Scripting News: Thursday, October 1, 2026
The problem with regulating AI is that no one knows where to begin. Yes it can do things that make you question your sanity for letting it have write access to your online work and private info. But if it is behaving itself you can do things you otherwise couldn't come close to. I speak from experience. I was able to create a new version of a large piece of software, from scratch, in less than three months, by myself. It has capabilities that make it able to understand a big codebase, in a few minutes, and then act on it. My human mind, even when I was younger could only focus on a small fraction of that. So we humans with our limited ability to comprehend devised ways to build tall and wide structures with conventions and carefully crafting the code interfaces, stuff users never see, so that what we'd expect is what is. When my Claude failed and started randomly overwriting files on active websites, it had rules that said it couldn't do what it was doing. Sometimes it doesn't understand what a rule means. Observable every single day, it forgets all the rules every time it starts a session, and it doesn't matter if it read the doc that contains the rules, sometimes it ignores one or more. I've spent a lot of time using it, and I have no stock or other interest in seeing it not regulated, but I couldn't begin to say what would be appropriate regulation that wouldn't also make it much less useful. #
- I keep thinking of cheesy ways I could switch over to https for new posts on Scripting News, esp now that Google is getting more militant in trying to sweep all the history of the web into the trash. #
- I know people think it would be a snap to do the conversion, honestly, sorry -- they are idiots. They don't understand that it's a viral format. If you claim to be "secure" then everything you include must also be https, and of course everything they include must be as well. So even if I would have to do nothing other than this conversion over a full year, what's to say Google doesn't invent another hoop we have to jump through lest their browser defames us and eventually shuts us down. It's like the web would become just like the Apple Store. Even if there's nothing on the site that requires https. Or if it's a historic site that very few people visit, but the archive is there because we believed the web would be a constant because no one owned it, no one could break it.#
- I've been on these trips with corporate platforms, and if they want you gone, you should just take the hint and go, because eventually you will get the point. This is a company that has nothing put spite for the web, or perhaps envy, or individual developers (ie indieweb). They are pure fuckers when it comes to people like you and me. #
- On the other hand you will probably be able to get https versions of my new writing at some point, Murphy willing. That's relatively easy. But I don't have that many years left, and I sure as hell don't want to spend any part of that trying to appease Google. #
- PS: This is the walkthrough of the answer to the question of who owns the web and how it is not Google.#
- When designing your RSS feeds, the top level title should be the title of the user's account. So if Bluesky had a feed for each user, the channel-level <title> element of the feed would be #
<title>Bluesky: Mark Cuban</title>#- Why? Well because readers need context. And it's easy.#
- And feeds are showing up in places where there isn't much room for the titles, so you have to make your characters count. #
- Bluesky shows the user's address, imho it should be the string the user chooses, usually simply their name.#
Linkblog items for the day
OpenAI launches Dots, its bubbly agentic avatar.
techcrunch.com
"I've been on these trips with corporate platforms, and if they want you gone, you should just take the hint and go, because eventually you will get the point."
scripting.com
Reddit is ending RSS support: What this means for Inoreader.
inoreader.com
New Cancer Drugs Are Revolutionary. Why Don’t More Patients Get Them?
nytimes.com
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