The Art Of Not Asking Why

I’m four days too late for this. You gave up your right to Discord to court if you, rather you know it or not:

Discord wants to void your right to sue them in court — but you can opt out of the practice

Based on what’s now laid out in the TOS, any disputes between a user and Discord will be handled privately, in meetings with the company. If those meetings fail, the dispute goes to arbitration. This process is private, which means the public has no way to review the evidence or results, it’s expensive, and there’s no guaranteed right to an appeal process. Whatever the arbiter decides, is the end of it. The process almost objectively privileges companies, which have a lot of power and resources, over individuals.

Yesterday I attended my second Micro Camp. If you don’t know what Micro Camp is, I forgive you. Actually, in its own way, that’s a good thing. It’s like a small get-together with a couple of friends and neighbors you know in your backyard for a little BBQ, not a big block party kind of thing. There are too many block parties on the web already.

Compared to last year’s camp, this year’s camp was smaller and quieter but still contained the same unique energy that makes me feel it really is one of those special places on the web: “a virtual gathering of the Micro.blog community to share knowledge and make new connections,” as the official description goes.

If I zoom out and look at my blogging journey, I can see that Micro.blog took my blogging to the next stage. I’m not saying “better” because it’s not about that. Better conveys quality and an improvement on the previous form, and while I believe that’s true in general, I feel it’s more about being in another stage in life, having a different perspective, and looking at things a bit differently. In order to see things differently, I needed to try different things, and this is where Micro.blog excels.

When I wanted to take more photos, Micro.blog was there with its photos plugins and community photo challenges. When I was toying around with the idea of recording what I do on the blog, Micro.blog offered podcasting. When I recently wanted to re-design my blog and customize its parts, Mico.blog introduced me to Matt Langford and his Tiny Theme. And yet, I’m not done. The camp introduced me to new things I hadn’t considered before, which are now cooking in my head.

The reason Micro.blog is so good at developing and adjusting is because it puts people at its core. The technology is there, yes, and as a whole, it’s pretty unique (though it’s built on well-known tools), but it’s that backyard BBQ that makes it truly yours, a place you really like and care about.

And that’s also what worries me about Micro.blog.

I’ve long learned that anything good on the web grows out of its goodness. Small companies are eaten, good ideas are stolen, and people you trust are bought or step down. I know this is inevitable, and I know this is coming; it’s only a matter of time. Micro.blog is strong and (as far as I know) does not face any financial hardships or any other immediate problems, but the clock’s ticking.

The best insurance Micro.blog offers is its exporting features. It’s easy to export your stuff out of Micro.blog and save everything, whether for yourself or in order to go somewhere else. This doesn’t replace Micro.blog, but at least I know my stuff will move with me whenever and wherever I go to a new home when the time comes. The knowledge I gained from the community will aid me in building that new home when I need to.

Still, there’s something missing. While Micro.blog has its community guidelines in place, it does not have a clear direction. Given the nature of this unique place, it makes sense: this is not the place for a mission statement or some goal, for the same reasons that make it good at what it is. But when you go on a journey, it’s good to have a map, and when you feel safe and secure, it’s a good time to start thinking of the what-ifs. I’m just sayin', you know? I worry because you tend to worry about things you care about.

It’s always nice to stumble upon a unique refreshing perspective, but it’s even better to find it when you don’t know you’ve been looking for it.

Thanks, @patrickrhone for this talk. This is inspiring and also good timing. And thank you @jean for posting the link in chat today!

Micro Camp: Patrick Rhone youtube.com

Archiving...

Great stuff from Cory Doctorow, as always:

Pluralistic: Even if you think AI search could be good, it won’t be good (15 May 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

I’ve been using Kagi, and I like it so far. The more I use it, the more there are things I like. If Kagi builds its excellent search results mostly from Google’s index (because Google is the biggest search index), it means Google can make its search results as good as they used to be, or even better:

Why wouldn’t Google just make its search results better? Rather than building a LLM for the sole purpose of sorting through the garbage Google is either paid or tricked into serving up, why not just stop serving up garbage? We know that’s possible, because other search engines serve really good results by paying for access to Google’s back-end and then filtering the results

…but they won’t:

Making search worse is good for Google. Reducing search quality increases the number of queries, and thus ads, that each user must make to find their answers

and:

If Google can make things worse for searchers without losing their business, it can make more money for itself.

I am not opposed to AI-generated search. I’m opposed to the big tech that runs it. Microsoft’s Copilot sucks (which is maybe why they force it down your throat by default if you use Edge or Bing), and I’m pretty sure Google’s AI search will be the same.

That’s because I’m guessing if you’re a regular reader, you’re probably reading my blog on your favorite RSS reader (speaking of that, did you know I have dedicated RSS feeds for each category? Check out the Archive & Search page to find out how to get those), which is fine of course.

Still, the Newsletter is yet another nice feature that comes with my MB blog. Comes to your inbox every Saturday morning. So, if you’re not an RSS geek or just want to hear from me once a week, check it out. If you register, keep in mind that Gmail (and most other email providers) will put it in your spam folder by default. Make sure you check this folder first after you register, this is where you’ll find your confirmation email.

To register, check toward the bottom of the About page.

As I was reflecting on the weekend and Infected Mushroom concert I went to in my journal, it occurred to me that I would never go without Nyx.

I’m an introverted person who doesn’t go to concerts or almost any “gatherings” of a social nature. It’s not a bad thing or a good thing; it’s just me. It was Nyx who pushed me (though gently) and got the tickets. It was Nyx who had experience with these kinds of events (she insisted on earplugs, for example, which I’m thankful for) and allowed me to “bridge” the lack of experience I felt I had, even if it wasn’t a real thing. And it was Nyx who allowed me to “borrow” her friends, a group of supporting individuals who kept an eye out for me and understood my weird behavior patterns.

The whole thing reminded me of my trip to Italy, which was NK’s idea. They said “let’s go to Italy!” and I didn’t think of it much at the time so I said yes. It was NK’s knowledge and motivation (they travel way more often than I do) that got me going two years ago. A trip? Abroad? Me? Nah. But if NK wants to go, I’d do it for them. OK, and a little bit for me. Actually, it was a wonderful experience for me, too. It just takes time to realize. Italy was amazing, and I’m happy I went. I’m grateful.

Our friends are our enablers. They allow us to extend ourselves and reach out to what we could never (or think we could never) reach out alone. We’re all just thinking about the world in our own little boxes, without outside perspective, until someone comes along with their box of shiny new things to share.

“Link In Bio” is a slow knife - Anil Dash

If Instagram users could post links willy-nilly, they might even be able to connect directly to their users, getting their email addresses or finding other ways to communicate with them. Links represent a threat to closed systems.

This is one of the things I can’t stand about Instagram. I’m forced to use its “stories” and “reels” to link back to my website. It’s not because I want traffic; my content is naturally text and images in post form.

I never got used to Instagram. it’s one of the major social networks I can’t keep up with.

Finally, a good reason I was up all night: Infected Mushroom live from Webster Hall in NYC.

It was a lot of fun with good people to share it with. Events like this that last through the night and into the next day make me feel hopeful about the world. Just a mass of people having a good time.

I haven’t heard of Frank Snepp before, and I should have.

‘Does the CIA Still Do That?’ | naked capitalism

Set assassination aside for the moment. Does the CIA work to influence domestic media, as it did during the Vietnam era? If so, what are its goals? Does it run other domestic operations?

The article includes a recording of an interview with Frank Snepp. Fascinating stuff. The CIA did influence and mislead the media during Vietnam, and it leaves us with the conclusion that it probably still does.

We know the CIA influences the media. We know the NSA has the ability to spy on us and has done just that. We know UFOs are real. We know secret government experiments on its own population are real. I’m not sure if being “crazy” is really all that crazy.

Movies 🍿 to watch again:

• Wag the Dog
• Conspiracy Theory
• Enemy of the State

My sleeping issues returned in full force this week. With my Apple Watch, it looks pretty depressing.

As you can see in the graph, I’ve been waking up at night since Tuesday, then trying to squeeze in some more sleep before work in the mornings. Even then, it’s rare that I get 6 hours of sleep. Unlike what it shows, I don’t spend the orange areas (awake times) in bed. I use this time to work on low-key projects or play relaxing games.

Today has been finally somewhat “better” (5 hours and 5 minutes), but I’ll probably crash hard in the afternoon.

As a result of all this, I’ve been posting much less, which sucks. I’ve been enjoying working on my blog last week, and there’s been a peak in my postings and messing about. Eeehhhrrrmmph.

Rossmann is a New Yorker who started his own computer repair business and came to fame by creating videos showing and teaching Mac repairs while rambling about Apple screwing their customers. What makes Rossman different is that his repairs actually work (his business has been profitable for about a decade), his videos are highly educational, and his passion leads him to legal battles as a right-to-repair icon in courts around the country.

Yesterday, I watched and enjoyed his video “Piracy is completely justified":

Rossmann tends to get passionate and goes into long ramblings accompanied by strong language and finger gestures, so here’s the gist: He subscribed to Netflix to get access to a show in 4k on a new fancy TV set and ended up getting a much worse experience than he would if he just pirated the show. He provides proof showing that when he blocked his smart TV from accessing the internet (for which he has good reasons), he could only get 720p.

When I started watching Fallout on Amazon Prime the other day on my TV, I had to put up with wasteful Ads (I’m a New Yorker, and ads tend to be about cars and green grass). On my computer, on top of the ads, I had to turn off my VPN, and I couldn’t get rid of the black borders around the picture since it wasn’t cropped correctly for my ultrawide screen. I have iina, an excellent MPV-based player, which can fix the cropping issue while providing other helpful features, but that requires access to the show files, which are blocked and locked by Amazon, of course. If I were to download Fallout somewhere, I’d get the highest resolution experience, the right cropping and format for my screen, no ads, and probably better audio quality while at it.

Back to Rossman’s point: I’d get a better quality for pirating the show and not paying a dime. His clip further points out that even the service quality for pirated material today comes with better out-of-the-box experience and (surprisingly?) support than you’d get from Netflix, or in my case, Amazon. The bottom line is that you pay for a worse experience.

Going back and forth trying to build a blogroll page, which I talked about Tuesday. The issue is with creating a shortcode for it in Micro.blog’s Hugo code.

It should be a rather straightforward process, but it doesn’t work as it should. I’m waiting for more feedback.

The Blogroll is now up…!

I couldn’t sleep so I’ve made some tweaks to the blog in the Archive & Search page. Most of these are documented in the CSS file in my repository.

You might have caught it in the screenshot from my post yesterday: a little G icon at the top of my Safari browser. Well, it’s true; I paid for my first month. I ran out of the free 100 searches in a matter of days, hardly enough to give it a real test drive.

So far I have been busy setting it up and bugging their support (in Discord of all places). I am curious about their FastGPT, an integration of chatGPT into their search results, and I wasn’t sure how to get it to work. It’s good that I asked because I learned some important things.

Kagi’s support is quick and responsive. A staff person was chatting with me and spent time answering my grilling question about their somewhat misleading advertising (unlimited FastGPT seems to only apply to the $10 tier, but this is also true for the $5 tier - as long as you don’t run out of searches). It left me with a good impression at the end.

Kagi is complex and has many tweaks that are not obvious immediately. For instance, I learned that FastGPT is the same as the “Quick Answer” button available on the search results page in Kagi, and you can integrate it with your search seamlessly if you end your search query with a question mark, which will give you a summary from FastGPT right the top of the results. This is a smart way of integrating it quickly without shoving AI in your face like the way Microsoft does with Co-Pilot, which you need to actively turn off (and then it still sticks out annoyingly right under your search bar - but we can file it under “normal Microsoft behavior” and move on). It will take me some time to learn about things and see if it’s worth the investment.

If you have any tips or other blogs and videos that helped you catch on with Kagi quickly, feel free to share!

You know, Compact Tabs on Safari are not half bad. I remember they caused an uproar back when they were first introduced, when I wasn’t using a Mac nearly as much and when I did, I used Chrome.

Today, I turned Compact Tabs on while looking at my blog, and I like the look:

There are other things that are nice too, like the tabs shrinking and expanding depending on the number of them you have open, or the arrow keys for back and forward a page on the browser getting out of the way if you don’t have a page to go back or forward too. This is a nice design idea.

Sure, it takes some time to get used to, and I can imagine the tabs getting crushed together is not ideal for power users who have 100 tabs open, but Safari is not my workhorse: for that, I have Edge with its vertical tabs, which works well.

This is yet another thing that makes the switch from Arc easier.