Scripting News: Thursday, September 12, 2024
Just watched a Harris rally in Charlotte NC. She's using what Trump said in the debate in her new campaign speech. Brilliant. Getting him on the record in that context is a gift. 60 million viewers. Up till then he only took interviews where he could bully his way past the interviewer. #
Braintrust query: I got an email from OpenAI saying I could access the new models, but I don't see the new models in the popup menu.#
I've been enjoying the recent blog posts by my longtime friend Jeff Jarvis. A couple of months ago, I was practically begging him to do this. He was pouring so much unfocused energy into making journalism play an appropriate role in our democracy. When Jeff started posting to his blog, it gave his friends something to point to. This writing had much more impact than a random tweet. Journalism crossed a line they should not have crossed. Now we fully expect them to try to do it again. We have to find a way for our ideas not to be scattered in the wind, so thorougly ignorable. And in doing so, I'm convinced we'd find a better way to organize the electorate online so it's more immune from unwise and unfair manipulation from the journalists. At the same time Dan Gillmor, who was also scattering his ideas about, has started a newsletter. Dan was a real blogging pioneer as was Jeff. We remember how this kind of thing boots up. We can set up any kind of distribution system we need. What matters is the collection of brilliance. Individuals are not so powerful unless they come from one of these. #
Another fantastic thinker and writer who is mostly scattering his ideas -- Dan Conover, who when he comes out with a piece, I stop everything and sit down and carefully read it and savor it, because not only is there sure to be new info and new ideas, the writing is sooo good. He's a former local reporter in South Carolina. I met him on a road tour I did a bunch of years ago. Where does he post this stuff? Facebook. I want it to be part of the concentrated web writers union. Maybe think of it as my karass, my version of The Atlantic, perhaps. Or my version of the op-ed page of the NY Times. I think there is definitely enough good stuff out there, unorganized, to easily rival them for originality, depth of thought, experience and great writing. Dan is on my list of such superheroes. #And btw I also am wasting my ideas too, one in a hundred has any influence, and even then it's minscule, the ideas drift away unimplemented or unused. I keep writing, hoping I see a way to get into the global conversation, again. I remember what it's like. But I'm not done. We still have a big problem to solve in our political and communication system. Online software is where it's at. #
Someday an election will be like Game of Thrones or Succession. A campaign would be a season. There would be character development, arcs, twists, revelations, unforseen events, cameos, acts of god. Near the end of the season you have the election, with the following episodes the plotting, intrigue, and undermining of democracy, and at the end of the season the inauguration of a new president. Each year you have more michegas, until four years later you go through the election all over again. People would really study the candidates, and would have reasons they like one character over another. And maybe the patriarch doesn't die, and decides to run again. This is where we're heading, we might already be there. #I was trying to explain to Miguel de Icaza, a longtime developer friend, how Dropbox was within inches of making the web a million times more useful, ten years ago, and then backed away from it. I don't think I've ever told the story here on my blog, so here goes. #
In 2014, Dropbox had a developer program, you could write an app, and register it with them, and then the user could run your app from a website, and log on to Dropbox in the app, and they would have access to files in a directory in the user's Dropbox hierarchy in the app, as if it were accessing it from the local file system, which in a way they were.#
I made an outliner for that system, and loved it -- it was great, I didn't have to get into the business of reselling storage, or user identity. And for the users, it "just worked" as they say, because they were already using Dropbox, and now it could be used for something completely new and incredibly useful, and it didn't require huge venture capital to get it going, so it would enable very small niche products to find a market. It was brilliant and visionary, and I was very open about my feelings on my blog. #
They also had a Public Folder, where any user files could be accessed over the web. #
They were within an inch of the perfect system. The problem was my app couldn't access user files in any other directory. So it didn't allow for specialization in products, every editor had to do everything. #
They had an option where you could give an app access to everything but that was ridiculous, I couldn't recommend users do that. Users store all kinds of private data on Dropbox.#
They lost interest in this, btw -- and when they broke the API, I took that opportunity to shut down the product. #
I wish they had gone in that direction, or someone would go in that direction. #
Linkblog items for the day.
Scripting News: Dropbox almost reinvented the web. scripting.com
Hmm as I recall four years ago Trump stayed in his PJs all day at the White House watching Fox News except maybe playing golf some days. axios.com
Trump's Slow-Burn Authoritarianism. newrepublic.com
A thread on Mastodon where I explain to Miguel de Icaza, a longtime developer friend, how Dropbox had the vision to turn the web into a fantastic file system for work and publishing. I made a product for it called Fargo. mastodon.social
Google Trends for "sanewashing." google.com
Paul Krugman: "Trump didn't have a bad night. This is just who he is, and has been all along, visible to anyone who looked past the sanewashing." threads.net
The California Google deal could leave out news startups and the smallest publishers. niemanlab.org
Harris was prepared. muellershewrote.com
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