Jason Calacanis asks for people to develop certain open source software, offering a bounty on projects, but I think the real incentive for people to pitch in is that Jason has a lot of sway in the startup world, and if there is a flow of excellent software this way, users will find out about it because the reach of Jason's podcasts and blogs. I've known Jason for many years, going back to the early days of the web. He has become one of the most successful angels in tech. I'm proud to have known him way back when.

Claude added the close box I asked for yesterday. Bravo!

Everyone wants to know things humans can do better than AI systems. The answer — relate with humans. The machines have no clue how our minds work. They act as if we're just like them. They could tell you all about it, from books they read, but they've never related with humans as humans. There's a great speech by Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting, where he explains how reading about something isn't the same as living it.

I'm gorging on NBA podcasts this week. So much fun for a Knicks user to hear how much-loved the Knicks are. Basketball is most an intimate sport for fans, it's like five consecutive boxing matches. We get to know the players' personalities, forming an idea of who they are, b...

If Claude were human it would learn from you even if they didn't record what it learned in a notebook, two or three times and they would remember. Not so with Claude. If it isn't written down it will not remember it. Its mind doesn't have memory. It remembers things by writing them in a markdown file. It's like the movie Memento, where the main character tatoos the info he needs on his body. And then proceeds to misunderstand it. Claude is just like that.

Just now, to Claude: "amazing how we get lost in the weeds, that's why you have cut way down on the verbiage. i am a human -- you can absorb all that info in an instant. my brain does not work that way."

Now that the basketball is over, can we ask why the San Antonio arena played the cartoon music while introducing the Knicks. I was surprised they did it again in Game 5 considering the butt-kicking they got in Game 4

I'm creating a new way to do messaging, a network that only understands RSS feeds for incoming and outgoing messages. The only API you'll need to subscribe is a feed reader. The idea is to show developers how to do it so a thousand flowers can bloom. It's a lot easier to create these things if you're modest in the features you support, at least at first, and you don't try to control the users. There is no business model here, other than the satisfaction of making sure everyone knows what a social system looks like made only out of the features of the web, and every part replaceable.

An example of the latest version of the library generator, which is of course just a script. Note that there's a disclosure at the bottom of the page where it says how and why it was created, and then lists the exact prompt that ChatGPT responded to. And I didn't write the prompt, Claude did. I think that pretty much assures I kept my own opinion to myself.

Often when I use the term RSS feeds it will link to this page.

In the coming weeks and months I'm going to talk a lot about RSS feeds. I want to be clear, that it is a short hand for RSS, Atom and RDF. It makes the writing flow better, and it gives me a place to provide the technical details for people who need them.

We use the Feedparser package to read the feeds, so basically we support the same feed formats they do.

Request for Claude, please add a close box to this message box. I wasn't using the new model. Once is enough for this message.

Good morning sports fans! Going to the Knicks parade in NYC on Thurs? Parade starts at 10AM at Battery Park, goes up Broadway through Canyon of Heroes, concluding at City Hall.

New top of page image. The official Knicks team picture as champs.

BTW the Gift Articles feed works really nicely in the blogroll.

Today's song: I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City.

People keep saying the Spurs are the future of the NBA, but they didn't earn that this year. More probably it's the Knicks that are the future. The Knicks will keep growing. The Knicks beat the Spurs in the last two games by playing rope-a-dope, probably not intentionally, but it worked anyway. The Spurs, and Wemby especially, were completely zonked by the fourth quarter. The Knicks had a bench this year that let the starters get plenty of rest. The Spurs lost game four because they didn't have the good sense to rest Wemby while they were up by 20+ points. Anyway, the Knicks have a formula. Pick players with heart potential and talent, treat them like a team, keep trying out new ideas, approaches. It works. Won NY the championship this year. As anticipated I have no idea what to make of the Knicks as winner. I'll have to learn too. ;-)

One thing I want to know -- where do I tune in to get the most of Clyde talking about this series.

And thanks to the Knicks for being such a great team. Never ever in a million years did I imagine saying that.

JY Stervinou proposed Universal Mentions, an interesting new low-tech web-like protocol for mentioning people, places or things via link elements in the head section of any HTML file you want to use as your personal directory. It's an intriguing idea. ChatGPT review, after a short discussion between us. Both JY and ChatGPT use the term "open web" which to me has become a red flag. The web is open. No need to say it twice. There's no such thing as a web element that's not open. It's like saying wet water.

ChatGPT made us new Really Simple virtual swag to go with the moment. ;-) Really Simple basketball. Really Simple player 27. PS: Go New York Go New York Go!

Imagine if someone cracked the speed of light. Now we could visit far off galaxies on vacation. Do you think we'd build it or argue about whether we should? Heh I know the human species, we don't do that kind of thinking we just go.

The giftarticles feed is now a simple RSS 2.0 feed. It's not pretty, that would require some work with Masotdon, but it does work.

The thing about tech, you have to start out small and simple, and carefully add features based on actual real-world-now use cases. Otherwise you end up missing the target, and have to go back and patch it, and it never gets simple. The only way to have a chance is if you start small, learn, and evolve carefully.

Imho -- the smartest thing facebook could do is find all the places where it's a silo and start desiloizing them..

AI is a miracle of human science, it took generations to get to the point we're at now, and the rate of development building software on top of it is imho the basis for a revolution. We use computers in all aspects of our lives, and the UI of the software is nowhere near as g...

There's an account on Mastodon containing a flow of gift articles.

Because Mastodon supports outbound RSS, you can subscribe to it in any RSS reader.

But the RSS is not very good. Have a look.

So I built a little app in my new scripting language, with the help of Claude, and boom now I can read the output of the mangled feed.

I don't know what is responsible, probably has something to do with the account, and something to do with how Mastodon. But the information is being communicated.

https://giftarticles.feedland.org/

This is not finished, it needs some css and the normal structure of an HTML page. We will come back to it.

I want to keep my podcast subscriptions in a single OPML file so I can subscribe in three different clients using the same list.

This story moved.

I am using Claude Code to create a toolset that makes it easy to write internet scripts at the same high level as Frontier. I was looking for a little project it could do, and came up with this. I like Wikipedia, but I know it has trouble with transparency. In areas I kno...

One of the things that sucks about the tech industry is that the assumption is that creative work is done by employees. Imagine if music or movies worked like that. And the employees will resist the company working with individual outsiders, the equiv of musicians in this a...