Scripting News: Monday, January 6, 2025
The great thing about using a system like MySQL (or any SQL for that matter) is that it's been around for so long that if you can think of something that would be nice to have, you can be sure it's there somewhere. They've had enough time not only to hit all the walls, but to try out different approaches and settle on one. Maybe at times there were competing ways to do things, like the way Bluesky and ActivityPub, and probably Threads, and certainly Facebook and Twitter insist on reinventing RSS. But when I ask ChatGPT "can you do this in MySQL" it gives me one or two ways to do it, but usually just one. These are things I never would have found in the old Google-search way of finding answers. An example, I wanted to find out if there was a MySQL way to query a value inside a JSON object, and the answer is (of course) yes. And you can create an index on such a value. I didn't even ask for it, ChatGPT volunteered, guessing it would be my next question (it was). Whatever happened in the evolution of SQL it was a lot healthier than what's going on now in the social web, where the creators completely ignored what came before, and each other, and as a result there's a proliferation of different ways to do things we've known how to do for over 20 years. SQL has been around for 50, so maybe they went through this stage and emerged from it with a better answer. This feels a bit like the Fermi paradox and I'm a time traveler who has managed to witness 50 years of evolution long after the fact, any day of any week I want to thanks to ChatGPT. Also this is why it is so important to keep the archives of the 1990's web preserved. We may need to loop back to this when the people responsible for the social web decide that interop is important as opposed to each of them going it alone. #
How I'd write books with WordLand. Just thinking out loud here. Working with a group of people. It's possible it's just the author and editor, or it could be a larger documentation job, or a report covering a lot of ground. In 2025 we'd use AI to find the threads in our writing, to maintain a book outline that changes as our writing goes forward. Gone is the problem of writing a chapter structure before doing any writing. I've always found that to be a real obstacle to getting started. I've yet to use a ChatGPT-like service to do this, but I expect it can be done. I'm thinking about how I can set up an experiment for WordLand for writing this kind of book. The first test case could be the docs for WordLand. I would write a post about a feature as I thought about it, but not worry about how it fits into the rest of the book. Trust the AI organizer to help us do something sensible. #
Linkblog items for the day.
Elon Musk, the Most Powerful Troll on Earth, Targets the U.K. nytimes.com
Senator's husband refuses to shake Kamala Harris's hand. youtube.com
Mark Cuban: "If you think only billionaires can control social media, you are absolutely wrong. Social media is completely dependent on its users." bsky.app
Donald Trump Jr. to Visit Greenland. politicalwire.com
Rudy Giuliani held in contempt in case brought by two former Georgia election workers he defamed. cnn.com
Sam Altman says superintelligence is near. jabberwocking.com
Four years after mob violence, Kamala Harris hands power – peacefully – to Trump. theguardian.com
Trolls are solar-powered. Trolls die in darkness. scripting.com
Virtual employees could join workforce as soon as this year. theguardian.com
The great thing about using a system like SQL is that it's been around for so long that if you can think of something that would be nice to have, you can be sure it's there somewhere. scripting.com
Apparently, some users cannot like, post, or comment on Bluesky, for two weeks. github.com
Write Books With the WordPress Block Editor. wordpress.org
Berkeley's arts organizations are in trouble. berkeleyside.org
As Marc Benioff warms to Trump, Time staffers cool to their owner. sfstandard.com
DOJ insiders slam own department's probe of Trump's Jan. 6 links. rawstory.com
The memory of January 6 has vanished from Trump's new Washington, David Frum writes. But "some of us need to volunteer to keep talking about the inconvenient things. Trump really did try by violence to violate the first rule of constitutional democracy" theatlantic.com
"What I Saw on the January 6 Committee." theatlantic.com
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