yeah this is definitely over the edge -- signal is lost in the noise
my main enjoyment has been to hang out on my own blog (which it generally pretty quiet) and say hi to people as they drop by. I've had a few pleasant interactions that way, and a couple people said hi in Unoffice Hours (link in the left column) or on the socials after
but generally I feel like "ambient togetherness" is just the beginning of something, and it needs to be paired with something more persistent to be useful (like a discord only open to subscribers, that kind of thing), and I haven't gotten around to building that side of it yet.
If you're interested in the multiplayer cursors + cursor chat, my philosophy is that every web page deserves to be a place, and pages should feel busy if lots of people are there
The reason I ask: there's a story about a physicist who was so kinaesthetic in his thinking that somebody walked into his office to find him rolling around on the floor, trying to embody rotations from the point of view of a particular system or something...
I can't say that my own subjective feelings while coding are so useful! But I like to imagine that they're a meaningful contributor to my "taste" of what good/bad looks like
(Outside the UK, the "Listen" link doesn't work except for the most recent ~350 episodes. You'll need to get the program page link instead which is in the footer.)
My assumption is that models are getting cheaper, fast. So you can build now with OpenAI/Anthropic/etc and swap it out for a local or hosted model in a year.
This doesn't work for all use cases but data extraction is pretty safe. Treat it like a database query -- a slow but high availability and relatively cheap call.
Any policy suggestions need to show how they'll urgently remedy the serious issues with energy, housing, and infrastructure detailed in the report -- or make the case that this issues don't matter.
my absolute top tip would be to find your super low-friction way to capture ideas about what to write, wherever you are, the very second the idea occurs to you
idea capture is upstream of everything else. you can do drafting or editing a month later or a year later, when the mood comes
I wrote a Colophon recently about my blog tech stack. it includes a "Writing" section which touches on how I start with idea capture (and also the psychological blockers about doing everything else)
It's super handy to have a place to put everything. So I can make a dumb iOS app and just announce it on my blog, without having to think about landing pages, hosting etc etc. Just lowers the barrier
I started blogging in February 2000 (it was social like Twitter back then). 5 years ago, I ramped up my writing again: I've been posted at least weekly for 256 weeks.
I've learnt that blogging is a necessary part of my practice for finding and exploring new ideas. It's brought me work and friends. And there's especially a place for blogging today: no platform will value your words like you will yourself.
That was my first thought too, strong Battle Chess vibes!
For those who never played it, Battle Chess was a chess game from 1988. It had one different: when a piece took another piece, it would play a canned animation (gruesome, funny)
There have been some really unusual moments -- like reviewing the pitch deck of a monk, or being suddenly involved in a design crit for a class of masters students.
And some are extraordinary. Last week I spoke with a hugely successful children's book author who has just opened a kids' playground that builds familiarity with the fundamentals of computing!
Sometimes I feel like I'm able to help. By being a second pair of eyes on what the other person sees as ordinary, or even tangled and overwhelming, we can identify a way forward or point of focus for a project or artistic practice.
But my favourites are the everyday conversations where we find common ground, and I learn something and they learn something too in the exchange.
I find that when I'm required to explain an opinion or some knowledge that I take for granted, the act of verbalising it illuminates new ideas, and talking to somebody else about it helps me find new perspectives.
It's the highlight of my week, and has been for 4 years now!
see my other post with the full-viewport waterhole, that was what I used to get rid of YouTube chrome.