💬 Quotes
I’ve hesitated at calling FeedLand a feed reader.
💬 Dave Winer
🔗 Read his post - I know what @dave means - one of the ‘category design’ conundrums.
Use a category name that everybody understands - or at least ‘thinks they do’ - and you are one of many - competing with all. Use a new name - and forever be answering ‘what’s that then’?
Wrestling with exactly that with a product we are beginning to roll. #StillThinking #NotCommitted
🔗😂 Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Not in the cartoon ….
This is what is meant when AI Alignment researchers refer to “PhD-Level Intelligence.”
💬 Zach Weinersmith
… it’s his usual additional punchline - with emphasis on ‘punch’ today.
🔗 Day 3: Einstein Made Us A Loaf - LLBBL Blog
Philosophers Hilary Putnam and C.W. Rietdijk worked this out in the 1960s. Their argument, roughly: if my “now” overlaps with your “now,” and your “now” overlaps with someone else’s, and that someone else’s “now” overlaps with an event in my future, then by transitivity that future event exists right now. Not metaphorically. Actually exists.
💬 'Logan'
Now read: Day 4: Does the Future Already Exist?
A paywalled Atlantic piece - but not paywalled on the Wayback machine: 🔗 The Lure of a Fully Randomized Life
When I first learned about Max’s experiment, I thought he had found a convenient way to dodge taking responsibility for his decisions. Sorry, the computer made me do it. But I came to see that no matter where the algorithm sent him, Max had cultivated an admirable equanimity about where he ended up. He’d traded the security of knowing exactly where he was going for the serenity of being present wherever he arrived.
💬 Simone Stolzoff
The whole piece reminded me of 🖇️ The Diceman
Ben seems to think the IPO is a good idea .. (His paraphrased conclusions)
1] Musk … has already pushed humanity forward on multiple vectors, including electric cars, self-driving, reusable rockets, satellite Internet, etc., and I’m excited to see him try and do more. 2] Musk is proposing an alternative path to unlimited compute is a relief. 3] This IPO is a return to what an IPO should be: the opportunity for people to contribute capital to actually build the business, and to benefit if it works out.
💬 Ben Thompson
Sure there are some nuanced caveats.
‘Your network is your net worth’ have none of you ever heard of just having friends?
💬 Joan Westenberg
Another Smithsonian - this from 1910.
Resent the Attempt to Smash the British Constitution by American Dollars" poster. Lithograph in black and red ink on white paper showing a caricature of John Redmond armed with a club called “Home Rule” with a large money bag containing US dollars in each hand, produced for the Unionist Party in December 1910.
💬 The Smithsonian
It’s all about fighting the use of American Dollars to ‘break Britain’. Apparently it used to be frowned on. Fast forward 100 years and ….
well, here we are. Again. 🚧
A lot of images from the Smithsonian are on Unsplash for free use. This one caught my eye.
This sign was designed to be placed in the window of a home so that all who passed would know that the woman within had exercised her right under the 19th amendment and registered to vote. It also served as a reminder to other women to do the same. ca 1920.
💬 Smithsonian: Record ID: nmah_1414548
… and here we are 100 years later. 🚧
I need an easy way to do a mini-podcast. An idea that should be said verbally, but it’s short and self-contained, about the length of an untitled blog post, like the one you’re reading now.
💬 Dave Winer
I had the same idea back in 2019 @dave - I even created a 🔗🎙️snicklecast to describe what a 🔗🎙️snicklecast - and why it is.
Never cracked the ‘simple’ part though.
I THINK there is something like this in MicroBlog on a higher tier than I sit at.
Ultimately your job as a developer is to turn your creation over to users to figure out. Listen to see if patterns emerge. Even better give the users the tools they need to build apps out of our apps, together. This is how humans build layers of tech.
💬 Dave Winer
Careful What You Wish For California
A wolf in sheep’s clothing? Or maybe the emperor has bought new clothes.
🔗 On God and LLMs … my bold.
I don’t have definitive answers here. But one thing that seems clear is that the newly emerging field of digital ethics (in which I’m currently active) is in the same place today as bioethics was five decades earlier, when new medical technologies began to force tough moral quandaries.
Which is all to say: before we blindly embrace whatever AI product Sam Altman or Dario Amodei declares to be inevitable, we still have a lot of work to do in figuring out what we’re willing to accept.
💬 Cal Newport
🔗 iPhones sales in China grew 3% year-over-year over the May Day holiday.
The iPhone was up against a set of new product launches but still managed to grow while the market declined. It’s a remarkable story. Apple guided to similar growth for the June quarter as for the March quarter. Signals are coming in that this is not a fluke.
💬 Horace Dediu
Clearly Apple is doomed.
🔗 Then again, maybe to become someone who …
not to do because you are, but to become because you did.
💬 Leon Mika
Nice.
🔗 Which age-gates should be skill-gates and vice-versa?
Would it really be so bad to introduce a voting licence? Make people take a short quiz to ensure they understand what they’re voting for and why they’re voting.
💬 Terence Eden
Not those words - but been saying this as a joke for years. In the past few years my cries have become increasingly more serious.