Every company should train an AI chatbot with all current info about everything so people can get answers. Most company info if documented at all is scattered, depends on Google for search, and it increasingly sucks. I spent years not finding a crucial piece of technical info about a company whose products I depend on, till I asked the question on my blog for the Nth time, and most people don’t have the ability to do that. And that's info the company wants people to have, and it ’s well documented on their site. We were supposed to be creating an information rich world, but so far it hasn’t worked. Someone should step up and be the example, reap the competitive benefits.#

I've just added the ability to include singular posts, like this. They have no titles. They're more like tweets than larger posts that get a title. What would you entitle this? Nothing. It's too short to get a title. But if I keep typing that might change. 😄#

AppleTV is running the whole of the first episode of Silo as a tweet. This is new, never seen this done before. I imagine that Apple is paying Twitter to do this, or maybe not. Maybe Twitter wants to establish itself as a medium for watching, not just participating, and Apple is helping. I think we'll see more and more of that. A diminution of individuals communicating and more corporations and political parties. People who think Musk is going to regret buying Twitter are imho probably wrong. They were just barely treading water, sitting on one of the most amazing communication systems ever built. A restructuring is for sure going to cause a dip, but once straightened out, it could turn into a strong business. It's not smart to bet against a company that's as installed as Twitter is. #

Every company should train an AI chatbot with all current info about everything so people can get answers. Most company info if documented at all is scattered, depends on Google for search, and it increasingly sucks. I spent years not finding a crucial piece of technical info about a company whose products I depend on, till I asked the question on my blog for the Nth time, and most people don’t have the ability to do that. And that's info the company wants people to have, and it ’s well documented on their site. We were supposed to be creating an information rich world, but so far it hasn’t worked. Someone should step up and be the example, reap the competitive benefits.#

Azeem Azhar: "ChatGPT has organised much of the world’s information and made it easily accessible."#

ChatGPT is basically a user interface for search, and it's a breakthrough. We can't and shouldn't go back. It's too good not to use.#

Fixed a problem in Drummer. The About tab was missing in user blogs. A bit of breakage in the transition to the new identity system, fixed. #

The vexing problem I explained yesterday is solved. But not the way I expected it to go. I kept banging my head on the Electric Drummer codebase, and I couldn't get it to build. Of course I have a process for that, but it had been months since I did one, and somewhere in there something stopped working, silently. I gave up in frustration after a few hours of slogging, getting nowhere, and on my way out, cleaning up after my failed adventure, I realized I could do it without changing E/D at all. It's a long story, no space for it here -- but I wanted to close the loop. I am now able to edit my I/O in E/D and I'm a H/C.#

I've been thinking about how memos work in highly structured organizations. When you're cc'd on a memo as CEO you like to see up front if there are no action items for you below, that this is just an FYI thing. When I was a CEO, a long time ago, I never had the time to read every sentence in every memo I was cc'd on, nor would it be appropriate. Everyone had to learn to be clear about the presence of action items before starting their narrative. Just putting an FYI at the top with a short list of people who have to act. Most memos, I found were totally informational, ie contained no action items for anyone. #

I used to live in Woodside CA, where snow on the ground was unheard of. Until today. Wow. And now I live in Woodstock NY where snow this time of year is the norm, yet this year there has been almost none. #

First, it's good that people are working on new features for RSS for podcasts. Why not. But you should choose a modest name for your effort. By calling it Podcasting 2.0 you're basically forcing anyone else who wants to do something here to call theirs 3.0 or 4.0. Just come up with a random name, like The Oslo Project. How did I come up with that name? I asked ChatGPT to do it : "Please give me 10 random names of European cities with less than 4 syllables in their names." Here's what it came up with. Or you can ask for children's names. Or color names. Or Yiddish words. And then please, look at what the other guys are doing and instead of implementing something slightly different with a different name, just do it their way. The only goal here should be upgrading the user experience and interop, so there's no freaking lockin. Keep the bullshit to a minimum. "Available where you get your podcasts."#

I'm still trying to figure out how to retrofit Instant Outlining in Electric Drummer without having to implement support for the new email-based identity system. It's especially hard to do that for an Electron app, it took a huge effort to get Twitter identity in there. E/D stores files locally, and combined with Public Folder, means it doesn't need any help storing stuff where it's public accessible. The hard part, I'm finding, is to figure out where I need to stop it from overwriting one of the head-level attributes. I wrote all this code, but it's so freaking complicated. Having cleared that up, I'm now ready to take another approach. I'll let you know how it goes. #

Drummer blogging is now restored on the new system. Things had to move around, of course, because of HTTPS. And the addresses of the blogs have changed too. Sorry, but we did a big migration there, you can see the role identity plays in online work. We were depending on a private company that became wobbly, so that's what caused the breakage. The foundations we build on on the 2023 web basically suck. Sorry I wish it weren't so.#

Even if a national divorce were possible constitutionally, it would leave minorities in the new Confederacy subject to all the abuses of fascist dictatorships like slavery and genocide. The United States guarantees rights to all, not just white Christians.#

I never ask personal friends to subscribe to my nightly email. I also never look to see who's subscribed. Not a guarantee I never will, but in practice, I don't want to know who's tuned in and who isn't. I don't ask personal friends to subscribe because they might choose not to, and that's not something I want to try to parse. Everyone's free to do as they want, and to not know what the choice was, unless the other party wants to make it known. Complicated? Yes, and still evolving. #

BTW, I've been meaning to ask if there's anyone from Automattic who is a regular reader? There's an interesting project being contemplated, and if you're in this loop you might be able to help. Contact me via email (on the About page). #

The other day I wrote about the problems that will appear unexpectedly because of the new rules imposed by HTTPS now that Drummer is running as an HTTPS app. One of the problems -- it totally broke Instant Outlines. If the user subscribes to an outline that's served under HTTP, the browser won't let us read it, because (I guess) they think we're loading code or private data. Neither is true. By definition the outline is public. There will be a workaround, we can call a server to read the file. I could be spending the time inventing new stuff, instead I'm mopping up after the EFF and Google. #

I chimed in on a Masto thread about whether the standard is Mastodon or ActivityPub. I was also asked for my advice which I freely gave. #

If you're interested how the music of my generation (born 1955, Boomer) came about, I can't more highly recommend the two-part documentary Laurel Canyon, currently streaming on Amazon Prime. I got real interested in the music of Laurel Canyon when I was exploring the story of CSNY and all the members individually after David Crosby died. I wish I had been part of a creative community like that. That was what I was dreaming of for my life back then, and it was right there and until now I didn't know it existed. Learning a lot about my own life these days, by studying what was going on around it. I don't think any of this could have happened without Wikipedia, YouTube and podcasting. It's amazing how well our media cover history now. This could be the golden age of history. Weird idea, I know. #

BTW, I've now been through switching two HTTP apps to HTTPS, and what they say about it being easy to retrofit is just marketing, ie nah, it's no more true than Node is single-threaded. In some cases, for a simple static website, it can be totally automatic. Check out Caddy. It's a miracle, if you think HTTPS is a requirement. But if you're talking about an app like Drummer or "FeedLand", it's a pretty large undertaking, with cascading problems, and fraught with opportunities for breakage that could be hard to find (I'll let you know in a year or two, knock wood). Using HTTPS means you have to use it in everything the app comes in contact with. Google and EFF as bright as they are haven't anticipated every way of building software on the net. This was a lesson I had learned before. We thought converting ThinkTank from the IBM PC and Apple II to the Mac would be easy. Ultimately we had to write a new product from scratch. The assumptions were different. But in that case I made the choice, not Google and the EFF. #

I need an outliner to manage my email drafts. In a perfect world I'd be able to plug one in. But we are very far from that. We were closer in the late 80s and early 90s. That was my goal then, to turn the apps of a GUI into toolkits for people who wrote scripts to connect them to create their own applications. Why should I have to write a whole word processor to have a new feature that no one else knows they need. If I could hook my emailer up to my outliner, I would get better use of the drafts I wrote. The ultimate goal is to do all my writing in my favorite writing app, and send pointers to the writing to the other apps, emailers, chat apps, CMSes, there would be only one original, and if I made a change to the original the updates would flow to all the places I sent pointers. Again we were much closer to this 30 years ago than we are now. But I think we have a chance to start fresh now with these goals. That's when you want to do this kind of integration for interop, at the beginning, before there are any apps. It's very hard to retrofit later, I can't say I've ever seen it work. #

Busy day today offline, see you with yummy updates tomorrow. ;-)#

Basically the people who run the country don't care how many Americans are murdered by gun violence. Pretty sure a fair number of those sacrificed watch Fox News.#

If you're using the new Drummer and you have files you want transferred from the old Drummer, see the instructions for how to request. #

Yesterday I posted a series of tweets outlining where I want to go next. It's about reviving the blogger developer community, to give them the tools we didn't have in the 90s and 00s that are now very practical. And start to grow, slowly at first, the way blogging and podcasting grew, with a clear foundation of what a document is, so interop is really simple and we're not so vulnerable to Silicon Valley adventures. To give programmers the means to easily deploy their apps with the minimum fuss, and for users to be able to take responsibility for keeping their own work safe. Then, having achieved this I will retire to Albania where I will throw pottery and sew afghans. #

I was looking for a simple list of ingredients for a nice pot roast and made the mistake of looking on Google first, and was bewildered by all the bullshit. Then I thought, this is a job for ChatGPT. All the business model bullshit prevents the web from being able to answer a simple question. ChatGPT filters out the bullshit and gets right to the point. What is so complicated about that. I don't see any misinformation, btw. #

I heard from a troll that ChatGPT couldn't come up with a recipe for nice potato latkes. More bullshit. I would only add that you can use chicken fat in place of the vegetable oil if you want the full experience.#

There's this great scene in Get Back. McCartney and Lennon are disagreeing, it's getting personal, or heavy in some way. Lennon looks at McCartney, big pause, and says "It's just me." The founders of the Beatles. The biggest rock stars. The whole franchise. On the other hand, they were nobodies together. Now everyone thinks we're so important, but come on, it's just me. Funny thing is, when you're a nobody you're desperate to be somebody. And when you're the biggest somebody there is, you yearn to be a nobody again. Nothing ironic about it, it's almost mathematical. BTW, if you find this clip on YouTube, I'd love to include it with this post. #

I got whipped cream cheese by mistake. I don't like it. #

I just redirected from drummer.scripting.com to drummer.land. So you can use Drummer once again. It's been down since Feb 4, while it was retooled for email-based identity and HTTPS. It all appears to work as well as it did when we previously did identity with Twitter. It has been a really stressful couple of weeks, while working with developers on getting FeedLand open source release out, I had to also rip up Drummer and put in a new identity system. All the code was written but it still was an ugly transition, one you hope to never have to do. Report problems here. Remember to give us steps to reproduce. If we don't understand what the problem it'll be hard to fix it.#

Thread: I want a personal size lightly-federated chat system for me and say 50 of my friends. Kind of like a Facebook group but not on Facebook obviously. #

When I was in college we had an honor system. They didn't watch us that carefully because we swore we wouldn't cheat. I took that pledge seriously. #

What I’d like to say to Kyrie Irving. I know you don’t come from the US so you might not know that here Blacks and Jews are equal, in theory. We’re all fighting for that to be recognized. Legally we have the same rights and deserve the same respect. That’s why your behavior was both bewildering and unacceptable, and why you feel you were chased out of NYC, which is an especially tolerant part of he US because it is a cultural melting pot. We all have to get along, and accept and even celebrate our differences. Your view of the world just doesn’t fit in here. Maybe they’ll like you better in Dallas, but I’d be surprised if they do. #

Drummer users, we're almost ready to switch over to the new Drummer. If you want your files moved to the new server, you have to register your Twitter address and email address a new utility app. Read the instructions carefully. It takes less than a minute. All you need is access to the Twitter account you used for Drummer and to know what email address you want to use for your Drummer identity. #

What if friends treated their friends as nicely as they treat dogs. When you sensed they needed a little support, you'd look them in the eye and say "Who's the good girl?" Rub behind the ears and when they sit give them a treat. Inside of us, everyone, including you, is a little pup who just wants to know they're in the right place doing the right thing. #

I had an odd feeling last night watching the Knicks-Nets game last night. The revulsion was gone. These were two New York teams, roughly comparable, and there weren't any carpetbaggers or Nazis on the floor, at least none that I knew of. The weird feeling was pride. This is NY basketball. I like it. Both teams have a good foundation to build on, and lots of first round draft picks in the bank, so there's hope for more talent. But don't import people who already have their championship rings who expect us to root for them. We want a unique experience, suitable for our great city. I'm still a Knicks fan, but I could see myself rooting for the Nets. BTW, the Knicks won in a blowout, that also contributed to the good vibe. 😄#

If I were giving advice to NBA team owners, don't sign players who were stars on championship teams. No one wants to see a team win just because they bought famous players with no hunger, and no link to the hometown. I love where the Knicks and Nets are now. I think NY is the best basketball city in the NBA. #

It's kind of screwed up when fellow independent developers who have little or no investment in Twitter as a platform gloat over its apparent collapse. Imagine if you had built on Apple and they were screwing around with their developer platform and in the process making their developers spin their wheels, or maybe go out of business. I've been in that place, with Apple, a number of times. It would be really poor form for a Windows developer to gloat. I hope friends who have invested in other platforms remember the Golden Rule. Today we're moving as fast as we can and burning out, to get out of the way of Twitter's careening dumpster fire. Next year it could be your turn. 💥#

The best new thing about "FeedLand" is the feed list. You can scan from top to bottom and see who updated, and by clicking on the wedge next to feed, you can see the five most recent posts. It's a new kind of feed reader. You can see how it works by clicking this link. That's my feed list. You can view anyone's list. For example here's Scott Hanson's list. You want to see a list of who has lists? No problem. All this without logging in. Unprecedented, goes far beyond feed readers. It's a group feed management system. New ground. Soon you'll be able to run your own server. It's getting close. #

Sounds like what pundits say about Chatgpt in 2023.#

I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out why Caddy wasn't working with Drummer's websocket code. I was writing a post for the Caddy repo, asking for help, when I noticed it was working. I changed absolutely nothing. Didn't reboot anything, or change any configuration settings. So now we're much closer to being able to redirect to the new site and let the users start checking it out for real. #

One of the funny things about XML is that they pitched developers saying "Now you can create your own formats!" I'm sure they meant it, but once RSS was established, they tried to replace it with an incompatible format. Luckily, the W3C wasn't as powerful as Apple or Google, and their format didn't replace RSS. But, imho, when you push an open tech and someone takes you up on it, you should help, not fight them, ie if you really meant it.#

James Cridland of Podnews created a modern feed with the podcasts from Trade Secrets, the show Adam Curry and I did in 2004-2005 during in the first wave of podcasting. I've loaded it into FeedLand. And James loaded it into Podfriend. It's great to have this stuff resurrected in a form that people interested in the formation of podcasting, journalists and historians we hope, can learn from. Thanks James! I hope he does the same with my Morning Coffee Notes podcast, which precedes Trade Secrets, and documents developments in the summer of 2004. #

RSS 2.0 which was 20 years old last year salutes its parent, XML, 25 years old today. A powerful family of open technologies for interop.#

Miguel's epitaph for Elon Musk fits in 280 characters. Good work. #

Today's song: So Far Away. #

Alexa responds to things you say when you didn't say "Alexa," which contradicts everything Amazon says about privacy. If it doesn't listen, then how does it wake up exactly? BTW, Google does this too. Sometimes I'm recording a voicemail or a podcast using my iPhone and my Pixel 6 starts responding to what I am saying. It's funny, even cute, until you realize it wasn't supposed to hear any of that. #

Coming back from deep in the innards of FeedLand and Drummer, where both are learning HTTPS. Under development, not yet ready for users. But here's something cute. If FeedLand supports HTTPS in all its functionality, it will end up demanding that people with feeds support HTTPS too, and will fail for those who don't. If we continue down this path, I will be doing Google's work, helping them take ownership of the web. Here's the deal. Suppose you're displaying an item from a feed that includes an image. Suppose that image is served from an HTTP website, but your reader is running HTTPS. You won't see the image. The browser will refuse to load it. This came up when Scott Hanson tried to look at an item from Scripting News that contained a painting from René Magritte. Here's a screen shot. I'm trying to think of a way I could not give aid and comfort to the enemy. There might be a way. I don't want to betray the open web. I might be willing to do a lot of work so I don't force the owner of that site to support HTTPS (which I know he won't do because he is me). The old moral of the story -- give an inch, they'll take a mile.#

I did a quick review of Twitter's new API pricing, I can't spend a lot of time on it given that I'm paddling as fast as I can to get a new Drummer online that doesn't depend on Twitter logins. But the first problem I see is that they think (apparently) that each dev has a single app. Which for me is far from the truth. Heroku made the same mistake, they came up with what they felt was a fair price, assuming the developer made one big app. The problem is with a free product running for so many years, we made lots of really small apps. Why build something huge if the idea is small. The cost of staying with Heroku would have been totally diseconomic when full servers could run all my apps for $10 a month. Why should I pay Heroku $500 for the same thing, even though I had to do a lot of work to dig out of the hole. Now with Twitter, I think I'll just bow out, and let other people find out if this is workable or not. I'll leave my servers running, and if they stop working, we'll figure out what if anything to do then. None of the apps I've made that depend on Twitter are worth $100 a month to keep running. That's another story, because the Twitter ecosystem for cool utilities was practically non-existent. All that energy from now on clearly is going to Mastodon where there is no vendor who can turn the cart over, at least not yet (don't rule it out, it could happen).#

Today's song: Country Girl.#

We started testing the new release of Drummer earlier today. There are features that used to work in Drummer that won't work in the new version. I am shipping the first open source version of FeedLand at the same time, working on both -- and this is really precarious work. Drummer will work as an outliner. The scripting features will mostly work, the Twitter verbs obviously will not work. Your public files will be at different addresses. As I've said before I'm one person, doing the best I can. I expect people to be appreciative and supportive, friendly. Thanks in advance. 😄#

One of my favorite things on Twitter are the art channels. The curators post reproductions of famous works of art. And occasionally RT another art channel they feel is related to their artist, that their viewers would enjoy. It's a way to broaden the art you get to see. When they talk about how horrible Twitter is they leave out stuff like this. However, without use of the API these channels can't exist, and since each is a labor of love, it's unreasonable to expect them to pay for it. #