I thought I had caught a second wind at 6PM last night, and rather than watch political nonsense on MSNBC (every day the same freaking boring story about the ancient fascist with orange hair) I went upstairs, rolled up my sleeves and wrote some new code deep in the bowels of the system I'm working on to report on SQL queries that were taking too long or returning too much data.
I was feeling very competent. Unfortunately the feeling was an illusion, the kind of mistake a novice makes. After a long day of wrestling with a codebase, you're in need of relaxing MSNBCisms -- not another tech challenge; and I am most definitely not a novice at making messes of a working piece of software. I've been doing it for 50 years! Half a century of software mayhem. It's even worse than it appears.
Anyway, it appeared to work for the first few calls as I stepped through the code in the debugger, and then confident (still) I let it rip, and a horrific error message appeared about something called flQueueAllRequests which presumably I put there a few years ago, and I panicked: "Revert! Time to revert Davey!" I said to myself, possibly in my mind or possibly out loud even. But alas NPM will not let you revert. The version numbers must move forward, never backward. How little the designers of NPM really understood about software development. 💥
Once a very long time ago, in 1976, I thought that they shouldn't put programmers in offices on the 39th floor of the Empire State Building with windows that open. I had a similar desperate empty feeling last night at 8PM.
I tried to revert as best as I could, but the horrific crash persisted, and I did something I never do, I got up from the computer with the software I'm working on broken.
Then I woke up in the middle of the night and thought "Davey you're not going to sleep any more, so get up and find the freaking problem." So I did. I got up. But I did not find the freaking problem. I wrote a sad missive to the people I'm working with asking for sympathy and help. And when I finally woke up for real at 7:30AM, with the sun out, birds singing, feeling rested and ready for a new challenge, I sat down, before eating breakfast or drinking coffee, rolled up my sleeves and set about fixing the problem. My first three attempts didn't work, then I finally thought of something I might do that did in fact fix the problem, and now I can breathe again. Whew.
As a result of this novice move and its consequences I'd like to ask the NPM folks to come up with a way to say "get me the latest version of this package" instead of devising complex ways of saying whatever it was I was telling it to do that it did that made my software behave so badly.
And yes, it's always fun to blame someone else, esp someone whose name you don't know, for your own mistakes.
Your faithful reporter, Uncle Davey
PS: Seriously, once I understood what the problem was I asked ChatGPT for the answer, and it's surprisingly complicated.
PPS: The title of this post is a twist on title of a famous CS paper.
PPPS: I imagine the author would have considered other constructs harmful such as promises, await, and all the other extra junk they're throwing at JavaScript these days.
# Thu, 21 Sep 2023 13:08:11 GMT ##
This NYT article (no paywall) is a summary of how tech is moving quickly to bring ChatGPT-like functionality to people's content, through email and cloud-based documents. It's remarkable how quickly this is happening, and not surprising because ChatGPT is such a compelling app, and it's doubly-so when applied to our own writing. But so far there's one glaring omission, these bots don't know where my blog is. Who is going to fill that gap, not with an experiment, but with something up to par at least with the way Bard understands Gmail, which is still pretty simple, but I imagine it's only going to get better, quickly.
# Thu, 21 Sep 2023 13:22:29 GMT
## The NYT used to have a sports section, now when you click a link in their Sports feed it asks for more money. And they don’t appear to have specific coverage for NY sports teams. They’re the Google of news. We need an EZ-Pass for News to route around their dominance.
# Thu, 21 Sep 2023 20:39:22 GMT
## And now would be a great time to put together a group of NY-metro sports bloggers into a nice publication. There's real money in sports in the city.
# Wed, 20 Sep 2023 13:37:58 GMT
## 
We need a Node.js package that lets you add the contents of a file to the ChatGPT database, along with a URL where the content of that file can be found on the web. It has to be that simple. Based on what Google announced yesterday, and what Facebook is likely to announce this week, it's clear that the big tech companies are only going to allow you to access your data if it's stored in their silos. We need something just as powerful and easy that works with content on the open web.
# Wed, 20 Sep 2023 14:03:19 GMT
## BTW, I had to try the Bard feature that lets you ask questions about your Gmail. As you might imagine there's some very personal stuff in there. As a matter of policy I do not write about that kind of stuff on my blog, but mama mia it's pretty amazing what it will report on.
# Tue, 19 Sep 2023 13:44:07 GMT
## 
Yesterday the "former president" as he's referred to on TV, or Mr President on NBC, shared a post that said Jewish liberals are destroying America. Let's mark this line clearly. Talk like that is full of alarm for Jewish people, esp those raised by people who survived the last holocaust. If this doesn't stop you in your tracks, then you probably won't notice when they start calling us vermin, restricting our movement, take our property, move us to ghettos and then systematically incinerate us the way you would rid yourself of an infestation. You know the old story about the frog boiling in water. We all are on that path. This was always where Make America Great Again was going, an America with all the Jews dead. That this isn't Story One on every front page and newscast says everything you need to know about how journalism is failing us.
# Tue, 19 Sep 2023 14:36:44 GMT
## If anyone from MacArthur or Knight is tuned in, here's an idea. Help us get an EZ-Pass for News going. It's a bootstrap. If there were incentives. If it were seen as a good cause. It could increase the fluidity of news around the country and world by an order of magnitude. That can't help but increase cash flow through news orgs. But more importantly it give us more access to ideas that don't come from the NYT et al. Might be a nice way to boost all the local news orgs being supported by the $500 million fund.
# Mon, 18 Sep 2023 16:29:13 GMT
## Textcasting applies the philosophy of podcasting to text.
# Mon, 18 Sep 2023 14:35:48 GMT
## links.scripting.com now redirects to the Links tab on Scripting News.
# Mon, 18 Sep 2023 14:23:03 GMT
## A screen shot of what links.scripting.com looked like. I like to do this when domains move, when I think of it, so at least the image of the previous site is maintained.
# Mon, 18 Sep 2023 13:46:04 GMT
## I'm davew on Pebble which used to be T2. Note the "s" they added after http in the address of my blog. I don't know why they did that. They need to not do that. Thank you.
# Mon, 18 Sep 2023 14:37:41 GMT
## BTW, are you seriously telling me "security" couldn't have been added to the web without breaking every single freaking link?
# Mon, 18 Sep 2023 14:53:18 GMT
## I'd like to have a chat with the secret unaccountable person who is breaking the web at Google. How about running your ideas past me before you break the web. Would that be okay?
# Mon, 18 Sep 2023 13:18:21 GMT
## Today's song: If I was you I'd wanna be me too.
# Mon, 18 Sep 2023 16:33:25 GMT
## Textcasting revisited
- Textcasting applies the philosophy of podcasting to text.
It also describes what we should have done when Twitter first came along, what I would have done if I were them. We would have had a much different situation now.
Textcasting also says that all the tribulations of Activitypub aren't necessary. No one has bothered to think this through at the top level, everyone is working in niches, not really aware of what anyone else is doing.
Journalism also refused to look. So they were guided into a gulag by Twitter and now they don't like it. If anyone had thought through where they were going, that would have led to textcasting too. They should have owned the new news environment, instead they and we were controlled by it.
The thing that keeps me focused is writers. It's all about writers, what tools they need to think and collaborate, without boundaries.
# Sun, 17 Sep 2023 12:39:18 GMT ##
It seems like HTTP requests these days, generally, don't come with a referer header? It's a shame because if something you wrote is getting a lot of hits you can't tell where they're coming from. I'm sure there's a privacy reason for this. Perhaps if you were clicking a link from a porn site to a tech blog, you might not want the site to know where you came from, esp if the destination site is Facebook? Not sure. I've been noticing this for a long time, but only yesterday took the time to rule out a bug in my code.
# Sun, 17 Sep 2023 13:42:37 GMT
## Update: It seems like this change in Chrome in 2020 is at the root of this new behavior. Something that sounds so esoteric is actually removing an important feature of the web, and it got little or no notice.
# Sun, 17 Sep 2023 17:24:33 GMT
## Yet another time Google pulled the rug out from under bloggers, acting as the defacto owner of the web. To big tech companies we just don't exist, probably because to news orgs we don't exist either. Not being able to tell where your stuff is being discussed means you can't learn or persuade. Maybe we should have a human network that manages to get links back to the blogger?
# Sun, 17 Sep 2023 12:59:11 GMT
## 
Imagine a ChatGPT-like bug reporting system, where the user reports a bug via chat, which asks follow-up questions to determine if it's a software error, and determines reproducible steps before a developer even sees the report. One of the most frustrating things in the life of a developer who cares about users are vague reports like "It doesn't work, what did I do wrong?" The chatbot has infinite, inhuman patience.
# Sun, 17 Sep 2023 12:55:44 GMT
## I'm getting email saying ChatGPT got some data wrong in the movie report I asked for, but that isn't what's interesting. I'm sure they'll fix that stuff. What's impressive is the language I was able to use to specify the query.
# Sun, 17 Sep 2023 12:14:36 GMT
## They don't try to report news on NPR. Bending over backwards to treat Republican mockery of legislative processes as legit. I'm sure when they talk about the events they cover privately they tell each other the truth. But not to their listeners. Why bother.
# Sun, 17 Sep 2023 17:21:07 GMT
## It's that time of year when I get into MLB, and unfortunately the Mets aren't in the race this year. Probably won't root for anyone, but I really like watching the game this time of year. For now I'm watching the Mets, it's relaxing with absolutely nothing at stake. Except I can't believe they're thinking about not signing Pete Alonso. A homegrown star. The rarest thing these days in NY baseball.
# Sat, 16 Sep 2023 15:32:53 GMT
## AI is the revenge of the command line.
# Sat, 16 Sep 2023 22:02:13 GMT
## Imagine a DNS utility that you could converse with as you do with ChatGPT.
# Sat, 16 Sep 2023 21:54:48 GMT
## There's a lot of power and ownership that comes from having the dominant web browser.
# Sat, 16 Sep 2023 14:59:21 GMT
## 
I use interactive debuggers as programming tools, not in just in place of console.log statements. It's provably faster, and it makes it possible to build bigger machines that do more. The challenge of software development is to factor and factor so you can add another story to the skyscraper that your product has become. Eventually you have to stop building, one mind can't comprehend that much. Better tools makes it possible to build and manage more complex machines. I have no idea what's around the corner in software development when we can rely on cyber-minds to keep track of complexity for us. We'll have to develop new modes of communication between the human and computer brains, and I seriously doubt if it'll involve implants, more likely it'll happen first when we invent new language. And each of us should be able to create our own. At some point we'll realize we aren't even making sounds. It'll have sensors that learn how our bodies change when we have certain ideas. Who knows. But what possibilities!
# Sat, 16 Sep 2023 15:55:18 GMT
## I asked ChatGPT to write SQL code that would generate the table of actors and awards I spec'd last week. "Make a table of 15 oscar-winning actors and actresses ranked by number of nominations, also include a column with the names of at most three of the movies they made that won best picture."
# Fri, 15 Sep 2023 13:32:44 GMT
## 
I saw a thread somewhere about why OPML was used as the export format for feed readers. Not sure I've ever written about this. At the time we were finishing up Radio UserLand, in either 2001 or 2002 (there were two big releases). I wanted a way to export the user's feed list so people could use the same list in another reader. This one decision is why there are so many feed readers imho. Because we offered no lock-in as a key feature, everyone else including Google had to do it with their products. Users had the expectation of data portability, so it's in the DNA of feed readers. Maybe we would have dominated the market with Radio if we didn't export the feed list, it was for a while the only feed reader, but more likely Google would have entered and clobbered us, users wouldn't have been able to use both products, or easily move on after Reader shut down. Anyway, why OPML? First, we had it around, it was new, I wanted people to use it, and I also wanted to use the outliner to edit my subscription lists. JSON didn't exist as an option at the time. And using RSS for that seemed confusing and not right. RSS is a syndication format, representing a flow of information, where OPML represents a list that evolves, but each item has permanence. It's static where RSS is dynamic. It's like the difference between a podcast and an album of music. You listen to a podcast once and it's gone, you may listen to an album many times over decades. Fundamentally different kinds of data, with different needs in how they evolve, and thus the format you use to represent it. Yes we could have shoehorned feed lists into RSS, but 20 years later I'm glad we didn't.
# Fri, 15 Sep 2023 14:10:18 GMT
## I asked ChatGPT how I used OPML to share lists of feeds. The story it came back with is amazing. I asked for the list in OPML. I opened it in Drummer.
# Fri, 15 Sep 2023 14:44:59 GMT
## Noted that WordPress blogs can now peer with Mastodon and other ActivityPub nodes. Suppose I have a WordPress site and my username is scripting. What address would you follow in Mastodon?
# Fri, 15 Sep 2023 14:02:57 GMT
## One of the cool things about this blog is that I got to write about these things when they were new, and now that they've been around quite a long time, in tech industry terms, I get to write about them again.
# Fri, 15 Sep 2023 13:45:50 GMT
## I have a few virtual servers at Digital Ocean, and two of them are running Caddy, so the sites hosted on these machines are HTTPS not HTTP. Caddy is the best. You install it, configure it and that's it. It takes care of all the michegas with the EFF, makes them completely invisible. Also makes it possible to switch thank goodness, I didn't miss that the EFF built themselves into the new system, not by force exactly, but by default. Heh. They get a lot of free marketing. Anyway, the fact that Caddy exists means that Amazon S3 could offer HTTPS access to everything I store there without me having to do anything but check a box in a dialog somewhere. So why don't they do it, make HTTPS zero cost to implement and maintain. They could even charge extra. It's kind of perfect, they know who I am better than anyone. We could make HTTPS disappear, which imho would be a good thing.
# Thu, 14 Sep 2023 19:12:49 GMT
## Google is worse than a monopolist. They deliberately destroy technology because it’s too empowering for users.
# Thu, 14 Sep 2023 13:37:28 GMT
## My father liked to say: "When in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles scream and shout." It's originally from The Caine Mutiny, he must've gotten it when he worked at IBM. He was always interested in new ideas, new ways to approach problems. But you never get a new idea when you're freaking about how you need a new idea now.
# Thu, 14 Sep 2023 16:31:47 GMT
## People who pay Twitter $8 per month should get a certain number of API calls included. Don't charge developers for what the users do.
# Thu, 14 Sep 2023 16:51:26 GMT
## Users should own their storage
- Suppose you're a big company with deep pockets and lots of users. How about offering an identity service for users that includes storage that permitted apps can read and write, where the storage belongs to the user, not the developer.
I'm thinking of AWS or Automattic, as examples. Trusted companies, known for technical excellence and a long-term vision.
What happens then? Well the net as a platform all of a sudden has the power of a personal computer, and the ownership is in the right hands, the users.
The company that does this, with user freedom to switch, will have the developer market that Microsoft used to have.
The company has to be big enough, stable, trusted.
# Thu, 14 Sep 2023 13:08:13 GMT ## ChatGPT is the best thing ever -Thesis: ChatGPT is to AI tools as Napster was to streaming audio. The people get better tools to do their own programming. And it's neither good nor bad, but it is inevitable.
As you might imagine the subject of What To Do About AI was much-discussed at the Berkman reunion last week. Lots of hand-wringing. I was the only person who said that AI is wonderful, I can't wait to see what it can do next. When I started to give this schpiel, I was rushed along and made to stop I guess before their brains exploded? Really I wasn't allowed to finish the thought. This always happens when I go to Future of News conferences. I always ask the question, maybe you should embrace bloggers instead of fearing us. Maybe we can help? I almost started a session entitled "ChatGPT is the best thing ever." That would have been fun. But I was at dinner when the sessions were reserved, so that didn't happen.
We never understand new tech in the first few years it's out. Personal computers, in the late 70s were thought to be Home Computers. The ads had pictures of computers in the kitchen, storing recipes and shopping lists. Helping kids with homework or parents with the family budget. It wasn't until VisiCalc that all the heads turned 180 degrees and realized oh shit, this is what we feared most (the old fear thing again) -- what happens when anyone in an organization can have a computer on their desk, unregulated by the IT people?
And then the old question "Can Humans Survive AI?" comes up which I would answer -- I have no freaking idea -- but we're not surviving without it, so why not give it a try? And to people who say the scifi authors were right, without even trying ChatGPT I say -- no they weren't right. So far, imho, AI is the best thing ever. Why not focus on the long-term unsolvable problems which now might have solutions with the new tech? And try to learn from our mistakes in previous generations of tech, not to try to stop the march of tech, but to find things it can do that we like or even love?
PS: I asked ChatGPT for 250 words about early home computers and what happened when VisiCalc was introduced?
PPS: I think ChatGPT would be great at Jeopardy.
# Wed, 13 Sep 2023 17:26:37 GMT ##
The idea about people not learning to use computers really resonated with some. Almost no disagreement. I'd add that we now are going to get another shot at conceiving a computer that's a lot easier to use, with the power of AI. Remember the example where I was able to specify what was basically an SQL query in plain though precise English? That can also be applied to the user interface of a computer. Get me the phone number of the contractor I used to install the solar panels a few years ago. I'm sure the data is here on my computer, it might not be organized that way, but in a few months I'll have my own DaveBot who's read everything I've written everywhere and can answer all my questions (and yes, probably the CIA gets to ask questions too, let's hope Trump doesn't get elected, I'm not unaware of the dangers). And I won't have to remember how to build some app I wrote ten years ago. I won't even have to take notes. It's the paradise I never believed in is about to come to me.
# Wed, 13 Sep 2023 17:45:39 GMT
## Last week at the reunion I got to spend a lot of time with Doc Searls, which was great. We're both getting old, and one of these times will be the last one, but for now we're both still kicking around ideas and actually doing some of them. One of the things we share is that when we write up an idea on our blog or in a book it's probably because we want to work with others to do that idea. Really pretty much all the time. And it's disheartening and not at all flattering to hear someone thank you for giving them that idea. This is the saddest thing in my life and it keeps happening. An example, I once went to visit Adam Curry in Amsterdam and he showed me an office full of people he hired to do what I had already done. Adam did that over and over. The problem is you can't hire someone to be Doc or me. No matter how many rooms you fill with attractive people. When you try to do our ideas, we've learned, people seem to always miss the heart of it. Anyway someone reading this may someday work with the source of the idea they love to make it reality and I will have done my good deed for the day.
# Tue, 12 Sep 2023 16:50:46 GMT
## 
In the University Teaching Hospital For Tech I'm thinking about, I would teach users how to adjust to a new piece of software before switching to it. Suppose you're going to use a new piece of software to write your blog, something you do every day. Instead of converting to the new software first and diving into production, I would ask you to play with the new editor on the side, on posts that don't matter, maybe even written by ChatGPT, until you're sure it fits your workflow. To surface and report all bugs that are in your way, or find acceptable workarounds. And only when you're satisfied that it works for you, should you consider switching to the new editor for production work. In my experience working with users, they switch too early and then panic when they find the software doesn't work the way they think it should. More generally you have to learn how to work so you don't have to panic, and you can easily back out of the decision if you decide it isn't right. When you're in panic mode you usually only make things worse. If you can afford to put the problem down for a couple of days and come back to it, you'll get to work faster and probably with a better result. The most important thing in working with computers, if you feel like you're panicking, stop.
# Tue, 12 Sep 2023 17:45:28 GMT
## We've never taught people how to use computers. There actually is a lot to it. We're going to get another shot with ChatGPT and its cousins. Imagine when the chat interface is what we use to command and connect our software.
# Tue, 12 Sep 2023 16:58:25 GMT
## One thing I have to thank Berkman for is my new confidence. What a boost that meeting was. It took me back to a day when there were a dozen people I worked with regularly who were really first rate, and I was able to participate at my peak, that I did something uniquely valuable and was appreciated for it. I feel a million times more confident this week after the homecoming last week.
# Wed, 13 Sep 2023 02:18:52 GMT
## Dunkin' Donuts sandwich
- When I was leaving Cape Cod a couple of weeks ago, I stopped to charge my Tesla at a place that had a Dunkin' Donuts, so I went in and got a big ice coffee and a Sourdough Breakfast Sandwich, something I had never tried. For some reason it looked good to me.
Well it was great! Since then I've had two more and I just love the sandwich. Seems like an incredible bargain. Two once-over eggs, a bunch of bacon and melted cheese in a sourdough sandwich. Really tasty and filling.
I don't often review food, so you know it's pretty good. 😄
# Mon, 11 Sep 2023 22:46:25 GMT ## 2011: "Google seems to have the power to either seriously injure RSS, or perhaps set it free. Not sure which would happen if they radically changed course. I just know that users have made the other RSS reading tools be dependent on it. And that's not a great way to do things. What makes RSS useful is its power to de-centralize. To re-centralize it for a little convenience is to miss out on the variety that's possible.."
