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 Mas...

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.

Yesterday I wrote that I'd trade in my Model Y if an un-Musky EV came along that equaled it. A few people asked what I liked about the Model Y that I'm not finding in alternatives. So I started writing a list, that didn't fit in a Bluesky post. I have a long torso so need ...

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 us 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'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.

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.

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

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

Looking for more excellent WordLand bug report writers. 😄

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.

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.

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

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.

In Government Gangsters, Kash Patel identifies 60 individuals he alleges are part of a Deep State undermining the US government. Michael Atkinson: Former Inspector General of the Intelligence Community. Lloyd Austin: Defense Secretary under President Joe Biden. Brian Auten...

Today's song: Where is the love?

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 when this happens. 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."

I was very happy to see this post on Bluesky this morning from a friend, Matthias Pfefferle, who works at Automattic on the connection between WordPress and ActivityPub. In his post he asks if there is a BDG for creating a PDS for Bluesky. A BDG is a Busy Developer's Guide...

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

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

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, and they should just be ignored. 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 make us scared.

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. 😄

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." :-)

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.

The Big Interview with Dan Rather podcast is a gold mine, esp when political blogs basically have nothing to say at least for a while. 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.

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 in 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.

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?