📚I reread “Snow Crash, recently and recommend it. It gets better with age.
When people talk about “Snow Crash” today, all they talk about is the Metaverse. But there is a lot going on in that novel, and the Metaverse is only part of it.
I was pleasantly surprised to be reminded that the novel is satire. It’s funny. People talk so seriously about the book that I had forgotten. I laughed out loud at the payoff to the joke about the dog.
ChatGPT Is Already Changing How I Do My Job. By Farhad Manjoo at The New York Times.
Guillotinable. The bit about the dog isn’t even the worst thing this narcissistic dipshit said. Not even close.
CEO Celebrates Worker Who Sold Family Dog After He Demanded They Return to Office
In his memo announcing the cuts Peretti took full responsibility, writing “I also want to be clear: I could have managed these changes better as the CEO of this company and our leadership team could have performed better…” which is why 180 other people will be getting fired instead of him. He’s learned so much, and going forward he’ll bring a new spirit of collaboration and humility to the AI garbage he replaces them with.
This speech was better in the original German.
Trump touts authoritarian vision for second term: ‘I am your justice’ - The Washington Post
I’ve been using Day One for journaling since 2011. It will be interesting to see where Apple goes with this.
Apple will launch a journaling app in iOS 17, but that’s bad news for some devs - Ars Technica
California Isn’t Special: California’s housing problem isn’t what you think it is
Jerusalem Demsas at The Atlantic:
California’s housing policies are the same as everywhere in the US, but population pressure has made the housing situation here far worse.
In blue and red localities across the country, researchers find a “California-style” preference for single-family homes, hostility to density and renters, a tendency to segregate types of development (industrial, commercial, and residential), and a default toward delaying or blocking the construction of new homes, whether affordable or market-rate.
…
What has made California the worst in the country for housing is not uniquely bad policy but population growth running up against generically bad policy. If both San Francisco and a small, economically disadvantaged town in Mississippi enact a home-building moratorium, that’s going to hurt a lot more in the former, where millions of people want to live, than in the latter, where just a handful of people do.
Jobs and state population growth in California outstripped housing development. From 2010-20, the state permitted—not built, just permitted—one home for every 2.54 jobs it added. That leads the country; Utah permitted one home for every 1.57 jobs.
Legislation to legalize high-density housing is proving politically impossible in California, and elsewhere around the US too.
Terrible housing policy isn’t California’s legacy; it’s America’s.
Thanks for being obsessed with us, America. Red State conservatives don’t hate California for what’s bad about California. They hate California for what’s great about California.
I’d love to see a Star Trek miniseries focused on young James Kirk, in his first posting to a bridge crew.
I always preferred the TV series Kirk to the movie Kirk. In the series Kirk, follows the chain of command and obeys orders, even when he thinks the orders are stupid. Movie Kirk is a cowboy.
So let’s call the series “Ensign Kirk.” We know that Kirk in Starfleet Academy was a grind, so how does he transform from that to the swashbuckling youngest Captain of a Constitution-class starship in Starfleet history?
"Picard" seemed to be setting up a spinoff focused on Seven of Nine, and I'm there for that.
I love Jeri Ryan. And not just for the usual reasons men love her; she’s also an excellent character actor.
I’ve only ever seen her in a narrow range of roles, but she excels at that range. She plays beautiful, powerful middle-aged bitches. Sometimes she plays villains, sometimes—as in the case of Seven of Nine on Picard—tough heroes who don’t take shit or suffer fools.
Cox shut down Internet service for scheduled maintenance this morning, because apparently it’s 1983 and people don’t need Internet to work from home.
I am not feeling a lot of love for Cox right now.
My latest: Cisco tames cloud application security chaos with OpenClarity. Cisco enhanced its OpenClarity open-source security suite to further protect today’s hairy cloud-native applications. The new VMClarity tackles security for applications built with virtual machines.
Instagram is letting users put up to five links in their profile and I guess that’s what counts for innovation at Meta. Also, Linktree had $1B+ valuation as of a year ago, and now that’s gone. I thought NFTs were a ridiculous investment but Linktree’s business seems even more ridiculous.
Ever since the dog snatched half of Julie’s Reuben sandwich from the kitchen counter on Sunday, I have been making jokes about the subject.
Like: The dog doesn’t want treats anymore; she wants more corned beef. Or: The dog asked us if we could swing by the deli and bring her back another sandwich.
Julie says she’s sick of these jokes, but I know she doesn’t mean it, so I will keep them coming.
“Headless Body in Topless Bar” turns 40 (Daring Fireball)