Last month I boosted a post on Mastodon where an early pioneer of networking relayed an amusing story about shutting down part of the ARPANET during a storm. After I did that, I was asked “@danyork Do you have a similar story from your archive?" As I said in a reply,I have stories, but none quite so dramatic. Born in the late 1960s, I got involved with the Internet in the mid- to late 1980s at the University of New Hampshire (UNH). I was not part of the late 1960s / early 1970s group that was involved with the ARPANET….
Jan 28
Fascinating Article About the Early History of Python
Back in the early 1990s, I was active in some different developer user groups where perl was the scripting language of choice. I remember with great fondness some of the “obfuscated perl” challenges where the goal was to write something as obscure and small as possible… that actually performed some action. The perl slogan …
Jan 24
With so many "Dan Yorks", ChatGPT’s interview questions are very generic
After Simon Willison wrote about how accurate questions from ChatGPT were when he asked “I am interviewing Simon Willison. What are some good questions I can ask them?”, I had to give it a try. Simon’s had some questions specific to the areas he works in, web development and open source, so I was curious to see what might be in one with my name. I was particularly curious because there are so many “Dan York”s out there on the Internet. Alas, my response from ChatGPT was boringly generic: I am interviewing Dan York. What are some good questions I…
Jan 23
FIR #312: The Social Media Press Release Redux
Everything old is new again, the saying goes. Despite touting the idea of a press release as a destination being a new idea, it actually dates back about 15 years — and retains all of its value. Neville and Shel explore the idea of defeating paywalls with destination press releases in this monthly long-form episode of “For Immediate Release.” Also in this episode:
- Follow-ups to stories about Artificial Intelligence (AI) interns and facial recognition used for nefarious purposes.
- The 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer — and whether Edelman can claim to be trust experts
- A roundup of news and commentary about ChatGPT
- A decline in Mastodon users
- Dan York’s Tech Report, which looks at some Twitter changes, good news for Mastodon users, a Mastodon instance for Medium users, Getty’s lawsuit targeting the generative AI image tool Stable Diffusion, Wikipedia’s new look-and-feel, and WordPress’s upcoming 20th birthday.
The post FIR #312: The Social Media Press Release Redux appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.
Jan 22
Cory Doctorow on the enshittification of social platforms
If you read nothing else this week, I encourage you to read Cory Doctorow’s latest … rant? … essay? … article? Written in a style uniquely his own, he calls the article “TikTok enshittification”, giving us an ever so appropriate…
Jan 19
Midway Through 100 Days of Blogging – How Did I Do?
Back on December 1, 2022, I boldly said that I was going to attempt 100 consecutive days of blogging. Today marks day 50, the halfway point. So.. how did I do? Wellll… how many different ways can you say… FAIL!…
Jan 12
Measuring Stuff That Didn’t Happen
In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel tackle a question from listener Kris Hansen about developing a metrics dashboard for her organization’s leadership.
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The post FIR #309: Measuring Stuff That Didn’t Happen appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.
Jan 01
My Themes for 2023
As has been my practice for the past 14 years (see list), my first post of 2023 across all my sites is of three words that are my aspirations or “themes” for the year ahead. They are not “resolutions” so much as guiding thoughts or principles. Health Health (or a health-related word) has been one of my three words in 11 of these 14 years. 🙁 BUT… the truth is that I’ve reached an UNhealthy point where I MUST prioritize caring for my body. I’ve had a couple of minor health scares. I’ve been too sedentary. And I’ve continually made…
Dec 30
Mastodon Tip – Filter Languages To See Only The Ones You Understand
A tip for all the newcomers to Mastodon – if you are seeing a lot of posts in your timelines in languages that you don’t know, there is a very simple way you can filter those posts out. You just:…
Dec 28
Techmeme Now Highlighting Mastodon Posts In Addition to Tweets
In a sign of the growth of Mastodon in the midst of the continuing drama at Twitter, Techmeme, the news site I use the most to keep up on tech news, has started to highlight Mastodon posts in addition to…
