So the EFF announced that they are leaving X, not because of any political objections though they note that’s a legitimate reason as well, but because they did the math and they get only 3% of the engagement on a post today that they did 7 years ago. People have opinions about this, not the least of which is Nikita from X who calls them stupid, but who has also spent the last week arguing with Nate Silver about large accounts no longer getting the engagement they used to. Hilariously Nikita accused Nate of being intellectually dishonest for quote-posting him, and argued that posting links doesn’t nerf your views even though Elon has explicitly said they downgrade posts with links and it’s been well known for years now that posting a link hurts engagement and the solution is to post the link in a follow up reply. This bickering is amusing to watch until you realize that it’s all because these platforms which started out as a hopeful way to connect people became algo driven hell swamps intent on monopolizing your attention no mater the social cost. An interesting thing that I haven’t had a chance to play with just yet is Quiet, which is kind of a decentralized no central server community tool that feels like it could be a good thing.
Speaking of connecting people Om talks about the recent (alleged) unmasking of Satoshi, and how it’s similar to the obsession to dox Banksy. His point which echos what I’ve been saying (though he’s a better writer) is that these “investigations” are entirely self serving. The communities aren’t dying to find out who these people are, and are completely comfortable with the mystery and allure – and that in a way makes them special. But people outside of the communities think it’s a puzzle they have to crack, to make a name for themselves as the ones who cracked it, and then just move on to the next thing without much concern for the impact or consequences of their actions. And ultimately the “So what?”
Speaking of our tools working against us, the FBI was able to use message notifications to get past privacy protections in Signal which led to indictments in the recent case accusing anti-fascist protesters of being members of the domestic terrorist organization antifa. Thats a such a ridiculous sentence I can’t believe I even just typed it (there is no organization called antifa – it’s just a shortened word. if you oppose fascism, you are antifa) But it highlights the importance of not just using privacy tools but using them correctly. Use a passcode for your mobile device (don’t use biometric which can be unlocked without your consent) and turn off message previews in notifications in all your messaging apps. With Signal do this: Signal → Settings → Notifications → Show → set to “No Name or Content”. The point here is that even without getting into your device your notifications can been seen reveal a lot of info you might not expect.
Speaking of things you might not expect, I combined Karpathy’s LLM-Wiki with McCoy’s LLMbrary to make an Obsidian (md files) based AI managed knowledge base brain thing (mapped above) and it’s so exciting. To translate that into human speak, basically I can flag any article or image or piece of info online and send it to one of several AI agents who reads it and puts it into my personal wiki, connecting the dots with other articles or info I’ve saved. Then I can also take a photo of a bookshelf and drop that in and the agents index the books, catalog them and connect author and topic data to the existing network. Then, in just natural language I can tell an agent “oh btw I wrote the forward for that book and this article mentions that dude who was a part of this project years ago…” and those details get added and connected. Then I can later ask something like “hey tell me about Trithemius” and then get back a detailed answer explaining how this 15th century occultist created cryptography that led to encryption and the internet and which books I have that dive deeper into him. It’s really fun, and it just gets better every time I interact with it.
Speaking of enjoying things I built, I’ve mentioned Quicky a few times now and it also keeps getting better everyday. I went ahead and made mine public so you can see what a delivered email looks like. I also “officially” launched it on Product Hunt this week to the delighted reception of single digits of readers, so if you do the product hunt thing and want to upvote it or leave a comment or whatever that’s helpful. It’s an interesting moment because suddenly anyone can build anything, but the cost of building it yourself is still often more than using something someone else built. But also using something someone else built means you are using the thing they built to solve their problem, which might not be 1:1 to your problem. So it’s a funny balance and I don’t know how long that will hold out, but I agree bigger picture the “SaaSpocalypse” is probably right around the corner. Certainly I wouldn’t be investing time/money into building a software company right now in hopes of selling it to a larger company, since an AI can just replicate any idea with zero code overlap in a a few hours. But conversely, that also means a future where all the software you use is built exactly for you and your needs and usecase. That might be optimistic, but that’s how it feels from here.
Speaking of how it feels from here, Norm wrote about Bo. Suicide trigger warnings on that or whatever. I kept thinking I should write something too, about how it makes me feel, but strangely it’s also very similar to how I felt about Aaron. I didn’t know Bo myself, he had no reason to know me, but he was friends with so many of my friends and of course I knew of him and appreciated the work he did for the community we all loved. It reminded me of my own experiences and a subject I’ve wrestled with repeatedly because honestly theres no escaping it. The thing Norm mentions, that many other friends did as well, is that many if not most of us found our way to punk rock and hardcore because we had painful childhoods and didn’t fit in anywhere else, and we were struggling, and found a home with others who also didn’t fit in and understood us. We found family and support in the least likely of places. But those struggles never really end, they just get managed. Sometimes better than others. Looking back today on my 2011 reflections and assertions, I’m not so sure I agree with the positions I took at the time. I guess that applies to many things but especially here. Shit is hard out there, and all we can do is keep trying, but that doesn’t mean that it always works.
This is The Crowd number 299. It’s wild to be because that feels like a lot, but also considering we’re over 10 years into this, not so much. People start newsletters these days and hit 300 issues within the first year. Still 300 feels like a milestone of sorts, though I don’t want to think about it too much for fear of building it up into something unattainable. I wonder where the next 100 issues will take us?
As always, thanks for being here for the ride.
-s