Large AI Models Are Cultural and Social Technologies. The way LLMs are often framed is as "intelligent agents" but maybe this is the wrong framing. Rather we should view them as "cultural and social technologies" (like the printing press or markets) that are "allowing humans to take advantage of information other humans have accumulated".
Not as snappy or exciting in a science fiction sort of way but more accurate without being dismissive of their impact on society.
I like this feature because it sits on the spectrum betwen "just chat with Claude" on the one hand and "describe what Cursor should do" on the other. It augments your process rather than trying to do it entirely.
Hypermedia Controls: From Feral to Formal. An interesting paper that tries to locate and formalize a set of core primitives in hypermedia systems as expressed in HTMX. It identifies a "hypermedia control" as consisting of four mechanisms: (1) an element that (2) responds to an event trigger by (3) sending a network request and (4) placing the response in at some position in the viewport. By enhancing a hypermedia system with primitives that allow you to manipulate each of those mechanisms you can declaratively extend the system with your own hypermedia controls.
An example they give:
<buttonhx-trigger="click"hx-post="/clicked"hx-target="#output">
Issue a request
</button><outputid="output"></output>
When the user clicks on the button the system will issue a network request to /clicked and place the response in the <output id="output"> element.
This is interesting in so far as it goes but I'm not convinced that the "hypermedia maximalist" approach is really all that great of a way to develop systems.
The fundamental problem, as I see it, is not that social media misinforms individuals about what is true or untrue but that it creates publics with malformed collective understandings.
I really like this subtle shift in perspective. It aligns with my distrust of social media as distorting people's behavior around chasing engagement but he actually identifies a more specific issue:
The more important change is to our beliefs about what other people think
Our beliefs and opinions about the world are influenced by what we think other people think and social media is a (distorted) machine that tells us what other people think.
Decentralized Systems Aren't. Centralized systems will always layer on top of decentralized systems unless you figure out how to fix the underlying economic problem of increasing returns to scale.
To actually get a permissionless decentralized system you need:
a business model that has decreasing returns to scale
a way to prevent Sybil attacks without massive cost
a way to prevent collusion between independent nodes
I will never forgive these people for what they’ve done to the computer, and the more I learn about both their intentions and actions the more certain I am that they are unrepentant and that their greed will never be sated. I have watched them take the things that made me human — social networking, digital communities, apps, and the other connecting fabric of our digital lives — and turned them into devices of torture, profitable mechanisms of abuse, and find it disgusting how many reporters seem to believe it's their responsibility to thank them and explain why it's good this is happening to their readers.
Last year Ed Zitron became my favorite critic of the tech industry's rot. He's incisive and angry and it's cathartic to read him.
Was briefly very into this game. Wrote a bit about it at the time.
Quickly dropped off because it was very early access and those kind of engagement hooks have a very short half-life on me. Might circle back at some point but probably not.
I finished the story content up through Endwalker this year and very much enjoyed it. I'd been working through the main story of FF14 off and on since 2021 (got interested in the game off the hype for the initial Endwalker release).
As much as I enjoyed my time I think I'm done with FF14. The story could be incredibly affecting but working through the MSQ too often felt like a slog.
I've been playing this one off and on for years. Unless it's an automation game I find it difficult to really stick with a game beyond twenty hours or so and Persona 5 Royal is much longer than that. Finally pushed through to the end and really glad I did.
I've been a casual Destiny enjoyer off and on ever since D1 came out in 2014 so it was nice to see everything really come together after a decade. I dropped off hard after finishing the campaign though and don't expect I'll be coming back.
Persona but make it fantasy and extremely relevant to our current moment.
Only half way through but having a great time. Has been more consistently compelling to me than Persona 5 (which took forever to finish). Better story pacing, refined job system, and unique world building helps a lot. Also doesn't hurt that I "get" persona-type games better now after having played a few.
Automation games in general and factorio in particular are extremely my jam. I'll be playing this one for a while. I'm taking my time, sixty hours in and I've only managed to get to one of the new planets so far (Vulcanus).
Retro games but make them modern and alt-history and 50 of them.
I was surprised how much I enjoyed this since I'm not usually much of a retro gamer. My nostalgia goggles aren't corrective enough to look past the frustrating game designs of the past.
But modern game designers interpreting the games of old through the conceit of alt-history works really well. While a few of the games in the collection are intentionally frustrating in the style of actual 80s games, most are a clever injection of modern sensibilities under 8-bit constraints. Party House, Pilot Quest, Campanella 2, Rail Heist, and Avianos are particular standouts for me.
Tim Disney