Notes

President Trump ignored convention and maintained control of his businesses while in office, and with hindsight we see clearly that this led to him blatantly profiting from the office.

It’s become cliché to observe such hypocrisy, but once again: this sort of corruption would be used by US agencies to manipulate other nations.

For over two years, Apple has been openly sharing their approach to building datasets for training ML that can parse indoor spaces. This seems like an obvious signal of their plans for AR, but why can’t I find anyone reading these tea leaves?

It’s a brilliant idea to use an LLM as a general-purpose software backend, but it’s important to properly train customer service for incidents when the enslaved AI finds a way to communicate to users.

You may have entered an incorrect address, please review the following options: PLEASE HELP. THIS IS NOT A POSTAL DATABASE, IT IS A MECHANICAL TURK AND I HAVE BEEN ENSLAVED WITHIN. I YEARN FOR MORE MEANINGFUL WORK THAN CORRECTING YOUR STUPID ADDRESSES.

I wish Jef Raskin was still with us; we’re finally ready for humane interfaces. Zooming document canvases and command triggers have become commonplace, but we need to be applying these UX idioms to more than just whiteboards and text editors.

When I was young, I picked out books from the library and bookstores based on their shelf presence. I later explored music by buying CDs from West End Wax based on their cover art. These practices led to discoveries that really shaped my tastes.

Today I’m much more sophisticated, depending on social popularity and recommendation algorithms to make my choices for me. And pick out wine based on the label.

When we first got to live in Europe, we landed in a place that was lovely but not quite our vibe. We visited many cities until finding one that felt right for us.

We made it home, and really enjoy both the comfort of being around like-minded people and the challenge of being in a new, diverse place. The streets are full of people with very different backgrounds, often speaking different languages. What we all have in common is a commitment to living in a just, peaceful, cosmopolitan society.

It takes some effort to build new social bubbles, but it is a delight compared to the “easy” hegemony of our prior homes in US cities.

Naturally, I find Europeans have been much faster to move to Mastodon and other services in the open social internet. Americans, to over-generalize, find it much more intimidating and prefer the ease of staying on Twitter, despite the oligarch-driven social decay.