On MSNBC yesterday I saw a discussion where two black panelists were asked to comment on Trump's idea that black people go for him because they can relate to his awful prison mug shot. How incredibly insulting. It's just like what Trump says about Jewish Americans being loyal to Israel. Such an un-American idea. We all got here different ways. Some for a better life, some for life at all, others as slaves. But the United States is a big-hearted idea -- the United States. It's unfortunate that such a small-minded disunited person is so powerful now. We still have a long way to go.
It’s going to be a busy day, but I wanted to pause to note two movies I watched this week and really enjoyed, for completely different reasons: Molly’s Game and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. I’m still amazed that Marcel was funded with such an obvious singular vision, unlike anything I’ve seen. 🍿
Captured in San Francisco on 6 Mar 2024 by Om Malik
I write with a 100 year old pen and ink made by a company that is almost 300 years old. There is something gratifying about the technology perfected in the past, allowing me to dream about the future.
I have enjoyed reading Manuel Moreale for quite a while now. When I saw his email pop up, I was quite delighted. He wanted to include me in his “People and Blogs series.” Manuel asks people with blogs to talk about themselves and their websites. He sends out a set of nine standard questions, and it is all done via email. These are well-crafted questions and extract the best out of you. When answering these questions, I had to pause and reflect before answering them. If you are interested in reading about my blogging and writing, here are my answers.
Just in time for Micro Camp today, a brand new Core Intuition: episode 599! We talk about Micro Camp, Micro.blog, and domain names, then catch up on GPT-4o, Google I/O, and Apple.
Dave to ChatGPT: I just read a news story that the Knicks won the last game in the playoffs because of an epic fart in the locker room. Can you draw a light-hearted illustration of that event?
Version 1
Then I asked for a serious and dramatic illustration.
✍️ Written by: Larry Correia
🏷 Genre: Sci-fi / fantasy
🗓 Published: 04 April 2023
📄 Pages: 471
🧐 My rating: ★★★★☆ (4 stars)
The assassination of the Chief Judge has pushed the Capitol to the edge. The Great Extermination has spread to all the land. The casteless must be annihilated.
Their only hope is the fallen Protector Ashok Vadal. But Vadal is being held prisoner on the island of Fortress. In order to save those who need him most, he must escape and find his way across the demon-infested sea and return to Thera, the prophet of an illegal and forgotten god. It is she who has sent the Sons of the Black Sword to war against the warrior caste, hoping to buy time until Vadal’s return.
But as the chaos swirls, Grand Inquisitor Omand Vokkan launches a coup to install Lord Protector Devedas as his puppet king. Devedas has no intention of being anyone’s puppet, but it may not matter. For Vokkan has struck a secret bargain with a demon. Vokkan will destroy the casteless for this ancient being; in exchange, he will be granted the power of the ancient gods.
Ashok Vadal, Thera, and the Sons of the Black Sword face foes both human and supernatural, Byzantine political intrigue and bloody hand-to-hand combat, gods and demons alike. But Vadal is a warrior with a warrior’s heart, and woe to those who would stand in his way—man, god, demon, or otherwise!
Not much to say over what I've already said about other books in this series. Still thoroughly enjoying it and I'm really looking forward to book 5, which is expected November 2024.
It's overwhelming how much ground Google has to cover to get AI into all their products, but that's what they think they have to do, and I more or less agree. They feel they have to because their main product, search, is threatened by ChatGPT.
Clayton Christensen called this The Innovator's Dilemma in a book published in 1997. It's why Netscape was able to undermine Microsoft when the web came out. Microsoft had a huge beast they had to move, Windows, and all its apps, and while they had a hardcore, scrappy and rich culture, they couldn't overcome the inertia that comes from being dug in, with their cannons pointed at the already-vanquished IBM, not the upstarts that came from the VCs in Silicon Valley.
Microsoft and the rest of the PC industry had written off Unix, but there it was, again -- ugly as ever, but with networking that really worked and was easy, and the users wanted networking even though Microsoft wanted them to want Office.
Google did the same with AI. As did Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. They had AI projects, and used AI in limited areas, as did Microsoft with Unix in the early 90s. But they couldn't bet everyting on it like a startup can. Now they have to. But the they don't have the tools needed to fight the new war. That's the dilemma.
This is the toughest corner any tech company has to turn, but there is an approach that could work for Google. Their strength is distribution. They have all the users. They can take a product that's ready for the world to market in a day. But they can't develop it. You can't snap your fingers and have a good new UI for every one of their products, ready in a year, although they will try as MS tried to adapt Office to the web. They don't have the right people or corporate culture to do that. Instead you have to hope you can find a great bootstrapping startup outside to work with, and use their strength as a distributor to help them. This is what I recommended for Microsoft in the 1990s, and I think I was vindicated, it would have imho worked a lot better than the path they chose.
But now, their third time around this loop, Microsoft has learned! With their OpenAI partnership they've done exactly what I recommended in the 90s. They still have to convert all the old software and their user interfaces around the new capabilities, but at least they also own a share of a bootstrap that's now booming.
PS: I am blessed to have lived long enough now to have been part of now six different rearrangements like this. I love that we have now gotten there again. There's absolutely no doubt now, imho. The six rearrangements -- minis, PCs, GUIs, web, Napster, and now AI.
PPS: This is all my opinion, and from the polls I did yesterday, it's obvious that many of the people within earshot don't agree or have seen the light yet.
On MSNBC yesterday I saw a discussion where two black panelists were asked to comment on Trump's idea that black people go for him because they can relate to his awful prison mug shot. 
Clayton Christensen called this The Innovator's Dilemma in a book published in 1997. It's why Netscape was able to undermine Microsoft when the web came out. Microsoft had a huge beast they had to move, Windows, and all its apps, and while they had a hardcore, scrappy and rich culture, they couldn't overcome the inertia that comes from being dug in, with their cannons pointed at the already-vanquished IBM, not the upstarts that came from the VCs in Silicon Valley. 