everything. And I let the team run itself, and I ponder the philosophical intentions, because to me the Met...