Scripting News: Saturday, July 12, 2025
I want Mastodon to take off as a blogging platform. That means hooking it up to existing blog platforms. I want our world to connect to theirs. I'm lucky to have bet on WordPress, so my product gets the connection to Mastodon for free. But the web is what matters, not my product or yours. Even if your product is huge, it's only part of the web. This is how we build, how we get back on track. Somehow we need to get a simple bridge that lets all blog content flow to Mastodon. That's the goal. I just wrote a couple of posts where this became clear to me. Who has the code and expertise to create a simple interface from the outside world to Mastodon. The interface doesn't have to be RSS. But it has to be maximally simple, and it has to cover the basic features of blogs that Mastodon supports. #
AI chatbots don't think and they don't decide. #- They can give you a way to approach a problem, but it's only one way, and it may not be the best way, and it depends on it actually understanding the problem, which is something it does a good simulation of, but can't do. It absolutely cannot think, come up with a strategy, or even make a decision based on probabilities. It might, in the future, get some of these abilities, given how far they've come, but no one knows, it hasn't happened yet. #
- The reports that say that using a chatbot to write code is actually less efficient than doing it yourself, are totally believable based on two years experience with using it as a development tool. And I can't believe that whatever it comes up with covers enough use-cases to be reliable. It might create a demo of something to present to a board of directors (they're famous for being deceived by demos, btw), but I doubt if it's as usable as something created by someone with an idea of how to craft usable software. #
- This might sound like a writer defending their art against the bots, but the difference is I've actually invested the time to learn about this. My counterparts among writers have not done that. And that's not a mistake my chatbot friend would make. It does a lot of research, it just doesn't know what to do with the result, that's up to you. #
- So if you want to know the roles humans will play, at least for now, that's it. Think and decide. #
- And those are hard and take many years to learn how to do for a human. And we could use some help there btw, look at the awful decisions we're making these days. They just fired all the people at the State Dept who work on climate change, for example. #
- Have a nice day one and all.#
- PS: Another thing humans can do that apparently AI bots can't is change their mind. #
- PPS: I asked ChatGPT if it had any comments on this editorial, and it did, of course. I should try saying something wrong to it and see what it says. I did come up with one, and it gave me an answer even though no answer is possible. #
Linkblog items for the day
ICE Set to Vastly Expand Its Reach With New Funds. nytimes.com
Trump Threatens Rosie O'Donnell Citizenship. mediaite.com
When Sam Altman, CEO of Open.ai, says that the next version of ChatGPT will be smarter than he is, he's wrong. He should be called out on that. ChatGPT does not think. And that's not just semantics, that's a serious, real limit. Took me two years to fully understand that. chatgpt.com
Knicks should have kept Tom Thibodeau. palmbeachpost.com
Running government is harder than bloviating on Fox News and assorted podcasts. nytimes.com
Cannabis farmworker in California is on life support after chaotic federal immigration raid, family says. nbcnews.com
Rewatching old series like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire, is like revisiting old friends. Fills a need we have for community. Like eating processed foods, not as good as the real thing, but better than nothing. nytimes.com
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