markjgsmith

I’m going to try and read a lot more blogs than usual today. I re-organised and pruned all my RSS feeds yesterday so that should be a lot easier than before. There’s also the chance that the new categorisation structure is too simplistic with everything that isn’t a blog lumped in under 'news'. We shall see.

Worldo still appears to be a bit blocky this morning. It was really blocky yesterday, making a point of blocking in a lot of key places. It wasn’t a synchronicity appocalypse day though. That tends to happen later in the cycle. At the minute it’s still from people being malicious or just stiring trouble, but it usually escallates until everything is blocking in every dimension, like some sort of demented singularity. #

cat << EOF > Cory Doctorow on data portability in social networks

Cory Doctorow pens a great piece about the importance of data portability in social networks.

You need to be able to move at low, or better still, no cost. Otherwise the platform owner’s incentives innevitably lead to them squeezing you, treating you worse and worse. He frames it as a network effects problem vs a collective action problem. Such a great way to think about it.

In his own words:

Economists call this the "network effect." Services that increase in value as more people use them are said to enjoy "network effects." But network effects are a trap, because services that grow by connecting people get harder and harder to escape.

That's thanks to something called the "collective action problem." You experience the collective action problems all the time, whenever you try and get your friends together to do something. I mean, you love your friends but goddamn are they a pain in the ass: whether it's deciding what board game to play, what movie to see, or where to go for a drink afterwards, hell is truly other people. Specifically, people that you love but who stubbornly insist on not agreeing to do what you want to do.

I think everything he observes is spot on. And it’s a big reason for why I’ve been writing about how inbound RSS is such a good idea for social networks. It’s not full portability but it gives people a way to stay a bit more independant while still participating in the network, and it uses a very well established protocol. I happen to believe that inbound RSS would also be beneficial to platforms.

One issue I have with Cory’s piece is that it overplays Mastodon’s portability. He makes it sound like it’s just a few clicks away. Last I checked, people who had tried to move, ran into many problems. Do a quick google search and you’ll find many people that were able to move but that lost a lot of things along the way. #

Julian Lennon [41:41]: "I think if you don’t know, you can’t talk about it. You can’t understand the weird journey that you go through. I think you have to do certain things sometimes just to realise what it’s all about. It’s that balance thing, it’s the light and the dark."

I’ve never heard or seen Julian Lennon before. Of course I know of him though. This interview is kind of fascinating. He does resemble his father, both in looks and the way he talks, but he’s very much his own person. It’s like every now and then a bit of John makes it’s way through him, and it’s strangely comforting or familiar, but it’s also nice that he channels it in a way that has his personality, his interpretation so to speak. And of course it’s very fractal like because he’s talking about his life, so you simultaneously get sense for how the world has shaped him. And he’s a pretty interesting guy who’s done a lot of interesting things. #

Looking at the calendar, looks like the fortnightly alergy flareup / mystery cold is due in the next 4-5 days. The last time it hapenned it sucked big time. Hopefully it will have passed by Christmas. #

cat << EOF > Sorry about the feeds

I’m aware that now that I’ve fixed my RSS feed reading issues, my writing patterns will likely change. I’m already feeling more inspired to blog. That will likely result in some new readers, and that’s great.

However I’m aware that my own RSS feed, the one for this website, is looking a bit weird at the minute. Actually the same issue appears on all the website’s feeds. I made some changes to the website last month. Much needed simplifications to the HTML. The website looks great, but there’s something odd happening with the HTML in the RSS feeds.

In the feed readers I’ve tested, the posts all seem to start with a bunch of the HTML tags showing. Normally that shouldn’t happen. I’ve already added some additional debug logging code in the static site generator. I would fix it now but I’ve run out of build minutes on Github this month. So it will have to be at the beginning of next month, i.e next year!

The feeds will look much better early next year once I’ve had time to fix the render bug. Until then just click through and read on the website, or just ignore the weird HTML tags at the start of each post. It’s December though, I think we can give the posts a pass for being a bit scruffy. Heaven knows I’m a bit scruffy at the minute too, but getting a bit better every day.

Sorry, please bear with me. #

A classic bit of Joe Rogan clarity following a very interesting wander with Julian Lennon into the realm of quantum computing [2:13:47]:

JR: That’s one of the most humbling things that I’ve found about doing this podcast. Realising how genuinely dumb we are in comparison to the amount of information that’s available. Not just uninformed, but incapable even if given the information, of grasping exactly what these apex minds are thinking and working on right now. Along with at the same time, people just living in Rivello, just having an expresso and a cigarette and getting a slice of pizza. [...]

JL: I resign. I truely resign in that level. [...]

JR: LOL, me too! [...] I think we are the last of the regular people. I think this experience that we are having, this experience that you are having on a motorcycle with no signal, driving through the countryside, just being alive, I think, we are the last of those people.

Me three dudes. I feel like that all the friggin time. Has it always been like this? I bet tons of cavemen had existential crisis’ with the invention of the wheel. I mean can you image, it’s like legs and feet, but also, it’s smooth abd continuous like water. WTF. #

What if behind every quantum computer is a very very very powerful regular classical computer and a random number generator? Maybe even a computer from 1000 years into the future, basically just pretending to be a "quantum computer". How would you know?

Seems to me based on things I’ve read or listenned to online, that there are quite a lot of folks looking at quantum computers with a proverbial one eyebrow raised at the minute. #

Internet at the internet place is on the blink. It was fine just a few minutes ago, then the indian bloke that stands uncomfortably close with his back to me while smoking a cigarette turned up and the Wifi network disapeared. It usually comes back after a few minutes when it goes down but so far it hasn’t this time. Looks like I’m going to have to leave it till tomorrow. This post and the previous link won’t make it into tonight’s build. I think I have enough build minutes left for an extra build tomorrow morning. Worldo is literally always angry about something. Probably doesn’t like pinneapple on pizzas, that or perhaps it’s chile con carne that’s causing the current freak out. #