Just a guy in Vermont trying to connect all the dots...
Dan York
Author's posts
Dec 26
FIR #305: We See You And You Can’t Come In
A petulant venue owner is using facial recognition software to keep people with whom he has issues from entering his spaces — including a mom with a Girl Scout troop. Also in this monthly long-form episode of the “For Immediate Release” podcast, Neville and Shel discuss the value of virtual goods and whether brands should start taking them seriously; business schools are exploring the potential for teaching in the metaverse — especially classes about digital technology; it hasn’t been a great year for metaverse activations, but at least brands are learning; it has been a year since Lush closed its Instagram and Facebook accounts, which means it’s time to see how that decision turned out; and the better ChatGPT (the AI text-generating chatbot) gets, the more worried some people get about its impact on truth; and Dan York shares a year-end Tech Report with a range of updates including using WordPress for newsletters, WordPress’s State of the Word 2022, and Tumblr Live.
The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, December 26.
We host a Communicators Zoom Chat each Thursday at 1 p.m. ET. For credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request the credentials in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com.
Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.
You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. Neville’s Asides blog is also available.
Links from this report:
- Business schools explore teaching in the metaverse
- Madison Square Garden Uses Facial Recognition to Ban Its Owner’s Enemies
- Pouring Through a Crisis: How Budweiser Salvaged Its World Cup
- AI-Created Comic Could Be Deemed Ineligible for Copyright Protection
- Could an AI Chatbot Rewrite My Novel?
- This Bot Will Argue With Your Internet Provider For You and Get You a Cheaper Bill
- Steve Coulson Tweet on Schools Banning ChatGPT
Links from Dan York’s Report
The post FIR #305: We See You And You Can’t Come In appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.
Dec 25
The Christmas Story, As Told by ChatGPT in Iambic Pentameter
For those who celebrate Christmas, as I do… MERRY CHRISTMAS!
As I am off celebrating the holiday with my family, I thought I’d ask an AI to tell the Bible’s Christmas story. So I went to ChatGPT and asked:
> Tell the biblical Christmas story in iambic pentameter
Why iambic pentameter? I don’t know… other than thinking it could be more interesting than just having Chat GPT regurgitate blocks of text. This requires a little bit more effort.
After getting the first version, I found the focus on Herod to be a bit odd, so I pressed the “Regenerate response” to get a second version. Then I did it three more times, and decided to include all five versions here. I find the differences very interesting, as each takes a different view on the story, and includes or excludes different aspects of the story. For instance:
- Herod, Egypt, and Nazareth only show up in version 1.
- The shepards only appear in 2, 3, and 4.
- The wise men are only in 2 and 3.
- Gold, frankincense and myrrh only appear in 2.
- Angels only appear in 3 and 4.
- Version 5 has almost no details but instead focuses on the religious meaning.
- None of them mentioned why Joseph and Mary where traveling (to register for a census in his home town for tax purposes for the Roman government).
It also shows that you can’t just take ChatGPT’s answer as gospel (quite literally). Imagine if you asked ChatGPT and got only version 1? You would have a very different view of the story from the other ones.
No matter which story you may or may not agree with, including none of these, I wish you all a very merry Christmas!
Version 1
Once in the land of Judah, long ago
A virgin fair was betrothed to Joseph, a carpenter
But in her womb, a child was set to grow
Conceived by power of the Holy Ghost, as told by angel Gabriel
This child would be the savior of us all
A king, descended from the line of David
His birth had been foretold by prophets tall
And now, the time had come, the promise given
But in the land, a ruler did hold sway
A cruel and wicked man, by name of Herod
He heard the news of this newborn king at play
And in his jealousy and fear, did order
That every male child, two years and under
Should be put to death, in Bethlehem and near
To try and kill this child, the Son of Thunder
But Joseph took Mary and the babe in fear
And fled to Egypt, till the danger passed
They stayed in hiding, till the coast was clear
Then returned to Israel, at last
And settled in a town called Nazareth
Thus Jesus grew, in wisdom, age, and grace
And when the time was right, he took his place
As savior of the world, in love and peace
This is the story of the birth of Jesus, the Prince of Peace.
Version 2
In Bethlehem, a city of Judea,
A child was born, the savior of mankind.
This infant, wrapped in swaddling clothes so new,
Was laid in manger, for there was no room
In inns of Bethlehem, on that holy night.
The news of this great birth was quickly spread
To shepherds in the fields, who did not stay
But hurried to the stable, where they found
The newborn king, lying in a bed of hay.
The shepherds marveled at the sight they saw,
And they returned to their fields, praising God
For sending them the savior of the world.
But news of this great birth was not confined
To shepherds in the fields or Bethlehem's town.
Three wise men, guided by a shining star,
Came from the East, bearing gifts of gold,
Frankincense, and myrrh, to honor him.
And so, on this most holy night, the world
Was blessed with the arrival of the one
Who came to save us all, the son of God,
Jesus, the Christ, the savior of mankind.
Version 3
In Bethlehem, a town so small and poor,
A child was born to Mary, pure and fair.
This blessed babe, the Son of God, was sure
To bring salvation, love, and mercy rare.
The angels sang, and shepherds came to see
This newborn king, in stable low and mean.
Three wise men, led by a bright star, did flee
To offer gifts, and worship on their knees.
This holy child, so pure and innocent,
Was sent to save us all from sin and death.
He lived and loved and healed with great intent,
And willingly submitted to his earthly death.
But death could not contain him, as was plain,
For he rose again, and lives forevermore.
He brings salvation, hope, and joy, and reigns
As Lord of all, forever and always.
Version 4
The Christmas story, as told in the Bible,
Is one of joy and love, a miracle true:
It starts with Mary, chosen by the Lord
To be the mother of His only son,
A son who would redeem the world from sin.
The angel Gabriel appeared to Mary
And told her she would bear a son, and he
Would be the savior of the world, a king
Descended from the line of David, great.
Mary, though frightened, knew that this was right,
And so she said, "I am the Lord's servant.
May it be to me as you have said.”
The time came for Mary to give birth, and so
She and her husband Joseph traveled far
To Bethlehem, the city of David's birth.
But when they arrived, they found no room
In any inn, and so they had to stay
In a stable, where the baby Jesus lay.
The shepherds, watching over their sheep by night,
Were startled by a bright and shining light,
And saw an angel, who told them the news
Of Jesus' birth, and said, "Do not be afraid.
I bring you tidings of great joy today:
A savior has been born in Bethlehem, a boy.”
The shepherds went to see the baby Jesus,
And when they saw him lying in the manger,
They knew that this was the son of God, and so
They spread the word throughout the countryside.
And so it was that Christmas came to be
A day of joy and celebration, free
From sin and sorrow, as the world rejoiced
In the birth of Jesus, our beloved Lord.
Version 5
The Christmas story, as told in the Bible, is a tale of hope and redemption. It begins with the birth of Jesus, the Son of God, in a humble stable in Bethlehem.
Joseph and Mary, betrothed in marriage,
Were traveling to the town of David's line
When Mary, heavy with the child she'd carry,
Was forced to stop and give the baby time.
And so, in poverty and low estate,
The Son of God was born, a lowly king.
But though His birth was humble and sedate,
His purpose was to save the world, and bring
Salvation to all those who would believe.
For He was sent to be the sacrifice,
To bear the weight of sin upon His sleeve
And through His death, bring us to paradise.
And so the Christmas story, full of grace,
Brings hope and joy to all who seek His face.
Dec 24
Two Major Challenges For Operating Mastodon Servers – Scaling and Content Moderation
As more people embrace the decentralized world of the Fediverse - and as we WANT more people to migrate to the Fediverse - we are seeing an explosion of new Mastodon servers/instances set up by all sorts of people and groups. Friends of mine have launched their own just running in simple virtual machines. There are now “Mastodon hosting” springing up - ex. masto.host, although the person running it has paused new customers due to the high demand.
But there are two major challenges for people or organizations getting into the space:
1 - SCALING - If you just run a small server for yourself and maybe a few friends, you can limit the system administration workload. But if you launch a public server… you have to be able to handle the influx of new accounts, particularly during the current Twitter migration/exodus. This might be very cool initially, but at some point it starts to become a serious amount of work. You have the technical challenges of scaling to support more users - and you also have to meet the expectations of members in terms of availability, reliability, etc. You have to answer their questions, feature requests, etc.
Running a Mastodon server at scale (or really any kind of public server with user accounts) takes a considerable investment of time, energy, and money. You need to think about how you involve multiple people, how you will support all your users, and how you financially support it all.
[UPDATE - It was noted to me that there can be very real technical and cost requirements with growing a server in particular with storing media. Whenever someone uploads an image or video to the server, it must be stored on that server. Additionally, your server will host media coming from other servers with which you are federated. So as your server gains more users, who follow more people on other servers, there is more and more demand for file storage on your server.]
2 - CONTENT MODERATION - This is perhaps the BIGGEST challenge for hosting a public server. If you again run a small server for yourself and people you trust, then this may all be fine. You set clear expectations with your friends or people you think you can trust, and that may be all you need to do.
But the minute you start letting the broader public into your server, you run into all sorts of legal compliance issues you have to be aware of. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently wrote, there are a range of legal concerns in the USA for operators of any service that hosts “user-generated content”. One big issue is copyright law and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). EFF also mentions FOSTA/SESTA, law enforcement requests for identity information, and child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
And this is just for the USA. Add in the need to potentially comply with European Union (EU) legislation such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the recently passed Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA). And… the legislation popping up in many other parts of the world. And, of course, your content moderation abilities needs to be able to grow as you scale to support more users.
[UPDATE - Aswath Rao pointed out in a comment on Mastodon that as a server operator its not enough that you trust the people who have accounts on your server. For every person your users follow on other servers, that person’s content and media are also copied onto your server. So you wind up hosting content on your server from all of those other external users, too. ]
These are also just the legal compliance issues around content moderation. You also have to think about what kind of community you want to foster on your server. Will you have additional moderation policies to create the kind of community you want? (For example, specifically not allowing “hate speech”.) If so, how will you then enforce those policies?
You need to again have the time, energy, and financial resources to be able to comply with the legal requirements, which may end up involving some level of monitoring / enforcement.
For both of those reasons, it will be interesting to see where the Fediverse goes - and in particular where Mastodon goes - in the time ahead. Will we continue to have the wide range of public servers as we do right now? Or over time will we see larger ones emerge that have the time, energy, and financial resources to address these challenges?
Dec 22
Automattic Promotes WordPress.com as a Platform for Email Newsletters (and provides improved support)
Just as Twitter is killing off it’s Revue newsletter service, Automattic is promoting their hosted WordPress.com service for newsletters - and providing some new tools to make that easier. In their announcement blog post, they note that WordPress.com has already had the features to email posts out automatically. This “newsletter” functionality has been there for quite some time. What they’ve done now, though, is to bring those newsletter features together in a new theme - and they’ve also simplified the process of setting up a newsletter site.
[NOTE - this feature is part of the WordPress.*COM* hosted service, not part of the WordPress software (sometimes referred to as "WordPress.ORG”) that you can install on your own servers. However, they indicate that the theme used for this newsletter feature will be made more widely available in the future.]
In the announcement, they mention these features:
- Add unlimited email subscribers
- Import subscribers from other platforms
- Launch with a beautiful, ready-made theme or customize every detail with a myriad of Block Patterns
- Stylize your newsletter with a background image, site icon, and accent color
- Schedule email publishing
- Monetize your site (stay tuned for more paid subscription features)
- Use a free .blog subdomain or connect a custom domain with one of our paid plans
- Publish on the go with Post by Email – making writing a newsletter as simple as sending an email
They also mention that you can start up a new newsletter or add the features to an existing hosted blog.
Giving It A Try
Naturally, I had to try it out. 😀 I started by going to the newsletter page and simply choosing the link “Start building your newsletter”. I logged in with my existing WordPress.com account and was brought to a page to set up my newsletter:
This was simple and easy. After I took the screenshot I added a logo, which needed to be circular.
Here is one place Automattic will monetize - the “Favorite color” allowed me to use blue for free. Several other colors are available as part of a premium upgrade.
Next they prompt you to set up a custom domain, and offer you some options while allowing for more. You can, of course, skip this (I did in my test) and just use the free default domain they give you.
As I noted, I skipped this part and just moved on to the new screen where I was asked to choose a plan - or start with a free plan.
I chose for the moment to stick with the free plan for this test. After clicking that link, I had one more screen where I could add some initial email addresses and then… ta da… I was at a screen to start publishing
What Do I Think?
First, to be clear, there is not really any dramatically new functionality here. This is how WordPress has worked for quite some time. Even the field for someone to subscribe has been there as part of the “Subscribe Block”.
All that’s really new is this “Newsletter” theme and some of the onboarding screens.
Having said that… I think it can be a great way to get started with a newsletter!
You have all the power of WordPress editing. You can run it on your own domain. You can use it on your laptop or mobile device.
It’s WordPress!
Now, it’s not clear to me that you will get the kind of statistics that you will get from a Substack, Revue or other newsletter platform. I couldn’t see any way to find, for instance, the open rate, or to know how many people clicked which links. Maybe it’s there and I’ve just missed it. Or maybe there is the expectation that you might use Google Analytics for that as part of a paid plan.
I don’t know… and it doesn’t really matter for me, personally. But I could see people who want to use this as a newsletter platform wanting that kind of information.
My one criticism was with the information about the plans. I couldn’t find any easy matrix showing what I get on the free plan versus the paid plans. I could see the features across all the paid plans… but not how that compared to the free plan. It would be helpful to understand as it might cause me to jump into a paid plan.
All in all I think it is a very useful reminder that WordPress can support these kind of interactions over email.
I may consider moving an older newsletter over to this platform and trying it out in 2023.
What do you think about this news?
Dec 21
Ceremonies of Light and Dark
I have always enjoyed our ceremonies of light and dark, here in the cold mid-winter of northern New England.
The winter solstice here is always a time of celebration. For us, it is the shortest “day” in terms of daylight - and the longest night. It is cold here at this time of year.
The solstice gives us hope. From here on out, the days only get longer… and at some point will start to actually get warmer. (We have to go through some much colder periods first, though!)
We celebrate here so often with candles… with fires… with flames… with light to drive away the darkness.
In the Christian tradition, there are the candles of advent, the Christmas trees with their lights, and… today… the many lights that people decorate their houses with. In the Jewish tradition, there is the menorah with its 8 candles that are lit during the days of Hanukkah. In older pagan traditions, there were similar ceremonies of light. Today, in our less religious times, we cover our houses with “holiday lights”. In a school our daughters attended when they were younger, there was a beautiful advent spiral walk with candles.
Many of the ceremonies have different meanings, of course,
Yet each in their own way brings light into a time of darkness.
There is beauty and magic in that.
Dec 19
Mastodon – The Server You Are On Is Most Important When You Are Starting Out
“How do I choose which Mastodon server to join? It’s SO CONFUSING! I just want to sign up to ‘Mastodon’!”
This seems to be a common refrain from some people exploring Mastodon as part of the Twitter migration/exodus.
The reality is that the Mastodon server you join is most important in the beginning when you are trying to discover new users. Over time, and as you follow more and more people, the server you are on becomes less important.
Let me explain...
I routinely point out to people asking these questions that it is a lot like choosing your email provider - do you use the email address your ISP gives you? Or Gmail? Hotmail? Yahoo mail? Protonmail? Or even run your own email server?
No matter where you have an email address, you can send email to anyone else using email. Similarly, when you sign up on a Mastodon server (or “instance” to use the older term), you can view and interact with people on any other Mastodon server.
But that still doesn’t seem to register for some folks in an era when we are used to centralized, monolithic social platforms. You just join Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or… whatever service. Mastodon is different - you have to make a choice.
I’ve been using Mastodon since December 2016, and in my opinion, which server you are on really matters the most when you are first starting out and seeking to discover new users. Here’s why. In your Mastodon view on the web or in apps, there are three “timelines” (or “feeds”) that you can view:
- Home - all the posts (or “toots”) of people you follow
- Local - all the posts of people on your local server
- Federated - all the posts of people across the Fediverse who are followed by people on your local server[1]
When you are starting out, your home feed will likely be pretty empty, and so Mastodon will be a bit of a ghost town to you. What’s the point of going into it if you only see a couple of posts?
This is where the Local and Federated timelines are important. They help you discover new users to follow.
With the Local timeline, you get to see posts from all the people on your server. So if, for instance, you join techpolicy.social, you will discover posts and people to follow interested in technology policy. If you join mastodon.art, you will discover more people interested in art. If you join fosstodon.org, you’ll discover posts and people interested in free and open source software. If you join ipv6.social… you guessed it, you’ll discover people interested in IPv6. 😀
Beyond the Local timeline, the Federated timeline will help you discover all the Mastodon users on other servers that people on your server follow. So on techpolicy.social, odds are that you will discover other people interested in tech policy, as well as probably tech news sites, and all the other kinds of accounts people there follow. If your account is on mastodon.art, your Federated timeline will probably tend to have more artistic people mixed in. On fostodon.org, your Federated timeline will probably have more people using Linux, developers, and people advocating for free and open source software.
By viewing the Local and Federated timelines, you can find people to follow!
Each person you follow will then start to appear in your Home timeline.
At some point, you will follow enough people that your Home timeline is all you really need to pay attention to. There are sufficient people posting that you only really have the time to read your Home timeline.
The Local and Federated timelines aren’t as important any more. I mean… you still might dip into them from time to time to see if there are new people to discover, but you don’t really need to do so anymore.
This is the key point. The server you choose to join is most important in the beginning when you are trying to find people. But you don’t have to worry too much. Pick one you like and start there.
Over time, much like what email server you are on, it won’t matter quite as much.
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[1] Yes, it’s a little more complicated than that, but I’m simplifying for the purpose of this article.
Dec 17
The Term "Weblog" Is 25 Years Old Today
By way of a Mastodon post this morning, I learned that the term “weblog” is 25 years old today!
The Wikipedia article for “Blog” says that the term was coined by Jorn Barger on December 17, 1997. Reading the Wikipedia article about Jorn Barger, we learn:
On December 17, 1997, inspired by Dave Winer's Scripting News and running on Winer's Frontier publishing software, Barger began posting daily entries to his Robot Wisdom Weblog in the hope of finding "an audience who might see the connections between [his] many interests." These postings featured "a list of links each day shaped by his own interests in the arts and technology," thus offering a "day-to-day log of his reading and intellectual pursuits” and coining the term "weblog" as a novel form of web publishing.
At two syllables, “weblog” was of course ripe for shortening and so did evolve into “blog” just a couple of years later.
A “log of daily activities published on the web” became a “weblog” which then became a “blog”.
I started what we now call “blogging” back in 2000 on a site called Advogato that actually referred to your content as a “diary”. But I do remember well that other sites were hosting “weblogs” and “blogs”.
Pretty wild to think that was 25 years ago! Happy Birthday to “weblog”!
Dec 15
Google IPv6 stats consistently peaking over 40%
When I looked at Google’s IPv6 stats recently, it was great to see that the peaks are now consistently all over 40%. Back in January, I wrote about crossing the 35% threshold, so there’s been a 5% growth over the space of the year.
Would we who advocate for IPv6 want it to grow quicker? Of course! And if you look at the per-country page, you can see that it has grown quicker in some countries than others.
But hey… we’ve been at this for a long time, so I’ll celebrate that 5% growth this year! Let’s see if it keeps on going more next year!
P.S. If you want another source of IPv6 statistics, colleagues of mine at the Internet Society are involved with measuring IPv6 on our Pulse measurement platform.
Dec 15
Google IPv6 stats consistently peaking over 40%
When I looked at Google’s IPv6 stats recently, it was great to see that the peaks are now consistently all over 40%. Back in January, I wrote about crossing the 35% threshold, so there’s been a 5% growth over the space of the year.
Would we who advocate for IPv6 want it to grow quicker? Of course! And if you look at the per-country page, you can see that it has grown quicker in some countries than others.
But hey… we’ve been at this for a long time, so I’ll celebrate that 5% growth this year! Let’s see if it keeps on going more next year!
P.S. If you want another source of IPv6 statistics, colleagues of mine at the Internet Society are involved with measuring IPv6 on our Pulse measurement platform.
Dec 14
Au Revoir Revue! Twitter to Kill Off Newsletter Service at End of 2022 – I Guess I Need To Move My Newsletter!
I was a little surprised to learn this morning that Twitter is shutting down its Revue newsletter service. Casey Newton first wrote about this back on November 3 in his Platformer newsletter, but subsequent articles after the massive layoffs confirmed that Revue is shutting down - and basically all the associated staff have been let go.
I had missed all those articles and just randomly saw a reference this morning when scanning social feeds.
It’s NOT actually surprising if you think about the fact that Elon Musk has to be laser-focused on revenue right now, particularly as his self-induced chaos is causing users and advertisers to leave Twitter. Revue was about long-form content published in email - and was not really a quick and easy way to increase advertising
So as they note, it’s all going away:
- December 20, 2022 – Revue will set all outstanding paid subscriptions to cancel at the end of their billing cycle
- January 18, 2023 – Revue will shut down and all data will be deleted
It’s too bad as it was a nice platform… if you were a strong Twitter user.
It had the nice feature that it showed up right on your Twitter profile page, offering people the ability to easily subscribe:
On the back end, there were some simple tools to easily add tweets into your newsletter.
Also, unlike Substack, you could set up your Revue newsletter with a custom domain, such as I did with choices.danyork.com.
So What Will I Do Next?
As that image shows, I started a newsletter on Revue called “A Choice of Futures” back in October 2021 and published a whopping two issues! 🎉
I had great plans to do more, but ran into several challenges in timing and then got super busy with work and volunteer responsibilities in 2022.
But I was thinking about getting back to it in 2023.
So what now?
I could move that newsletter over to Substack, Medium, AWeber, or any of a zillion other places.
Or.. I can just shut down this particular newsletter.
Realistically, that’s probably what I’ll do. Send one final issue as the period at the end of the sentence, and then be done.
You see… I actually already have a Substack newsletter at danyork.substack.com called “A View From The Crow’s Nest” where the intent is to write about new technology out on the horizon. It’s an even older newsletter that I used to run through an email service provider. I moved it to Substack back in March 2020 when Substack was getting a lot of attention. I wanted to learn about Substack and it was my intention to start doing more with it.
But then.. pandemic… and so much else of the craziness of COVID-19 and how our world was changing. I dropped that newsletter and so much else, just caught in the moment of trying to make it through each day.
By the time late 2021 came around and I was interested in a newsletter again, I had some concerns about the direction Substack was going… and so I thought I’d give Revue a try.
Ha!
Turns out the concerns would end up being with where Twitter and Revue were going instead! (Although I do still have concerns about Substack!)
So that will be my personal plan. I’ve hit the button to export all my data from Revue, and I’ll invite folks there to join my other newsletter on Substack.
Any of you reading this are welcome to join too!
