One quick question for the Anthropic, OpenAI, and Meta IT guys: is it that hard to configure a sandbox to block outbound traffic to the Internet? I know really good guys who could help you with this. Or, if you don’t want to hire a human to do it, just ask your fuckin models how to do it. Until then, how can we trust you?

I’m returning from a short visit to YouTube Studio to find out that Google is now offering AI-based ideas to inspire the creation of new videos. I selected that one because it relates to Micro.blog. Very low quality. Here’s an excerpt:

“Most Micro.blog sites are digital ghosts, invisible to the search engines and professional networks that matter. We are going to fix that by engineering a high-authority ecosystem that ranks on the first page while keeping you in total control. Stop shouting into a void and start building a discoverable hub.”

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

I saw people mention FreshRSS on my timeline today and I was curious about it. Why? Because self-hosting an RSS reader service might mean that I could drop Inoreader… so, I started reading the documentation. If there was a single-click install droplet on DigitalOcean, that would be enticing, provided that FreshRSS offers a great set of APIs. The UI is meh, though, but using the engine with a nice client like NNW might be a possibility. I didn’t go further in my exploration so far… but now I want to look at other self-hosting solutions, too. Suggestions?

Today, while preparing the next edition of my newsletter, I wondered whether managing numerous product lines, with a multitude of variants and configurations, might be harming Apple, especially in the current context of supply chain difficulties. I feel that Apple’s strategy is no longer in tune with the times.

In “The War That Could Swallow the World”, David French writes:

“I’ve often wondered what it was like to be alive in the summer of 1914, much less in 1938 and 1939. When did people start to realize that the world was on the brink of catastrophe? Speak up too soon or too frequently, and you look ridiculous — like the Chicken Little of World War. Speak up too late, and you live (if you live) with bitter regret.”

I often ask myself similar questions. When does it feel like it? Are we calling a world war after-the-fact? Does it matter in the end? This blog used to have a blog post category named “UkraineWar”. It will be renamed “Conflicts” which I think feels closer to what I perceive from today’s world.

I’m not sure what is going on at Anthropic these days, but updates to Claude Desktop have stopped. Normally, I would get an update every few days; the last update was July 24th. Something might be going on. I wouldn’t mind if AI companies took a pause and started thinking about the consequences of putting their products in the hands of millions, you know, being conscious about what you do? Alas, that’s not going to happen.

This morning, I received a renewal notice for a domain I registered during my transition from my previous job to my current one. At the time, I wasn’t sure if I would start my own consulting firm, so I registered the domain but then changed jobs. Despite that, I decided to renew the domain just in case. I like to think that one day I’ll be my own boss. It cost me about ten bucks a year, which is really cheap for dreaming.

The real AI risk is inside the labs -

I believe we should not consider AI safe. A critical event that may result in the extinction of Homo sapiens is possible, but the danger is not in open models, or China making faster progress than the US. The danger is that a few CEOs (everywhere in the world) without the required background and legitimacy are in the position of making hard choices for humanity at large. They were not selected to do so; it was just the randomness of events that created this setup. They can’t speak for everybody, given the stakes, just because they have GPUs and money. This is the first thing that should be fixed.

In light of recent security-related events, both at OpenAI and Anthropic, I also believe these companies must be held accountable for what they put out there. I believe we are entering dangerous times with AI, maybe we are even on the verge of being out of control with this. Add this to the AI bubble speculation. Scary.

For the past two or three years, I’ve been contemplating the idea of creating a comprehensive training course for Craft. There’s nothing comparable to what you find for Notion or Obsidian. I think it’s a great opportunity, very niche, but still an opportunity. Craft has evolved considerably in recent years, making it difficult to produce content that doesn’t become outdated quickly. Now that Craft’s evolution seems to be slowing down, the idea of creating this training keeps resurfacing. But there’s a problem: a lack of motivation and time with no guarantee of results.

I tested creating a training plan using Claude AI, and while I’m impressed by the level of detail and completeness of the proposed content, I would need to record more than 75 video capsules lasting 2 to 4 minutes each. Preparing those recordings requires between 15 to 45 minutes of preparation, without considering the post-processing requirements. That’s quite a commitment!

I’m afraid the idea won’t materialize. Life is short and I’m not here on a humanitarian mission. I think I’ll move on to something else. 😌

I’m unsure who Substack writers aim to reach. In my view, Substack might be the most anti-reader platform I’ve ever seen, even more so than Medium, which is in itself very telling. Today, I wanted to read an article on Substack after following a link in an email from my inbox, but my app wasn’t installed on my iPhone. After reinstalling it, I tried to open the link again, but it didn’t work. I had to log back in, apparently, which I did. The next step? Reading the article? Not quite—now it asks for topics of interest, then requests access to my Contacts. I stopped there, killed and removed the app from my phone and never read that article. Instead, I’m here to vent my frustration.