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Dave Winer - Scripting.com

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Scripting News - 2024-12-25T16:32:55Z

- 2024-12-25T16:32:55Z
I am ready to start programming ChatGPT, the same way I have built my own code writing and deploying software on Macintosh. I want to create rules in some kind of macro language that it will never violate. I find it has huge problems with memory, it says it's remembering something, but has forgotten it 24 hours later. This is like the Fail Whale in the early days of Twitter. Cute, because the system is doing something so new, futuristic and useful, but after a while it's not cute because we're using the system for real work. The web is programmable, our operating systems are, of course the AI-o-verse will be programmable too. We are able to create entirely new development environments, these platforms deserve a fresh new look at everything. I'd also like to note that at the same time, the platforms are breaking through in web user interfaces. Remarkable progress. Far beyond what we were doing in the very stagnant Web 2.0 world. They're still stuck on whether or not our writing can have titles. So bizarre to have to exist in a world that is deliberately hobbled, and another with infinite horizons. Anyway this is what I'm thinking about just before hunkering down with my Knicks and popcorn, a Christmas tradition for many many years. Ho ho ho.

- 2024-12-24T14:05:16Z
Talking with a friend about the listening lists idea and realized if it takes off it will turn podcasting into its own loosely-coupled social network. Really low tech, like the web. And not possible for one company to control. All it will take is one popular podcast client to get the pump primed. The second and third apps should be much easier to convince. This is how it worked with podcasting. Steady mission broadcasting, keep beating the drum, and if it's the right idea and when it's the right time, eventually, it happens. It will be that way too for this layer of the network, but at this time I don't own a podcast client, and that's the most basic ingredient in this bootstrap, so we wait, and keep beating the drum.

- 2024-12-24T14:19:52Z
Another idea that we continued to push in 2024 is textcasting. It was what I needed to build WordLand, it defines its objective, to form an open social web with all the basic features writers need. Titles, links, simple styling, ability to edit, no character limit, these are basic features we will drive the adoption of. Defining a new network where if you want to play you'll need to start thinking about writers, their power, and interop. You can't be on the open web and be a silo. And some of the most insidious silo-like features seem innocuous, like character limits. Whatever forces you into copying and pasting into tiny little text boxes, that's how you know you're in a silo. If you can use any writing tool to post to a network, then it is on the web. Pretty simple. Right now -- none of the popular ones qualify. None.

- 2024-12-24T14:25:33Z
How this stuff fits in? 1. RSS blew a big open hole in the distribution of news and ideas. 2. Now we want to blow the equivalent hole in the writer's web. Put the two together and we will have finally, after 30+ years, delivered on the promise of the web.

- 2024-12-24T19:07:44Z
I have a fairly large and old C application that was written to run on the Mac and Windows. I still use it today on a relatively modern Macintosh. I wonder if it will soon be possible to turn this project over to an AI like ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity or some other, to convert it to run on Linux, where it should be able to run in perpetuity, or at least a lot longer than on the Macintosh. I would be willing to pay a few thousand dollars to do this work.

- 2024-12-23T15:22:16Z
Instead of having the Dems redefine the Dems, how about the people who vote for Dems redefining the Dems. Agree on what the Dems are, and just as important, are not. End arguments about whether the Dems are this color or that, this gender or that, this age or some other. Draw a circle of common interest and leave out everything else. Draw the biggest circle possible.

- 2024-12-23T15:01:39Z
I wrote this piece in WordLand yesterday morning over breakfast. Started writing it as a Bluesky post, quickly ran out of space so I switched over to my own TLTB, and it's very conducive to writing flow, which is its purpose. Then I did the same thing this morning. Sorry to keep talking about the product without it being in general release yet. I want to get it right before opening it up. Still a bunch of things I want to add/fix.

- 2024-12-23T15:07:50Z

- 2024-12-22T13:34:01Z
I love writing my morning missives in WordLand. It really fits.

- 2024-12-22T13:31:21Z
What we need, now, is a system to compete with Twitter. A system as capable as Twitter. It has to be privately held by a group that can be trusted not to interfere with democratic use of the system. This can't be guaranteed, it has to be based on trust. It needs to scale very quickly. Its vision is to represent democracy. And it has to be simple, clean and quickly understood as parallel to Twitter. Bluesky has a lot of what's needed, but its ownership is not clear. But it more like Twitter than Twitter is today and I expect that to continue.

- 2024-12-22T14:07:11Z
BTW Twitter is innovating in ways that it never has. People not staying on Twitter would have no way of knowing. Another reason why, for software developers, quitting Twitter is stupid. As quitting Facebook was ten years ago. Great, now you have no idea what features your users are learning how to use. Eventually your software will be in a dead end while a new coral reef has been forming. Where are you going to get fresh ideas from. Not using these systems would be like not listening to the Beatles in the 60s,. You would have missed all that followed. And not just popular music. Same with Twitter in the 2020s. That story is far from over.

- 2024-12-21T15:59:02Z
I like to share posts from Threads on Bluesky and Mastodon to illustrate the incompatibility, the ignorance of one to the other. These guys should all be using the same protocol. It's a travesty that each of them considers their product to define the social web -- they don't understand the first thing about the web, what the miracle the web was. Before the web, the tech world was as it is now, fragmented by huge companies that didn't care about anything but their own internal drama. The last thing they would consider was reusing something that was already running. While all that was going on Unix basically agreed on a core set of functions that formed a basis for interop. They weren't perfect, there were differences in each of the Unixes, but you could reuse most of what you knew on each of the platforms. But Apple, Microsoft, Sun and IBM each ran their own ecosystems. And then one day along came the web. Instead of bookshelves of docs, it wasn't even a booklet. You could be up and running with a "website" in ten minutes. I speak from experience. My first website was authored with a freaking email. Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon are the IBM, Microsoft and Apple of 2024. It's ridiculous if they think this is a web. To paraphrase the late great Lloyd Bentsen, I knew the web, the web was a friend of mine. You are not the web.

- 2024-12-20T22:32:55Z
I've been alternating days here on my blog. One day, lots of posts, maybe even a podcast. And then a quiet day. Today started out quiet, and then the ideas started flowing.

- 2024-12-20T23:18:30Z
Programming work: I was trying to work out a feature for WordLand that isn't cooperating, having to do with the clipboard and the MediumEditor package, which does all these nice things for us with the clipboard, but it isn't willing to share custody, or perhaps more accurately we can't figure out how to. The feature I want is when you paste a URL and there's a selection, the selected text is turned into a link. A video explanation. I've burned two full sessions on this, seeking advice from ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity. They all pretend to know what to do, but in fact they don't. The clipboard is one of those areas of the browser that is held together with rumors and confusion, as is MediumEditor, and the intersection is rumors and confusion squared. Tomorrow I'm going to work on other things, and the day after until I have an idea for another way to approach this. I really want this feature because apparently it's supported in Slack, WordPress and other software that supports links.

- 2024-12-20T23:14:52Z
BTW, we could use a few more testers with good experience with bug reporting who use WordPress. I'm sure there are more bugs we haven't gotten reports on yet.

- 2024-12-20T22:55:49Z
I've figured out more precisely what WordLand is meant to compete with --> the tiny little text boxes of the social web. Ours is slightly bigger, and grows as your piece gets longer. Neatly arranged like the others, and all your writing flows through WordPress and RSS, where each of the TLTBs only flows into their limited and incompatible views of the social web. RSS and WordPress are a powerful distribution system. Lots of software works with those two protocols, as do many programmers, and they're both marvelously open, stable over more than twenty years each, and can't be owned by billionaires. Pretty powerful place, kind of amazing that there's so much room here, and the people are friendly. 😄

- 2024-12-20T23:06:15Z
Amazing that the tech industry hasn't tried to retrieve its reputation from the ones who are repping us in DC nowadays. Software doesn't have to treat their users like nobodies. Quite the opposite. I come from the school that says our users are the smartest most powerful people in the world and it's our privilege to create tools for them.

- 2024-12-20T23:07:58Z
One more thing. I love taking the time to craft a delicious piece of software. I have never really done that in the 50 years I've been doing this. This time I decided there's no rush. I'm going to wait until people want what I've created. We're not there yet. 😄

- 2024-12-20T23:30:38Z

- 2024-12-19T17:29:39Z
Podcast: ChatGPT is encyclopedic but is not good at strategy. It will drive you down blind alleys. It rewrites your code to conform to its standards. It has a terrible memory. Forgets things you told it specifically not to forget. It does not keep promises. People who say the bubble is fully inflated on this stuff are not paying attention. We're still dealing with very basic features.

- 2024-12-19T17:15:32Z
A tuneup for WordLand confirms that it's publishing.

- 2024-12-19T23:20:30Z
I'm thinking maybe we'll do a Kickstarter for WordLand. It'll cost money to run the server and continue to develop the sofware. It fills a big enough need to ask the users to support it financially, at least to get it off the ground. The server is open source so theoretically anyone can run one. But in practice most people will probably just want to use the service. I just want to solve this problem so we can start building a developer ecosystem around WordPress that it's never had. Think of WordLand as a pump primer. 😄

- 2024-12-19T16:08:15Z
I watched Ari Melber last night and noted he isn't yet on Bluesky or hasn't updated his show graphics to include it? He usually tries to be leading edge in this, and at this point he looks a bit behind the times, imho, ymmv etc. After Melber, I stayed through the opening segment of Joy Reid and was charged up by her intro. She's clicking on all cylinders. They must be thinking about gutting or reconfiguring MSNBC at this time. It's up for sale, I wonder if a billionaire will see the wisdom of owning that piece of real estate as Musk saw the value in Twitter, far beyond what the stock market valued it at. (BTW, I should add that I benefited from his largesse, I was a very small shareholder in Twitter at the time. I did not want to sell, but my vote didn't matter. Heh.)

- 2024-12-19T15:50:19Z
I've been thinking about Blogger Of The Year for a few months, and had a choice (not yet final), but then Paul Krugman left the NYT, set up shop on Substack, and has been totally kicking ass every day for the last week. Presumably these are all things the NYT wouldn't let him run? Or if he submitted them, would they edit them into mushy nonsense. I've been there, I quit Wired when they edited my pieces, with my name on them, where I said things I thought were inane, things that I most definitely did not say. There's never been a better illustration of the importance of blogging and the value that's removed by publishing in the NYT. If a Nobel Laureate like Krugman can't get his ideas out that way, with the huge advantage in circulation they have (as Wired did over my humble blog), then there must be a reason to have blogs after all. I don't think he will be my BOTY for 2024, but maybe next year, if he keeps up the intelligent irreverence.

- 2024-12-18T16:09:09Z
I've got a new project called davegpt, it's in GitHub, open source of course. I also created a ChatGPT project with the same code. Presumably I can ask it questions about the code. Because I have a worknotes.md file in the GitHub project, ChatGPT understands where I want to take this project. Most amazing, it wrote a summary of what it saw in the project. I added that to the GitHub project, of course, and since it was in Markdown, it fit right in with no mods. The power of standards. I love it when things that should work, do. The next step is to implement a feature in the new Bingeworthy that can only be done with an AI bot like ChatGPT. It's such a thrill to be working on this stuff as it's happening. And what a delight that it has an API. I don't mind that I'm paying for it, I love the idea of paying to break down walls to create new things that couldn't have been created before.

- 2024-12-17T22:26:07Z
The Democrats are, of course, failing to lead the 75 million who voted for them in the last election, which was a bit over a month ago. Maybe they should factor that into their thinking, what kind of relationship would you have with an organization that only cared about what you thought if they needed something very specific from you in that exact moment. Any other time, who are you again? We are without leaders.

- 2024-12-17T22:29:25Z
What could journalism do to help the country? Move your shows out into the red territories. Make it a requirement that Chris and Joy, Lawrence or Rachel, if they want to stay on the air, have to broadcast from one of the red states. It could be a large city in a red state. The reason is symbolic and practical. The red state voters wouldn't be such a mystery if you knew some of them from your everyday life. And you might have a few of them on the show. You have some selling to do, the idea you're selling is that you care about the people you don't know.

- 2024-12-17T16:43:45Z
I'm farting around with the OpenAI API. I have a nice encapsulation for calls to ChatGPT, one that hides all the tricky stuff, all you need is an apiToken to make it work, something that is available for free. The first place I put it is in an outliner. Basically I can write a question in a headline, click an icon and the response from ChatGPT is placed in a series of sub-heads. Interesting to see that they use Markdown to convey the response. The logical choice. I'm not sure how or if I will use this in my writing, but now I have an idea what it's good for. Here's a screen shot of a question I asked and the answer. Also the API is very slow. A question like that would be displayed instantly in their app, in my app it takes a half minute. And I have to pay for it, whereas in their app it's all covered by my $20 a month subscription.

- 2024-12-17T17:07:04Z
I get my greatest ideas walking, riding my bike, on a ski lift, or sitting in a hot tub esp when it's really cold out and there's a full moon as there was last night. Sometimes the ideas prove workable and other times they're like the great brainstorms one had with cocaine in the 80s, not that I would know, but have heard. Anyway, I was daydreaming about what I'd do with Bingeworthy if I was going to continue working on it. I thought about the mode I want to use it in. I want to watch a series that I would like, not that Netflix thinks I'd like, because their idea of what I'd like is bullshit. I find that I'll like almost anything that's rated in the 80s by Metacritic, but really only if the NYT reviewed it well. I'll give almost any NYT critics choice a go. So what I really want in the middle of the Bingeworthy display of a program is 250 words about the program aggregated from various critics as Metacritic does so well. Unfortunately neither Metacritic or the NYT offer an API for this as far as I know. Oh too bad, same old thing. No access to the data where you need it (btw, ideally Bingeworthy would be baked into the TV set, or all the streamers could be played in the context of Bingeworthy). Anyway, then boom it hit me, holy shit the thing I was farting around with in the outliner could actually do this. Now I'm going to need to be able to call ChatGPT from a Node app.

- 2024-12-16T23:11:38Z
Interesting episode of the Daily podcast about AI in Hollywood. They specifically mention a new movie starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, with bodies and faces edited by AI to be various ages other than what they are (mid-late 60s). The movie Here, was rated not too great by various critics including the NYT.

- 2024-12-15T21:58:52Z
Martin Luther King Day is January 20 in 2025, also is Inauguration Day.

- 2024-12-15T18:05:20Z
What if you had a twitter-like system that was embedded in a ChatGPT-like app. What would you do with that?

- 2024-12-15T17:47:26Z
The journalism I pay attention is labeling itself as truth-based -- but it most definitely is not. When it comes to topics I am expert in, they tell a mushed up version of extreme points of view, that (surprise!) favor the continued existence of their jobs. The choice of the truth-based label is kind of a clue. 😄

- 2024-12-15T17:44:44Z
This post spawned quite a thread on Bluesky: "The AI industry could give us easy tools to build our own models, from our own archived writing, for private use. This may be a blind spot. It's as if when personal computers started, instead of spreadsheet editors, we were offered great sets of tabulated recalc'ing data. Fun to watch, maybe useful for researchers, but nothing compared to the utility of playing 'what if' on our own models."

- 2024-12-15T18:18:57Z
Deep in the thread: "I want to give a huge volume of writing to ChatGPT or something much like it, and then ask it to give me an outline of what I wrote, and allow me to massage the outline, churn out a synopsis. I'd like to see what's there, and there's far too much writing for me to do that."

Online communities can work - 2024-12-14T18:44:11Z

A piece in today's NYT said all networks flame out, but that's actually too crude a statement.

If you want your network not to flame out, give the users the tools to keep things moderated.

One of the best features of Facebook is it gives the author of a post the power to decide who can respond to it. (I know they're not the only ones, but they're the first in my experience, so I give them credit.)

If I write something that I know will attract trolls, I just restrict it to friends. If they flame me, or even try to provoke an argument, I just unfriend them, and I suspect they know that. The hotheads have been culled from the list over time, there's trust that people don't want and won't pick fights.

Assume adults know when they're asking to argue, and not only don't accept the bait, but don't allow them to participate.

Keeps things friendly. Not kidding. It doesn't flame out there.

It also helps that I've been using these networks since the 70s, and there have been times when I sought out the flames, because I could have shut them off at any time, but I let them keep going. Now I don't. I just don't argue online, and as a result the heat doesn't reach me.

In other words, if you give people good tools, and they use them well, you can make this work.

PS: To be fair, the NYT piece focused on Bluesky, and they are for sure going down a path much like the one Twitter went down, but it will happen much faster because the trolls are already plentiful and well-organized. They're going for the billion-dollar cashout, for sure and they will very likely get it, and as users we will still be looking for an open system that we can use to get work done.

- 2024-12-13T22:22:35Z
ChatGPT gets projects. Haven't had a chance to explore, but I desperately need this. I organize all my work as projects, and need to have my ChatGPT work be part of that.

Mid-day ramble - 2024-12-13T16:18:41Z

There was a moment a couple of years ago when Mastodon was gaining traction in a serious way when I thought that Automattic should do something publicly to demonstrate support for it because I felt that WordPress and Mastodon were two sides of the same important coin.

As you know, I've felt as a writer that we've been tragically limited by the idea that Twitter popularized that there was glory in removing features that writers could use. As if to say that writers were over-using things like links, simple styling, titles, the ability to edit, or to finish a thought. These were all very basic features of writing on the web before 2006, as they should have been.

Somehow a mass psychosis took over and there was a belief that these limits were good. I am shaking my head as I write this. It's as ridiculous an idea as the one that's going around at the top levels of our future government that we should bring polio back to the children of America and the world.

Anyway, by supporting Mastodon, I hoped people would make the link between WordPress, which has none of those limits, yet is very popular for publishing on the web, and Mastodon, which I (it turns out correctly) believed would navigate away from those limits given enough time.

I think I sent an email or a text message to Matt, or wrote a note on their Slack system, communicating with Matt is an iffy thing, not sure if the idea got through. Then this morning, I woke in the middle of the night, and realized that what I wished for was actually there. Without any fanfare at all. I could write on WordPress and it would appear on Mastodon. How is that not exactly what I asked for? And theoretically at least (someone should test this) you can access my WordPress writing on Threads, the system that Facebook launched to (as it turns out) compete with Bluesky! (In addition to Twitter, which is no longer called Twitter of course.) What a strange world it is.

And in the interim, the focus has gone off the social web, imho because the limits are still very much in force at Bluesky, which still insists a post can only have 300 freaking characters and no links, styles etc blah blah blah and yadda yadda. We're still having this argument. Programmers vs writers. The world has lost its mind.

And in another thread there are idiots who propose trying to vilify and presumably cancel people who drive Teslas as if the car you use for transport is as trivial a possession as a fur coat.

I'm having a great day, no sarcasm, all of a sudden I feel like we might actually be winning, again.

- 2024-12-12T16:22:52Z
Possibly the last moment when the Dems really kicked ass.

- 2024-12-13T01:57:59Z
It's a big enough umbrella but it's always me that ends up getting wet.

- 2024-12-12T15:58:06Z
BTW, I hear that Safari now defaults to using HTTPS. Not sure exactly what that means. But if they ever actually stop showing scripting.com, which will always be plain old HTTP, I'll probably ship an Electron product that browses the web, and doesn't care if it's HTTP or whatever new fad Google is promoting. I'm going to hold the fort for the original web. I can't change scripting.com to HTTPS, it would break all the images and probably a lot of other stuff.

I'll keep my Tesla, thank you - 2024-12-12T16:12:58Z

I saw a pundit suggest people harass people who drive Teslas.

When I bought mine, it cost $70K, a large sum of money that I will not throw away just so a pundit can make a point.

Here's my rebuttal. I'd like to see you get on without buying Exxon products. We all agree they suck, but evil companies have a way of building dependence, that's how they stay in business while openly doing despicable things.

When I put down $70K for what is, btw, a fantastic car, no one knew how evil Elon Musk was going to turn out to be, how little he would care what you and I think.

And I don't believe anyone can live a pure life and extract all evil from it, and still participate in civilization.

- 2024-12-11T15:37:44Z
Bingeworthy has an RSS feed (not public yet), and new ratings show up in my blogroll, of course.

- 2024-12-11T17:10:40Z
I have United Healthcare insurance. I got it as part of my Medicare package when I turned 65. I've had good experience with them. I had major surgery in 2002, cost hundreds of thousands, included a one-week hospital stay and lots of followup treatments. I know the hospital did all the work with them, I was shielded from any complications, but as far as I know there were none. Never had a treatment questioned or denied. I had another insurance provider for many years after that, but when given a chance I went back to United. Just want to say, so far -- knock wood -- I am a happy customer.

- 2024-12-11T14:39:52Z
Just added to my todo list -- add the option to use the WordPress REST interface in place of the WPCOM interface, this will give WordLand the ability to edit WordPress sites anywhere, not just on wordpress.com. When I made the choice to go with WPCOM I didn't have ChatGPT to look at the other options, I was surprised to find that WordPress actually had a good JavaScript API. It doesn't look like the conversion will be too bad. It's obviously better to be able to work with all WordPress sites.

- 2024-12-11T15:08:20Z
No more elections where Hope is the main theme. Better: Kicking ass. Kicking ass is for ass-kicking Americans. I personally like Hope, but I'm also a sports fan and understand the value of kicking ass.

Answers for a tester - 2024-12-11T20:33:05Z

A valued tester of WordLand asked a series of questions, which I answered in some detail, and felt it was a good idea to post the answers here on my blog.

• Any kind of feedback you want to give is totally welcome. I'd prefer it be in the GitHub issues section so it might inspire other people to contribute.
• Re image insertion, I'm not sure it could be simpler. The goal is to get an image into the user's document. If it succeeded at doing that then I'm happy with the design. ;-)
• The target audience is writers who use WordPress. The idea is to put all the features writers need in one place, rather than scattered around the WP interface. And to use modern UI techniques you'd see in social web apps.
• I've tried to answer the questions you raised in the only way I can. For example I need to use a term for the arrows that move you through the stories you've written. They aren't all posts, but they are all drafts. I can explain that in the docs, but I seriously doubt if anyone would read them. There is a distinction and it's important to make that distinction. I also don't think it's crucial to get that one "right" -- not that I think there is a right answer to that one other than removing the feature, which I like having there because it emphasizes that we're working with a set of documents that you can edit.
• In all cases, you could raise any issue you have, I will think about what you say, but accept my response, and trust that I've incorporated your experience as data that might inspire a change in the design at some point.
• But do understand that a lot of thought has already gone into this, and a quick review by a new user is no substitute for a product design.
• I know the docs are non-existent. I am limited in the time I have and the commitments I've made. The truth is that even dedicated users won't read them. I know that by the questions they ask. But I will write the docs.
• What I suggest is you try using the product for its intended purpose, and assume that all feedback is welcome (it is) but once it has been registered, you should move on to the next thing.
• I've worked with testers many times going back a very long time. I've even hired testers. I don't take offense to critiques of the software.

BTW, if after reading this, you think you could be this kind of tester for WordLand, and you have experience with WordPress, and a site on wordpress.com, and are excited about the idea of a simple way to write and manage lots of documents in a WordPress environment, please fill out this form, I'll read it right away, and if it seems like a fit, I'll authorize your account.

- 2024-12-10T15:36:23Z
This time of year every day feels like Sunday.

- 2024-12-10T15:08:44Z
Here's a sad fact. When something open takes off, the vultures swoop in and try to own it. You wouldn't believe the greed I've seen. It's a virus, and it needs to stop, or at least be exposed as it's happening.

- 2024-12-10T14:37:06Z
Yesterday I did a podcast about why it's important to choose humble names for groups of developers working on open formats, using podcasting as an example. Another case in point, the Social Web Foundation, which is about ActivityPub and the Fediverse, when there are many other forms of the social web. Here's where the rubber meets the road. They're having a meeting in Brussels where people can demo their social web apps, but it's only about ActivityPub. If you have a project for Bluesky, or Threads, or non-ActivityPub Mastodon, or RSS for that matter, you should feel welcome there, regardless of what their Call For Participation says.

#rss