/reader

Anyone can build on an open format. That's part of what it means for it to be open. Developers and users are free to use anyone's ideas, or not use them, even if they claim to be the Holy Church of Some Open Format. No one can form an organization that owns the future of the open format because then it wouldn't be open. #

I've got the new version of Bingeworthy running here. When I saw how the database code worked, I had to redo it from scratch. It was probably my first SQL project, and I barely knew what I was doing. It's too bad, because looking at it from that point of view I could see how SQL could have been much simpler by making some of the optional features automatic. A higher layer on top of SQL is possible, it seems to me. Having ChatGPT review my ideas has been invaluable in this project. I'm going to use it myself for a while, and see how I want to reorganize the user interface. There were opportunities for factoring I didn't take back then because I was in a rush to do something else. #

How I know Twitter was great. When something was going on anywhere, any kind of thing, I'd go to Twitter and it happened there 14 minutes ago. It was the pulse of the news. And somehow they couldn't figure out how to make a business of that! Amazing.#

I bet a lot of people who voted for Trump hoped they were voting for Jimmy Stewart in Mr Smith goes to Washington, or It's a Wonderful Life. I think they may be surprised to find that they actually voted for Mr Potter or Ebeneezer Scrooge. Look for a lump of coal in the stocking. #

If you want to get excited about the future, I highly recommend this week's Jon Stewart podcast interview with Bernie Sanders. I recognize these ideas, it sounds like what we're waiting for in the social web and in journalism. And working for and with each other.#

Why I like my Model Y#

• Yesterday I wrote that I'd trade in my Model Y if an non-Tesla EV came along that equaled it. A few people asked what I liked about the Model Y that I'm not finding in alternatives. Here's the list. #
• I love the handling of the Tesla. It's a muscle car like the 2007 BMW 535i I used to drive, great acceleration, but handles like the 1993 Miata another car I owned and loved. I've also owned really sloppy cars like a Subaru Forester or a Toyota Sienna minivan, even a 1974 Plymouth Voyager, the largest American passenger car ever made. I'm never going back to a car that doesn't have the authority of a Model Y. #
• The Model Y has lots of headroom, which my long torso needs, so I don't bruise my head each time I get in the freaking car. #
• I have a Tesla charger at home, so whatever I buy has to be compatible with or adaptable to it.#
• 4WD is important because where I live it snows in winter, and I drive on dirt roads a lot too.#
• It's a computer. It's going to be hard for a competitor to offer the integration with a network that Tesla offers, they're a computer company as much as they're a car company. Their connection to Starlink (assumed to be coming) is going to be hard to compete with too. #
• Calling it self-driving should get them in trouble with the FTC, there's no way anyone should trust it to drive itself, and the car's OS enforces that view, so I guess they have lawyers at Tesla. That said, I like having access to this technology. I've been an innovative software developer for a long time, and I like using tech that pushes the leading edge. The marketing (a Musk feature presumably) is what I don't like. #
• Charging network. I occasionally take trips that are out of range of my home charger, to Boston, or NYC sometimes leave me needing a charge on the way home. I'd like to have the option of driving cross-country as well. The Tesla charging network is a big plus. I honestly don't know how good the charging situation is for other brands. This would be something for car magazines to rate, to have a way of measuring it, as people who are put off by Musk's politics (about 1/2 of American voters) look for ways to drive something other than a Tesla. #
• So this turned into an ad for Tesla. Heh. #
• There are reasons we love it so much. #
• Just separate from Musk and all's well. #
• I've been thinking Tesla drivers who love America should have some kind of demonstration. We all park our cars around local Tesla dealers, let the police tow our cars, only to be replaced by other Teslas. We're all computer nerds, we could probably even figure out the scheduling. We probably have nearly as much money as they do. Just sayin. #
• Tired of companies that push us around politically and Tesla is one of the worst. So far they've managed to convince us they aren't Elon Musk, but that's a mirage, he is the company and the company is him. They are completely one and the same. #
• Like the My Pillow guy and his pillows. 😄#
• #

When Bluesky was experiencing its huge post-election surge, it was exciting because lots of us users were experiencing the surge in followers and engagement. It was exhilirating. That has slowed to nothing now, no more engagement there than on Threads, Masto or Twitter. The character limit on Bluesky being considerably less than the others makes it harder to rekindle interest imho. And btw the euphoria being gone is neither good or bad, it just is.#

ChatGPT is also a tutor. I'm learning new ways of coding SQL through drill and it's also improving my JavaScript code. It's infinitely impatient. It does make mistakes, but that's also good for the drill, catching the mistakes is instructive too. And in programming you always have to be looking for errors, because you'll almost always find them. "Runs the first time" is a rare occurrence, no matter who wrote the code."#

I drive a Tesla Model Y, the best car I've ever owned. I wish Elon Musk wasn't associated with it. If there were a good alternative to the Tesla, I would divest in a minute. I could afford to do it and would welcome the opportunity.#

I'm getting a new Apple Watch today, the latest model. My current watch, which I wear all the time (except when it's charging) is a 5th gen. The new one is 10th. I had to upgrade because there's a Tesla watch app out now that won't run on my old watch. It's the most rational add-on for the car. A must-have.#

Chuck Shotton: "Posting a video to YouTube is infinitely easier for a lot of people than understanding how to publish a podcast." True. #

17-minute podcast I recorded on Tuesday after hearing that the president of South Korea had declared martial law. #

Dom Christie has an interesting idea related to listening lists. Aggregate all the shows from all the feeds in a list into a single feed. This seems brilliant because it reduces the implementation in the client to almost nothing, just rebuild a feed periodically, it could be done entirely in the client app. But it also could be something users could share with other users, sort of a meta-channel. I think it's brilliant with the caveat that sometimes when you implement it you find something that makes it more complex than it seems at first. This is the second idea I've heard that the initial listening lists idea spawned. I think there's a lot of unexplored possibilities here. #

As if in response to Dom's idea, overnight, via email Leslie Joyce sends a link to a feed containing first episodes of new fiction podcasts. First comment, how useful! I love this idea as a user. And second, how innovative! I love this idea as a media hacker, what a clever use of RSS. I've added it to my blogroll and to my shared list of podcast feeds. #

I am definitely the last person to hear about ListenNotes search engine for podcasts. It's incredible. Just starting to explore its capabilities. #

President Biden pardoned his son. I have no problem with that, because his son was accused as a proxy for his father. If there is any legitimate use of presidential pardons, this is it. Perhaps relatives of the president should also be immune from prosecution. Does anyone really think Hunter Biden would have been tried for such petty crimes if he weren't Biden's son? The journalists, as always, have equated two very different things. They're playing their own game, trying to self-pardon in a way, to avoid being a target for the incoming administration, which we're all scared of, and I guess that's the point, to scare us. #

BTW, another thing journalism is getting wrong, the FBI is not the squeaky clean organization they present it as. #

We're looking for a Busy Developer's Guide to Bluesky's feed format. #

I frequently have trouble remembering the names of things I want to use in my writing. I've come to rely on ChatGPT for help. So I wrote to ChatGPT: "I'm trying to remember the name of the stone that has the key to understanding a language." To which it replied: "You're likely thinking of the Rosetta Stone. It was crucial in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs because it featured the same text written in three scripts: Greek, Demotic, and hieroglyphic. The Greek text provided the key to understanding the other two scripts."#

We need a BDG for Bluesky#

• I was very happy to see this post on Bluesky this morning from a friend, Matthias Pfefferle, who works at Automattic on the connection between WordPress and ActivityPub. #
• In his post he asks if there is a BDG for creating a PDS for Bluesky. #
• A BDG is a Busy Developer's Guide, something we did first for SOAP in 2001 when we were trying to figure out how to map XML-RPC onto it. Since then there have been lots of BDGs for all kinds of things. It's a useful concept because developers are often overly busy, so we need to get right to the problem before understanding all the theory behind it. We need an example that works, and we'll just do what it does. That also guarantees interop, which is the point of course. #
• Now we have a similar problem. Bluesky stores a user's writing in a PDS. If we can generate a PDS for our blogs, theoretically Bluesky should be able to see them and use them as if they were created inside Bluesky. If it were easy to understand we could get busy converting everything so it works there. We can do that because we're using popular simple formats like JSON (see below) to organize our work. #
• For example this is how I use JSON for my blog, the one you're reading right now.#
• Here's a folder in a repository on GitHub. Broken down into years, months, days, and posts. #
• Each post is a JSON file, like this. It has three bits of data, the text of the post, when it was created (which also serves as a unique ID, no two posts have the same creation date) and type. This item has a type of outline, because it can have structure, though this post does not. #
• Here's another post that does have structure. In Bluesky it would be represented as a thread. #
• Here's the question. What's the absolutely simplest way to have that structure of posts represented in a Bluesky PDS?#
• PS: I had a conversation with ChatGPT to scope this out. #

All the people on Patel's list#

• In Government Gangsters, Kash Patel identifies 60 individuals he alleges are part of a Deep State undermining the US government. #
• Michael Atkinson: Former Inspector General of the Intelligence Community.#
• Lloyd Austin: Defense Secretary under President Joe Biden.#
• Brian Auten: Supervisory Intelligence Analyst, FBI.#
• James Baker: Former General Counsel for the FBI and former Deputy General Counsel at Twitter.#
• Bill Barr: Former Attorney General under Trump.#
• John Bolton: Former National Security Adviser under Trump.#
• Stephen Boyd: Former Chief of Legislative Affairs, FBI.#
• Joe Biden: President of the United States.#
• John Brennan: Former CIA Director under President Barack Obama.#
• John Carlin: Acting Deputy Attorney General, previously led DOJ’s National Security Division under Trump.#
• Eric Ciaramella: Former National Security Council staffer during the Obama and Trump administrations.#
• Pat Cipollone: Former White House Counsel under Trump.#
• James Clapper: Former Director of National Intelligence under Obama.#
• Hillary Clinton: Former Secretary of State and presidential candidate.#
• James Comey: Former FBI Director.#
• Elizabeth Dibble: Former Deputy Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassy, London.#
• Mark Esper: Former Secretary of Defense under Trump.#
• Alyssa Farah: Former Director of Strategic Communications under Trump.#
• Evelyn Farkas: Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia under Obama.#
• Sarah Isgur Flores: Former DOJ Head of Communications under Trump.#
• Merrick Garland: Attorney General under Biden.#
• Stephanie Grisham: Former Press Secretary under Trump.#
• Kamala Harris: Vice President under Biden; former presidential candidate.#
• Gina Haspel: CIA Director under Trump.#
• Fiona Hill: Former staffer on the National Security Council.#
• Curtis Heide: FBI Agent.#
• Eric Holder: Former Attorney General under Obama.#
• Robert Hur: Special Counsel who investigated Biden over mishandling of classified documents.#
• Cassidy Hutchinson: Aide to Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.#
• Nina Jankowicz: Former Executive Director, Disinformation Governance Board under Biden.#
• Lois Lerner: Former IRS Director under Obama.#
• Loretta Lynch: Former Attorney General under Obama.#
• Charles Kupperman: Former Deputy National Security Adviser under Trump.#
• General Kenneth McKenzie, Ret.: Former Commander of United States Central Command.#
• Andrew McCabe: Former FBI Deputy Director under Trump.#
• Ryan McCarthy: Former Secretary of the Army under Trump.#
• Mary McCord: Former Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security under Obama.#
• Denis McDonough: Former Chief of Staff for Obama, Secretary of Veterans Affairs under Biden.#
• General Mark Milley, Ret.: Former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff.#
• Lisa Monaco: Deputy Attorney General under Biden.#
• Sally Moyer: Former Supervisory Attorney, FBI.#
• Robert Mueller: Former FBI Director, Special Counsel for Russiagate.#
• Bruce Ohr: Former Associate Deputy Attorney General under Obama and Trump.#
• Nellie Ohr: Wife of Bruce Ohr and former CIA employee.#
• Lisa Page: Former Legal Counsel for Deputy Director Andrew McCabe at FBI; exchanged texts about Trump with Peter Strzok.#
• Pat Philbin: Former Deputy White House Counsel under Trump.#
• John Podesta: Former Counselor to Obama; Senior Adviser to Biden on Climate Policy.#
• Samantha Power: Former Ambassador to the United Nations under Obama, Administrator of USAID under Biden.#
• Bill Priestap: Former Assistant Director for Counterintelligence, FBI under Obama.#
• Susan Rice: Former National Security Adviser under Obama, Director of the Domestic Policy Council under Biden.#
• Rod Rosenstein: Former Deputy Attorney General under Trump.#
• Peter Strzok: Former Deputy Assistant Director for Counterintelligence, FBI; exchanged texts about Trump with Lisa Page.#
• Jake Sullivan: National Security Adviser under President Joe Biden.#
• Michael Sussmann: Former Legal Representative, Democratic National Committee.#
• Miles Taylor: Former DHS Official under Trump; penned New York Times op-ed critical of Trump under the byline “Anonymous.”#
• Timothy Thibault: Former Assistant Special Agent, FBI.#
• Andrew Weissmann: Mueller’s Deputy in Russiagate probe.#
• Alexander Vindman: Former National Security Council Director for European Affairs.#
• Christopher Wray: FBI Director under Trump and Biden.#
• Sally Yates: Former Deputy Attorney General under Obama and, briefly, Acting Attorney General under Trump.#