FiddlerClamp

Tech has the following issues to greater and lesser extents:

* It gets in the way: confirmations, notifications, features that don't exist and can't be added, even when they're asked for repeatedly.

* It stops listening: freezes, overly-strict interaction requirements.

* It's not 100% safe, and thus not truly reliable.

Not all tech is like that. Or has to be.

Or, it's greasing the wheels of free-association until people skid out of control.

And since the 'world' of the chat is mostly epistemologically closed (except for Web search), there's no absolute tether point. Everything's subjective, and self-confirming.

Thoughts on using meta tooling to build a process for organizations:

Values -> Monitoring -> Evaluation -> Tripwire -> Enforcement

Our values are subjective across substrates, but are relatively consistent internally. We can build an objective substrate to drive this loop.

I could use some help! Been thinking about this for a long, long time while I was busy with other things in my life.

I still think stylus support (both hardware but especially software) is going to be a killer app for these things. They've gone in the wrong direction for now, but some of the Asian phone companies (Huawei?) still have stylus support.

"No physical toy, especially if it’s branding itself as a companion with a personality and soul, should include a killswitch that deactivates its core, best features if you stop paying up."

Can't wait to get my next employer's name tattooed on my forehead.

Wondering what's going on with Canada. I checked out their site yesterday out of curiosity and most products were listed as out of stock.

Also the Data General One (poor screen aside).

Location: Toronto, Canada

Willing to relocate: Not at present

Skills: I'm a novelist. Published. Good writing, weird writing. If you need a fiction writer who doesn't write using GenAI, check me out.

Work:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1220704.Bear_Like_Me (2003, gay satire)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/212903418-talio-s-codex (2024, gay fantasy legal thriller - yes, that)

https://www.lavendertavern.com (2021, gay fantasy fairytale podcast)

Think PKD meets Le Guin.

Email: jonathanacohen@gmail.com

I think it was a one-two punch:

1. Snoopy becoming Flanderized, as in the "Happiness is a warm puppy" stuff from the 1960s.

2. Introduction of Woodstock the bird. That meant Snoopy and Woodstock went off and had their own adventures which didn't involve the human gang at all.

I also wonder whether Schulz participated in any recreational drugs in the 1960s. I don't meant to be disrespectful at all, but some of the stuff he drew was pretty wild.

There's a set of strips where Charlie Brown sees the moon as a baseball (and later, Alfred E. Neuman's head), another where Snoopy dreams of Charlie Brown flying him like a kite and him crashing to the ground in pieces, and a horror-movie-like series where Linus's blanket attacks Lucy. All very strange.

Interestingly, Peanuts started with a focus on Shermy and Violet as the 'straight men' and young(er) Charlie Brown as the comic upstart. Snoopy shows up fairly soon, but he doesn't even seem to be CB's pet for the first while.

It's fascinating to see Lucy, Linus, Schroeder and Sally grow from tots or babies to the developed characters we know today.

VITURE's Immersive 3D already offers this for several platforms (for VITURE glasses).

Fireflies.ai co-founder and CTO writes a LinkedIn post about how their 'AI that joins meetings and takes notes' was him and the CEO joining the meetings and taking notes manually.

I remember my Compaq TC1000 well, a pen tablet convertible running Windows very sluggishly with a Transmeta Crusoe processor. Nice promise, execution not so much unfortunately.

You're too late: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bulgari_Connection

Here's an exercise - why do you think this approach failed?

I also like how people can submit their own presets for each soundscape with comments, so you can see what worked for others.

My only wish is for a smooth fade-out when leaving a sound generator page, or a way to cross-fade between them.

Android, too. I've contributed to the Web site, but not the Android app (as yet).

I'm a longtime fan of Web-based myNoise: https://mynoise.net/

And who's going to be able to afford to see them, when all the jobs are gone?

Reminds me of the 'interactive' video from the 1960s Fahrenheit 451 movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOs8U50T3l0

For the 'you're right!' bit see: https://youtu.be/ZOs8U50T3l0?t=71

My Google feed (the one that shows up on some Android phones) is 90% articles that could be answered in the headline: "This one ingredient improves the taste of your potato salad." Of course you have to click through and read, read, read till you find it.

It's why things like /r/savedyouaclick exist.

I remember these! A board game I played as a kid in the 1970s, "The Inventors," had chicken eyewear protection as an invention.

Pic available at: https://boardgamegeek.com/image/817261/the-inventors

As a kid, the main thing that never occurred to me was 'why' - why were they holding this contest? Why offer this service for 'free'? Etc. Once I realized that generally businesses don't do things out of the goodness of their hearts, it was a lot easier to find the business reason and incentive behind their behavior.

The question is whether this can be taught without turning kids into cynics.

I was wondering what had happened. Suddenly it was much too easy. It was really hard at the start.

E-ink handheld game console. Looks suitable for things like gamebooks and casual turn-based games (Solitaire, anyone?).

OneNote now shows the Copilot icon right where I start writing on a blank page. That's infuriating (as much as I see some uses for AI). Fortunately you can turn it off in the 'connected experiences' setting.

I think General Magic might've been onto something. From what I've seen, BOB looked so childish that it was likely insulting to adult users. General Magic had a crisper UI (partly because of the b/w nature of the devices) that felt more like the iconography of a late-80s copy machine.

I still remember laughing my butt off at the elevator (or 'lift'?) scene from Small World at the time.

Unfortunately, if you're willing to pay for an ad-free service, I suspect you're far more valuable to advertisers than any reasonable amount you could pay to be exempt.

This could use an RSS feed (Blogtrottr reported there isn't one). Looking forward to seeing how it develops!