🚧 WIP
Ideally posts in this category don’t stay this way - a reminder to yours truly that he needs to return here one day and do something with it!
📺 Watched: Cross Season 1 🚧
🔗 Intent Computing vs. Spatial Computing
Clearly Apple is not deprecating Spatial Computing. It’s a remarkable creation and those of us who use it find it irresistible and irreplaceable.
Great piece from Horace Dediu - and iterates on why I am in - and firmly remain in - the camp of ‘Vision Pro’ was a success.
(It comes down to that old chestnut that many people still try to understand 🍎 through the lens of other companies and then double down with criticisms like ‘not innovative’, ‘where’s the next iPhone’, ‘they’ve lost the plot’ …)
🚧 Links to some earlier posts to come.
📸 A test as much as anything to see what Gemma 4 26B did with providing ‘accessibility text’ for my photo.
This is what it came up with:
A small structure with a dark roof covered in solar panels sits nestled among a dense backdrop of lush green trees.
Not too shabby. It was that kind of phrasing I had in my mind when I took it down by the beach last week, observing how the roof of an old boathouse (Unused? Do not know.) could double up as a baby solar ‘farm’ and not be that distracting.
Farm? Ok ‘backlot’.
🔄 UPDATE: 5 Minutes Later
Now I have read 🔗 Manton’s post properly - point of clarification -
While the checkbox is present in the current build, the server-side work is not yet enabled for any users.
So jury remains out as to how good the local model will be. I will run a test on the same image when it is available … so marking this post 🚧
🖋️ Sometimes 'Non Obvious' comes disguised as 'Obvious'
Manton suggests that Apple rarely builds anything now … ‘except the most obvious products’. I disagree, because that statement depends on two things … what is meant by ‘obvious’ and what is meant by ‘product’.
🚧 Design Template
This is a living post used to ensure consistency is applied on posts, conversations and replies across the site. All common/resuable css elements should be accounted for here.
🚧 Please - just ignore me - you know what this is …
test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test.
💬 the dude
yet another test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test .. just give me a little more echo.
💬 not the dude
👁️🚧 Experiment.
👁️🏢 🔗 MALUS - Clean Room as a Service | Liberation from Open Source Attribution
A parody I believe - but just like with satire - I have this nervous feeling that parody might not be able to keep up with reality.
Morning Claude
Can you look through all of our conversations and across all projects and give me an action list of projects that we have started but are not yet complete. In a seperate list - and reading between the lines - are there some project possibilities that we have not yet picked up on that could make sense and then present me with a full Markdown doc that I can review.
🤯 It did - it is now in Craft. Careful what you ask for … thinking about the next prompt. Something like …
Can we set about developing priorities to help focus.
Interesting - though not unexpected switch on Claude …
“Oh - you have run out of tokens - buy more? Click here."
… and I swear to god - two days ago on the click you chose how much. (5 bucks typically does it for me.)
Today … “choose one: 50, 250, 1,000, other."
Click on other - you get to enter 5 bucks.
Spending more time looking at Feedland as I seek to work towards a better way of managing my canonical OPML for all feeds …
I know that I am definitely not the only reader of people like Gruber and Ben … but according to Feedland .. nobody else is subscribed to them.I wonder what gives❓
Once more everybody is jumping up and down over ads. Once more to remind that ads do make (a few aspects of) the world go round.
But
If I am paying you to use your product … I do not want you to put ads in that product.
The ad isn’t the real problem .. it’s the tracking. My ‘ad blocker’ doesn’t block ads .. it blocks the ability for the advertiser to track me. Why do we still not understand this?
If I want you to provide your service without tracking and/or ads … then you should … of course … recognising that to do that costs money … so I would expect to pay a fee for that. But nobody really offers that.
—-
🚧 I might comeback to this in the future.
Today’s Surprise From History - 🖇️ Biggest surprise here is that it is still marked 🚧 - so I guess I need to finish it off!
“If the wedding photographer can’t deliver more magic than the phone in my guest’s pocket, no thanks.”
“And if the local print shop can’t set type better than my Mac, I’ll move on.
" So is your copywriting, research, illustration or coding better than I can get from the AI on my desk? "
From an article by Noah Smith that I need to come back to and write more. I find those three groupings quite fascinating.
Added Later … sorry not helpful - right?
🔗 Is the U.S. in a ‘high-level equilibrium trap’? | Noah Smith
🚧 Still more to come.
🎵 🖇️ Blog Challenge - Music Edition - thank you for the inspiration @Annie
🚧 Links To Posts by Others
🚧 Prisons and Bitcoin
I am unsure if they are connected - so parking this here while we think.
There is also something going on with the Argentinian playbook - which I am planning to publish in a newsletter.
I am no expert - but my spidey senses are up … Bitcoin, Argentina, El Salvador .. OR, it’s all summarized thus ….
Bitcoin
El Salvador introduced bitcoin as legal tender in 2021 and then - as now - one Tim Draper has oft’ spoken breathlessly of how cool it is that a sovereign nation has adopted it.
Tim Draper Expects Bitcoin to Transform El Salvador Into One of the Richest Countries in the World.
The flag waving by Tim has never stopped.
That Said
- El Salvador’s experiment with Bitcoin as legal tender since 2021 has had mixed results.
- Only 8.1% of the population have used Bitcoin for payments by 2024.
- Seperately, the initiative faced criticism for its volatility, lack of transparency, and limited impact on remittances, which make up a significant part of the economy.
- Even so, El Salvador’s Bitcoin investments turned profitable by late 2024 - BUT the government has not recouped the costs of promoting the cryptocurrency.
- So, in December 2024, El Salvador agreed to scale back Bitcoin policies to secure a $1.4 billion IMF loan (Dollars speak) which included making Bitcoin acceptance voluntary and reducing public sector involvement in Bitcoin-related activities.
- Despite all of this by the end of 2024, its holdings surpassed 6,000 BTC which seems to have grown to 6,055 BTC as of February 1, 202. Value? Over $612 million.
Perspective
In a recent Bloomberg interview, Michael Saylor, executive chairman and co-founder of MicroStrategy, revealed that beyond his company’s holdings, he personally owns at least 17,732 Bitcoin, currently valued at approximately $1 billion.
Yup - Saylor personally owns 150% more Bitcoin than The country of El Salvador - and let’s not forget that his company MicroStrategy owns another 471,107 bitcoins.
Question
Why do we still trumpet the El Salvador story?
Prisons
El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) is the largest prison in Latin America, with a capacity to hold 40,000 inmates. The facility spans 410 acres of land, with the prison complex itself covering 57 acres (approximately the size of seven football stadiums). It features eight cell blocks and extensive security measures, including electrified fences, reinforced walls, and 19 guard tower. It was built in late 2022 during a large-scale gang crackdown and officially opened in January 2023. Population of El Salvador - 6.5 million The USA has a total prison capacity across federal, state, and local facilities that can house 1.9 million people in federal prisons, correctional facilities, state prisons, local jails, and other detention centers.
Today’s News
# Could US criminals be sent to El Salvador’s mega-jail?
President Nayib Bukele confirmed that he had offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system". Putting aside the legal questions of exporting US citizens to another country’s prison system - I am wondering what’s going on.
Back Of The Napkin - Capacity
- El Salvador : 6,500,000/40,000=162.5 - in just a single prison
- USA : 350,000,000/1,900,000=184.2 - total capacity
Back Of The Napkin - Prisoner Count
- El Salvador : 1,086 prisoners per 100,000 people in the population
- USA : 531 prisoners per 100,000 people in the population
My Three Words ..
I’ve been doing this every year since 2019. My 7th will be out in a few days time.
The History
2024 - substack.philpin.com/p/here-we…
Transform | Transition | Transcend (sic)
2023 - substack.philpin.com/p/its-tha…
Focus | Flexible | Fabulous
2022 - substack.philpin.com/p/take-th…
Clear | Closer | Choice
2021 - john.philpin.com/2021/01/0…
Transform | Transition | Transcend
2020 - substack.philpin.com/p/take-th…
Believe | Move | Ascend
2019 - substack.philpin.com/p/here-we…
Uncertain | Less | Different
🚧 💬 Quotes. I collect them, so maybe a ‘collection’ application?
This is going to be a living , breathing kinda post.
And like all living, breathing things … it might die.
