Scripting News: Tuesday, January 9, 2024

Tuesday, January 9, 2024

Twitter became a hairball. I first heard this term in speeches given by a tech exec, Scott McNealy, talking about a competitor's product. A hairball is something a cat coughs up. Very undesirable. Of course, given enough time all software becomes a hairball. As you refine your understanding of how the product is being used, versus how you thought it would be used, all the new paths through the code and UI become more crooked and impenetrable by a human mind, because you still have to do all the things you did before, unless you start over. There often is value in starting over. Now is a good time to be thinking about bare-bones social web apps. People are open to new ideas.#

I asked "Is news copyrightable" on various social web sites because people aren't making a distinction between the expression and the underlying facts of news. If an AI bot reads a news article, and extracts the facts, then there's no problem, because no one owns the facts. #

Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts."#

A puzzle about ChatGPT. How can it get something right that both Wikipedia and journalism get wrong? Journalism often uses Wikipedia as a source, thus propagating its lies and mistakes. I think this negates the idea that they're just scanning the news orgs to get their information. The method obviously is more sophisticated. #

Linkblog items for the day.

America, yeah! 😵‍💫 youtube.com

Trump warns of 'bedlam,' won't rule out violence after immunity hearing. washingtonpost.com

How Trump's Unhinged Immunity Demand Could Unleash a Second-Term Crime Spree. newrepublic.com

Trump team argues assassination of rivals is covered by presidential immunity. thehill.com

Thousands of Software Engineers Say the Job Market Is Getting Much Worse. vice.com

Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts." goodreads.com

The Wisdom of Plagues: Lessons from 25 Years of Covering Pandemics: Donald G. McNeil. amazon.com

Where have all the websites gone? fromjason.xyz

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